I just love this guy (who don't).  If you haven't attend TechEd 2007in Barcelona or you didn't attend his session,

well just see and listen to his song .

During Teched I have taken a few pictures with my mobile phone. You can go to my flickr account to view them, so click here.

I also have taken 2 short movies while we where waiting for the opening keynote.

VIDEO_001.mp4 (493,6 KB)

VIDEO_002.mp4 (636,02 KB)

If you want to see more pictures just click here and you will be redirected to flickr whedre you can find all photo's tagged with Teched 2007 Barcelona.

OK.  As I was busy since I got back from Teched and a little tired.  Finally my last posts about my Teched adventure.

Framework Engineering: Architecting, Designing, and Developing Reusable Libraries

Although this sessions looks good, I did leave it early, because Krzysztof Cwalina was more talking about API programming and how to do it instead of the real Framework Engineering.

Deep Reflection - Things You Really Need to Know About Reflection 2.0

A very good session and the last one of Teched.  We learned a lot about generics (Inspecting them and creating them at runtime). Also how you could create your code at runtime.  I already done this with the CodeDom, but we also saw Reflection.Emit in this session.  And Finally Roy Osherove talked a bit about Runtime code inspection.

My Teched Round up

This was my first Teched event and I was looking forward to it. I did talk with a lot of people especially at the parties, but also during the day.  Made some new friends.

At the end I could only say : it was great to be there, although at the end I was very tired.  If I have to say what my worst session was : The openings keynote.  In my eyes it was a commercial talk and has nothing todo with developers.  My best session : I really can't say.  I had a lot of good and very good sessions.  Some where a little good.  But still I have a few items I want to dive in deeply, and a few sessions I followed has todo with my job as architect and software factories.  The parties where good as we talked a lot with several people.  Especially the influencer party on tuesday evening.

Tom Mertens organised also a lunch session.  In this session and on the Belgium country drink we have taken a moment to remember our friend David Boschmans, who passed away from us and the community last august.  It's a proof that he isn't and never won't be forgotten.

If I can and mymanager let me go, I want to go back next year. So guys and girls Cu in 2008.

The last day of Teched for me.  We came with our luggage to the convention hall and put it away.  At 16:30 we will go with the bus to the airport and we'll be back in Belgium at 22:20 hour.

But ok, more about the sessions I followed.

Web Client Software Factory (WCSF): Building Rich Internet Applications with ASP.NET AJAX and WCSF

We got a bit information about RIA (Rich Internet Applications) and what it is and then we got a bit info about 5 patterns.  Later I will post more info about them, but here's already the list of patterns :

• Suggestion pattern
• Live form pattern
• Validation Application Block
• Popup pattern
• Display Morphing pattern

After the party yesterday it was a little bit difficult to come out of my bed, but I managed it and was on time here in the convention hall.  So i went for the breakfast and then attend the sessions of today.

.Net Code protection and licensing deep dive for developers

This was the first session I attended.  The .Net code protection and licensing is a new tool of Microsoft.  the tool offers 2 deliverables :

• Code protection
• Licensing & activation

All delivered through an API, which makes it very easy to integrate in your code.  One of the contra's is that there is a little performance issue. The product is a pure .Net solution and runs under 100% managed code.

As we all now, our compiled code isn't protected and using f.e. Lutz roeders Reflector tool, you could decompile to the code.

By using the tool of Microsoft you could select everything or just certain function of which you want to protect your code.  After the protection is added, you will that Lutz Roeder Reflector tool can't give anymore your code.

To add the protection, you need a permutation key, which is unique for each vendor.

So now your code is protected against

• IP theft through reverse engineering
• Code tampering

For the licensing and activation, you also select the business methods and then you can set of a user can use it or not.  You can even set for the trial functionality.  Also changing afterwards the licensing for a customer is very simple by just chaning the settigns , resend the customer the licence file and he just have to activate again (or you do it over the internet).

How it works ? The use a kind of software processor to do all the work for you.  This software processor runs in a secure virtual machine engine, and they use a kind of SVM Language compiler during the compile time to create generic MSIL code, which results in a new assembly that is now protected and licensed.

Manual and dynamic mocks with c# and VSTS

when you write your unittests, it could be that you have dependencies with other layers, which aren't finished or even doen't exist at that time.  Maybe because it's another team that writing this layer.  So what can you do then : use Mock, which is a testing dounle replacement from the real layer.

There are 3 ways :

• specialized manual
• manual
• dynamic

I will give the pro's and contra's of each

1. specialized manual
   1. Pro
      • Lightweight
      • Introduces no new dependencies
   2. Contra
      • Sorry forgot them, but I will update this
2. Manual
   1. Pro
      • Lightweight
      • General
      • Introduces no new dependencies
   2. Contra :
      • Verbose tests
      • Semantically fragile
3. Dynamicly : todo this you have to make the use of a tool
   1. Rhino mocks
      • Recording metaphor
      • Type Safe
   2. NMock2
      • String-based
   3. NMock2 Pro
      • Succint tests
      • Very flexible
   4. NMock2 Contra
      • Not Type Safe
      • Introduces extra test dependencies
   5. Rhino pro
      • Type-safe
      • Succint tests
      • Very flexible
   6. Rhino Contra
      • Introduces extra test dependencies
      • New API

Later I will post more about Mocks and VSTS.

