XML Schema Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 In this interview, Yang Xiao, a tester on the Visual Basic IDE shows us the new XML Schema Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1. This new window is invoked when you right-click on an XML literal element or namespace and select "Show in XML Schema Explorer" in Visual Basic programs. It's a nice way to visually display the structure of your schema sets which makes you even more productive when working with XML in Visual Basic.
Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community funkyonexFriday, August 15, 2008 12:03:00 PM
SQL 2008 & Occasionally Connected Client Support in Visual Studio SP1 In this interview, Milind Lele, a PM on the Visual Studio Pro Tools team shows us the improvements made to the tooling in Visual Studio SP1 for occasionally connected clients as well as the new data type support for SQL Server 2008. Using SQL 2008 built-in change tracking, you don't need to make modifications to your table schemas like you have to do with SQL 2005. Additionally he shows off a "smarter" DataSet designer where you can have tables coming from server and client data stores all contained within one model.
Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, VS Community funkyonexFriday, August 08, 2008 5:07:00 PM
The P-Invoke Interop Assistant In this interview, Jared Parsons, a Developer on the Visual Basic IDE, shows us the P/Invoke Interop Assistant available on CodePlex. The tool helps with converting unmanaged C code to managed P/Invoke signatures and vice versa. Say goodbye to digging through random header files or MSDN documentation to find the right constants, structures and signatures. The P/Invoke Interop Assistant does a smarter translation for you using SAL (Source Code Annotation Language).
Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community
funkyonexMonday, July 28, 2008 3:14:00 PM
Tips and Tricks with the Interop Forms ToolkitIn this interview, Todd Apley, Senior Test Lead on the VB Team, shows us a variety of tips and tricks with using the Interop Forms Toolkit on Visual Studio 2008. He also shows us how to deploy a hybrid application built with VB 6 and VB.NET using XCopy deployment and RegFree-COM. The Interop Forms Toolkit, available from the Visual Basic Developer Center, enables you to take a phased migration approach to upgrading your VB 6 applications. Instead of having to do a complete rewrite, you can instead create .NET user controls and forms that can be run from within your current VB 6 applications.
Todd will also be posting follow-up information on the VB Team blog.
Enjoy, -Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community funkyonexTuesday, March 04, 2008 4:00:39 PM
Code To Live: Dave Donaldson on CodeKeepJosh Holmes caught up with Dave Donaldson to talk about the cool project that he started back in 2005 called CodeKeep. This is a fantastic example of a passionate guy putting up a project that everyone can benefit from with no financial motivation.
This is one of the longer episodes so far (close to 30 minutes) but there's a lot of great content here. joshholmesFriday, February 22, 2008 8:47:18 AM
The New DataRepeater Control in the Latest Power Packs ReleaseIn this interview John Hart, QA Lead on the Visual Basic Team, shows us the new DataRepeater control that has just been added to the latest Power Packs release on the Visual Basic Developer Center. Power Packs are free Add-Ins, Controls, Components, and Tools for you to use with Visual Basic to make developing applications even easier.
The new DataRepeater control allows you use standard Windows Forms controls to display rows of your data in a scrollable container giving you more flexibility and customization than standard grid controls.
Enjoy, -Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community funkyonexMonday, February 18, 2008 11:41:46 AM
XML Properties and Enabling IntelliSenseJoin me and Avner Aharoni, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, as he shows us how to enable XML IntelliSense in Visual Basic using the XML to Schema Wizard. Avner shows the differences between how IntelliSense works with axis properties on XDocument and XElement objects and speaks to how the wizard can infer multiple schemas from multiple sources as well as the affect XML namespaces have on IntelliSense.
Get started with LINQ to XML in Visual Basic with these How-to Videos. And here are some good articles too.
Enjoy, -Beth Massi, VS Community
funkyonexThursday, January 17, 2008 5:36:02 PM
Brian Beckman Does Higher Algebra with Visual BasicIn this interview, Brian Beckman, Principal Developer (currently working with Erik Meijer), attempts to teach me higher algebra using Visual Basic, generics, and operator overloading. Brian is a wonderful person and brilliant physicist and we have a lot of fun with vectors and matrices and VB. I actually think I understood some of what Brian showed me ;).
Visual Basic is a great language for mathematics as well as all kinds of other applications. Brian makes the point that he has fun coding in VB because of its intuitive style and how easy it is to be immediately productive. Check out Brian's blog post on the VB Team blog! And for all you abstract algebra aficionados, here's the code to play with.
