BizTron

From: TVUG President, Griff Townsend:

Sorry for the delay in getting this out: things always seem to get hectic around the time to put announcements out, and this month was no exception. With that said, I've spoken with this month's presenter (in the mirror), and he is ready to go.
Using the Entity Framework in .Net 3.5 SP1

Speaker: Griffith Townsend, MCP.Net, MCSE
When: Tuesday September 8th, 2008 - 6:30-9PM
Where: VersaTrans Solutions, Latham, NY

When developing multi-tiered applications, it’s not uncommon that to encounter code and architectural “noise” where a developer is forced to shift languages between the business logic layer and the data layer. The preference of many developers is the use of tools (typically Object Relational Mapping solutions) to abstract the database-specific aspects of the data layer into objects usable by the upper layers by object-oriented programming languages.

Microsoft’s long awaited Entity Framework (EF) is one approach to raise the level of abstraction in complex applications, separating the logical object schema from the underlying data store. EF allows developers a lot of flexibility in creating and mapping database entities, relationships, functions, and procedures into either direct class translations or custom business entities.

In this presentation, Griff Townsend introduces us to the Entity Framework as of its initial release in SP1, providing an architectural overview of EF, while also extending it into a working Data Layer. The presentation will also cover:

• Building your first EF model
• Using Stored Procedures and customizing business objects in the EF model
• Extending the Framework to support more robust data access
• LINQ to EF vs. LINQ to SQL
• Sharing Entities between layers

Bio: Griff Townsend is a Senior Software Engineer for 6N Systems and the President of the Tech Valley .Net Users Group. In addition to over 14 years of web- and windows- development experience in Central and Upstate New York, he has also taught Software Development for Syracuse University and ITT Tech. He is a Microsoft Certified Developer in .Net, as well as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. He's starting to blog these days, too.

TVUG Presentation - June 10th, 2008 (Now June 17th)  

This event was postponed due to serious weather advisories.

Be sure to check the TVUG Website for any updates.

TVUG President wrote in an e-mail to the Tech Valley .NET Users Group membership.  Please join us...

Join us for our last meeting before our summer break as Andrew Badera introduces us to Windows Communication Foundation. The current plan is that we won't have another meeting until September '08, but we might have a special meeting if we can get an INETA speaker in the area. Let's put it to a vote next week!

WCF Essentials

Speaker: Andrew Badera, CTO, Change Round-Up
When: Tuesday June 10th, 2008 - 6:30-9PM
Where: VersaTrans Solutions, Latham, NY

The global acceptance of Web services, which includes standard protocols for application-to-application communication, has changed software development. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is designed to offer a manageable approach to distributed computing, broad interoperability, and direct support for service orientation.

In order to simplify development of connected applications through a service-oriented programming model, Windows Communication Foundation bundles a lot of powerful features in one easily configured package. A couple notable features, as service architectures grow more complex and support greater workload, are duplex communication and connection throttling. This presentation will review the essentials of WCF, utilizing a Silverlight GUI to demonstrate latency and scaling characteristics of a simplex polling application vs. a duplex push application.

Speaker Bio
A lifelong geek, Andrew Badera has been immersed in the software world since the age of seven, when his parents bought him a Tandy BASICA programming book instead of Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator he had been asking for, months on end. Not to be dissuaded, he read the book three times over the following week, and immediately set about, without any great degree of success, trying to write his own flight simulator. Currently he serves as CTO of Change Round-Up in Coxsackie, NY as well as senior software engineer on the Open Systems team at Davis Vision, Inc. in Latham.

From the Editor

Hello developers across the northeast. Here's the latest news for our corner of the country.

As I write this, Code Camp 9 hasn't happened yet, but I want to thank everyone who volunteered to help make Code Camp what I'm sure was a great event. In particular, I want to thank our many speakers who shared expertise and the contributing companies who donated giveaways to support the event.

If you missed Code Camp 9 and live in the Albany, NY area, you can attend the Tech Valley Code Camp on April 19. 

© 2008 Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0: A Platform For Building Custom Applications

Speaker: Alberto Gemin, Account Manager, Infusion, Development
When: Tuesday April 8, 2008 - 6:30-9PM
Where: VersaTrans Solutions, Latham, NY

With its latest release, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is aiming to function as a flexible, robust platform for building applications that can help meet the unique needs of many business groups. This technical presentation will be composed of three parts: a brief overview of CRM concepts, a presentation of the Dynamics CRM 4.0 application focusing on architectural and development aspects as well as new features, and a drill down into application design areas, such as User Interface Management, Business Logic Design and Application Data Modeling. The session’s goal is to provide insights into the possible benefits of using a platform like Microsoft Dynamics CRM to jumpstart application building efforts.

Bio
Alberto Gemin is an account manager at Infusion Development in New York, focusing on State & Local Government and CRM. He started his career in Italy in the world of TSO, CICS, IMS and COBOL, but he soon moved to Sweden, where he worked at Ericsson’s European Research Labs. He designed real-time operating systems and device drivers, and learned a lot about multi-threading and Unix. He moved on to Accenture in France, where he became involved in CRM with Daimler-Chrysler‘s pan-European implementation of Siebel. After three years at Innoveer in London as a senior architect implementing EAI solutions for CRM systems, at Infusion he found the opportunity to expand his experience with a wide range of architectural challenges. He is Siebel and Microsoft Dynamics CRM certified.