Smart Client Software Factory and CAB: Real World Solution Patterns

Cab = Smartclient factory = composite smartclients primarily

We did see several patterns.  I did only write down a bit of the first pattern, but will update later this part as it was a little bit difficult to follow the session and writting down everything.  But now youa lready have the idea which patterns where explained.

Patterns 1 : offline model patters

• Provides offline experience
• Enqueue service requests
• execute them when online

All this is done by an agent, which

• queue's incomming requests
• has a request processor
• Has a service proxy
• This is not good for retrieving data, for this you could use the reference data cache.
• Works asynchronuous and the persistent db for keeping all the requests is SQL Server compact.

Pattern 2 : Context sensitive behavior

Example Office document with an actionpane

Pattern 3 : Taskforce using workflow

Pattern 4 : Workitem identity & packaging

In the evening I went with a friend of me who lives in Badalone to a local Tapabar named "La Esquinica".  A very good place where almost no "tourists comes".

Yesterday evening, we had a nice MVP and influencer party here at Teched.  The party was held in "TAPASBAR DIAGONAL MAR" a very nice tapasbar just near the congrescentre.  Did talk with a lot other people there.

For today, the first session is just done.

Visual Studio Team System, Scrum and agile methodologies : Are they possible in VSTS?

This was an interactive session.  No presentation, but the audience had the change to ask questions the zhole time. Most of the answers I already knew, but I learned a bit of new stuff.  Like that this month a new version (v 2.0) of the Cochango template will be released and it will be much better than for the moment.

One of the questions was also how you could integrate your integrate testing process with the scrum development process.  Well you have to make new workitems for as you have too include the estimate time in your graphs.  Or you have to wait for Cochango version 2.0.

Another interresting part was  that the speaker adds the daily scrummeeting items also as a workitem.  The developeprs has to answer them there.  This is very handy when your team is splitted over several locations or when the Scrummaster went ill, and a new scrummaster have too take over his task during this period.  Normally you would stop the sprint and start a new one, but now the new Scrummaster just read all those workitems and the sprint can still go on.

Building services with the Service Factory : modeling edition

This was the second session for today.  The explain that there are 2 different needs :

• Webservice developer
• Tools developer

You also have to think about the 4D's

• Design
• Decide
• Develop
• Deploy

If you want  to create a new project you should have at least the GAX installed.

Nice is that the Data types you create for the service are reusable.  Also, you could extend the framework.  For a few you have to rebuild the source code (f.e. when adding a policy extension the first time).  For other extensions you could just add the compiled extension in the extension bin folder.  In the new TFS (Code name Rosario) this software factory will be build in.

Communities? Can they really help my business, my day-to-day job and my career?

This was a lunchsession I followed.  It was just lightweighted and non technical.  We got some explication from Bart Martens (A Belgium guy) about communities, what you can do and mostly what you CAN'T do.  Especially that last one.  Lots of time partners who given free meeting rooms to usergroups, have 5 or 10 minutes to speak about themself.  Mostly they send a sales who just want to sell their stuff.  this is wrong as the attendees are mostly technical people.  Better is to demonstrate f.e. a product of your company in a kind of labs/demo/... in a technical way.  it was an interresting session with some good points of view about communities and their working.

Microsoft Robotics Demonstrations

This was the second interactive session I followed.  In the beginning it was interresting, but half way it was a repeat of the session yesterday.

Build your own software factory

The start of this session was just a repeat the session "Building services with service factory".  Luckily after a few minutes we got some new content.

OK, what's really handy to the modeller is that before you build everything, you could use the validator framework to validate your model.

We also got a nice timeline when you are creating your own Software factory.  it seems that it takes 2 till 3 times longer to develop your factory then it takes for developing an application.  The ROI (Return of Investment) is only when you could use your factory at least 5 times.

We where presented with an overview about "When to build your own software factory".  But I will blog later about it as it is some heavy stuff.

Just to say you this : There's a free toolkit from Clarion (which seems one of the best toolkits) and it's called...The Software Factory Toolkit. You can use it for starting to build your own factory.

Understanding Software + Services

A session given by the well known David Chapell about understanding Software + services (S + S).  He talked mostly about SaaS but the session didn't satisfy me as most of the content was already a few years old.

Belgium Country drink

This evening was the evening of the country drinks.  And of course I joined the Belgium party.  It was in the tapasbar "Sal Cafe".  A great tapasbar on the beach.  We had a lot of fun, again fun, talk, networking and of course food and drinks.  Afterwards we went with several other Belgiums to Port Olympic for more drinks.  We have survived the evening .

