If you’re reading this, you probably follow this blog in one way or another. In the spirit of simplification, we will be merging our various MSDN (Web Developers, Mobile Developers and Solution Developers) blogs in one – the Canadian Developer Connection. Moving forward, the Canadian Developer Connection will be your one-stop for all development topics - web, mobile, cloud, developer tools, and more!

Over the next few months, we’ll be working on adding functionality that will make it easier for you to narrow down the content to exactly what you’re looking for and are interested in, amongst other things. But since we’re already going to be looking at making things better, any feedback you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Join the conversation in the Canadian Developer Connection group on LinkedIn and let us know what you’re thinking. If you’re not already a member, make sure you join. As a group member, you’ll be amongst 4800+ like-minded developers, such as yourself, having informative discussions, asking questions, and getting answers.

Moving forward, I’ll see you over at the Canadian Developer Connection.

TechDays isn’t your only opportunity to get out and learn about the latest technologies from experts. We hold a number of smaller events throughout the year, and we also sponsor and present at other great events organized by experts across Canada. There is a lot happening in April and May, I am probably missing a few events so if you know of something I missed please comment on this blog post and share!

Victoria ,BC

DevTeach Community Event

Two fantastic presenters bring you some great content. Richard Campbell, MVP and host of DotNetRocks shares Ten Web Performance Tuning Tricks. Medhat Elmasry, BCIT instructor and president of .netBC user group helps you learn how to use Microsoft OData.

When: Thursday April 5th, 2012, two choices of time slot 3PM or 6PM

Cost: FREE

Vancouver, BC

Windows 8 Camp 

A Windows 8 Camp is a free, two-day event where developers and designers will discover HANDS-ON how to build their first Metro Style App for Windows 8. At these camps, we’ll also share the next steps on how to get Windows 8 apps out there!

When: April 3 & 4, 2012

Cost: Free

TechFest 2012 

If you are a developer, the fact Scott Gu is doing the keynote may be enough to get you here alone. But above and beyond that there is lots of great content too! Windows Phone, Windows Azure, .NET Debugging tools, DotNetNuke, Joomla, Windows Server 8, database and design content as well! Several members of the Canada’s Evangelism team will be there: Jonathan Rozenblit, Thomas Lewis, and Paul Laberge. Check it out!

When: April 28th, 2012

Cost: $50, $25 for students

DevTeach, MobileTeach, RubyTeach, SQLTeach

What’s do you want to learn? mobile development? ALM in Visual Studio 11, database content like T-SQL with guru Itzik Ben-Gan, SharePoint development? The combined experience and knowledge of the speakers at this event ensure everyone will have the opportunity to learn something new to take back and apply. Say hi to Thomas Lewis from our Canadian Evangelism team when you go.

When: May 28th – June 1st, 2012 (including pre and post conference workshops)

Ottawa, ON

Ottawa IT Camp

With 5 tracks including a track dedicated to Windows 8, there is content here for any geek: SQL Server 2012, SCCM 2012, ASP .NET MVC 4, SharePoint coding, C# ASync. Presenters include Hockey Geek Girl (aka Susan Ibach) from the Microsoft Evangelist team, Arnold Gagnon and Mohamed Sharaf, Premier Field Engineers for Microsoft Canada, Microsoft MVPs Colin Melia, Colin Smith, Jean-Rene Roy, Joel Hebert, and Islam Gomaa

When: Saturday April 14th, 2012 9 AM

Cost: $25

Toronto, ON

Windows 8 Camp 

A Windows 8 Camp is a free, two-day event where developers and designers will discover HANDS-ON how to build their first Metro Style App for Windows 8. At these camps, we’ll also share the next steps on how to get Windows 8 apps out there!

April 16 & 17, 2012

Cost: Free

The Lord of TFS – At the movies event

ObjectSharp presents an At the Movies event where you can learn about the new Microsoft developer tools for 2012. Visual Studio 11,  Metro on Windows 8 and Windows Phone, TFS and Test Manager. Last year’s event sold out, so register soon! Good you get me one of those posters if you go? I need one of those!

When: May 1, 2012 9AM –Noon

 

Montreal, QU

Windows 8 Camp 

A Windows 8 Camp is a free, two-day event where developers and designers will discover HANDS-ON how to build their first Metro Style App for Windows 8. At these camps, we’ll also share the next steps on how to get Windows 8 apps out there!

