Martin Kulov's Blog

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

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

A very good friend of mine, Mihail Mihaylov (a.k.a. Mike Ramm), is starting professional training services.

His first course will be next week (13 March 2008) on Software Project Management Fundamentals. Usually I find such project management courses a total waste of time. However I know that Mike was in all the hell of project management in small outsourcing companies. I know that his experience is real and he is feeling the pain of developers and their direct managers.

If you are still reconsidering attending, do not think - register! Seats are limited!

Mike is also running the PM Stories blog, Nova Rabota and few others.

Labels: Events

Labels: Events