Enjoy, -Beth Massi, VS Community funkyonexWednesday, December 19, 2007 8:19:29 AM
XML Literals Performance and Namespaces ExplainedJoin me and Avner Aharoni, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, as he dives into LINQ to XML and XML Literals in Visual Basic 9 and explains namespace bubbling and the performance gains you may see using XML Literals. This is a good interview to pay attention to if you are struggling with how XML namespaces work in Visual Basic.
One funny note here about the interview -- I was having a hard time pronouncing Avner's last name so when I introduced him I was so focused on getting his name pronounced correctly (which I did) that I messed up and said "feature related to SQL to XML" instead of "feature related to LINQ to XML" Doh!
Get started with LINQ to XML in Visual Basic with these How-to Videos. And here are some good articles too.
Enjoy, -Beth Massi, VS Community funkyonexFriday, December 14, 2007 1:54:40 PM
Refactoring in Visual Basic with Refactor!Join me and Lisa Feigenbaum, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, as she shows us how to use Refactor!, the free add-in for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 that provides over 30 refactorings for Visual Basic. Lisa walks us through all the new refactorings that were added for the latest version of Visual Basic 2008. You can download Refactor! here. You can get the demo code she used here.
Enjoy! -Beth Massi, VS Community funkyonexTuesday, December 11, 2007 5:39:45 PM
VS2008 Training Kit: What's new in Visual Basic 9.0?
Hi and welcome to another Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit screencast.
This session was presented by Amanda Silver and is the from the Visual Studio 2008 training kit available from http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7602397.
Do you remember your first Basic program? Visual Basic has come a long way from a simple event handling language to a fully capable Object-Oriented language with the power of the .NET frameworks behind it. Visual Basic 9 will bring unparalleled productivity for line of business applications in the form of SQL-style query expressions and XML as a first class data type. But LINQ isn't the only important feature for the VB developer. We’ll continue to deliver on the productivity promise for VB devs with a vastly improved Intellisense experience in VS 2008 that should jazz those not ready to move to .NET 3.5. Off-cycle releases will ease migration from VB6 to .NET and address some missing features like line and shape, repeater, and PrintForm controls. Did you know that refactoring support is available for VB developers for free for VS 2003 – 2008? In this brief session, you will learn about some of the key new language enhancements that are provided as part of Visual Basic 9, which is included with Visual Studio 2008.
Recorded September 2007.
DavidAikenMonday, November 19, 2007 5:56:12 AM
Type Inference in Visual Basic with Bill HorstIn this interview Bill Horst, a member of the Visual Basic QA team, shows us the ins and outs type inference in the newest version of Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2008. He shows us how the new Option Infer works and how various types are inferred by the compiler without having to explicitly declare them. Type inference is one of the new features in Visual Basic to support LINQ.
Also make sure to check out these LINQ How-Do-I videos on the VB Dev Center.
Enjoy! -Beth Massi, VS Community funkyonexThursday, November 08, 2007 9:20:43 AM
Matt Gertz Plays Cards with Visual BasicMatt Gertz, Development Manager on the Visual Basic team (well former Dev Manager, I'll let him explain ;)) shows off a Euchre game he's developed in Visual Basic that includes speech and sound. Matt is one of our best bloggers on the VB Team and he loves game programming as well as the VB Community. Matt talks about his experiences at Microsoft and the Visual Basic team, and what he'll be doing going forward. funkyonexTuesday, October 23, 2007 3:05:31 PM
Offline Data Synchronization Services in Visual Studio 2008In this interview Milind Lele, Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, shows us his favorite features - the new Data Synchronization designer in Visual Studio 2008 and how the sync services for ADO.NET work to support occasionally connected scenarios. He shows us how to set up a local database cache using SQL Compact Edition and how to use it to store read-only data caches as well as how to add the code to support two-way synchronization.
If anyone's ever tried to implement an occasionally connected smart client, they'll very much appreciate this new tooling and framework in Visual Studio 2008. For more information on sync services catch up on The Synchronizer blog.
funkyonexWednesday, October 10, 2007 9:35:38 AM
geekSpeak Generics (and more) in VB with Jim DuffyListen in to this geekSpeak to hear about the finer points of using Generics in VB as explained and demoed by expert Jim Duffy.
In this segment, Jim answers common developer questions about not only use of Generics, but also some language-specific features of VB.NET.