April 10 & 11, 2012

Cost: Free

(Thinking of the Tim Horton’s coffee that I had this morning… thinking I might need another one…)

When it comes to evaluating your applications and their suitability for the Cloud, the decision usually comes down to whether you put your applications in the Cloud or whether you keep them on-premises in your own datacenter. But wait - why does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t you take “your” Cloud the way you take your coffee – customizing it to what works for you?

You can, and you should.

The way I see it, taking your Cloud like your coffee breaks down as follows:

• Your selection of coffee provider/flavour (Tim Horton’s, Second Cup, etc) is analogous to your selection of hosting platform as it is the basis to your experience.
• Your selection of milk, cream, or half and half is analogous to the architecture you choose to go with – either all in, not in, or half and half (hybrid).
• The amount of sugar you add to your coffee is the final determination of your drinking experience, analogous to the platform’s (of your choosing) ability to deliver on the deployment experience to your expectation.

Let’s zero in on the milk, cream, or half and half.

For me, the selection of milk, cream, or half and half is dependent on the coffee I choose. Some coffees go better with milk, and others with the cream. Having said that, it’s no different when looking at the platform that host your applications. Some platforms require you to be all on-premises. Other platforms required you to be all in the Cloud. But where the magic happens – like half and half that gives you the texture of cream, but lower butterfat content – is when you can have the best of both worlds and work with a platform that enables you to run some things on-premises and others in the cloud, taking advantage of the benefits of each.

When would you need a platform that can do half and half, or better known as hybrid solutions? Here are just a few:

• Applications that require single-sign on authentication with an existing identity provider, like Active Directory.
• Applications that work with and/or store sensitive information
• Applications that store information deemed by regulations as not allowed to leave the country
• Applications that work with on-premises applications (applications behind a firewall, not exposed to the Internet)
• Applications that need network access to resources (file shares, applications, internal IPs, etc)

Without a hybrid option, these types of applications would be constrained to live their entire lifecycle in an on-premises world. With a hybrid capable Cloud platform, like Windows Azure for example, you can remove that constraint.

Best of Both Worlds

Hybrid solutions allow you to take advantage of the best of both worlds:

On-Premises

• Use existing systems/applications that you have today, without having to duplicate them to the Cloud
• Use existing operations and monitoring mechanisms to ensure compliance with rules and regulations
• Use existing identity provider (i.e. Active Directory) to perform authentication and authorization
• Completely control security and privacy of data
• Comply with legal, security, and privacy regulations

Cloud

• Provision infrastructure only when you need it to make deploying applications faster
• Deploy applications all over the world to ensure an optimal experience for users regardless of where they are located
• Scale all or parts of an application as demand dictates
• Pay for the infrastructure only when you use it, rather than upfront in case you’ll use it

All of this while not having to make too many changes, if at all, to your existing on-premises applications to support a Cloud component.

Taking your Cloud like you take your coffee

So now you can see – taking your Cloud like you take your coffee is, in fact, possible. You just need to ensure that the Cloud platform of your choosing supports it.

As I close off this post, it seems appropriate to end with a coffee/Cloud order!

Original photo by Will Keightley

I taught developer courses for a number of years, and there were certain questions and requests that came up on a regular basis. In this post, I’ve compiled some of the most common requests I received from my students and listed the resources I shared. When you are trying to find the syntax for a specific method, or a code example for a particular API, searching the internet works great! But sometimes more generic information can be harder to find in a sea of websites, blogs, and articles. I hope these resources will help both new and experienced users of Visual Studio to help you get started or get more out of the tool you already have.

What edition should I buy?

I always have trouble finding this when I want it so here is the Visual Studio 2010 Comparison

What can I get for free?

• Visual Studio 11 Beta
• Trial versions of Visual Studio
• Visual Studio Express Products

How can Visual Studio help with testing or aspects other than coding?

We often think of Visual Studio as just a tool to help us code, but it can help with the whole application lifecycle. There are some good intros to using Visual Studio as an ALM tool here.

Microsoft Test Manager was added to Visual Studio and helps track test plans, test cases and more on your project. Learn more about how to get started with Test Manager here.

I’ve been working with Visual Studio for a while, how do I find those “hidden” features?

• Download the Keyboard shortcut posters (I love these and was so happy when they released the VS2010 versions)
• Have some fun learning new tricks with the Visual Studio Achievements Extension
• Zain Nablowski’s blog has tips and tricks

Are there labs somewhere I can launch to try out the tool and features?

