Javier G. Lozano

MSDN Unleashed!

Javier G. Lozano — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:32:49 -0600

Instead of having our regularly scheduled IADNUG meeting, we're having Mike Benkovich and Kent Tegels do an MSDN Unleashed Event at DMACC West! Here's the info on it:

Join us at our MSDN Unleashed events for the latest tips, tools and technical information you need to build powerful applications and engaging user experiences. We'll show you how SQL Server 2008 delivers new development capabilities, including support for Spatial Data types, a fresh storage mechanism and more. You'll also learn how to leverage the Silverlight platform to build next generation applications for consumers and business. Don't miss these free, live sessions near you.

Session 1: What's New in SQL Server 2008 for Developers

SQL Server 2008 adds numerous new capabilities for developers – from support for Spatial Data types to a storage mechanism for SQL BLOB data using the NTFS file system, and much, much more. The new release also delivers several improvements to development-related areas, from T-SQL to SQLCLR to XML. This presentation will provide a technical dive into the latest and greatest features you'll find in SQL Server 2008, while offering insight into how effectively apply them to your upcoming development projects.

Session 2: Build next generation applications with Silverlight 2.0

Silverlight provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we'll take a look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next generation experiences for consumers and businesses, and demonstrate how to build a rich interactive application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft.NET. We'll explore how to use Microsoft Visual Studio to create applications, and how to create UI using XAML markup and code, controls, and File I/O.

We'll also discuss networking, how to retrieve data from a Web service, and various other aspects of building Silverlight applications.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Anyone who designs, develops, or debugs code. If you are an architect, developer or just enjoy curly braces, join us.

Microsoft ArcReady

Javier G. Lozano — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:27:18 -0600

Not sure how many of you know about this upcoming event (tomorrow) 11/06/2008! If you're going to be around the area, please come check it out!!

ArcReady

Professional Patterns on the Job

You're smart. You deliver. What more could your company want from you? Why don't they come to you for the big technical decisions? Why won't they listen to your proposals? It seems like everyone has an agenda and they're doing everything they can to kill your great ideas.

Join us this quarter as we focus on the soft skills that architects need to master. Learning these skills will boost your emotional intelligence and help you become a more professional, well rounded contributor. You'll gain insight into the architect's role as leader,influencer, and business professional and learn how to leverage your position to become a positive force within your organization.

Session 1: Mastering the Soft Skills
In this session, we'll discuss key interpersonal skills and how they can affect your projects and career. We cover how to positively connect with humans, how to participate in and influence the business processes you support, and how to transcend your technical role and maximize your connections with all members of your organization.

Session 2: Organizational Dynamics
This session examines the dynamic nature of large organizations – their structures, decision making processes, and political landscapes. We'll discuss the goals of key business and technical decision makers and their influence on architects and software projects. We'll conclude with some strategies for maximizing the soft skills from Session 1 to ensure successful outcomes for your projects and career.

WHAT IS ARCREADY?

A forum for aspiring and practicing architects to discuss industry trends
An overview of Microsoft's roadmap as it relates to software architecture
A mechanism to solicit your feedback
An opportunity to showcase the work you do!

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Architects and Senior Developers who are interested in becoming an architect.

WHERE ARE THE EVENTS?

Events are held in 19 cities across Central Region. To register for this event, please visit www.arcready.com.

WHAT TIME ARE THESE EVENTS?

9:00am – 11:45am

Iowa Code Camp v2!

Javier G. Lozano — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:43:20 -0600

That's right! If you're free this Saturday and get to get some free content and a great way to interact with the developer community in Central and Eastern Iowa, come check out the Iowa Code Camp at the DMACC West Campus!

Here's more info:

Iowa .NET and CRIneta.org are hosting the second code camp to Iowa on November 8, 2008 at DMACC West inWest Des Moines.

You might be asking, what's a code camp? Well, here are some of the basic ideas:

Community driven
High quality
Its for and by developers
No cost (for attendees)
All about code, not PowerPoint presentations
Source code and slides must be available to share with people who attend
Never during work hours - usually on Saturday

What a code camp is not:

Corporate product placement
Marketing
Powerpoint Centric

Again, if you're free on Saturday, come check us out!

Not At PDC - Presentation Content

Javier G. Lozano — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:58:36 -0500

Well, better late than never!

For those of you that attended my two talks for Not At PDC, a big thanks! My apologies for rushing some of the content, but I under estimated my ability to squeeze the content into an hour!

