Mark Wednesday, December 9th on your calendars: that’s when Ottawa’s having it’s next DemoCamp! This one’s a special edition, with the space provided by Microsoft (it’s the venue for the Techdays Ottawa conference, which isn’t being used in the evening) and the presentations gathered by both Ottawa IT Community.ca and Startup Ottawa.

This DemoCamp will take place at the Hampton Inn and Conference Centre (100 Coventry Road) on Wednesday, December 9th at 7:00 p.m. and running until around 8:30. Attendance is free-as-in-beer, and there are plans to do some holiday celebrating once the demos have finished.

There will be two kinds of presentations at this DemoCamp:

• Demos: These are straight-up, five-minute demonstrations of the presenters’ current projects. The only thing you’re allowed to show on the big screen is your project in action – no slides allowed! The idea is for the audience to see working products explained by the people who helped build them, not pitches by marketers.
• Ignite Presentations: When something won’t work as a demo – say, an explanation about a specific technology or idea – it’s time for an Ignite presentation. These are slide-assisted presentations with a twist: you're allowed only 20 slides, and they must auto-advance every 15 seconds for a grand total of 5 minutes. It’s a test of your knowledge of the topic and your presentation skills!

I am currently reading "Domain Specific Languages in Boo" by Ayende Rahien, he is a contributor/Author of Rhino Mocks, NHibernate, and many more...

If you have interest in DSL's or their sub components like Fluent Interfaces or you just want to pick up a new language go ahead and read this book. It is full of great examples. I had the chance to meet and see Oren Eini aka Ayende Rahien at the DevTeach conference and the MVP Summit and I must say it is quite impressive the way he related and explains the content of his presentations. When I heard he had a book I had to get it < the topic also was interesting >. The more I read and the more I converse with my peers I see that many do not comprehend what is a , or have never see/used a :

Domain Specific Language (DSL)

Fluent Interface

Program language other than C# and VB.Net for the CLI

Therefore I am planning a presentation on BOO for after Xmas with the Ottawa.Net User Group and I will perhaps do a dual presentation on DSL's in the new year as well.

http://www.manning.com/rahien/

Opulent ASP Development Inc. is pleased to announce that Joël Hébert shall deliver the following presentation during Microsoft Techdays which is set for December 9th and 10th. Mr. Hébert has presented at Techdays in the past having delivered content for the 2008 conference as well. At that time the presentation was on Ado.Net Data Services (Astoria) , this years presentation is on:

Track->Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices

A Strategic Comparison of Data Access Technologies from Microsoft
Thanks to recent innovations from Microsoft including LINQ, the Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services, choosing a technology for data access architecture has become a subject for debate. Among other things, developers must balance productivity, elegance, and performance. Some common questions include: Are data readers and data sets still useful? How should I choose between LINQ and Entity Framework models? Should I design custom entities or use types that follow the database schema? Should I use ADO.NET Data Services to expose my data model or control access via Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) business services? This session looks at data access architecture for each of these technologies, illustrates common practices when employing each, discusses pros and cons, and helps you better understand how to choose the right technology for your scenario.

Opulent ASP is pleased to pervey that Joël Hébert was named the SQL Developer Stream Director for the Ottawa SQL.NET chapter or PASS. Being a Microsoft MVP for ASP.Net and a long standing member of the Ottawa .Net communities steering Mr. Hebert believes he can bring experience and dedication to this role.

Yesterday I had the pleasure to present at the Ottawa Code Camp.I showcased something quite interesting and got alot of feedback on it.



In Entity Framework you can stronly type your linq to sql includes by adding Extension Methods. I found just methods as I was perusing the net one day.

Extension Method

Later on I discovered that the possiblitily to daisy chaine these strongly typed incudes could be done by daisy chaining lambda expressions. .This can be acheived with this Extension Method from the same author.

Extension Method for multiple includes

The lesson to retain is that the compilation is going to catch the erroneous fields if they are altered or missing , and not the user at run-time.

Here is the semantical variance:

NORTHWNDEntities ctx = new NORTHWNDEntities();

var Category_Products_EagerLoad = ctx.Categories.Include("Products");

//VS

var test = ctx.Categories.Include(c => c.Products);