Microsoft Tech Ed 2010 on the Gold Coast

As a brief introduction, this post is more for my records and to jog my memory about some of the key points to take away from Tech Ed Australia 2010.

Tech Ed was held on the Gold Coast at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre. Tech Ed 2011 will also be held at the same location from 30th Aug 2011 to 2nd Sep 2011.

This year was a little different as the keynote was held on the Tuesday in the afternoon. I actually preferred this as it ‘extended’ the tech ed experience and allowed me to get straight into the content on Wednesday.

Selecting sessions was a little tricky this time around. There was a vast array of sessions and tracks. In total there were 15 tracks containing various content. I largely stuck with Data, Cloud, Development, Web and some Architecture.

Here is a list of the sessions I attended:

Day	Time	Title	Code
Tuesday	4:30pm – 6:00pm	Opening Keynote
	6:00pm	Welcome Reception
Wednesday	8:15am – 9:30am	A lap around Windows Azure	COS301
	9:45am – 11:00am	Migrating Applications to Microsoft SQL Azure	DAT209
	11:30am – 12:45pm	Networking (Rob & Darren)
	1:45pm – 3:00pm	I am a DBA – Why should I care about SQL Server 2008 R2	DAT305
	3:30pm – 4:45pm	Showcase your ideas on Bing Maps	WEB303
	5:00pm – 6:15 pm	Instructor-led Lab “Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Service Bus”	Lab
Thursday	8:15am – 9:30am	Lab “ASP.NET MVC 2 – What’s New?”
	9:45am – 11:00am	Internet Explorer 9 and HTML5 for Developers	WEB204
	11:30am – 12:45pm	The Art and Engineering of Supple Enterprise Applications	DEV426
	1:45pm – 3:00pm	Location Enabling the Cloud – Spatial Data Support in SQL Azure	COS310
	3:30pm – 4:45pm	Expression Blend for Developers	WEB305
	5:00pm – 6:15 pm	In Another (Silver)light – Something Different	WEB306
Friday	8:15am – 9:30am	Spatial BI	DAT311
	9:45am – 11:00am	Master Data Services	DAT315
	11:30am – 12:45pm	The Business of Cloud Computing	ARC206
	1:45pm – 3:00pm	High performance, highly scalable applications on the .NET Framework	DEV424
	3:00pm – 4:00pm	Locknote

Key Points/Resources to Take Away

1. Data Steward / Custodian – A person responsible for the quality of the data across the enterprise.
2. Reactive Extensions for .Net (Rx). See also Eric Myers,  IObservable and IObserver.
3. SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio now includes a map result tab to display spatial related query results. This is the same control used in Reporting Services.
4. Google Earth appears to treat the world as flat (Geometry). SQL Server can treat the world as round – Geography.
5. Migrating data to Azure is relatively easily. There are some caveats. No CLR data types allowed at this stage. the ‘USE’ keyword does not work. Your database connection string should have ‘Encrypt=True’. Database collations cannot be set however more granular collations can be.
6. SQL Server Migration Assistant
7. DAC (Data-Tier Application) packages. Single unit for authoring, deploying, and managing the data-tier objects.
8. Unicode data Compression (for row data) now included in R2. Not for ‘MAX’ types which can be stored off page.
9. Make dependencies explicit when building components as this allows greater composition.

My call to action:

1. Investigate how Spatial BI can improve our Client’s awareness about their customer’s and their habits.
2. Consider how existing services could be amortized through the use of Azure and cloud computing.

Our Family plus One

Children are such a blessing. They are also a challenge. I reckon they bring out the best and the worst in parents. I’m very thankful for my little family of which I feel a great sense of responsibility.

Our family recently expanded by one. My wife and I now have 2 precious daughters. I have no doubt that Tamara and I will experience great joys and great heartaches as we watch our little angels develop into young women. I hope and pray that we can be good role models for our girls, that they can grow up having a solid foundation and cornerstone on which to make their decisions.

A big thank-you to all of our family and friends for your support and words of encouragement.

Christian Management Australia’s Conference 2010

The theme for my first and the eighth annual Christian Management Australia (CMA) conference was ‘Balance’. I had the opportunity to attend the event held on the Gold Coast  and specifically Wednesday’s (Day 3)  sessions.

