Developer Connections: Las Vegas November 10-14

VDA306: Leveraging the SQL Server Compact Edition in an Occasionally Connected System
Since the inception of SQL Server Compact Edition, I've worked with lots of developers that want to leverage its power and speed to augment their occasionally connected systems (OCS) architectures. Considering that SQL Server Express might also be considered for this task, this session contrasts the two engines by walking through the architecture and implementation of an OCS system that incorporates the new Visual Studio Data Caching and ADO.NET Synchronization Services classes along with the Compact Edition or SQL Express database engines. We'll see how much work you can delegate to the SQL CE engine as well as where SQL Server Express Edition can take over or simply act as a replication Publisher. By the time we're done, you'll know where both engines make sense and where they don't. You'll also know how to set up, manage, and configure the Compact Edition database and its schema as well as how to configure the new Visual Studio Data Cache interface.

And for the first time anywhere...
VPL301: Getting Your Technical Work Published
This session is designed to help those who would like more professional exposure and prestige through technical writing. Have you ever had a great idea that you wanted to spread to the world but didn't really know how to get started? Have you ever wanted to have the phrase "Published Author" and a list of papers or books listed on your resume? Have you ever felt that you could write better documentation than Microsoft or almost anyone? Have you ever wanted to impress your mother-in-law and show up your cousin whose book on mushroom farming sits on her coffee table? Did you ever wonder how authors get past the hurdles put up by the publishers and editors? This session is designed to show developers and the technically inclined what they need to know to get started toward being published authors. We'll talk about how to take a technical concept and get it into a national or international print or online magazine. We'll discuss how to find a publisher and what to do if they find you. We'll talk about editors, contracts, advances and how to invest the... well, we'll talk about what it pays and the other rewards as well.

And my day-long workshop scheduled for Friday, November 14th.
VPS201: Implementing Best Practice Data Architectures (9 AM - 4 PM)Add'l Fee $399
Many companies are at the stage of morphing or merging small applications into large systems but fail to implement efficient, scalable, supportable designs. Other shops are transitioning from Access/JET, Visual Basic 6.0, or other older technologies to the .NET Framework but have been unable to get a foothold on the best practices and available architectural choices. This often means customers are unhappy with performance, data security, and responsiveness of the development team to requested changes. After code review we typically find problems that center on data architecture and implementation issues where fairly fundamental concepts have been overlooked or misunderstood. We find developers that are unsure about how their DBMS engine works, that they've chosen the wrong engine or have pushed it well beyond its limits. We find teams and data architectures that fight over shared resources and confusing design choices as Microsoft constantly adds new solutions.

This workshop is designed to help developers gain a solid footing on the foundations of data access architecture. We discuss several alternative approaches and where each is best suited. We discuss how SQL Server works and how to choose the "right" version for their design today and tomorrow. We discuss the Visual Studio and SQL Server tools including SQL Server Profiler, SQL Server Management Studio, and the Visual Studio code generators that can make the job seem easier but might also be the source of performance or code maintenance issues. This workshop includes Bill's popular sessions on "Getting Connected" and "Managing CLR Executables" as well as sessions on the new RDL reporting technology. This content is updated to reflect Visual Studio SP1 Business Intelligence tools in anticipation of SQL Server 2008's RTM.

This workshop is all about data. It's about data architectures, data validation, connecting to data engines, running efficient queries, managing the resultsets, building server-side executables, cursors, constraints, indexes and managing users, and rights and security. It's about choosing how and where to save, retrieve, and protect data. It's about how to build efficient forms-over data applications whether they are Windows Forms, WPF, WCF, ASP.NET or whatever new paradigm Microsoft thinks up between now and when the conference starts--or years in the future.