Sessions 2012

Fiddler and Your Website

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Fiddler is a great free tool for monitoring HTTP traffic between clients and web servers. It is very helpful for troubleshooting web sites and for gauging performance. 

 

Review the basic features and explore advanced techniques for tracing traffic with remote devices.

 

Tags: Web Performance Troubleshooting Fiddler

Embracing HTTP with ASP.NET Web APIs

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If you've ever developed web applications you've been in this situation. In order to create a service that exposes your resources over HTTP, you plan on adopting the REST architectural style, use URI templates, support multiple content types and control client-side cache.  And to top it all off, you want your service to be easily creatable and highly testable. So which technology do you choose? The new ASP.NET Web APIs of course. With the new Web APIs you can do all of the above, and still have plenty of time left for a cup of coffee.

 

In this session we will see how to create HTTP services with the ASP.NET Web APIs, how to test them, and how to consume them from various clients.

 

Task and Data Parallelism: Real-World Examples

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Many developers have seen the Task Parallel Library APIs for concurrent applications, but have only played around with toy examples. In this session we'll see how to extract concurrency and parallelism from seemingly impossible situations, how to gain scalability from lock-free code, and how to analyze real-world parallel applications with profilers to see the precise benefits gained from parallelization.

 

.NET developers will learn in this talk how to improve application performance in real-world scenarios and algorithms by using the Task Parallel Library that shipped with .NET 4.0 and was considerably improved since. The session will cover numerous cases where parallelism appears to be impossible but can be extracted by following clear rules and using the right APIs. We'll also discuss performance measurement tools that can identify scalability bottlenecks and point towards actual performance wins gained from parallelization. Primary topics:

• Introduction to the Task Parallel Library APIs---parallel loops, tasks, PLINQ
• Extracting concurrency---case studies
• Concurrency patterns: aggregation, dependency management, lock-free code
• Measuring concurrent application performance with the Visual Studio Concurrency Visualizer and resource contention profiling

 

Prerequisites: .NET development experience

 

Tags: Concurrency C#

Architectural Patterns For The Cloud

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Enough mushy, baby talk about the cloud. Let’s roll up our sleeves and talk about some real patterns for how to use the cloud in the real world.

 

Hint: As much as some vendors want you to think so, it doesn’t require you to move everything to the cloud. Leave with some concrete ways to use the cloud in your existing world.

 

Tags: Windows Azure Architecture Cloud

Native iOS programming for .NET developers

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Are you a long-time .NET programmer who wants to dabble in or move to iOS programming? Have you been scared off by talk of the evil IDE XCode, or the scary multi-headed dragon known as Objective-C?

 

In this session we’ll debunk the myths, and look at how you can leverage your .NET development skills in an iOS world without selling your soul.

 

Using HTML5 to Build Mobile Apps

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Native apps are great, but if you want your app to reach as many people as possible, HTML5 is your ticket. In this session, we'll explore the different ways HTML5 can be used to build and deploy mobile apps, as well as the tools that can make the job easier.

 

Responsive Web Design: From Mobile To the Big Screen

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With the advent of CSS3, building response web apps that adapt to different screen resolutions has become a popular focus of web application design. Although much of the emphasis is placed on mobile web design, we also have to take into account that more and more users not only have small (mobile) screens, they also have large (20in+) screens on their desktops.

 

In this session we’ll look at basic response web application design features, and how they can be applied in not only mobile to desktop transitions, how they can be used to go from big to bigger on the desktop.

 

ASP.NET and Visual Studio vNext

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Learn about the great new features coming in the next version of ASP.NET and Visual Studio.There are some great enhancements to all of the editors (CSS snippets, CSS vendor prefixes, JavaScript go to definition, etc). Discover the new model binding and respository capabilities in Web Forms, along with unobtrusive jQuery validation support for validators.  See how to bundle and minify CSS and JavaScript files simply to drastically improve web site performance.

 

The new Page Inspector shows the DOM and styles applied to pages, while indicating directly where the given markup originated in the ASP.NET project so it can be easily adjusted. Review how the new asynchronous features allow much better scalability by freeing ASP.NET threads during long running asynchronous requests.

 

Tags: Web Forms ASP.NET 4.5 ASP.NET Bundling/Minification VS 2012

ASP.NET MVC Razor and jQuery - the New Face of ASP.NET

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Learn what you can do with ASP.NET MVC, Razor, jQuery, and other new WebDev concepts, frameworks, and tools. Since .NET 4 and 4.5 came out, we've seen many new technologies - new versions for ASP.NET MVC, improved jQuery plug-ins, and the new Razor view engine.

 

In this session we'll learn how to incorporate all these technologies to build the new generation of ASP.NET web applications.

 

Windows Azure Tips & Tricks

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Windows Azure is a very broad cloud platform. Brian will discuss seven tips and tricks you need to know to be quickly successful. These are all hard learned from real world projects and customers.

Tags: Windows Azure Cloud Real World

Refactoring Applications using SOLID Principles

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We’ve all heard about well-designed software projects, where things aren’t (yet) a big ball of mud that’s painful to work with, but many of us aren’t lucky enough to work on these.  Nor is it an option for us to get to start a brand new “greenfield” project, where we can leave behind the legacy of spaghetti code and technical debt our current project might have.

 

But there is hope! By applying refactoring steps based on SOLID principles of object oriented design, we can reduce the technical debt of our existing application, improve our code quality, and hopefully make our application more enjoyable and productive to work with.

 

In this session, we’ll briefly introduce the SOLID principles and several design patterns, and then we’ll apply these principles and patterns by improving the design of an existing application through several refactoring steps.