• We have some Visual Studio 2010 labs you can launch online at Techdays Canada
• The Visual Studio team has also made a Virtual Machine and a series of Visual Studio 11 labs you can download and try.

Where can I learn C#? VB .NET? F#?

• VB .NET
• C#
• F#

I want to get certified on Web? Windows? Where do I start?

Check out this blog series that covers how to figure out what certification to take, the exams required, and some tips on how to prepare for the exam itself.

Looking for anything else, I suggest you check out...

MSDN Learning Visual Studio – helpful resources to help beginners and seasoned professionals build their skills.

Microsoft Learning Training Catalog – helps you find both online and in person training resources

Do you have any great resources or tips to share? Join us on the Canadian Developer Connection on LinkedIn and share it with the Canadian developer community!

Kinect for Windows and it’s SDK gives us a chance to break away from the ordinary and get creative!

I have spent many hours writing validation code for forms, code that read or updated databases, or code that looped through collections. Sure I got creative from time to time with how I wrote my code, but coding for Kinect lets me unleash my creativity in a whole new way!

I had the pleasure of hearing Bill Buxton speak a few months ago. Bill Buxton is the guru of User Experience. User Experience goes beyond just User Interface Design. He challenges us to not just think about making screens that are pretty and easy to use, but to think about the overall user experience. He described some of the ways user experience has evolved:

When you go to the washroom you wave your hand to get a paper towel. That was Kinect 1.0

When you leave the grocery store, the door opens automatically as you push your cart through the doorway. That was Kinect 2.0

So why are doors and paper towel dispensers smarter than our laptops?

It’s an interesting challenge to us as developers to find new ways to interact with our users. The Kinect opens up so many possibilities. Nissan has created a virtual experience using Kinect which shows how you could use Kinect to create a virtual showroom. Then there’s the Kinect virtual fitting room. Kinect provides us with a whole new set of choices when it comes to user experience and lets be honest, it is also just plain fun! Check out the Nerf Gun and Kinect skeletal tracking to protect your office (you can get the code here) or maybe you’d enjoy using Kinect to control Robosapien. Robosapien is a remote control robot that was a big hit with my kids for a few years, without Kinect you controlled it by pressing commands on the remote, using hand gestures and voice commands through Kinect instead of a remote is pretty cool.

So get your geek on with Kinect for Windows. You’ll need the SDK which you can download here and you can keep up to date on the latest news and updates for Kinect for windows keep an eye on their blog. Happy coding!

Get the beta February 29th!

The Visual Studio team has gone hog wild the past few days releasing lots of great information about Visual Studio 11 and the .NET 4.5 Beta that will be available February 29th. I just wanted to share with you some of the great articles they have posted so you can start geeking out!

• Visual Studio 11 Beta home page
• What’s new in Visual Studio 11 Beta – Visual Studio product page
• The Road to Visual Studio 11 BETA AND .net 4.5 Beta – blog post by S.Somasegar
• Sneak Preview of Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5 Beta – blog post by Jason Zander
• Coming Soon: TFS Express – blog post by Brian Harry
• Introducing the New Developer Experience – blog post from Visual Studio Blog
• Visual Studio 11 Beta Go Live – Information on how to go live with the Visual Studio 11 Beta and .NET Framework 4.5 Beta

And one last link, because betas are great to download and explore but if you haven’t bought or renewed your existing Visual Studio license Get ready with MSDN: Save up to 35% on Visual Studio with MSDN

In this post, I’ll share what I learned about how to get started writing HTML5 code in Visual Studio 2010.

HTML5 seems to be everywhere these days! I started trying it myself a few months back and I quickly decided that if possible, I wanted to play with it in Visual Studio. I’ve been working with Visual Studio for years, it’s got to be simpler to keep working with the developer tool I already know and love rather than moving to a new tool. Besides I want to be able to incorporate HTML5 into ASP.NET applications!  It took me a bit of messing about to get up and running with HTML5 the way I know there will be greater support for HTML5 in Visual Studio 11. But for now I am working with Visual Studio 2010.  I thought I would share what I learned so hopefully it will be easier for you.

Here’s what you want to do:

• Add HTML5 validation and intellisense
• Create an HTML5 project
• Set up for <video> and <audio>
• Play!