Yesterday evening after the Welcome party, together with some friends we went to port Olympic (one of the harbors here in Barcelona) searching for some food.  We found a very nice restaurant with some very good steaks and the price was not that much.  Around midnight we went back to the hotel.

Putting the user back into architecture

The first session I followed today was about putting the user back into Architecture.  Here we discussed first what architecture is followed by several rules on how to add the user also in the architectural traject.  This is something that most of the time is forgotten but very important, because the UI is also an important item in the traject.

We have 3 main levels with each 3 sublevels.

• Ideas
• Personas
• Sorry forgot the 2 others, but will update them ASAP
• Interface
• Platform
• Productivity
• Performance
• Internals
• Proven
• People
• Proactive

LINQ to SQL

The next session was an in depth session about LINQ, namely LINQ to SQL.  Just as the LINQ session yesterday, 2 slides and a lot of demos.

What could be strange for DBA’s is that there’s no use of the Select statement. 

The result is strongly typed and by default we use Optimistic concurrency.  We could easily use Stored Procedures and filtering the result in memory (not good) or by using the DB Designer.  We also don’t need to write classes for each table if we use the DB designer, which is very easy.

The use of transactions is also possible and easy.

Hands on labs VSTO in VS2008

I didn't attend the next 2 sessions, as there weren't any interresting for me.  What I did during this time, was some hands on labs using VSTO in VS 2008 for Office 2007.  As I'm currently working on a project with VSTO for Office 2003 using VS2005.  I can only say it that the new VSTO has given me a great pleasure and experience.  Now included in VS, so no separate installation anymore.  And most of all, very easy to make your Actions pane with data binding.  Another nice feature is creating a ribbon.  You can choose the old fashioned way using XML, but they now also have a visual dseigner for it.  You can even disable the standard ribbons when opening a document.

Microsoft Robotics Studio

This will be the last session for today I'm going to attend, as I'm interrested in robots 9I'm making one myself at home : IQBot01.  I will update you about this session alter this evening or tomorrow.

After Teched, I will go more in detail about some topics I have followed.

For this evening, we go to another party till 9 O'clock this evening and then we will see.  Keep you up to date.

Today I went to Barcelona for Teched 2007.  Together with Gill Cleeren and Kurt Claeys.  Starting point was in Zaventem where we had the 7 O’Clock flight with Iberia.  Around 9 O’clock we landed in Barcelona.  The shuttle bus brought us to the ICC.  Here we had our conference bag and the invitation for a private session because of the Super Early Booking.  This session will be hosted on Friday morning. At 2 O’clock in the afternoon Teched started with the opening keyword of S. Somasegar (Vice President of the developer division).  He talks mostly about VS 2008.  Furthermore there are 2 sessions planned for this day.

The first I attended was  “Extend the Office User Interface with VSTO”.  Here we got a shortly brief about VSTO in VS2008 (which is now standard included) with Office 2007.  The Difference between Ribons, Tabs, task panes, user action panes where explained using Word and Outlook.  A very interesting case.  They also had a business case with Dell about this.

The next session was about “The .Net Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Framework”.  This was the best session of today, given by Luca Bolognese.  Only 3 slides and for the rest 55 minutes of demo, demo and again demo.  Starting with the code in .Net 2.0 and ending with the LINQ code in .Net 3.0.  Although it was the same session given on the Dev & IT Pro Days in Belgium, it still was a nice session.

At the end we had the welcome party Aheeum Party, more a drink with some sandwiches and we have the change to talk with other people or the sponsors.

Next this evening I’m going to eat a bit and tomorrow a new day with an invitation in the evening for the MS MVP and Influencers party…

BTW : It’s difficult here to type because they have some damned QWERTY keyboards….

BTW 2 : I've taken some pictures and a short movie with my mobile.  I will post them when I'm back in Belgium...someday...

Just got the mail from my manager that I can go to TechEd 2007 in Barcelona this year.  I will attend it together with my colleague Kurt Claeys.

This is where I will be the whole week (click on the picture to go to Googlemaps).

A few days ago, the Tech.Ed 2005 Europe website went live.  Find it here.

Just found on the Microsoft site.  Date for TechEd 2005 Europe is already confirmed :

5-8 July 2005 in Amsterdam RAI, The Netherlands

Hope I can attend this time

Also available now is SQL Server 2005 Beta 1 Express Editions.  The same as for the Express editions of VS 2005, it's a lightweight version of SQL Server 2005.

You can find more info here :

• Microsoft Labs
• Brian A. Randell
• VS Data team's Weblog

Update :
Check also the VSExpress blog.

There will be a seperate “Mobile PC and devices“ track.  So if you are interested in mobile development, you know where to come.

I also have a short list of speakers :

• David Chappell
• Rafal Lukawiecki
• Clemens Vasters
• David Gristwood

David will talk about “21 rules of thumb - how Microsoft develops its software”.  It's based on the “21 rules of thumb for writing great software” from Jim McCarthy (Developed at Microsoft).  It adds more detail about MSF and how they arrange their teams and processes.

Still hoping to attend this event.