For those of you wondering about where the content lives, please go to: http://jglozano.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/presentations. Again, you'll need to use TortoiseSVN to check out the content.

If you have any questions,comments, ideas or would like to talk about software in general, please feel free to contact me!

Not At PDC

Javier G. Lozano — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:33:56 -0500

Can't make it to the Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) in LA? Well, we've started a new group called NotAtPDC! Chris Love is the genious behind this movement! Here's some info from him:

We are going to have live meeting sessions, links to Blogs, Podcasts and any other .NET related content featured this week. Right now we are trying to get things organized better. We will have a site live in the morning. If you want to schedule a session or something DM http://twitter.com/NotAtPDC.

Chris is in the process on getting a website up to aggregate some of the content that the community is sharing. If you want to join the facebook group, go here.

If you're interested in this movement, come join the fun!

Visual Studio Templates for MVC Views without Codebehind Files

Javier G. Lozano — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:23:51 -0500

For those of you doing MVC out there you've probably noticed that every time you create a new view within your project, the template that VS uses creates a both a .aspx.cs and a .aspx.designer.cs file for your view. A group of mvps/insiders have been talking about this topic for a bit. A small group of us feel that providing this file is a temptation that can lead to world of hurt.

To us, the this code behind file is a honeypot asking for bad practices. The fact that you have a codebehind file and that you can put ANY type of code within it, easily negate the fact that you're using MVC. Why? A developer can easily put non-view code within this file, after all it is the codebehind for a webform. Non-view specific code can range from db connections, LINQ queries, or even worse web service calls. Fellow Insider/MVP Steven Smith had an excellent blog post entitled, Codebehind Files in ASP.NET MVC Are Evil.

So Rule of Thumb #1 for ASP.NET MVC, DO NOT USE COBEHIND FILES IF YOU'RE USING THE WEBFORM VIEW ENGINE.

Having said that, you'll need tooling support to prevent you from going into these wicked ways. So, what I've taken the liberty to change the ItemTemplates that ship with MVC Beta 1 and changed them to prevent the creation of a code behind for both Views and Master pages. To get these templates, go to: http://jglozano.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/downloads/mvc_templates

Here's what you need to do:

Make sure that VS is not loaded
For the item template zip files

MvcViewContentPageItemTemplateBeta.cs.zip
MvcViewMasterPageItemTemplateBeta.cs.zip
MvcViewPageItemTemplate.cs.zip
MvcViewPageItemTemplateBeta.cs.zip

Copy these files to these locations:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplates\CSharp\Web\MVC\103
C:\Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET MVC Beta\Temp

For the itemtemplatecache_folders.zip file

Extract the contents (should be 4 folders of the previous 4 item template zip files).
Copy these folders to:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ItemTemplatesCache\CSharp\Web\MVC\1033

After you've completed these steps you can get a codebehind-less MVC View within your project from these dialogs:

New Add View Dialog

Add New Item Dialog

If you have any questions or need help installing these new templates, please feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks, VSLive Las Vegas and HDC Omaha '08!

Javier G. Lozano — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:05:59 -0500

For those of you that attended one or both at of my talks at VSLive Las Vegas or HDC Omaha 2008, I just want to say, thank you! And for the VSLive folks, I do apologize for cutting my open source tools talk short by 10 minutes. I had to jet out of the Mirage so I can make the plane back to the Midwest!

As promised, I upgraded my code to run with Beta 1 of the ASP.NET MVC Framework! So, if you want to get the latest bits go to: http://jglozano.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/presentations

You will find my slide deck as well as all the necessary pieces to run my demos. Please note that for the YABE and NHibernate demo you need SQL Server.

Again, thanks for taking the time to come listen to me. If you have any questions for concerns don't hesitate to contact me: javier-at-lozanotek-dot-com or http://twitter.com/lozanotek

VSLive! NY and HDC Minneapolis Talks

Javier G. Lozano — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:05:10 -0500

Yeah, I know...been really, really quiet here. Reason? Busy with work, work and life. Going to try to get back into the "frequent blogging" mood, I promise!!

Any way, for those of you that attended my talks at VSLive NY! and HDC Minneapolis, I just want to say, "Thanks!!" The code as been updated slightly to help clarify some of the interactions between the different projects (and logic). So, go check out the latest bits at http://jglozano.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ Please note that the PPT deck is also in that location for you guys to get.

Again, thanks for coming to the talks and I hope you enjoyed the material!

