Speakers

Corporate developers have to constantly contend with fallacies often delivered to them as facts. However, each of us has a professional responsibility to be objective and make decisions that will help us and our teams be productive and deliver results. In this presentation we'll pick on some fallacies, lay down facts, and discuss how to stay professional and objective in our daily efforts.

Functional Programming style has been around for decades. It is finally making it's way into the most widely used platforms like Java and .NET. In this presentation, we will delve into what the functional style of programming offers and how you can utilize that using the F# language on the .NET CLR.

Unit testing offers several benefits. However, dependencies make it quite difficult to realistically develop those unit tests. In this presentation we will discuss pragmatic ways to deal with dependencies, and how, using mocks, effectively carryout unit tests. We will discuss reasons to use mock vs. not using them, hand tossing mocks, and using frameworks to create them.

In this Jeopardy style presentation, you will drive the topics to discuss various features of Java that require extra care and caution in everyday programming. We will pick a sample code, identify the problems in it, and figure out how to do it right.

You're most likely familiar with the Gang-of-four design patterns and how to implement them in Java. However, you wouldn't want to implement those patterns the same way in Groovy. Furthermore, there are a number of other useful patterns that you can apply in Java and Groovy. In this presentation we'll look at two things: How to use patterns in Groovy and go beyond the GOF patterns in Groovy and Java.

Java introduced Generics in the 1.5 version (Java 5). What are the capabilities of Generics? How do you use it? Are there some gotchas in using it? In this example driven presentation, we will start at the basics of generics and look at its capabilities. We will then look at some of the under the hood details on generics implementation. We will then delve into the details of some of the changes to Java libraries to accommodate generics. Finally we will take a look at some restrictions and pitfalls that we need to be familiar with when it comes to practical and prudent use of generics.

Programming in a language is not entirely about the syntax. You have to learn and get used to a different paradigm and the idioms it supports. Functional programming has some clear strengths that benefit high concurrency and multi-core processors. However, to take advantage of that you have to think functional which lot of us are not used to. In this hands-on workshop, we will take some familiar problems, solve it using traditional style and then refactor it to functional style. Even though we will use Scala and Erlang as vehicle to get the examples working, you don't have to be familiar with the syntax. You will participate to write pseudo code in these styles and the speaker will help you translate those into practical working examples in these languages.

"There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone." (Bjarne Stroustrup)

The "lizard brain" is the oldest part of the human brain -- the part responsible for autonomic functions like breathing, heart rate, and navigating websites. OK, maybe not that last part, but your website should be easy to use. Stupid easy. Lizard brain easy. Any time your user spends figuring out how to do something -- even for a split second -- is wasted time due to poor design. Inspired by Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think", this talk answers the question, "Why is that website so hard to use?" In this talk, we look at what make a "good" website "good". Simple changes in the layout or sort order can yield drastic improvements. We'll get inside the heads of typical users and see how their view of our website is drastically different than what we painstakingly planned out. You'll learn how to cater to "Browsers" and "Searchers" -- the human kind, not the software kind. "Lizard Brain Web Design" answers these questions and more in a funny and informative way.

"The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned." (Antonio Gramsci)

There are plenty of sarcastic "Web 2.0" checklists out there -- be perpetually in BETA, when in doubt add rounded corners, etc. While we can all laugh at the superficial aspects of the Web 2.0 revolution, there are plenty of serious aspects to it as well. Is your website mash-up friendly or hostile? Do you tell your visitors when things change (via RSS or Atom syndication), or do you expect them to check in daily for updates? Is your website a silo or a part of a larger ecosystem? In this talk, we discuss what makes a "modern shiny Web 2.0" website look the way it does. But we go beyond simple look and feel as we catalog the common features in modern websites and show you how to implement them yourself.

"The central enemy of reliability is complexity." (Dr. Daniel Geer)

Java is a powerful programming language. A smart developer can do nearly anything with Java. So the next question is, "How quickly can it be done? How many lines of code does it take to do common tasks?" Groovy greases the wheels of Java by decreasing the complexity of the language while preserving the raw power. At first glance, you might think that this talk is simply about how Groovy drastically reduces the lines of code you need to write. What this talk is really about is bringing simplicity, clarity, readability, and yes, beauty to your source code. In this talk, you'll see common problems presented in Java and the corresponding solutions in Groovy. From something as simple as defining a JavaBean up through File I/O, XML, networking, and database interaction, Groovy offers identical capabilities in a fraction of the lines of code.

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating. By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece." (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)

Most Grails tutorials demonstrate how easy it is to build simple CRUD (Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete) applications. While skinning a database with a web front-end is undeniably one beneficial aspect of Grails, it isn't the only thing Grails is good for. As you'll see here, Grails can be used to build a wide variety of web applications. You won't see a single HTML table with "edit" and "delete" links, I promise. In this talk, we look at a variety of Grails applications that go beyond the simple CRUD metaphor -- blogs, wikis, maps, portals, and more.

