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Day – 2 (24-Mar-2011) was started with the theme of Internet explorer 9 – “Fast is now beautiful”. Most of the sessions were around HTML 5 in web developer track. Opening keynote was delivered by Brian Hall (General Manager, Internet explorer and Windows Live) and Bharat Shyam (General Manager, Windows Azure Developer Platform).

Sessions of Day – 2 is divided in to 4 tracks “Unleashed a more beautiful web”, “Core dev”, “Cloud Services with Windows Azure Platform” and “Business Intelligence”. I have tried to attend sessions from all the tracks except Business Intelligence.

Session 1 : “HTML 5” – more than HTML 5 by Harish Vaidyanathan

HTML 5 has major improvement over its older version. I didn’t know how many stages involved in finalization of HTML specification until I attended this session. HTML 5 is in working draft state at the W3C process. Harish take us through many features like new elements (tags and attributes), SVG support, multimedia capabilities (audio and video), capability of data storage on client machine, Canvas and GeoLocation etc…. You can find out more and detailed HTML5 changes here.

Session 2 : A Day in life of an IIS Request by Madhur Joshi

It was very informative session about IIS 7 configuration. Madhur shared many tips and tricks to change the behavior of application hosted on IIS 7 from the IIS without touching the code. He has created few IIS extensions which can be used for copyright image implementation. There are many ready to install IIS 7 extensions available here.

Session 3 : Building a real-world, internet-scale stock trading application by Naveen Prabhu

We have seen the first-look of India’s first Silverlight based Trading portal. It is made for Icicidirect.com. Naveen and his team developed this application, so he was the best person to take us through its development strategy and challenges they faced during development. He started with the decision making part for architecture including UI options (ASP.Net MVC, ASP.Net Webform and Silverlight), exposing data through service (WCF service, WCF Rest service), data containers and formats (Business entities, XML format), Data Access methodologies (ADO.Net, Entity Framework) etc… and all these with the aim of building high performing and secure stock trading application. Site features was the next part which he covered.

Link to ICICI Direct RIA site – https://ria.icicidirect.com/

Session 4 : Building a social networking portal on Windows Azure in 1 hour by Saranya Sriram

Social networking portal was developed using Windows Azure, SQL Azure and ASP.Net 4.0. During session Saranya showed us how to store data on SQL Azure, Develop ASP.Net on cloud environment from Visual studio 2010 IDE and integration with Facebook application.

Session 5 : Lap Around Silverlight 5 and comparative with HTML5 by Supreet Singh

This session had cleared my doubt about HTML 5 could replace Silverlight or not. It’s not. Silverlight 5 will change the face of RIA. As I am writing this post Silverlight 5 is already released in Beta version. Supreet explained what’s coming new in Silverlight 5. There are few interesting blog posts which talks more about it.

What’s New in Silverlight 5 Beta – video tutorial of 7:44 min.

Top 10 Reasons why HTML 5 is not ready to replace Silverlight

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I am feeling very excited after attending Microsoft Tech·Ed India 2011 @ Bangalore between 23rd to 25th march. It is the best technical event I have attended so far. I would like to share my experience so that whoever not able to attend can get virtual tour of it. I have kept reference / resource link with abstract of each session which will give more insight for respective sessions.

Brief about Tech·Ed event :

Microsoft Tech·Ed India 2011 is the premier technical education and networking event for tech professionals interested in learning, connecting and exploring a broad set of current and soon-to-be released Microsoft technologies, tools, platforms and services.

It was held in Bangalore between 23rd – 25th March 2011. It was 3 days event with Keynote sessions by Senior Microsoft executives, breakout sessions, Hands-on-labs, Instructor-led labs, community programs and free Microsoft certification (for office and Windows Azure) and above all social gatherings and networking with techies and community contributors across the India.

Day 1:

We started from Mumbai at 6 AM in the morning and reach at the venue Hotel LaLiT Ashok, Bangalore at around 10 AM. There were a kiosk per company for registration, so we got the registration without any queue. We got a welcome kit with a Aluminum bottle with Microsoft Logo, complementary copy of Telerik JustCode  and many pamphlets from different software vendors like Telerik, Infragisitics, Microsoft WebsiteSpark etc… Day 1 was started with Opening Keynote of Qui Lu (President, Microsoft Online Services Division) and Yousef Khalidi (Distinguished Engineer – Microsoft Windows Azure).

There were total 6 different tracks were started after Keynote. 3 tracks for Developers, 2 for IT pros. and 1 for Architect. I have attended mainly Developer track – “The Next Web”

Session 1:  ASP.Net Web Forms, MVC – choosing the right one for your web development by Harish Ranganathan

Harish had explained both the worlds very closely with example of ASP.Net Web Forms 4 and ASP.Net MVC 3 (released with VS 2010 SP1). And the possibilities of making hybrid model of ASP.Net Web Forms + MVC.

Link to Presentation

Session 2:  What’s new in ASP.Net MVC 3 : Building a Nerd-Dinner/AppStore by Chris Eargle

Chris had took us through the new features of the ASP.Net MVC 3 with help of Nerd-Dinner application. I must say if you want to learn anything related to ASP.Net MVC then you should look at this application before you deep dive-in.

You can download PDF, Code and screenshots at http://tinyurl.com/aspnetmvc

Session 3: Improving Web Application Performance using native output caching in IIS 7 by Praveen Srivastsa

Praveen started with IIS request processing lifecycle, different caching mechanism like output caching, fragment caching and then took the scenario of copyright image (Image having copyright text on it). What we normally prefer is to cache the static images on the IIS as part of static resources but what if IIS (through IIS extension) is appending “Copyright Text” to all the image of the site. In this scenario we can cache Image with Copyright Text can be cache from IIS through kernel mode caching in IIS 7.

