Martin Kulov's Blog

My good friend Dean Vitner started a great idea that grow up very fast and turned into really valuable one. He wanted to gather some speakers to present in depth and professional sessions without any marketing and basic overview topics. The idea got accepted very well by Microsoft Croatia and they decided to supported. Now for its first time Kulendayz is a multi track conference with speakers from USA, Belgium, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Macedonia which is really amazing. I also like the idea of getting speakers from Balkan region. We are all working more and less on the same kind of project constraints and we have the same kind of project approach and attitude. This makes session content even more relative to all attendees. The conference will be held tomorrow, 20 June, at a very nice town called Osijek so if you are in the area please join us. I will be presenting a session on Crash Dump Analysis in ASP.NET applications.

I think that these kind of topic is what most people what to hear today. There is so much information in the Internet about what is coming and what it can most likely do for us, that people really need to know how exactly these things will work for them. They need to know what are the benefits and limitations when you really start to use the technologies. The worst case scenario for you as a developer, architect or project manager will be to trust on a new cutting edge technology and in the middle of the project to realize that because of its constraints it can not fit your needs. It usually happens to careless and mindless people, who find out a solution after all with a lot of struggle, and eventually become MVPs in that technology :)

This concept is also the laying ground for DevReach also. I first though that it will be great if people really see how is the technology looking in real life implementation. It was something that was missing and definitely something that people are eager to learn about it. This year, for a third time in a row, DevReach will be even bigger and greater. Keeping the same quality of content and passionate speakers, we will also make sessions even more relative to people problems by increasing sessions level and attracting more speakers from the

Now we only have to see who will win the football game now (Croatia vs Turkey) :)

Last week it was the MVP Summit 2008 at Seattle. I had a chance to attend it also this year. Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie were answering questions during the keynote and we had a great three days with the VSTS product group. Many things to come in Rosario so make sure that you keep in touch what is coming out in the next releases.

Here are some fresh ones. April Rosario CTP is the longest expected one (more info below). Note the significant push in the architecture tools as also the new build system based on Windows Workflow and the improved historical debugger and test tools available in the previous CTP. There are some very useful video tutorials that you must checkout after downloading the release.

TFS Power Tools March 2008 is also released (more info below). There is a very cool tool called TFSServerManager for monitoring current status of the TFS server. Also the Process Template Editor is now working with custom controls.

April Rosario CTP now available!

http://blogs.msdn.com/jeffbe/archive/2008/04/11/april-rosario-ctp-now-available.aspx

Architecture Edition

• Exploring the existing code structure
• Designing process flow as activities
• Designing user interactions with systems
• Designing system functionality as components
• Visualizing and designing types in systems
• Visualizing and designing interaction sequences in systems

Development Edition

• Simplify Code Analysis rule selection with rule sets
• Find and fix a bug using the historical debugger
• Identify the test impact of code changes
• Find a bug on a separate machine using the standalone debugger

Database Edition

• Building and using an off-line representation of your operational database as a “sandbox” development environment.
• Using Data Generation to custom-build data for testing your database application.
• Making and unit-testing schema and code changes in an off-line environment.
• Performing static code analysis of your programmability objects.

Test Edition

• Planning a testing effort
• Executing manual test cases
• Verify the fix
• Automate a manual test and add validation.

Team Foundation Server

• Managing an Agile schedule
• Easier reporting from Excel
• Managing features with the CMMI Process
• A new Add Files to Source Control wizard and support for drag and drop from Windows Explorer to Source Control Explorer
• An enhanced, non-modal conflict resolution experience, integrated into the pending changes tool window
• A new history view that shows labels applied to a file as well as how changes were merged across branches
• A new automated build system built on Windows Workflow Foundation, featuring dynamic build machine allocation from a machine pool and distributed build functionality
• Rollback for a check in (currently only available at the command line)
• Many Source Control Explorer usability enhancements

March 2008 TFS Power Tools now available

http://blogs.msdn.com/jeffbe/archive/2008/04/21/march-2008-tfs-power-tools-now-available.aspx

Labels: Rosario, TFS

I got awarded for the third time with the MVP Award. The award is presented on an annual basis which makes it even harder to keep up in the years. Still Microsoft does not stop releasing new products and CTPs so one can easily lose many days and nights working with their products. Becoming an MVP is great and has a lot of benefits. My category is VSTS which gives me access to a number of great people that are eager to discuss and share their knowledge in VS and VSTS. If you want to become one, you have to keep one thing in mind: community work! You should be ready to spend a lot of your time helping online and local communities without getting paid for this. Believe me this could mean having weeks of few hours sleep per day. Or just leaving your daily job and concentrate on this :)

Labels: Rants

I am going to speak this Saturday at a brand new conference at Warsaw, Poland called Communities to Communities 2008 - " the first ever countrywide IT conference in Poland organized by community of Microsoft .NET and SQL Server professionals and geeks". I am going to talk about Debugging and Crash Dump Analysis of ASP.NET Web Sites where I will show real life examples how WinDbg saved my poor soul a number of times. WinDbg and related debugging techniques are something that every single production manager should know and shouldn't be scared to run and try. I will also show how you can analyze a sample stack trace and track down a specific value in stack. If you are in the area, I would love to see you there and talk to you.