 

Tags: C#

Principled N-Tier Solution Design

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Separating applications into separate layers or tiers has long been touted as an architectural best practice, but the typical naïve approach can result in tight coupling and a heavy dependence on the database. Alternative approaches to layered architectural design do not suffer from this limitation, allowing for loosely coupled, testable solutions that can swap alternative infrastructure implementations in and out of the application.

 

In this session, we’ll examine the traditional N-Tier design and its deficiencies, and introduce an alternative based on the Ports and Adapters or Onion architectural pattern, and we’ll show how to set up a solution from scratch to take advantage of this approach.

 

Tags: C#

Cross Platform Mobile Development using C#

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Are you a .NET developer who wants to build iOS and Android apps?

 

Kent Alstad will walk you through examples of how to use monoDevelop and monoTouch (from Xamarin) to create mobile applications for iOS and Android using C#. You’ll examine the pros and cons of C# as a mobile development language as well as look at designs that minimize code duplication and yet still result in rich native applications that WILL be accepted into the Apple's AppStore as well as Google's Play Store. 

 

Come and learn how to leverage your C# skills in the exciting world of mobile application development.

 

It's a Knockout! MVVM Style Web Applications

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Client-side development using javascript libraries like jQuery, jQuery UI and kendoUI are all the rage in this Web 2.0 world.  However, these excellent libraries require developers to directly manipulate the browser's DOM using css Selectors. This approach requires developers to work closely with designers and does not really support the principle of "Separation of Concerns" which is well established for server-side frameworks.

 

On the other hand, the Model-View-ViewModel pattern is well-established in Silverlight (including Windows Phone) and WPF UI development, and is an excellent pattern for clearly separating the design (View) and functionality (ViewModel), and this pattern is now available for javascript developers.

 

The KnockoutJS library which is being promoted by Microsoft as part of their new "Single-Page-Application" web application template, is one of these javascript implementations of the MVVM pattern. Using DotNetNuke as an example, in this session, Charles Nurse, Senior Architect for DotNetNuke Corporation will show how KnockoutJS in conjunction with the WebAPI can be used to add advanced client-side behavior to an existing Web Forms Application.

 

The Web Is Native

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HTML5 is evolving so fast that its extremely difficult to keep up.  In the browser, it's somewhat easier to overlook these new features as support is so varied.  But HTML5 is coming to a desktop near you.

Projects like Chrome OS and B2G are bringing the web as a platform to native devices.  Windows 8 treats HTML and JavaScript as first class citizens not for building websites, but for building fully native applications.  Chrome OS is built on HTML5 and even offers the browser as the primary desktop experience.  When the web becomes native, bleeding edge becomes baseline.  Advanced audio and video manipulation, hardware accelerated graphics, file system integration and of course the cloud are now technologies that you need to know about.  This year's website may be next year's app store hit.

In this session we will take a look at how the web is evolving into a native platform.  We'll cover what's happening in platforms that haven't yet arrived, as well as what some companies are doing today to deliver HTML5 as it's never been done before.  It's not happening, it's already happened. The web is native.

 

Look Mom – NoSQL

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As Professional Developers most of us are familiar with working with common Relational Databases (RDMSs) like SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle. More recently, driven by the rise of big Social Networks like Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In, there has been a lot of interest in so-called NoSQL Databases.

 

In this intermediate session, Charles Nurse, Senior Architect for DotNetNuke Corporation will introduce the concept of NoSQL Databases – what they are and why they are becoming more popular. We will develop a simple web application using ASP.NET MVC and RavenDB – a NoSQL database built in .NET, with LINQ support.

 

Implementing the MVVM Pattern in WPF

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In our never-ending quest to put as many letter variations as possible behind “MV” we have MVVM. Model-View-ViewModel is binding-oriented pattern that is crucial to WPF and Silverlight development and in this session I’ll teach you all about it, and how to implement it properly. I’ll cover binding, intent and implementation of ViewModels, Commanding, and Unit Testing techniques.

 

Come on in, and leave your code-behind at the door.

 

Tags: Unit Testing XAML MVVM WPF

Building Secured, Scalable, Low-latency Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform

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See how you can build scalable, durable, and secured web sites in Windows Azure with the help of compute, storage, CDN, ACS, AppFabric cache, and more. We always hear tips about the patterns and practices of building web applications with Windows Azure, it's time we see how it is done!

In this session we will construct a secured, durable, scalable, low-latency web application with Windows Azure - Compute, Storage, CDN, ACS, Cache, SQL Azure, Full IIS, WCF and more.

This is a no-slides presentation!

 

Understanding Dependency Injection and Those Pesky Containers

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Dependency Injection is one of those terms that advanced programmers throw out with an expectation and assumption of full understanding on the part of the receiver. However, I constantly get asked by attendees, students, and clients to please recommend a good DI product and show them how to use it; and when I proceed to start talking about the subject, it becomes immediately apparent that many don't even know what they're asking about.

 

It's easy to get infatuated by a cool buzz phrase, specially when you hear so many others using it. But to truly understand something you need to start by understanding the problem spaces that it is trying to solve.

 

So let's bring you totally up to speed then. In this session, I'll explain dependency injection from concept to implementation, and use raw code samples to show you how it works and what problems it solves. Then I'll get into what a DI container is and some of the characteristics of the ones that are out there.

 

Tags: Dependency Injection DI

Doing More with LESS for CSS

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As CSS3 adds support for rich styling in standards-based web applications, style sheet markup can quickly get out of control! Many CSS effects today require repetitive rules to cover the proprietary browser CSS prefixes. LESS for CSS is an open source framework that makes modern CSS more manageable. With support for variables, mix-ins, nested CSS rules, and operations, LESS finally makes complex CSS easy to maintain.

In this session, you will discover how LESS can be easily adopted in any web project, including ASP.NET, and learn about tools that make it easy to work with LESS in any environment.

 

Tags: Open Source CSS