Jim's real-world experience shows as he tackles tough questions from the audience. The show consists mostly on Jim showing code samples. Tune in and enjoy! llangitWednesday, October 10, 2007 10:46:14 AM
Partial Methods in C# v3 and VB9
Author: Hi, I am Daniel Moth :-)
Introduction: Partial Methods is a new language feature of both C#3 and VB9, available via Visual Studio 2008 for projects targeting .NET Framework v2.0/3.0/3.5. Watch the 15' video for more.
Video download: Click on the image to play the video (from a streaming file). If you'd prefer to download the wmv packaged in a zip file, you may do so here. Daniel MothTuesday, September 25, 2007 4:07:00 AM
Building N-Tier Applications in Visual Studio 2008In this in interview John Stallo, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, talks about WCF and simple N-Tier applications. He talks about a specific architecture scenario and some of the pain points we have building n-tier applications today. He then walks us through the improvements made in the DataSet Designer that physically separates the data access from the structure and validation code and then quickly creates a WCF service and a client that demonstrates this architecture.
Here's the step-by-step walkthrough of what John demonstrates.
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0:00 – 1:33 |
Intro |
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1:33 |
Architecture discussion |
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6:30 |
N-tier project layout |
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7:15 |
Separating data access code (TableAdapters) from the structure (DataSet) |
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10:36 |
Adding validation code |
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12:55 |
Creating the WCF service |
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15:31 |
Adding the service reference on the client and reusing types |
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19:17 |
Databinding to the client form and calling the service | funkyonexMonday, September 10, 2007 11:39:42 AM
LINQ to SQL and the O/R Designer in VS 2008In this in interview Young Joo, a Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, talks about LINQ to SQL and the new O/R Designer in Visual Studio 2008. He demos a typical business client-server scenario and shows how LINQ to SQL classes make it much easier to work with relational data in SQL Server 2005. Young also talks about architectures where he sees using LINQ to SQL having the most benefits.
Learn more about the O\R Designer and LINQ to SQL by viewing our "How Do I" video LINQ series on the Visual Basic Developer Center.
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0:00 – 2:48 |
Intro |
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2:48 |
Demo Starts |
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3:22 |
Create LINQ to SQL classes |
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7:50 |
Adding Stored Procs on DataContext |
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9:06 |
Setting namespaces on the entity classes and browsing the generated code |
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12:20 |
Partial Methods |
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15:55 |
Databinding to LINQ to SQL objects |
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18:40 |
Loading customer classes and lazy loading related orders |
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21:02 |
Submitting changes |
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24:15 |
Using Stored Procs when submitting changes |
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27:45 |
Writing a LINQ to SQL queries |
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31:55 |
Calling stored procs through the Datacontext |
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36:06 |
Architecture usage discussion | funkyonexMonday, August 27, 2007 3:53:56 PM
Amanda Silver on Visual Basic LINQ Syntax in Visual Studio 2008In this interview, Amanda Silver, a Lead Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, demonstrates new LINQ syntax around Joins and Aggregates that is now available in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. Amanda is a guru of LINQ in Visual Basic and gives insightful explanations of how to use this new syntax. Also check out new How Do I videos on LINQ to help get you started with LINQ in Visual Basic. More are added weekly!!
The interview starts out a little funny because the first 20 seconds of my video tape got chewed up so we had to reshoot the intro later in the day. Amanda thought of a funny way to make the transition as you'll see. See if you can pinpoint the movie that inspired her!
funkyonexFriday, August 17, 2007 12:12:35 PM
Visual Basic Language Design Meeting I sat down with the VB Language design team and asked them about their design process, favorite features, their thoughts on other languages, as well as what the Visual Basic language strategy really is. It was a fun and enlightening interview with a group of really smart people lead by Paul Vick. You can find most of the team members on the Visual Basic Team Blog.
And as for the "grey shirt joke" that's mentioned in the interview, see this post on the VB Team Blog.
Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community funkyonexWednesday, July 23, 2008 3:21:00 PM
Happy Holidays NinersIn keeping with what has become a holiday tradition here on Channel 9 he have Chris Anderson, Don Box and now Amanda Silver singing you a special holiday song.
