Topic:  Enterprise Library v1.0 Overview

Enterprise Library is a major new release of the patterns & practices Application Blocks, which are reusable software components designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Enterprise Library 1.0 will bring together new releases of the most widely reusable blocks into a single, integrated download, with anemphasis on consistency, integration, extensibility and ease of use. Our discussion will focus on the following topics:

• What is Enterprise Library?
• How was it created?
• How can it be leveraged?
• How can my organization look to incorporate Enterprise Library into our application development?

Please join us for this very exciting and interactive presentation on this major release from Microsoft! 

Speaker:  Kyle Burkholder and Jeff Donahoe from Avanade

Kyle Burkholder has been with Avanade since October of 2000. His experience in the development field has been built around serving customers of all sizes. From starting his own internet consulting company that served small to medium sized businesses to working with Accenture and Avanade which serve medium to large businesses, he has seen a number of different types of application development approaches. He has built numerous technical and application architectures and now focuses on helping customers maximize their ROI on the .NET platform by architecting mission-critical systems using the .NET platform.

Jeff Donahoe has been with Avanade since July of 2002. As a member of the Delivery Management Group, his primary responsibilities revolve around working directly with client business owners in defining desired solution functionality. Previous to joining this group, Jeff acted in several development and architecture roles across numerous industries.

Topic:  Understanding and enhancing WSE 2 WS-SecureConversation

Microsoft's WSE 2 introduced support for WS-SecureConversation thereby allowing applications to utilize one token for efficiently exchanging signed and encrypted messages. This presentation discusses this technology with a slight twist. We'll demonstrate how to implement centralized authorization & authentication for an enterprise WSE WS-SecureConversation. 

Speaker:  Tom Fischer

Tom Fischer’s professional experience includes work with many of Microsoft’s latest (and oldest) technologies and tools. Tom has written about .NET security and object oriented design. He also holds several certifications, including the .NET MCSD

 Topic:  Using log4net for all your .NET Tracing/Logging Needs

Log4net is an Apache-sponsored initiative within the “Apache Logging Services” project. It provides a rich diagnostic infrastructure for .NET, with support for hierarchical logging and configuration, multiple logging targets, and support for logging context. A recent article outlined the advantages of log4net over Microsoft’s Enterprise Instrumentation Framework (EIF), though Microsoft/Avanade will be revamping this logging infrastructure with the release of the Enterprise Template Library. Given that the log4net initiative has broad support at the API layer (i.e. log4j, log4PLSQL, etc.) and platform layer  including .NET CF) as well as the benefit of maturity, log4net seems like a very reasonable choice for instrumenting production .NET applications today. This talk will give you an in-depth look into log4net, and give you some ideas about how it can integrate into your operations monitoring strategy.

Speaker:  Scott Colestock

Scott Colestock is the chief architect for Trace Ventures, LLC. He has been focused for the last year on leveraging BizTalk 2004 to realize service-oriented architectures for various clients, writing about his  experience on www.traceofthought.net. He has been developing for various incarnations of the the windows platform for twelve years (including six while at Microsoft), and focused on .NET since the beginning.

Topic:  Introduction to VS.NET 2005

First on the agenda, we will discuss the different versions of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 that will be released. This will include licensing options and proposed cost. We will also discuss the many features that will be released in each version and discover which is right for organizations based on their size and needs. There will be demonstrations showing the new features of VS.NET and the .NET libraries. We will also cover the future of software development using tools such as refactoring and software factories.

Speaker:  Davin Mickelson from New Horizon of Minnesota

Davin Mickelson enjoys working with all versions of Microsoft architectures (from "Export C" to .NET assemblies). He especially loves working on the cutting edge of Microsoft technologies and helping others understand and utilize them to their full potential. He has been consulting for over six years and recently became an instructor at Benchmark New Horizons Learning. He has previously taught development courses on Microsoft .NET at the University of Minnesota. Davin has developed software in C/C++/ATL/MFC, Visual Basic, Visual Basic .NET and C# and is currently working on his first .NET book.

Topic:  What a .NET guy to do with InfoPath?