Labels: Debugging, Events

I am going to teach a one day course on what is new and shining in Visual Studio 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2008. The course is delivered by WebAcademy.dk. It will be held on 13th March (this Thursday). Below is course agenda in Denmark (as Steven Forte says - I hope they know I will not speak in Danish :)). The course will be held at a wonderful location called Raadvad Kro in Copenhagen area.

A great prize is expecting its lucky winner :)

There is still a chance to register if you didn't yet.

Looking forward for this great event!!!

08:00-09:00 - Check-in, udlevering af materiale og morgenkaffe
09:00-09:15 - Velkomst og præsentation
09:15-10:30 - What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5

I denne session kigger vi nærmere på alle nyhederne i Visual Studio 2008. Vi vil også lære dig hvordan du bygger dine løsninger imod forskellige versioner af .NET frameworket, og afsløre næsten hemmelige debugging tips som hidtil kun har været kendte af eliten. Vi vil også vise dig hvordan du bedst udnytter webudviklings features såsom JavaScript debugging, IntelliSense, JSON support og meget mere. Til slut vil vi lære dig hvordan Visual Studio 2008 vil hjælpe dig med at speede din udviklingstid op og forbedre dine debugging skills, til et niveau som dine kolleger vil misunde dig.

10:30-10:45 - Pause
10:45-12:00 - Implementing Best Practices with Team Foundation Server 2008

At bruge best practices i software udviklingsprocesser kan være en langtrukken og kedelig opgave. At håndtere, ændrede anmodninger, enhedstest, løbende integration, peer reviews, daily build, web, load, performance tests, defekt management…. du har hørt om dem alle, men hvor mange af dem bruger du virkelig i dine udviklingsprocesser på nuværende tidspunkt? Team Foundation server kan de fleste læse om i ugevis, men alligevel gå glip af de mest banebrydende og nødvendige features. Vi lærer dig hvordan de nye features i Visual Studio 2008 og Team Foundation Server 2008 kan bidrage til at din virksomhed leverer bedre og hurtigere resultater. Denne session vil også introducere dig til tredjepartsværktøjer der vil gøre din udvikling nemmere end nogensinde før.

12:00-13:00 - Frokost
13:00-14:15 - LINQ - the New Way for Data Access

Language Integrated Query (LINQ) er en ny programmeringsmodel fra Microsoft der gør det at arbejde med data i .NET frameworket til en simpel og ligetil opgave. I Visual Studio 2008 er C# og VB sprog kompilieringen væsentligt forbedret for understøttelse af nye udvidelser. Imens at sådanne muligheder længe har eksisteret i 3. parts værktøjer er .NET frameworket 3.5 det første til at understøtte lokal adgang til forskellige datakilder ved brug af en ny dataorienteret metode i C# og VB. I denne session vil du også lære hvordan du bruger den indbyggede Object Relational Mapping (ORM), der muliggør at modelere relationsdatabaser til objekt orienterede modeller og nemt skabe, læse, opdatere og slette (CRUD) data ved brug af .NET objekt adgang.

14:15-14:45 - Kaffe og networking
14:45-16:00 - Scenarios for Integration of WCF and WF

Med tilkomsten af Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) og Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), tager Microsoft konceptet om forbundne systemer skridtet videre. Denne session vil vise dig hvordan du integrerer WCF og WF i forskellige scenarier og lære dig hvorfor du bør gøre det.

16:00-16:15 - Pause
16:15-17:30 - Profiling, Load and Web Testing in Visual Studio 2008

Denne session vil bl.a. lære dig hvordan du tester den maksimale load på dine systemer, ved brug af de i forvejen skabte brugsscenarier. Til slut vil vi vise dig hvordan vi under load testing kan måle din kodes ydelse bedst muligt.

17:30-18:00 - Afslutning / Bingo

Kurset foregår d. 13 marts i inspirerende omgivelser på Raadvad Kro nord for København. Prisen er 3.900,-, inklusiv frokost og forplejning.

Labels: Events, Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft has just announced their annual conference MS Days 2008 on 24^th and 25^th of April in the International Exhibition Center - Sofia. For the second time the conference is paid one, but the price is only 50 euro for two days which is absolutely nothing compared to what you get. Having a paid conference makes a lot of things also possible. They now have three external speakers (and may be even one more, but he is still tentative) and great prizes to give out to lucky winners. The prizes are three 3 ATV motor cars! They are also planning a party on 24^th :)

Hurry up and register because I have the feeling that after few weeks it will be sold out so do not blame me that I did not tell you this :)

I will be presenting two sessions there:

Testing with VSTS 2008

Testing is progressively becoming a real first class citizen in Visual Studio Team System. In this session we will show you what tools you have available in different Visual Studio 2008 editions and how to use them effectively. This session is intended for every team member who cares about how to write high quality code without sacrificing productivity.