Add HTML5 Validation and Intellisense

You will definitely want to make sure you have Service Pack 1 installed! By installing Service Pack 1 you get both intellisense (can’t live without that anymore) and validation for HTML5. Don’t forget after you install Service pack 1 to go to Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML | Validation and set the validation to HTML5 or XHTML5 or the HTML5 validation won’t work.

First of all there is a really great blog by Burke Holland on how to use the MVC HTML5 template for Visual Studio 2010 here.

Create an HTML5 project in Visual Studio

You have a couple of choices here.

• Modify an existing template to be HTML5 or create your own template. There is a great blog describing how to do that here.
• Download the MotherEffin ASP.NET MVC HTML5 template that Jacob Gable was kind enough to post on the VisualStudio Gallery.
• Download the mobile ready ASP.NET MVC HTML5 template that Sammy Ageil was kind enough to post on the Visual Studio Gallery

Set up for <video> and <audio>

The first tags I started playing with in Visual Studio were the video and audio tags. I immediately had problems getting an actual video to display on my web page it was really frustrating. Here is what I had to do to get everything working. The basic problem was with the MIME types. When a .avi, or .MP3 file was used on my website, the web server didn’t recognize that those were video and audio files. To get it working I had to edit my web.config file and make sure I had IIS express running in the development environment instead of the development server built into Visual Studio to ensure that my web.config file was being used to figure out the MIME types. You need to do this for the WOFF fonts as well.

• Install IIS Express
• Specify the mime types you will be using in your web.config file. Here’s an example:

      <system.webServer>
        <staticContent>
          <mimeMap fileExtension=".mp4" mimeType="video/mp4" />
          <mimeMap fileExtension=".m4v" mimeType="video/mp4" />
          <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff" mimeType="application/x-woff" />
          <mimeMap fileExtension=".webm" mimeType="video/webm" />
          <mimeMap fileExtension=".ogg" mimeType="video/ogg" />
          <mimeMap fileExtension=".ogv" mimeType="video/ogg" />
        </staticContent>
      </system.webServer>

Change the project settings, by right clicking on the project and changing the settings to Use IIS Express when debugging in Visual Studio.

Play!

Once you have it up and running you can start exploring the world of HTML5. There are some great resources on learning HTML5 here. Make sure you read up on feature detection since different browsers will support different HTML5 features and because you will need this for backwards compatibility as well!

If you want to experiment with <video>, I found it handy to just download Big Buck Bunny since you can get it in multiple formats so it’s great for experimenting with the fallback features of HTML5 <video> for different browsers.

Since a big part of HTML5 is the cross browser support, make sure you try it out in different browsers, or use the F12 developer tools in Internet Explorer to test how your code will work in different browsers or older browsers.

Most of all have fun!

Here’s the situation – you’ve been following the Canadian Developer Connection, my blog, or wherever you get your updates on what’s new and exciting in the developer world. You’re sitting down to give Windows Azure a try (check out the Windows Azure Challenge for a fun way to get started with Windows Azure). You go to create your free Windows Azure trial and boom – it asks you for a credit card. You scratch your head and say: “If I put my card in there, I’m going to get charged – but it’s a free trial…”

The truth is that, up until recently, it was technically possible to get charged for your Windows Azure usage if you went over the resources that come with the free trial. But now – no more. Your FREE trial is actually FREE because of a new feature that was added to Windows Azure called a Spending Limit, and the nice thing is that it is enabled automatically to ensure that you’re protected!

Now when you sign up for a new trial subscription and deploy applications to Windows Azure, the spending limit, which is by default set to $0 (meaning you don’t want to spend any money) will prevent you from being charged! If and when your usage exceeds the monthly amounts included in your subscription, Windows Azure will disable your service for the remainder of that billing month, which includes removing any apps you have running (though your data in your storage accounts and databases will be accessible as read-only). At the beginning of the next billing month, your subscription will be re-enabled and you will be able to re-deploy your Windows Azure apps and have full access to your storage accounts and databases. Perfect for ensuring that you are not charged for playing around and getting comfortable with Windows Azure.