John will provide a technical overview of InfoPath. He will cover developing managed InfoPath applications. He will also be covering publishing and deployment strategies and what place this new technology has in a world full of Web and Windows Forms. John will also cover how AgriBank, FCB is using InfoPath to deploy hundreds of forms to thousands of users, many who do not have InfoPath installed.

Speaker:  John Lomnicki of AgriBank 

John Lomnicki is a hardcore techie and dynamic presenter. His 10 years cranking out business application has always allowed him to build some pretty cool applications many leveraged the office toolkit. In addition to heads down coding, he also has worked as a mentor, trainer, and architect for banking, insurance and marketing companies. John currently works as the .NET Technical Architect for AgriBank, FCB downtown Saint Paul. This guy is so hardcore, if you're interested you can see how John uses computers to animate his 100,000 light Christmas display to music.

Topic:  Getting Ready for SQL Server 2005 Yukon

The Twin Cities .NET User Group in association with the Twin Cities SQL Server User Group presents an exciting seminar on SQL Server 2005 Yukon.

The ability to run managed code in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 doesn't mean that T-SQL is going away. In fact, SQL Server 2005 has significant T-SQL enhancements. However, a Microsoft .NET language can be useful in some situations. In this presentation, we'll discuss how CLR-based code might be a better choice for computation and logic-intensive operations. In addition, .NET languages such as Microsoft Visual C# and Microsoft Visual Basic .NET provide better looping and branching constructs than T-SQL does. Plus, writing structured code with these languages is easier than with T-SQL, and you can access Microsoft .NET Framework class libraries which open up new possibilities that don't exist with T-SQL.

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 & .NET 2.0
• Dig into the details of SQL Server 2005.
• DBA meets developer?
• Understand the architecture.
• Security concerns & considerations
• Look into the new capabilities of using the CLR integration.
• Examine when to use T-SQL and when to use the CLR.
• See the enhancements to T-SQL.
• Finally debugging end to end!
• Introducing: Notification Service & Service Broker
• Learn more about native types and objects vs. SQL Server types.
• Third party tools will be there.
• See best practices and solid examples.

Speaker:  Pete Hosfield from ILM and Randy Holloway from Microsoft 

Pete Hosfield is a .NET architect with ILM. He has been a Microsoft advocate and evangelist for over 10 years, from the early days of VB3 to early Beta versions of Microsoft .NET framework. He has worked in almost every aspect of software development ranging from technical support, testing and development to enterprise architecture. His software development experience ranges over a diverse set of industries from banking and marketing to industrial automation. He has helped many companies realize the huge return on investment through the use of Microsoft .NET technologies. He enjoys the challenge of both hands on development as well as architecture and analysis.

Randy Holloway specializes in application platform servers, including Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft BizTalk Server and he works for Microsoft in their Mid America district. Randy is also the author of a book on SQL Server 2005 for developers that will be published by Addison-Wesley late in 2005. 

Topic:  Comparison of Visual Studio 2005 with Open Source Alternatives in an Agile Environment.

As companies take on aspects of agile software development, such as test-driven development, continuous integration, shorter development iterations, they need tools to assist the development effort in supporting these techniques. With the release of Visual Studio 2005 team edition, the development environment will come with support for many of these techniques out of the box. Many of these tools are currently available from various open source projects in Visual Studio 2003, but how do they measure up? This discussion will explore the difference between the approaches and which situations are better for each product.

Speaker:  Mike Gillespie and James Brown from Agillence Software Inc 

Mike’s been in the software development industry for more than 7 years, specializing in the Microsoft development environment from the beginning. For the past 2 years, he’s been focusing on streamlining the software development process at GMAC-ERS while developing an enterprise credit modeling platform. Additionally, Mike has been working with the Center for Lupus research at the University of Minnesota where he is working with the computational biologists to create a genetic analysis program to help predict disease activity based on blood samples.

Jim Brown - Agillence Softare Inc.

Jim has been developing software since 1995 using both Microsoft and J2EE based technologies. His current focus is on helping implement agile methodologies and object oriented design to solve complex business problems for various organizations in the Twin Cities area. His background includes a BS in Engineering from South Dakota State University and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas.