You can compile along with them by grabbing the Very Beautiful holiday season! For even more holiday cheer, please check out episodes I, II,III and ) With i Console.Write(.Value) End With REM a language so true If i IsNot Nothing Then Console.WriteLine() End If REM Console.Write(<some>xml</some>) Next End Sub End Module
'Lyrical-indenting
Module VB : Dim myvar As _ Integer?() = {3 * 3} Sub Main() : For Each i In myvar Console.Write("Hello VB") With i : Console.Write(.Value) End With REM a language so true
If i IsNot Nothing Then Console.WriteLine() : End If REM Console.Write(<some>xml</some>) Next : End Sub : End Module
jeffsandSaturday, December 22, 2007 4:00:11 PM
Chris Gray: Windows Home Server Extensibility Model - Building Add-InsWe recently announced the availability of Windows Home Server. I caught up with Lead Developer Chris Gray to get the scoop on Home Server's extensibility model (fully .NET managed APIs, by the way) and talk about some of the innovative add-ins customers have created. Chris demos a few simple add-ins to show how easy it is to extend the Windows Home Server admin console using Visual Studio. CharlesTuesday, November 06, 2007 7:27:58 AM
JAOO 2007: Erik Meijer and Dave Thomas - Objects, Functions, Virtual Machines, IDEs and Other Fun StI recently got the chance to attend JAOO in Aarhus, Denmark. Besids learning a great amount about various approaches to solving hard problems that we all face as programmers (regardless of the stack we spend most of our time developing on), I got to meet so many interesting people from all walks of programmer life. What a great conference! For one thing, JAOO not about specifc products. It's not about one company's view of the world. It's not about one class of technologies or developer. It's not just about Java and LAMP or .NET and Windows.
Dave Thomas is well known for his work in object oriented programming language design, dynamic language development (SmallTalk), virtual machines and in the development of the Eclipse IDE.
I was lucky enough to grab Dave and Channel 9 celebrity, co-creator of LINQ and programming language scientist Erik Meijer to about objects, OO, functional programming, the future of programming languages in the age of parallelism and concurrency (multi/many-core hardware "revolution"). We also talk about virtual machines in the context of language runtimes. Dave provides some feedback on Microsoft's approach to "managed" runtimes (aka CLR). He has an "interesting" perspectives in this area, though I don't agree with him fully :)
This is a fantastic conversation with two of the computing industry's best and brightest. It was a real honor to meet Dave Thomas. He's incredibly nice and really humble given his myriad of technical accomplishments.
Enjoy! CharlesFriday, October 19, 2007 11:05:38 AM
OSIsoft: Real-Time Monitoring and Analytics - The Power of PI, Part 1Global carbon regulation is arguably the largest risk and opportunity most corporations will face in the beginning of the 21st century. It has been estimated that turnover in the global carbon marketplace could exceed a trillion dollars in the next five to ten years. Voluntary and mandatory reporting protocols are emerging. How can an organization know its true carbon footprint and exposure? What options are available to manage corporate carbon risk? What impact can energy efficiency programs have on reducing a corporation’s carbon footprint? Read whitepaper
OSIsoft’s real-time monitoring solutions help companies improve the overall energy efficiency of their organization while simultaneously reducing its carbon footprint. In fact, Microsoft uses OSIsoft PI infrastructure for their Data Center Energy management. Also at a recent, OSIsoft user group meeting, Kodak presented on how they were able conserve energy and reduce their operational costs by using OSIsoft software.
Several case studies exist on OSIsoft’s website which can be viewed at http://www.osisoft.com/Resources/Case%20Studies
Here, we meet some of the developers who make PI and a surprise appearance by OSISoft's founder and CEO, Dr. Pat Kennedy. What is PI, exactly? How does it work? Is it extensible?
Cast of characters:
Prabal Acharya, ex-OSIsoft-customer to ex-engineering to now Director, Microsoft Global Alliance. Alex Zheng, Team Lead, PI Server & Analytics Jason King, Senior Developer, PI Clients Denis Vacher, Lead Developer, PI Server Core and Niner Dr. Pat Kennedy – Founder and CEO Mark Hughes – CTO
See CharlesThursday, June 21, 2007 10:44:14 AM
Anders Hejlsberg, Herb Sutter, Erik Meijer, Brian Beckman: Software Composability and the Future of How will imperative programming languages evolve to suit the needs of developers in the age of Concurrency and Composability? What role can programming languages play in enabling true composability? What are the implications of LINQ on the furture of managed (CLS-based) and unmanaged(C++) languages? How will our imperative languages (static) become more functional (dynamic) in nature while preserving their static "experience" for developers?
Answers to these questions and much more are to be found in this interview with some of Microsoft's leading language designers and programming thought leaders: Anders Hejlsberg, Technical Fellow and Chief Architect of C#, Herb Sutter, Architect in the C++ language design group, Erik Meijer, Architect in both VB.Net and C# language design and programming language guru, and Brian Beckman, physicist and programming language architect working on VB.Net.