ASPInsiders Summit 2008

Javier G. Lozano — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:18:30 -0500

Last week I attended the ASPInsiders Summit at the MS main campus in Redmond. I must say that by Wednesday afternoon my head was ready to explode with the amount of content that I, along with another Insiders, parsed through!! However, it was a great opportunity to provide feedback the teams that make up the ASP.NET Team.

Over all, it was a great way to experience the process in which MS takes customers feedback and prioritizes features for their products. Sure, we all build products, but I must say that we don't do it at the scale that Microsoft does. The impressive thing about this is the size of the team! Now, I don't know the exact number but from the looks of it from the people coming in and out, the team is about ~30 people. Pretty impressive number for such an awesome platform!

Now, I can't say much about what was discussed (since most of it is under NDA), but I can say this: The team is very passionate about delivering a great product and customer experience. Every time you spoke with a member of the team, they were very attentive and always asked the "What would you like out of the product?" and "How would you do it?"...pretty awesome.

I must say that the highlights of the trip was spending time with the ASP.NET MVC team (both framework and tooling) and get to know them both as individuals and peers. Sure we talked shop, and lots and lots of it, but it was nice to hear about their personal lives for a change. Now, the one thing I will say (over a series of more blog posts) is that I was enlightened on the perception that over ASP.NET developers have about the new MVC framework. The main thing I hear from the group was "explain to me why/how..." Now, all of these are valid questions anybody exploring a new technology/approach should always ask. The interesting thing about these lines of questions is that it shows that we've (those proponents of MVC) have not been doing a good enough job explaining the zen of asp.net mvc. From my point of view, this is totally our fault for focusing on the specifics rather than the abstractions. This is something that I know was realized by the MVC Mafia (thanks Alan Stevens for coming up the name!) and that we're working on changing. So stay tuned!

Any way, back to the post...

As I said, it was a real pleasure for me to be a part of this summit. I met a lot really cool people and I must say that I can't wait until Insiders09. Also, I would like to thank those involved in putting it together, particularly Scott Galloway! You guys just rocked the event!!

267F Days Old

Javier G. Lozano — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:00:41 -0500

Wow, I can't believe I've added another 16D days to the stack...although at times it feels like 1DF1. For you geeks out there, here's another representation of the day count:

Octal - 23177
Octal (byte) - 177
Binary - 10011001111111
Binary (byte) - 1111111

Well, now thinking about it...I'm actually only 267E days old since the day is not over yet.

Anyway, here's to good times (and hopefully more to come)!

How did you get started in software development?

Javier G. Lozano — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:06:02 -0500

Well, I was tagged by Jeff earlier to talk about how I got started in software. So, here's my stab at answering these questions...

How old were you when you started programming?

I was either 11/12 years old. I got into it a little late since, well, I never had access to a computer when I was living in Mexico. I knew what they were and I was intrigued by them, but to ask my parents to get me one was completely a ludicrous idea since they were 10x more expensive in Mexico.

What was your first language?

Apple BASIC and QBASIC

What was the first real program you wrote?

This answer all depends on how you define "real" program. I wrote a pretty wicked "lemonade stand" game in Apple BASIC that would render the stand, a glass filling up with lemonade and the face of a happy customer. I spent close to a month working on the "graphics" since I had draw them on a piece of paper with a grid to lay out the blocks that made up the images. Oh the joyfulness of 10 PRINT "DO YOU WANT TO BUY SOME LEMONADE?"

The first "paid gig" was working on VB4 code on Win95 for a company that wrote software for utility companies. The money I got paid there beat what I made on my paper route BY FAR.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Yes, totally.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Make sure you do things with passion. Even in your darkest day during the job, passion the thing that keeps you motivated and going forward. Everything else (architecture, designs, practices, etc) is superficial.

What's the most fun you've ever had ... programming?

That's a though one 'cause there are so many different things that affect the "level of fun". I would say that my most enjoyable times are either when a client or colleague has that "Eureka!" expression on their face when you work with them on a problem. That's always a sign that you've done your job correctly; specially when building business software.

Who am I calling out?

IronRuby Runs Rails!

Javier G. Lozano — Wed, 28 May 2008 19:00:01 -0500

Great job to the IronRuby team on getting this done!

This just freakin' rocks!

Spaghetti Code Podcast - Ruby, RoR and ASP.NET MVC

Javier G. Lozano — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:00:52 -0500

A couple of weeks back, I recorded a podcast with, our community MS Developer Evangelist, Jeff Brand for his Spaghetti Code series. I was informed by Jeff, today that he finally posted it! I had a heck of a time recording this podcast with Jeff, the hour just flew by! If yo have the time, download the podcast and check it out!