Reference video tutorial – Click here.

Session 4: jQuery and AJAX control Toolkit: Better together for building rich web apps by Fritz Onion

Till now many of us have used AJAX control toolkit with web apps. However package comes with the cost whenever we include AJAX control toolkit control on the page, it also requests additional JavaScript files to support control functionality on the page. So if you are planning to use jQuery in your project ideally you can replace AJAX control toolkit controls with jQuery UI widgets to reduce load on the page, caused by jQuery + AJAX control toolkit. Both will still exist but you can choose based on your requirement.

Session 5: Web Deployment – super simplified using IIS 7 and Visual studio 2010 by Madhur Joshi

It was deep dive into IIS7 publishing capabilities. It was started with MSBuild and Web Deploy. Madhur had demonstrated how to package web apps in .zip files and  deploy them using IIS7 UI or through command line. We can also deploy web apps settings with it.

You can get more resources and information from http://www.iis.net/

Stay tuned for Day – 2, its coming soon…

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I am presently working on Performance Improvement of my application. So I was going through one nice article which I though I should share with my blog reader. I will be posting more in couple of days.

ASP.NET AJAX Performance Improvement

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To translate / migrate your code from C++ to C# or VB.Net very handy utility is available at by Code2Code.net.

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The Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2008 features and a variety of framework technologies including: LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual Basic 9, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight, Mobile and Application Lifecycle Management.

Training kit on VS 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 –> click here to download..

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Microsoft Codename “Astoria” – Sept 2007 CTP (Community Technology Preview) is released.

Question: What is Microsoft Codename “Astoria”?

Answer: The goal of Microsoft Codename Astoria is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within corporate networks and across the Internet. The data service is reachable over regular HTTP requests, and standard HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE are used to perform operations against the service.

The payload format for the data exchanged with the service can be controlled by the client and all options are simple, open formats such as plan XML and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation is a lightweight data-interchange format).

The use of web-friendly technologies make it ideal as a data back-end for AJAX-style applications, Rich Interactive Applications and other applications that need to operate against data that is across the web.
The first Astoria CTP is a dual release, making Astoria available in the form of downloadable bits that can be used to build data services that are entirely contained within a single computer or network and as an experimental online service that you can use to create online stores that are hosted by Microsoft and are accessible over the Internet.

This September 2007 CTP enables developers to use Astoria together with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and the ADO.NET Entity Framework and Tools Beta 2.

The Astoria September 2007 CTP is now available for download.

For more information on this release please check out the announcement on the Astoria Team Blog.

For additional information, updates and for details on the experimental online version of Astoria, go to the Astoria web site at http://astoria.mslivelabs.com

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Problem : While loading data from Excel source to SQL destination, I was facing problem that source column contains both Numeric and Alphanumeric type data. While loading this data to SQL, some times values are populated as NULL in SQL instead source column value. I have spend whole day to find out solution for this problem and finally following is the solution I found.

Solution : Set ConnectionString property of Excel source file as following

Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=filepath\filename.xls;Extended Properties=”EXCEL 8.0;HDR=YES;IMEX=1“;

NOTE: Setting IMEX=1 tells the driver to use Import mode. In this state, the registry setting ImportMixedTypes=Text will be noticed. This forces mixed data to be converted to text. For this to work reliably, you may also have to modify the registry setting, TypeGuessRows=8. The ISAM driver by default looks at the first eight rows and from that sampling determines the datatype. If this eight row sampling is all numeric, then setting IMEX=1 will not convert the default datatype to Text; it will remain numeric.

You must be careful that IMEX=1 not be used indiscriminately. This is IMPORT mode, so the results may be unpredictable if you try to do appends or updates of data in this mode.

Reference : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/194124/en-us

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If you are new to SharePoint, you might take a look at this resource guide. It is wealth of SharPoint information in 41 pages.

As Kevin Dean points out on his blog, “the premise behind the attached SharePoint Resource Guide is that almost everything in the booklet is the result of an education customer asking for more information.”

download : http://blogs.msdn.com/hied_mid-atlantic/attachment/4645260.ashx

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jQuery is a new type of JavaScript library. It is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

Few links that will help to reach jQuery resources :

• Downloading jQuery
• jQuery Documentation
• Tutorials
• Plugin Repository
• Using jQuery for AJAX in ASP.NET

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Improvements in VS 2008 Beta 2 are listed below. Each improvement link will lead you to the explanation page of that improvement with examples.  I must say each link worth visiting, it’s written by the Scott Guthrie, General Manager of Microsoft Developer Division.

VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

• VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support

• VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense
• VS 2008 JavaScript Debugging

Language Improvements and LINQ

• Automatic Properties, Object Initializer and Collection Initializers
• Extension Methods
• Lambda Expressions
• Query Syntax
• Anonymous Types

Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL

• Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL
• Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes
• Part 3: Querying our Database
• Part 4: Updating our Database
• Part 5: Binding UI using the ASP:LinqDataSource Control

Lots of other improvements

The list above is only a small set of the improvements coming. For client development VS 2008 includes WPF designer and project support. ClickOnce and WPF XBAPs now work with FireFox. WinForms and WPF projects can also now use the ASP.NET Application Services (Membership, Roles, Profile) for roaming user data. Office development is much richer – including support for integrating with the Office 2007 ribbon. WCF and Workflow projects and designers are included in VS 2008. Unit testing support is now much faster and included in VS Professional (and no longer just VSTS). Continuous Integration support is now built-in with TFS. AJAX web testing (unit and load) is now supported in the VS Test SKU. And there is much, much more…

You can download the Visual Studio 2008 product here. You can alternatively download the smaller VS 2008 Express Editions here.

Reference : Scott Guthrie’s Blog