Here’s what you’ll see as you approach the limit of your subscription:

and then when you’ve reached the limit, rather than charging your credit card, the subscription is disabled:

No more worries of being charged

With spending limits in place, there are not more excuses as to why you can’t give Windows Azure a try. Here are two great ways to do so:

	Windows Azure Camp Challenge Downloads the tools and a hands-on lab to complete on your own computer. You can then reward yourself with a few drinks on us. Go >>
	Basics of Application Development for Windows Azure on TechDays Online Use our virtual environments to complete the lab. You won’t have to download or install the tools. Just the remote viewer. Go >>

Join the Conversation

I’d love to hear all about your first experiences with Windows Azure – what compelled you to give it a try? What was your first time like? Did you have any “ah-ha” moments? Did you come to any realizations? Did you make any sort of conclusions about Windows Azure? Once you’ve gone through one of the above (and/or the many other hands-on labs on TechDays Online), join the conversation about first experiences in Canadian Developer Connection group on LinkedIn.

Whether you were able to attend Tech·Days 2011 (or even 2010!) or not you’ll find it all on Tech·Days Online. It looks like many of you have already been perusing the training content that’s up there, so it’s definitely looking like TechDays Online is how Canadian Developers, like you, are staying on top of the latest technologies and innovations, as well as connecting with the developer community at large.

So what’s available on TechDays Online?

From Hands-On Labs to session videos to articles, and more, TechDays Online has the technical training that you need to grow your career:

• Session Videos. Watch all of the sessions from Tech·Days 2011 and 2010 across all of the different tracks and technologies.
• Hands-On Labs. Try the technology for yourself with step-by-step instructions and virtual machines that are already set up and ready for you.
• Blogs and Articles. See what your peers and industry experts have to say on the latest issues with up-to-date blogs and featured articles.

But wait, there’s more – Introducing TechDays TV

Starting the end of this month, TechDays TV will air brand new TechDays sessions (exclusive to TechDays Online). The experts will be LIVE and INTERACTIVE which means that throughout the session, as well as after the session, you’ll be able to post your questions via chat or Twitter and have them answered in real-time. You’ll be connecting to technical folks as if they were right there with you at a TechDays tour location.

Clear your calendar and save the dates – every other Tuesday at 12:00 PM ET, starting February 28.

So…

Visit Tech·Days Online now to drive your technical skills into the future—at your own pace and your own convenience and stay tuned for more on TechDays TV.

Once again, a huge thank you to Neil MacIsaac, SharePoint MCT, for putting this entire series together. Happy reading!

If you missed the earlier posts you can find them here

1. Information Management
2. Project Management
3. Information Security
4. Business Intelligence

This week we look at Business Intelligence.

4. Business Intelligence

Are there organizations out there that are really striving for Business Unintelligence? Wouldn't everything that an organization does be in an effort to do something better? I love the term Business Intelligence (BI) mainly because of its massive overuse and its wide misunderstanding as 'reporting'. So the question really becomes "How do we maximize our BI?" First, it is important to understand what BI really is. It is about making better decisions. If we have better data, and a better understanding of our data, it would be logical to conclude we would make better decisions right? Not necessarily. The theory is correct, but in practice most organizations fail to implement this properly by not focusing on the decision that they are trying to improve and instead only achieve in bombarding their key decision makers with an avalanche of reports. What is also surprising is that most of the decision makers in an organization are probably the ones asking for the reports in the first place. Let me give you an example. In a sales based business, you might see some monthly sales figures like this (overly simplified for the sake of discussion)

Why do we need to see these sales figures? The typical answer you will get will be "Because I need to know if there are any problems and to see if we are doing better or worse than last month or last year." So, with the above numbers, where is the problem? Most people would focus on Bob because his numbers are lower than the others. What isn't shown with these numbers is that Bob is the newest of team and manages the smallest sales area. Can you still spot where the problem is in the above sales numbers? The typical failure in implementing a BI solution within SharePoint is usually in the disregard for a proper BI solution that focuses on those key decisions which strives to achieve a better decision by supplying as much data around the factors and drivers of the data as the data itself. Instead we see fancier reports of the above sales table and hope that our decision makers will 'figure it out'. Another interesting point concerning SharePoint and BI integration is the potential for SharePoint to implement the decision. If our BI solution is focused on key decisions, a good solution should allow the user to implement the decision as quickly and easily as possible.

Conclusion

As you can see, SharePoint offers many challenges when deployed into an organization and requires due diligence to maximize your return. I hope that some of my tips may make their way into your organization and perhaps save you from some of the common pitfalls that have trapped others. There is good reason why SharePoint has become as popular as it has and hopefully you will be better able to get the most out of your implementation.