Launch Extravaganza.....

2006-01-10T01:19:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I had the great fortune to attend the launch organized by the BDotNet user group. Quite a number of my friends had registered for the event. However, eventually most of them dropped out citing the following reason "Hey, it is gonna be another TechEd kinda event, where there is only GYAN and no DEMO".

Well, my convictions and expectations were quite different. First of all, I believed that since this launch is organized by the user-group community, there should be a practical consideration in all the sessions. Also, I had gathered from some of friends that typically these user-group sessions are handled by MVPs. So, for a fact, I knew one thing. Some real experts from the industry, who are essentially "Problem Solvers" are going to be on the launch.

So, I was convinced that I would definitely go on the first day and then take a call whether to attend the second day or not based on the effectiveness of the sessions (Incidentally, I am the mother of one-year old baby and weekends are very extremely precious to me.)

Now, I would like to move on and cite the events of the launch on a day/session basis.

Day 1: Visual Studio 2005

Session 1
Topic: Introduction to Visual Studio Team System (VSTS)
Faculty: Manoj

Following is a brief synopsis of my learnings on this session

1. Visual studio team system basically integrates the tools and processes in a project (working on .Net technologies)
2. It helps effective communication and task allocation between the Infrastructure Architect, Solution Architect, Developer, Tester and manager in a project
3. The server component for the VSTS is the Team Foundation Server (TFS). It is an integrated platform for collaborating on Software Development projects
4. Following are some of the features of the TFS
a. Work Item Tracking
b. Version Control
c. Build Automation
d. Team Communications
e. Reporting

The faculty presented a demo on the VSTS where he demonstrated the above features of the VSTS and TFS.

Session 2
Topic: Team Architect
Faculty: Pooran

Following is a brief synopsis of my learnings on this session

1. The VSTS for Team Architects can be used to design and develop tools for building mission critical applications
2. It provides the following key features
a. Application Designer
b. System Designer
c. Logical Datacenter Designer
d. Deployment Designer
e. Class Designer

The faculty presented a demo on how to create an application diagram using the VSTS for Team Architect. He also showed how a logical datacenter digram looks like and generated a deployment diagram from this.

-------------------------------------TEA BREAK---------------------------------------------
Session 3
Topic: Team Developer
Faculty: Manoj

In this session, the faculty concentrated on the following key aspects of the Team Developer, that enrich a developer's productivity.

a. Source Control integrated into the Visual Studio IDE (New options to shelve and unshelve work items)
b. Unit Testing Helpers integrated into the Visual studio IDE (This has one distinct advantage over NUnit: One could test the internal and private members using this feature). The test manager serves as a place holder for all the test cases.
c. Code Coverage (This statistics in the results window states whether all the lines in the code have been unit-tested or not)
d. Visualizer Window during debugging, provides a graphical (and also hierarchial) representation of the data structures (For example, a dataset contents can be viewed in a datagrid-like representation)
e. Static Code Analyser helps in performing a design-time code analysis (and review).

The faculty presented a demo on how each of the above features work.

-------------------------------------LUNCH BREAK------------------------------------------
Session 4
Topic: Visual Studio 2005 features for Smart Client Applications
Faculty: Chaitra

Following is a brief synopsis of my learnings on this session

1. Smart Client applications are basically windows applications that make use of the good features of the web applications as far as distribution and deployment is concerned.
2. They can work both in the connected mode as well as the disconnected mode (with synchronization)
3. The Visual Studio 2005 for Smart Client applications provides the key feature of "Click Once Deployment" where in a client can install an executable from the link that the server publishes.

The faculty presented a demo on how each of the above features work.

Session 5
Topic: Visual Studio 2005 features for ASP.Net 2.0
Faculty: Kalpesh

In this session, the faculty presented the following key features of ASP.Net 2.0

1. The concept of the master pages. Using this master page concept, one can do away with the use of user controls for common-look and feel across the application (for example, common headers and footers on all pages).
The master pages present content place holders. The different pages in the application need to specify this master page name using the MASTER directive and present the page content within the content place holder
2. The different data controls available for ASP.Net 2.0 . Here, the faculty demonstrated how database operations can be achieved without writing much code, by using the varied data controls available.
3. The login control available for ASP.Net 2.0.

The faculty presented a demo on how each of the above features work.

-------------------------------------TEA BREAK---------------------------------------------
Session 6
Topic: Team Test
Faculty: Saravana

On this session, the faculty presented the features available in Visual Studio 2005, for the testers. Following are the different kinds of testing possible in the IDE.
1. Unit Testing
2. Load Testing and
3. Manual Testing

The faculty demonstrated how the above testing could be achieved using Team Test. He also showed the different options available while building a test project.

-------------------------------------TIME TO GO HOME--------------------------------------
Whew! by the time the sessions got over, my mind was completely saturated. How much knowledge could one assimilate in a day. And, the knowledge out there was flowing seamlessly, with the experts encouraging us to ask as many questions as possible.

In my opinion, this is the only forum that I have attended, where one is actually encouraged to ask questions and clarify doubts.

There was also the fun part to the session. All the faculty members were witty and the atmosphere was charged with wit and humour. There was a SUDOKU game for the participants to play and win some goodies. However, I was not much interested in the game. For me, the sessions were more interesting and I did not wish to miss out on anything that was presented.

At the end of the last session, I had made up my mind. I WAS GOING THE NEXT DAY AS WELL.

-------------------------------------BACK TO THE LAUNCH----------------------------------
Next day, I came back to the launch with more entusiasm and energy than the day before since I clearly knew what to expect !!! I would never miss it for the world!