My session electives and timetable was as follows:

9:00am	Keynote – Anne Robinson	Identity and Purpose: Balancing Who You Are with What you Do
10:05am	Peter Tyrrell – Insight for Living	Timeless Leadership from 430 BC
11:20am	Morning Tea
11:55am	Mathew Hunt – Helensvale Baptist Church	Counterintuitive Sustainability: Developing Local Church Infrastructure in a God-Centred Environment
1:00pm	Lunch
2:05pm	Mark Hadley	Virtual is Actual: New Media and Christian Ministry
3:15pm	Afternoon Tea
3:50pm	Keynote – Richard Swenson	Confronting Future Trends: Keeping our Balance in Stormy Seas

Some resources:

1. Insight for Living: http://www.insight.asn.au/
2. Our Community: http://ourcommunity.com.au/
3. World Vision Transparency Award: http://www.worldvision.com.au/media/pressreleases/10-05-07/World_Vision_Australia_commended_for_transparent_reporting.aspx
4. Great Leadership Speeches: http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/leadership/leadership_article.jsp?articleId=2835
5. Invictus Movie: http://invictusmovie.warnerbros.com/dvd/index.html
6. Mark A Hadley – Communicator: http://www.markahadley.com/
7. Richard Swenson: http://www.richardswenson.org/index.html

What a refreshing and challenging day!!!

Next year’s event is tentatively scheduled for the 6th-8th June 2011 in Sydney.

Microsoft Exam 70-510: TS: Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server

Short but sweet. I recently studied for and passed the 70-510 exam. I utilised the Transcender practice material and found the questions very helpful in not only passing the exam but learning more about the product. I was keen to have my skills in this area recognised before moving on to the 2010 product.

There is no equivalent exam for Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server.

TFS is more than 1 product, it is multiple products. If you think about all of the Microsoft products that are integrated and tested, there a quite a few: IIS, SQL Server, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Firewalls, TFS, SharePoint, Excel, Project.

There used to be a Microsoft web page you could visit that would show you the number of people world wide who have successfully achieved a specific certification. Where has this gone?

 

A general life update

There is always a lot going on. Knowing when to say yes or no and prioritise things can be difficult.

So, what has been going on lately? We have had extensions done to the house, secretarial and HR duties for a local community organisation, we are expecting our 2nd child shortly and preparing for his/her arrival, my grandmother just turned 80, my brother-in-law and his wife had their first child – I’m an uncle again, my wife and I spent 2 days in Toowoomba for Easterfest (music festival) and much more…

I’ve also purchased a motorcycle (2003 Ducati Monster Dark i.e. 1000) – thanks heaps for your input Dad. Your the best and my most favourite Dad ever. I’m looking forward to further ‘exploring’ the Gold Coast and beyond.

I’m very thankful for the great support and  from family and friends! You rock my world!!

Continuous Build Integration with Team Foundation Server 2008

There is no denying that real life events are often the inspiration for stories or in this case a blog post. Our team recently purchased and had installed a bright new LCD TV in the development area. The rationale is pretty simple. We get greater awareness of our iteration/sprint progress and better visibility into the compilation success of our applications when we make changes.

The LCD TV displayed our application builds and was mostly green (success). No longer than 1 day after it had been installed some dodgy check-ins made the screen light up like a Christmas tree. It is now pretty obvious to all of the team and anyone who walks into the room. Yes, even the Boss Man knows that red is not good. With that in mind comes the remainder of my post.

Broken Build Etiquette

Ok. So the build is broken. Everyone knows about. You’re responsible for fixing it. What now? Here is a bullet list of things i reckon should be done immediately:

1. Identify why the build broke – review log files etc. Not sure why it failed – then seek assistance. A broken build is the whole team’s responsibility.
2. Reproduce the broken build locally – Did you forget to get the latest version or forget to build before checking in?
3. Fix the build

Now the above might seem pretty simple and logical but you will note i said ‘immediately’. Don’t leave the application in a broken state for a extended period of time. The length of time will depend on the team. Other team members may not be able to check-in their work until you have done so. (Gated check-ins assist with this).

Fixing the build doesn’t mean creating a rushed change[set], checking it in, crossing your fingers, heading home and hoping that everything is ok in the morning. Morning may not come!!!

Continuous Integration (CI)

I see this as an application lifecycle best practice all about identifying problems early and quickly. CI provides up to the minute knowledge of your application or suite of applications compilation status. It may also provide valuable information about the quality of your application. Including the execution of unit and other tests aids in measuring quality. Just because the application compiles doesn’t mean the code is logically correct and operating as expected.

There are some great thoughts and practices outlined here: http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html

Our experience has been that implementing CI is relatively simple and worthwhile.