Links:

Direct Download - click here
Subscribe - click here
iTunes - click here

New Wrox Title: ASP.NET 3.5 Programmer's Reference

Javier G. Lozano — Tue, 13 May 2008 23:21:23 -0500

So, here's a little shameless self plug for a book that Bryan Sampica and I are writing...also, I'm using this blog post as a warm up for my writing this evening!

Yes, like I just mentioned, I'm co-authoring a book for Wrox with Bryan entitled, ASP.NET 3.5 Programmer's Reference. The purpose of the book is to get you the novice/beginner introduced to the features of ASP.NET 3.5, and hopefully teach you a few ~~tricks~~ things along the way. The book is due out in November, so that means that my summer (evenings) is pretty much booked up. I must confess that Bryan is writing more than half (3-4 chapters more) of this 36 chapter venture.

So at this point, you might be wondering, why are you writing a book? Well, I figured it might be fun and the mean time, I can help Bryan out with the title. That's pretty much it! I've always wanted to experience the writing of a book, so when Bryan presented this opportunity to me, I felt I was up to the challenge.

To help me manage the writing process, I've setup a project at unfuddle so I can keep track of milestones, tasks and, of course, source code.

I will keep blogging about the progress of the book and let you guys know what sort of things I run into! Stay tuned!

How do we define community?

Javier G. Lozano — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:28:32 -0500

During lunch on Tuesday of this past week, ScottHa raised an interesting discussion point by saying that he rarely sees MVPs that are enterprisie ... by that, MVPs that actually work for (day to day) for an enterprise). Granted, he used to be one himself back when he worked for Corillian. But as we looked around the group you could see that we were all trying to recollect if we knew of any other MVPs that are enterprisie. Sadly, we didn't.

Now, the point of that discussion was not say that people in the enterprise cannot be MVPs, it is more to find out the reasons why there isn't a community of enterprisie developers. We started to talk about some reasons as why people wouldn't/couldn't be members of a community. Here's an example of these reasons:

Not having too much free time -- people do have lives outside work
Shutting off when the bell rings -- again, people do have lives outside work and IT
Not caring -- people go to work to just collect a paycheck
No valid channels to provide support/feedback -- do the forces behind the enterprise care about talking with other enterprises?

We explored some of these (and others) in somewhat detail to see if we could get a sense of the problem. Later that evening during our product dinner, I posed the same question to my members of our table to see if we could get a different perspective.

So now, I ask you, my three readers, are there channels or ways to reach to people in the enterprise? If so, is there a problem with providing greater reach? And if not, how can we create such channels?

If you work in the enterprise, I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

MVP Summit Highlights

Javier G. Lozano — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:08:52 -0500

Well, I had a great time meeting old friends and making new ones at this year's summit. There were so many things going on and so many people to see and talk to, that it's next to impossible to consume everything at once! So, to keep things simple, here are of the highlights per day:

Sunday

Although, I was not there until late (way late), it was a lot fun hanging around the Westin's lobby and talk about how a chicken takes a dookie. Yeah, that's right. Keith Elder had the great intentions of recording a podcast that quickly degraded into different implementations of ICanLayEgg and ICanPoo. Yeah, needless to say you had to be there.

Monday

By the far the impromptu IronRuby open space was the best! Had a pretty small group (10+/-) of people talking about IronRuby. You knew you were in for a treat when John asked, "Tell us where we suck." From there the conversation turned into the number of specs needed to get IronRuby fully running and talking about getting RoR up and running by RailsConf. Great stuff! Also, I had the please of finally meeting Jimmy Schementi and talk about dynamic Silverlight! Jimmy had some great insights on his side project called Silverlight on Rails. The concept made my mind explode!!

Tuesday

I had a great time at the product dinner! I sat next to my new MVP Lead, Suzanna Moran, Jason Tillman, Bryan Sampica and Eilon Lipton. We talked about how we define community, and how we can build community and of course, ASP.NET MVC! The fun really begun when Phil Haack and I created the "Butch" an open source drink for the product dinner. The drink for those of you wondering, is 1 part vodka, 1 part ice and 1 part citrus juices (lemon, limes, etc.) and 1 part grenadine. The reason why its called the "Butch" is because it's both pink and manly at the same time since it's made with Beefeater Vodka. Yeah...again, you had to be there!

