Live from Code Camp – Day One

Hi! Today and Sunday I am going to be blogging live from Code Camp Oz in Wagga Wagga.

This is a live blog entry, so check back for updates regularly.  Alternatively, you can follow my (and other) twits on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com)

Running out of battery power – again.

Last session is a hoot.

Missed Session Eight

** SESSION SIX **

Paul Stovell is now presenting on SyncLinq – a new way of thinking about programming.

Reactive Programming

Observing change: INotifyPropertyChanged/INotifyCollectionChanged was built to allow notification of property changes.

Paul’s done a good job of explaining the use of Type Descriptors.  I’ll link to his blog post on this topic at a later date.

Bindable objects.  Domain modelling with event driven and reactive designs can be used to handle state, change events and many other concepts.  Introduces the concept of Model/View/Binder (Model – objects, view – UI, binder – mapping/manipulation)

Freehand Notes

State -> Events -> Reactions/Transformations (Hub and Spoke)

Filters, projections, aggregates.  Runtime query.  Introducing SyncLinq.

ObservableCollection, WPF collection which inherits from INotifyCollectionChanged.

** SESSION FIVE **

Note: Shorthand notes on PDA (battery was rested at this stage)

** SESSION FOUR **

Shane Morris is pimping his app – user experience advice and lessons learned.  As per my previous comments, I’m not a UI guy, so this will be like apples and oranges for me.

User Experience = Useful -> Reliable -> Usable -> Adaptable -> Desirable

Planning for a User Interface

1. List everything you need to show
2. Map out the workflow*
3. Layout the elements

* Personal note: I personally am a fan of using functional flowcharting to help guide/aid in the evaluation of functional requirements (driven from business cases)

** SESSION THREE **

Bill Chestnut is talking about Windows Server 2008 and how to implement a SQL cluster on a single machine.

Must check out the new licenses with Hyper-V – interesting potential there.  Link provided by Craig Bailey.

  • Install Hypervisior (beta, only on 64bit) – must be in US region when you install OS
  • Use wizard to create new virtual machine
        a. New connection (network) available
        b. "Internal Network Connection" – can see localhost and other virtual machines
  • Uninstall old additions when moving VHDs to Hyper-V
  • Core install is an interesting proposition, designed to reduce the attack surface of Windows Server.

Clustering.  Install Failover clustering (role). 

** SECOND SESSION **

Right, moving onto the second session.  Greg Low is up talking about new date handling in SQL Server 2008.

I’m watching Greg and applying advice he provided from yesterday’s session – he has included some humourous content, and is delivering well.  Good voice projection 🙂

We’re looking at what is attributed as the most expensive software bug ever written.  Interesting stuff.  Note: haven’t seen ADA in quite some time.

Free hand notes follow:

Null is currently provided as a magic number, 01-01-1900 at 0:00:00:00.  Min Value is 1753.  Current usage with dates include: CONVERT, GETDATE() and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP.  Name change on the cards for timestamp – thankfully!

New in SQL 2008, uses CLR DateTime ranges.  Precision up to 7 decimal places for time.  Time offset included.  DateTime2 introduced as a high precision DateTime.  GETDATE() -> SYSDATETIME().  SWITCHOFFSET() could be useful.

GETDATE() is now deprecated.

** FIRST SESSION **

The first session has just Kicked off! 

Jonas Folleso’s session is on using video content in Silverlight and WPF.  We’ve been shown ways to embed Silverlight applications with Visual Studio 2008, and he has shown some groovy video content with some serious back beat!

Expression, Blend sure are interesting tools, although not new by any means.  I recall seeing early versions at the Readiness Summit in 2006.  

Shame I’m not a UI/Graphics/Designer-type-guy.  If I ever touch a UI, they ought to come and arrest me for crimes against user input 🙂  Like Joel Pobar, I’m more of a console guy.

It sure does look pretty.  I like the ability you have to insert chapter points, which previously required re-encoding with Windows Media Encoder.

Jonas got his code backwards which was rewarded with a roar of laughter from the crowd.  It’s good to see people in good humour early on the first day.  Coffee hasn’t kicked in yet (for me, anyway).

XAML has always intrigued me.  Wonder if we will see that whole video clip,  I think the background music is Coldplay 🙂

Jonas’ code is at http://jonas.follesoe.no

Internet access has been provided by the fine folks at Charles Sturt University.  I’ll be reviewing the university’s wine this evening at the wine and cheese tasting session – yum!

Was just reviewing the session list for today.  Paul Stovell’s session ought to be interesting, but aside from that I’m really  more psyched for tomorrow instead.  Bill Chestnut and Greg Low are up next with a rapid fiire session about datetime changes in SQL Server 2008.

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