Topic:  Learn to program with AJAX in ASP.NET - Life without Page Refresh/A New Approach to Web Applications 

This discussion focuses on how to build composite user controls with ASP.NET server controls, and how to incorporate AJAX methods to implement a very rich User Interface. See behind the scene implementation of popular websites like Google Suggest, Google Mail, Google Maps. AJAX methods will be demonstrated showing how to create some cool AJAX enabled web front-end and the power it imparts to the developers. Pros and con of various AJAX techniques will be covered as well

Speaker:  Doug Nelson from SynApp North and Sunil Kutty from ILM

Doug provides application development services for several large clients with a primary focus in the forest products industry and industrial health and safety. These applications developed are based on a Sql Server backend database with a web based front-end. He has been doing web development since 1996, transitioning from CGI applications to classic ASP and on to ASP.Net. In addition to the web development, these applications also support WinForms and Pocket PCs. He has extensive experience implementing truly distributed applications involving windows services and message queuing.

Sunil has been an information system professional for 10 years as a technical lead with strong planning, analytical, and architectural experience on client/server applications and web based applications. He has been working on the .NET framework since its inception in 2002. He is an excellent mentor to other developers. He is motivated toward continuous learning and leverages his excellent communication and teamwork skills. He is actively involved in speaking engagements for the twin-cities .NET Usergroup and other events.

Topic:  Understanding Indigo, the next generation Windows Communication Framework.

According to Microsoft, Indigo is ”the unified programming model for rapidly building service-oriented applications on the Windows platform”. This presentation will focus on an overview of this new technology from Microsoft, with the latest information hot off the presses from the PDC in Los Angeles. Live code demonstrations of how to work with and implement Indigo will occupy the vast majority of this presentation.

Speaker:  Jeff Donahoe and Ben Reierson from Avanade

Jeff Donahoe has been with Avanade since July of 2002. As a member of the Delivery Management practice, he acts as Project Manager on custom application development projects. Previous to joining this group, Jeff acted in several development and architecture roles across numerous industries.

Ben Reierson has been with Avanade since Summer 2004. As a member of the .NET practice, Ben acts as both a designer and developer for customer solution implementation and integrations with existing systems.

Topic:  .NET Framework 2.0 Web Service Enhancements

At first glance, it may seem that Web Services have been overlooked in Whidbey, as everyone is focused on the unified call stack that we’ll get with the release of Indigo. However, there are several important enhancements to the ASMX infrastructure for hosting Services in IIS. These include using an interface to specify your web service binding instead of a class, allowing a class to implement several web service interfaces (and therefore several bindings), simplified support for asynchronous service invocation, and much better support for mapping type information in your WSDL to CLR types on the client machine. We’ll look at these and other new features in detail, and then with our eye on Indigo, talk about some changes that can be made to your Web Service infrastructure today using Whidbey that will pave the way for your transition to Indigo when it ships.

Speaker:  Dominic Selly from Intertech, Inc. 

Dominic Selly is an Intertech trainer and consultant. Dominic is a frequent presenter at VSLive, Connections, and SD Expo conferences. He is also a co-author of Visual Basic .NET at Work from Wiley. Dominic has been creating software for over a dozen years. Dominic has also been teaching developers for many years, in topics including ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#, XML, Visual Basic, ASP, and SQL Server. He is the author of a five day ASP.NET course, and co-created the Web Application Development Certificate program offered at George Washington University in DC.

Check out Dominic's book Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advance Application Design

Topic:  Compare and contrast the XML features in SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.

With XML being the de-facto data format for sharing data between disparate systems identifying how to create and accept xml into your data tier can give you another solution that may solve an existing problem. This talk is sure to capture interest from all levels of .Net developers as well as some data technologists. Product demos to be presented using applications written in .Net 2003, .Net 2005 as well as both sets of the SQL Client tools.

Speaker:  Todd Hyatt

Todd Hyatt is a .NET developer most recently working on integration and work flow solutions using BizTalk 2002 and BizTalk 2004. He has over 15 years of experience with Microsoft Technologies and has currently been hanging his hat at FUJITSU CONSULTING INFORMATION SERVICES INC. going on 7 years now. He can be contacted at mailto:todd.hyatt@us.fujitsu.com.