From there, I had the pleasure of meeting ScottGu! I must say that it was pretty awesome moment (yes, I sound like a little school girl). I thanked him for the work him and his team are doing to pushing out the best content and tools for .net developers. I think the moment where I passed out during the our conversation was when he told me that he reads my blog and really likes the content. The next thing I knew, I was at the Westin lobby standing next to Caleb Jenkins. Totally surreal.

At this time, it's close to 11 PM and the night is just staring. From the Westin lobby, I wonder off to bar/restaurant place called The Palace where I had a few beers with Rob Connery, Steve Harman, Jon Galloway, Dave Donaldson and Rick Strahl. I sat next to Jon and had a great time talking to him about his adventures with Silverlight and developing Video.Show.

Wednesday

By far both of the dynamic language sessions, "Why I Py?" with Harry Pierson and "IronRuby" with John were pretty awesome. After listening to Harry's talk, I should realized that I should give python more of a chance. The only thing that I do not like about python is the requirement to use space as a scope boundary...that's it. I know, I should stop whining and give it a chance. Also, talking with Scott Bellware and Phil Haack about thunking from IronRuby to CLR types was pretty cool.

The attendee party was pretty great too! It was funny to see my wife get up and sing Brown Eyed Girl with Nick's wife. Also, listening to D'Arcy Lussier sing I Touch Myself and Keith Friends in Low Places was pretty awesome too.

Heading Home

Unfortunately, I left on Thursday morning so I was unable to make the rest of the festivities along with the ALT.NET Conference. In all, I had a great time with everyone and look forward to the rest of the year and next year's summit!

Laptop Skin

Javier G. Lozano — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:24:03 -0500

I've been looking into getting a laptop skin for my Macbook Pro for some time now. I've been searching on Google trying to find something I like and have tossed the idea of creating my own with the lozanotek logo (I still might do this one!). The one to me that seemed the coolest (and the one that people might know more) is an art piece called The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai. Here's what the art work looks like:

While returning a movie over at InMotion at Seatac, I bumped into the Gelaskins version of the skin and decided to get it. Here's what it looks like (from their website):

Pretty cool, huh?

twitter: Human Service Bus

Javier G. Lozano — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:07:05 -0500

twitter is a funny thing. Not only is it a web application but also a way interacting with people both on/off-line. The thing that I find most interesting about it is how people tend to user it as a verb (have you twittered?) and a noun (my tweeps)...like another thing that's just part of their things to do. Another interesting thing is how people here in Des Moines have managed to organize a monthly physical meeting where other fellow DSM tweeps can meet. Definitely something I really need to check out next month.

Not sure how many of you have seen the Web 2.0 ... The Machine Is Us/ing Us video in which it shows how we are the Internet and that the Internet is us (kinda of a scary/overwhelming thought). If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you check it out. It's only 4:31 minutes long.

Now, I'm not sure if twitter falls into that same realm or categorization as blogs, podcasts, etc. because of the way one interacts with twitter. At it's core, twitter is nothing more than a simple publish/subscribe architecture. If you care about to know it, just follow the loosely structure updates. Just like sitting back and watching people go by in an airport...random things happen, it's totally up to you to pay attention to them. There's nothing really formal about it...just you and the Internet.

Could it be that it's lack of structure that makes it so appealing to people? If you think about it, although RSS has Simple in its name, it's not...when compared to the 160 char limit of twitter.

I guess, that I can't put my hands around it...twitter, what's your je ne sais quoi?

Currently Reading List

Javier G. Lozano — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:20:25 -0500

I haven't done this in a while, so I apologize. Here's my current reading list for technical/non-technical books:

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Thus far is a pretty good book. When I picked it up, it sounded like a great book since it tries to answer the "how" of the unexpected. For some reason, I'm always a sucker for these type of books.

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

I love biographies because they provide a different insight on a person's life. I've only managed to get through chapter 1, which is a little sad since I was really looking forward to getting through this book. At 704 pages, it's going to be a great read...come on, it's Einstein!

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Now, technically, I'm not reading this this book since it is an audio book. I really like the way the authors explain their SUCCESS process for making your ideas a bit more "sticky". I must say that I listened to this book on the way up to the Twin Cities Code Camp and the time just flew by! Really, I mean that. I definitely can't wait to get a lot further on this audio book.

I Am America (And So Can You) by Stephen Colbert

I listened to this audio book on the way to/from (and in) Hawaii. All I can say is that I laughed hysterically! If you like watching the Colbert Report, you need to get this book!

Twin Cities Code Camp: Silverlight Presentation

Javier G. Lozano — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:35:30 -0500

For those of you that attended my Silverlight presentation yesterday at the Twin Cities Code Camp, I just want to say, "Thanks for coming! I hope you enjoyed it!"