Debugging and Crash Dump Analysis of ASP.NET Web Sites

This session will show you how you can debug and resolve problems in web applications that are running on a production server. We will take a look at the features in developer's best friend - WinDbg. You will see different problem scenarios that may sound familiar to you and ways to get problem located on the live server. Additional tools for tracing and diagnostics will be shown.

Find out more at MS Days 2008 Agenda and MS Days 2008 Speakers.

Labels: DevDays, Events

This month UG meeting will be held on 7th of March, 19:00 at Elieff Center for Education and Culture, Studentski grad, Sofia, Hall 103. We have a special guest from INETA - Alex Thissen.

Alex is going to talk about WPF and LINQ in two different sessions.

Here are the abstracts:

Windows Presentation Foundation

In this talk the speaker will show some of the powerful features of WPF that clearly shows its potential as an application framework. The session will focus on styling, resources, templates and data-binding for WPF controls. Learn how styling for WPF brings CSS of the web to the world of Windows applications. You get to see that templates allow you to completely change the look of controls and how resources are used in WPF. And last, but not least, this session will cover the data-binding options, which offer much more control and possibilities to combine data and controls. The session shows all features in several demos and puts the pieces of this puzzle together by combining it all.

LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML

The .NET Framework 3.5 has support for language integrated querying and ships with providers for various data sources. In this talk we will take a close look at two of these: LINQ to query SQL Server databases and XML data. After a quick introduction to the basics we are going to dive right in and get a deeper understanding of how and where LINQ queries are executed. Finally, you get to see how LINQ can be used for real-life scenarios such as a WPF application. This session is going to be full of demos and offers room for lots of questions from the audience.

About the Speaker

Alex Thissen is .NET technology evangelist from INETA Europe Speakers Bureau. He works for Class-A, a company specialized in training and coaching on Microsoft technologies and tools. He is a .NET trainer and teaches and coaches developers to build better software. He teaches the .NET Platform and Framework to both developers and architects. He has been a trainer for many years now and also spent quite some time with COM+ and Visual Basic. Alex performs audits of .NET implementations and the development teams responsible for it. He has written a number of articles for various magazines, such as .NET Magazine, the Visual Basic Group and SDC Magazine. You can probably find Alex at conferences, seminars and other community events where he likes to share his experiences from training and coaching.

Thanks to Telerik and INETA for all the support!

Labels: INETA, LINQ

There has not been much activity from me in the IASA field, but this does not mean that I have stopped following up with the ATC team. IASA is growing very strong and you can expect a lot more to come this year.

Now IASA is offering a free virtual conference. You can register on the web site below:

http://iasa.brighttalk.com/

Wrap up:

Illities and Illiancies: Quality Attributes from Security to Resiliency

Quality attributes or cross-cutting technical concerns represent a key area for architectural focus and constraints. From security which is a massively important enterprise issue to resiliency and flexibility, IT architects are faced with quality attribute trade offs on a daily basis. For example, optimizing an application or set of applications for performance will often result in detrimental effects on flexibility. These tradeoffs are an important part of the architects job and if overlooked can cause tremendous downstream impacts to the value IT can generate.

In this virtual conference you will hear thought-leaders, such as Scott Ambler and Angela Yochem, discuss quality attribute issues based real world ramifications. Take a look at the agenda and register here today! As we said attendance is virtual (from your home or office) and free! So don’t miss this excellent education opportunity.

Labels: IASA

Paul Hacker is a VSTS MVP guy that started something very cool - a TFS Times magazine. He already have few issues published. Make sure you go and read them - it is a great resource of summarized information about VSTS with real world tips and tricks from VSTS MVPs.

Make sure you subscribe so you can receive future publications also. It is free of charge.

Also Paul Hacker, Mickey Gousset and Martin Woodward recently started a new podcast called Radio TFS.

It is about 40 min long and you can listen to the latest podcast here and subscribe.

Labels: TFS

So many things are happening in Bulgaria and in Microsoft technologies in general that I can hardly manage to write a line about everything, but I will try to do this in series of posts.

The second match of IT Boxing has just finished. This time the fight was about "ASP.NET vs. Java & JSF vs. PHP vs. Ruby'. Alex Thissen did a great job showing new things in web development with .NET 3.5 and VS2008 and also the fresh Preview 2 of the ASP.NET MVC pattern. I was disappointed to find out that Java team won, after all they showed to the public was a recorded usage of a simple CMS system and general description of how enterprise is J2EE, although we did not see almost no demos from them. I guess that the Java fens just were outnumbering the .NET fens. Poor Java guys - after all they saw from Alex, Stefan and Emil and they are still voting for Java - same as Bulgarian politicians - they never know what they are voting for.

Labels: Bulgarian Association of Software Developers, Events