This class will spike your JavaScript skill sets. Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) will quickly become valuable tools in your web development toolkit. This class is targeted at developers who are more comfortable writing back-end services than browser-based front-ends. You will learn about JavaScript -- both its strengths and its weaknesses. From there, you'll see how JavaScript mixes with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the Document Object Model (DOM), and the XmlHttpRequest (XHR) object to give you the suite of technologies known informally as AJAX. We'll also see how JSON is quickly replacing XML and SOAP for web services tailored for browser consumption.

The session focuses on writing and tuning queries and programming with T-SQL in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. In this session you will learn the details and capabilities of T-SQL: Ranking Functions, Joins and Set Operations; Aggregating and Pivoting Data; TOP and APPLY; Data Type Related Problems; Programmable Objects; Graphs, Trees and Hierarchies. Along the session you will learn how to use T-SQL to solve practical problems for common requirements via SQL Server SET based approach. We will try to cover close to 10 different scenario's and their practical solution via some of the features available inside SQL Server.

In this session we will walk through the aspects of Cloud Computing and introduction to Windows Azure and the various services offered by Windows Azure. Further we will examine how, as Java Developers we can leverage the Windows Azure Hosted Services as well as the Storage Services for deploying and running your applications on the cloud platform as well as utilizing the storage using the Windows Azure storage SDK. Join for a demo filled session.

In this session we will explore how we can combine the power of Silverlight to create great web experiences as well as use the scalable three tier architecture built using WCF RIA Services as the middle tier. This adds a viable business layer to your front end SL Apps for custom business logic as well as implemented a well-defined architecture on top of entity data model.

In this session we will explore on using a combination of jQuery as well as Microsoft AJAX to build rich user experience for your ASP.NET Webforms as well as the new ASP.NET MVC based web applications. We will examine the right places to use them and how they can in tandem help you build some of the rich user experiences for your web applications and also help you improve the performance for your web applications.

In this session we will examine how we can leverage the ASP.NET AJAX Library Beta, jQuery as well as AJAX Control Toolkit in your ASP.NET Application. We will also see how the Visual Studio 2010 intellisense support for all of these including jQuery, helps you develop web applications pretty quick. This session will also analyze the perfect scenarios where each one of these apply and the integration between them.

In this session, we will take up an existing ASP.NET Application which uses a SQL Server backend and migrate the application to Windows Azure. We will first move the on-premise database to SQL Azure and point the application to use SQL Azure storage for querying / retrieving records. Next, we will move the ASP.NET Application into Windows Azure Web Role and thereby move the entire application to the Cloud. This would be a demo driven session.

Join us for a Demo filled session where we create a 3 tier application with Data Access Layer using ADO.NET Entity Framework, Middle tier using WCF RIA Services and UI layer using ASP.NET Webforms. We will also explore how we can customize the methods generated in the middle tier using WCF RIA Services as well as specfiy Authentication, Authorization at Business Layer level.

In this session we will examine how we can leverage the ASP.NET AJAX Library Beta and AJAX Enable not just ASP.NET Applications but even PHP as well as pure HTML websites using the powerful client library. We will also use the super cool AJAX Control Toolkit script version for adding some of the controls that traditionally work only with server side web programming. Join us for this fun filled demo driven session.

Building SharePoint applications was never straight forward with the earlier versions of Visual Studio. However, with VS 2010's out of the box support for SharePoint templates, it becomes super easy to design, develop and deploy SharePoint Applications, Web Parts from within Visual Studio. Join this session to learn more about developing SharePoint applications with Visual Studio 2010 Beta.

Creating Service Oriented Applications? Worried about – Hosting, Persistence, Monitoring and Management? Windows Server AppFabric (aka “Dublin”) is the answer. Dublin was the code name for Windows Server AppFabric - a set of application server features and management capabilities added to Windows Server. In this session we will show you how to create a service based application in VS 2010 using .NET 4.0 - specifically the advancements in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflows Foundation (WF) targeted at the AppFabric. The session will also cover how to package, deploy and manage the application in IIS/WAS using the new capabilities.

"Small Movies" is a movie rental store which allows its customers to view, select movies, create a viewing list, schedule delivery and pick up for a specific date/time using a web site or a mobile phone. In this session we will show how Windows Workflow Foundation can be leveraged to quickly build a system based on Workflows to handle the various business rules and processes. The session will cover the various components of Workflow Foundation including the runtime engine, rules, base activity library, runtime hosting options, designer hosting, activities and custom activities.

Windows Communication Foundation 4.0 has a lot of enhancements for building cutting edge middle tier that supports a variety of protocols / formats as well as standards. With the WCF REST Starter Kit introduced in .NET 3.5 SP1 and further enhancements to the same, building RESTful services with WCF is much better. Also, integration with Work Flow helps build truly powerful architectures. In this session we will examine the new features in WCF 4.0 and how developers can make the most of it.