Tools & Utilities

If you are looking at increasing the awareness of the build success within your team i recommend taking a look at these:

1. Telerik TFS Work Item Manager & Dashboard – try it for yourself. It can be quite fun to see another team member’s picture displayed on the dashboard because they were the last person to break the build!!!
2. Team Build Screen – this is a codeplex project and is quite good. As the description says it “displays the active status of build definitions … can be used on developer workstations and/or displayed on a large screen so that a development team can monitor the status of the build.
3. Build Notification tool – this comes as part of the team foundation server power tools download. The Build Notification tool runs in the Windows task bar’s notification area to monitor the status of the build definitions you have specified. You can configure it to show notifications when builds are queued, started, or completed for multiple build definitions spanning multiple Team Foundation Servers.

I trust that this has been helpful for someone considering implementing continuous integration.

Walking with wise counsel

Psalms 1:1-3

1 Blessed is the man
       who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
       or stand in the way of sinners
       or sit in the seat of mockers.

2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
       and on his law he meditates day and night.

3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
       which yields its fruit in season
       and whose leaf does not wither.
       Whatever he does prospers.

A severe error occurred on the current command. The results, if any, should be discarded

It sounds pretty nasty doesn’t it? Yes, at the time SQL Server was crumbling down around me it certainly was. Now, with a little more perspective and additional gray hairs, it’s not that bad. I didn’t have any results to discard and fixing a basic logic error in the script ‘resolved’ my specific problem so I guess that was a positive. In the meantime, it turns out that I found a reproducible bug in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3.

The process:

I was investigating the performance of a particular process in an application. The query had been identified and appeared to be running ok. I viewed the actual query plan and was presented with some missing index details. The missing index was supposed to increase by query by 85%+. What a great suggestion!! I proceeded to create the index and rerun the query. That is when it all went downhill. It appeared that the cause of the problem was the addition of the new index. So I dropped the index and reran the query. Everything was fine again. Weird right? A bit of investigation on the internet led me to a couple of different sites all stating that the error had been fixed in prior service packs. OK, so why was I getting the error?

Reviewing the query for obvious mistakes revealed a small logic error and we changed an “OR” to an “AND” in the where condition. The query ran fine with the problem index in place.

How to reproduce:

I created a self-contained Transact-SQL script to reproduce the problem and lodged it on Microsoft Connect. You can find all of the details here: http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/530712/a-severe-error-occurred-on-the-current-command-the-results-if-any-should-be-discarded

I also recently ran the script on SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP (10.50.1352.12 – Enterprise Evaluation Edition – 64-bit ) and everything is fine.

I look forward to hearing about the source of the problem and that it has been fixed.

10 Year Work Anniversary

On the 10th January 2010 I celebrated 10 years of service for Data Aspects. That is quite an accomplishment and something I’m proud of. I’ve been told a couple of times that you get more time for murder. I’ll keep that in mind.

I’m not the first person to celebrate their 10th anniversary so as I went to work today I was acutely aware that there would most likely be some form of ‘celebration’.

Firstly, I’d like to ‘thank’ the boyz for their efforts. Lets see. There was glow in the dark silly string and lots of it. I was handcuffed to my mouse with no possible means of escape. All of my senses were treated as police sirens sounded and I was sentenced to another 10 years of hard labour. Time will tell I guess.

I’m a dentist and can’t show my face on TV.

There has been much change over that 10 year period. Staff have come and gone. Others have remained and contributed significantly to the team. We have moved desks more times than I like to recall – although the change of scenery has been nice. My skills and passion for IT have developed.

So, what does the future hold? I don’t know but He who holds the future knows. I’m fairly sure there will be hard work and more 10 year anniversary ‘celebrations’.

More photos will be posted soon.

Gold Coast .NET User Group 2010

Looking back, 2009 wasn’t great for the user group with meetings occurring occasionally and at varied locations. [I admit I didn’t make it to all of the meetings!!]. The speakers were good with some great content presented.

The start of 2010 looks to be exciting and more consistent for the group as room bookings have been confirmed at Griffith University for each month until June.

Date	Location
21st January	G03 Theatre 2
18th February	G03 Theatre 2
18th March	G03 Theatre 1
15th April	G03 Theatre 2
20th May	G03 Theatre 2
17th June	G06_2.05

Note: All dates are Thursdays and all meetings are held at Griffith University. This will probably disappoint a few members who prefer the Bond University facilities/location.

Data Aspects will continue to provide sponsorship to the Group in 2010 as it did in 2009 through the provision of limited funding towards dinner.  Is your organisation willing to contribute in some way?

Call to action:

1. Sign up to the group at http://www.gcdotnet.org/
2. Join the Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=121860471489
3. Join the LinkedIn group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2020827
4. Attend the next meeting!!!