Day 2: SQL Server 2005

Session 1
Topic: Business Intelligence
Faculty: Praveen Srivatsa

Following is a brief synopsis of my learnings on this session

1. The faculty explained that there is a separate Business Intelligence Development Platform in SQL 2005 for the following key solutions
SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services)
SSAS (SQL Server Analysis Services)
SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services)
2. The faculty demonstrated the key elements of the Integration Services application like the control flow, data transformations, exception handling, fuzzy lookup etc
3. He then demonstrated the key elements of the Analysis Services application like the cube generation, defining data mining structures, identifying the Key Process Indicators (KPI)
4. He finally demonstrated the generation of SQL Server Reports and adhoc reports (with KPIs) using the report builder
-------------------------------------TEA BREAK---------------------------------------------
Session 2
Topic: Programmability Features in SQL 2005
Faculty: Srinivas Sampath

The faculty demonstrated the following new features in SQL 2005

1. SQL Server Management Studio (the new IDE for SQL programming)
2. Surface Area Configuration (one could enable different features using this tool like the CLR support in SQL 2005)
3. SQLCMD (This utility provides the scripting capability for SQL and makes the traditional iSQL and oSQL commands obsolete)
4. DBMail (This eliminates the need for the outlook profile and uses the SMTP protocol)
5. SQL Integration Services (This replaces the DTS utility of SQL 2000)
6. SQL Configuration Manger
7. Server Management Objects (This replaces the DMO)
8. Upgrade Advisor (Used while migrating from SQL 2000. It advises whether the database objects are ready to be migrated into SQL 2005)
9. Improved Profiler
10. XML Showplan
11. Error Management (using Exception Blocks)
12. CLR Integration (concept of "context connection")
13. T-SQL Features
a. XML Data types
b. CTE and Recursive CTE (Common Table Expression)
c. DDL Triggers
d. PIVOT & UNPIVOT
e. APPLY & CROSSAPPLY
f. EXCEPT & INTERSECT
g. RANK
h. DENSE_RANK
i. NTILE
j. ROW_NUMBER
14. Service Broker (for writing asynchronous applications within SQL. It promotes service oriented programming for database)
15. HTTP Endpoints (One could expose database procedures like Stored Procedures and functions as web services. There is no dependency on IIS. It makes use of the SOAP protocol)

The faculty demonstrated the working of most of the above features.

-------------------------------------LUNCH BREAK------------------------------------------

Session 3
Topic: Building Highly Available Systems with SQL Server 2005
Faculty: Vinod Kumar

Building highly available systems for the customers is the need of the hour. The barriers to high availability are the following
1. Database Maintenance and operations
2. Data Access Concurrency Limitations
3. Database Server Failure or disaster.

The faculty demonstrated how the feature of Partial Database Availability differs in SQL 2000 and SQL 2005.

In SQL 2000, if any one of the database files (like the .ndf files) get corrupt, the database goes into the SUSPECT mode and one cannot work on it.

However in SQL 2005, if the .mdf and .ldf files are intact, even if the other files (like .ndf) get corrupt, only the filegroup goes offline, but the database is UP.

Some of the features of the SQL 2005 Partial Database Availability are
1. Online Piecemeal restore
2. Instant File Initialization

The faculty then talked at length about the new isolation introduced in SQL 2005 called Snapshot Isolation.

The faculty then demonstrated the database mirroring feature in SQL 2005. It was simply amazing to see the principal and the mirror databases alternately taking on the load whenever their respective servers crashed.

Database mirroring supports three configurations
a. High Availability
b. High Protection
c. High Performance

Personally, this was my favourite session for the day.

Session 4
Topic: Security
Faculty: Srinivas Sampath

In this session the faculty presented the following key concepts

1. User-Schema Separation (In SQL 2005, the database objects are no more bound to users, They are bound to the schema. The schema serves as a placeholder for the database objects. It also helps in providing an additional level of security for the database objects). The faculty talked at length about the securables, permissions and principals

2. Encryption in SQL 2005 (This can be achieved using symmetric keys, asymmetric keys and certificates)

-------------------------------------TEA BREAK--------------------------------------------- Session 5
Topic: DBA Features in SQL 2005
Faculty: Vinod Kumar

This was another interesting session. In this session the faculty discussed the following tools available with SQL 2005 to help tune the applications and also improve developer productivity.

1. Tools in SQL Server Management Studio (like the Summary Explorer where one can define filters on the objects to be viewed)

2. Performance Monitor (to define the performance parameters to be tracked in the SQL profiler)

3. SQL Server Profiler (The faculty demonstrated how the SQL profiler in SQL 2005 differs from the one in SQL 2000. One could view the execution plans in XML using this SQL 2005 profiler)

4. Database Engine Tuning Advisor (This replaces the Index Tuning Wizard of SQL 2000. The faculty demonstrated how the response of a slow-running query improved greatly using the recommendations of this advisor)

5. SQLCMD (This replaces the iSQL and oSQL utilities of SQL 2000. The faculty demonstrated the working of this utility)

6. DMV and DMF (These views and functions can be queried to fetch and view the system information)

7. Database Maintenance plans (to perform activities like Restore, Backup etc in a defined sequence)

8. Event Notifications (using DDL Triggers). The faculty demonstrated the working of these triggers.

-------------------------------------TIME TO GO HOME-------------------------------------- Whew.. That was just a brief description (believe me) of the activities on the launch. There was again a SUDOKU game to be played on the second day as well. There were many instances of goodie-give away for different categories like asking good questions, answering questions, for the games, active participations etc...

It was a great event to participate in and I greatly thank my friend who recommended this session for me.

HATS OFF to the faculty members and other people who were responsible (directly & indirectly) for organizing such a WONDERFUL launch pad for Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 for the benefit of Software community.

HIP....HIP....HURRAY.....

Simple Simon

Launch Extravaganza.....