This is a great conversation with some of the industry's most influential programming language designers. Tune in. You may be surprised by what you learn... CharlesThursday, January 18, 2007 8:32:00 PM
Geeking Out in BarcelonaWhat do you do after an evening at a Girly Geek dinner? Well, you head back to the hotel lobby and geek out, of course. Join Catherine Heller, Technical Evangelist and one of Microsoft's smartest people, Kate Gregory, C++ Guru and Regional Director, and Cyra Richardson, IE Program Manager and passionate customer advocate, as we debate programming language syntax, C++, VB, managed code and other truly geeky topics.
For those of you who've not heard of Kate Gregory, she's an incredible programmer, runs a software consulting company ( Gregory Consulting, based in Canada: http://www.gregcons.com ) and is one of the premier C++ experts and developer conference speakers in the world. Her technical talks at developer conferences consistenty rank among the top in attendee speaker ratings. Oh yeah, and she LOVES C++. Rock on, Kate! CharlesThursday, December 07, 2006 11:47:15 AM
Brian Beckman: Monads, Monoids, and MortBrian Beckman is a fascinating individual. Ex-cosmologist, ex-military operating system and simulation developer (have you ever considered processes that move both forward and backward in time? Well, Brian and team at JPL created just that. He explains in this interview...). Brian was one of the first members of Microsoft Research and one of a group of physicists who joined Microsoft in the early 90s. At Microsoft he is a passionate advocate for Mort, the somewhat ambiguous class name for novice developers. In fact, he considers himself a mort (somewhat hard to believe, honestly, but we'll go along with it...). His team works on innovative incubation projects that turn into developer platform features (like LINQ, for example) and more. Tune in to this very interesting interview.
Brainbec's Weblog
CharlesTuesday, August 29, 2006 10:34:24 AM
Erik Meijer: Democratizing the Cloud
Erik Meijer is a computer science professor turned Microsoft Architect. He is responsible for things like helping to make VB.NET a great development language that supports constructs other managed languages can't or working on LINQ for C# and much more. He also leads an incubation team working on some really cool progamming technology that promises to democratize the internet cloud. What does that mean? Watch or listen to find out. This is a great conversation with a software tools and languages visionary. Enjoy. AdamKinneyTuesday, August 08, 2006 10:01:55 AM
Scott Nonnenberg - Visualizers in VS 2005Ken Levy takes his camcorder into the office of Scott Nonnenberg, a program manager on the C# team, to discuss using Visualizers in VS 2005 debugging. The demos include easy steps to create your own custom Visualizers. CharlesWednesday, February 22, 2006 4:14:09 PM
Shamez Rajan - VB 2005 Express in actionKen Levy met up recently with Shamez Rajan, program manager on the VB team, discusses VB 2005 Express and shows demos of how it can be used to build simple components to complete database applications. Also discussed are the other Express versions such as C#, Web, J#, and C++ Express as part of the Visual Studio 2005 launch. CharlesMonday, November 21, 2005 5:24:33 PM
Jay Schmelzer - Working on the VB Core TeamKen Levy took his camcorder over to see Jay Schmelzer, lead program manager on the Visual Basic.net team. They have a nice chat about what the VB team has been up to lately. scobleizerTuesday, November 01, 2005 6:24:03 AM
Paul Yuknewicz - Working with VB CommunityDo you use Visual Basic? Well, you should get to know Paul Yuknewicz. He's a program manager on the VB team (he's worked there for more than five years). Talks about his experiences working on the VB team, and what his team is doing to make the VB community a great one. At about 10:26 he gives a demo of extensions that you can get online to make VB.NET better. It all starts at http://msdn.com/vbasic . scobleizerTuesday, October 18, 2005 1:28:01 PM
Manuel Clement and others - Introducing SparkleMicrosoft, today, at the PDC, announced Microsoft Expression, which is a suite of three applications to help you build Web sites and new kinds of Windows applications.
Here we meet the Expression Interactive Designer team last week as they were having a late-night pizza dinner (code-named Sparkle) and then sit down for a lengthy demo.
Hey, Jamie, this one is for you! (Jamie is a Channel 9'er who is a graphic designer). But, who's that developer hanging out with Manuel? John Gossman. The two of them show how development teams are changing, even inside Microsoft. scobleizerWednesday, September 14, 2005 10:57:53 AM
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