As promised, you can download the presentation slides and source code from Google code using TortoiseSVN.

Again, thanks for coming to my presentation and thanks to Jason Bock for allowing me to come up and be part of a great event!

Ask An Expert Live Chat: May 1st, 2008

Javier G. Lozano — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:47:15 -0500

That's right! We're having another ASP.NET Expert Live Chat on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 6 PM PST. Here's more info on the event:

Get your tough development questions answered by Microsoft MVPs, Regional Directors, and other industry experts. Community experts will be on hand to answer your .NET- and Visual Studio-related questions. No off topic questions please.

Please note that questions regarding upcoming products and future product specs might not be answered.

Would you like to participate as an expert? Contact Ryan Olshan at Ryan[dot]Olshan[at]strongtypes[dot]com.

MSDN Online Chats - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx
Chat Room - http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/chatrooms/msdn.aspx
ICS - http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/08_0501_msdn_DEV.ics

If you have some questions you want answered, come check it out! It's going to be a great time!

IADNUG Meeting: Intro to ASP.NET MVC

Javier G. Lozano — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:04:59 -0500

That's right, we're having another IADNUG meeting this evening with Chris Sutton from the CR Ineta user group talking about ASP.NE MVC! If you're free this evening, come check us out!

Intro to the ASP.NET MVC Framework
Chris Sutton, CRIneta.org
The ASP.Net MVC Framework is a new project that the ASP.Net team is working on to give developers an alternate and potentially better way to do web development in the ASP.Net environment. Model View Controller(MVC) is a well known presentation pattern that has been used in many environments with a variety of different languages. It enables the developer to achieve better separation between data, program flow and the actual presentation(html). By getting the optimal separation between data, flow and presentation your projects can be more maintainable as well as more testable.

In this talk we will dig into Models, Views and Controllers to learn how we can use this pattern to make our development lives easier. Chris will show you where to download the latest bits, how to install them and then how to use get starte developing with this project.
Presenter Bio:

Chris Sutton is a consultant and technical trainer in Eastern Iowa and has been working with ASP.Net since the November beta in 2002. He helped start SouthColorado.net, the Ineta group in Colorado Springs, CO, and has been involved running CRineta.org, the Ineta group in Cedar Rapids, IA, over the last three years. Chris has the MCPD:Enterprise certification and is working toward his MCITP: Business Intelligence certification.

Getting to spend time with his wife and kids makes his tech work worthwhile. He also enjoys hiking and biking in the summer and snowshoeing in the winter.

MVP'ed for 2008

Javier G. Lozano — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:56:02 -0500

That's right, the nice people over a Microsoft decided to award me with the ASP.NET MVP award for 2008! Just wanted to use this blog post as a Thank You! for those people involved in the program!

I'm really looking forward to the MVP Summit next week and the year to come!

ASP.NET Web Service Serialization Proxy Bug

Javier G. Lozano — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:17:05 -0600

Long blog title, I know. Yesterday, I ran into a issue/bug that I've never encountered during my years of being an ASP.NET developer. The error message is below:

The interesting thing about this error, is that it's occurred so often that there's a KB article (KB896181) for it that tells you how to fix it. Fortunately for me, I didn't have to apply the fix in the KB. I just had to change some of my security settings to give the account hosting the website the right permissions.

Here's how the errors occurs:

So you have an ASP.NET page that calls a web service. This can be done within its code-behind or within a control that the page is hosting. The big thing here is that you have a web page calling a web service.

Although you've created a proxy for the web service you plan to call, its base class SoapHttpClientProtocol still needs to create a temporary serialization assembly and cache its contents within the constructor. So, when you new-up that proxy, you run into this error.

Why you might not run into this issue:

By default, every ASP.NET web application runs as the ASPNET account, along with the IWAM_ComputerName account that runs any of the out-of-process applications for IIS. If you haven't changed any of these default settings, more than likely you haven't encountered this bug. However, if you're running your ASP.NET application as a different Windows user to tighten down security, you have a greater chance of getting the error.

That's the reason why I encountered it! We're hosting our application in IIS 6.0 and I've created a new AppPool to run the application as a user with minimal rights. Doing so, we can use Windows integrated security for connecting to remote resources like file shares, SQL Servers, etc.

For those running into the similar issue, I hope this post helps you!

Software Simian

Javier G. Lozano — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:54:02 -0600

This is just too funny:

We all know we've been there!