Paul Wilson's .NET Blog

I attended a session entitled "Object-Relational Mapping As a Foundation for ADO.NET Database Access" here at TechEd.  The speaker was Terry Weiss, one of the Microsoft Regional Directors, which is kind of like being a super-MVP.  Here's the description of the session as it was provided in the TechEd materials:

What, if anything, should I say publicly in a blog about one of the worst sessions ever?  Should I dive into it and tell the world, or should I keep this type of criticism private?

There's one huge CommNet area at TechEd, and lots of little satellite areas.  Apparently since roaming profiles are enabled the machines tend to run out of disk space a lot.  That's probably quickly fixed at the main area, but not at the other areas.  This sounds bad, and it is for most people, but the upside is that you can always go back to any particular computer that you have previously used and be one of the only ones able to use it now.  Its kind of like reserving my own computer for the rest of the week!  Sorry, it wasn't my idea, but I'm willing to exploit this to its fullest.  :)

I went to see the talk about SQL Server Yukon and its .NET Programming Features given by Jose Blakeley and Eric Brown this morning.  There weren't as many demos as I would have liked to see, but there was no shortage of new things coming that they talked about.  My take is that its not just use any language to work with SQL, but also work with your data in any way you want.  That's right, you will be able to work with any data as either normal data (DataSet), objects (ObjectSpaces), or xml (XmlReader).  I'm not sure what all the implications or limitations are since I haven't gotten a copy of it myself (yet), but it makes sense.  Since .NET languages and constructs will be a native part of the database, its just a natural evolution to be able to natively expose objects.  Also, they will be adding an xml data-type to the database itself, so once again it just makes sense to expose any data as xml also.  My question is whether or not ObjectSpaces will be part of .NET itself, or part of SQL Server?  Why does it matter -- because I want to read and persist my objects totally independent of the database so my code will automatically work with Oracle and Access too!  I can do this now with Thona Consulting's EntityBroker, and others are also going down this path, like Andres Aguiar's DeKlarit, who I met this morning.

I went to listen and review Nikhil Kothari's talk on server controls and Scott Guthrie's talk on assorted black-belt tips.  Scott again keeps giving hints about ASP.NET version 2.0, basically saying that everything he showed will be unnecessary.  Let's see, he talked about setting focus, keeping scroll position on postbacks, lots of client-side javascript, and how to add themes or skins to templated controls.  I then went to help at the ASP.NET Ask the Experts booth, and I got to meet more of the ASP.NET team, like David Ebbo and Joseph Croney.  David knew who I was and said he was referring lots of people asking about his original MasterPages to my article -- really cool.  Then I went to a get-together of TechEd bloggers, meeting Clemens Vasters, Scott Hanselman, and too many others to list here.  I also re-discovered a former co-worker, so you never really know what all to expect at these conferences.  Finally, I got to see the book I co-wrote -- ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook.  OK, I didn't contribute that much, but the book doesn't say how much, it just says I did!

I made it to TechEd on an early flight this morning.  I saw a couple of other bloggers after registering: DataGridGirl, Eli Robillard, and Stephen Swienton.  Stephen made me feel good since he said he presented some of my template techniques at a user group.  I just finished listening to Dan Fernandez talk about the future of C#.  Nothing new was said that isn't already available in white papers on the net, but he did demo some real generics using Gyro, that is available for Rotor now, that I hadn't personally seen.  That one always seems to get the most attention, although ASP.NET developers should also be interested in Partial Types. :)  I'm off now to see Rob Howard give a Tips and Tricks talk that I'm supposed to formally review as part of my deal for being here.  It looks like Rob is going to go the route that I really prefer, that being lots of code and less slides, so maybe he'll get a good review out of me yet!

I'll be at TechEd in Dallas next week as one of the Experts for the Ask the Experts booth, along with some additional responsibilities for Microsoft.  Hope to meet some of you that I haven't already met at Microsoft or DevConnections, and I'll try to blog some also since I'm set up on http://techedbloggers.net.

Check out my latest demo that shows a Windows Form UserControl embedded in an ASP.NET Page.  It populates the ComboBoxes and DataGrid by calling a WebService that returns DataSets that are bound to the controls.  The data is automatically refreshed with the correct child DataSets whenever the selection in one of the ComboBoxes is changed.  Note that the Windows Form DataGrid automatically supports Sorting and Scrolling -- all without PostBacks!  Note that this does require the client computer to have .NET v1.1 installed locally since it uses Windows Forms.