geekspeak - Channel 9

geekSpeak recording: The Mole Visualizer with Karl Shifflet

glengo — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:00:00 GMT

One of the things we like to do from time to time on geekSpeak is feature technology contributions that come out of the developer community. A very prominent contribution is the Mole project, a very popular and powerful visualizer for Visual Studio. Mole is a community project that’s been developed by several people, most notably Karl Shifflett, who is a Microsoft MVP for WPF .

In this geekSpeak, Karl runs through how to install Mole and gives some tips on how to use it with ASP.NET. Mole’s ability to drill down into your object trees and highlight what’s going on in there is indispensible when debugging your apps. I could list cool feature after cool feature of Mole, but it’s best to see them in action, so give this geekSpeak a viewing. Karl also gives some great tips for those of you who are feeling the urge to build your own visualizers. Karl totally deserves the Maverick reference we joke about during his introduction, he’s a top gun when it comes to Mole demos!

Since the time this geekSpeak was recorded, Karl has joined the team at Microsoft that builds the WPF designers (Cider) for Visual Studio. I’m sure we can look for continued WPF goodness from Karl in the future!

geekSpeak recording: Inside LINQ to XML with Paul Sheriff

glengo — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:07:26 GMT

In this geekSpeak, Paul Sheriff focuses on LINQ to XML and reveals lots of tips for getting up to speed with it. We loved seeing the new techniques for building XML documents using the XDocument type that are tremendous time savers. He helps us understand what is LINQ, what’s LINQ to XML, and what are the new XML handling capabilities of VB and C#. He shows a nice example of LINQ to SQL output with XML literals interleaved, as well as an actual LINQ to XML query that comes back with (surprise) XML.

Paul also addresses some of the why, where and when XML, which is something many of us face. He shows us how he uses XML for prototyping very quickly. Also Paul shares some simple yet great techniques he uses to keep his team members up to date on skills.

Other tips range from how to get Intellisense in XML in your project to working with aggregates to what the heck the SingleOrDefault method does. Are you an XPath guru? Watch Paul’s tips on incorporating XPath queries into LINQ to XML as a transitional approach.

Some fun moments on the show are Paul slipping in a COBOL .NET reference, and his explanation as to why he's glad he took an “anti-Glen” pill that morning. :)

Finally, Paul has a great freebie he’s making available for geekSpeak fans, so listen out for the URL he shares.

This geekSpeak was hosted by Glen Gordon and Lynn Langit.

About our guest: Paul Sheriff, President, PDSA, Inc.

Paul Sheriff is the president of PDSA, Inc., a Microsoft Certified Partner in Southern California. Paul acts as the Microsoft Regional Director for Southern California assisting the local Microsoft offices with several of their events each year and being an evangelist for them. He has authored several books, webcasts, videos, and articles on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft SQL Server, and Windows SharePoint Services. Paul can be reached via www.paulsheriffinnercircle.com.

geekSpeak recording: All About Team Build 2008 with Steven Borg

glengo — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:09:00 GMT

In this episode of geekSpeak, Steven Borg shares the merits of using Team Build 2008 to radically improve the quality of the code you write. Steven gives a great overview of how to set up automated builds and a build server, and the benefits of investing the time to do it right.

Steven also spends a bit of time talking about why he loves Test-Driven Development (TDD) - but pragmatically rather than zealously. Nonetheless, things like work items, build reports, logs and changesets available with Team Foundation Server can help developers zero in on bugs that "break the build". Breaking the build is bad, and we have a good chuckle about some of the stiff "penalties" that various development teams (even some within Microsoft) come up with for that infraction.

Also in this geekSpeak, get the scoop on what's on the horizon for setup and deployment projects, and hear about a great tool called WIX which makes building projects into MSI files super easy. Steven goes so far as to say that WIX actually changed the way he works, listen to him explain why.

Steven also gives tips on how many of you already have access to Team Foundation Server (and therefore, Team Build) and don't even know it. So it's easy to incorporate these tools into your software build process and, through the Continuous Integration they afford, drive up quality and enhance team involvement. As Steven says, it's like "a little bit of magic."

This geekSpeak was hosted by Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar.

About our guest: Steven Borg

Steven Borg, a Northwest Cadence principal and the Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) practice lead, works with corporations to improve their automated build process and overall software development process. In addition, Steven assists the Team System community as a Team System Most Valuable Professional (MVP), and was a founding member of the Seattle-based VSTS User Group. Northwest Cadence is a Microsoft Certified Partner and VSTS Inner Circle partner that focuses exclusively on helping companies improve their Application Lifecycle Management using Visual Studio Team System.

geekSpeak recording: LINQ Migration Strategies with Jim Wooley

glengo — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:23:46 GMT

Here's a very practical geekSpeak that's loaded with tips on how to incorporate LINQ into existing architectures and applications. Our guest Jim Wooley has a longtime background with databases, coming out of the Access and Foxpro world. He shares his insights about how the advent of LINQ brings with it a new paradigm for working with data. This geekSpeak will get you thinking about data access in different ways - about a functional approach that's less about iterative manipulation - plus how this type of data access will find its home in future technologies like Silverlight.

As for thoughts of any actual "migrations" you might have been entertaining, give some thought to Jim's tips in here and consider the business justification and trade-offs. Listen to Jim's points about maintainability and how you can use LINQ to enhance what you're already doing. It's compelling to think about getting some slick benefits from LINQ to SQL like cached query plans and precompiled optimizations, as well as free concurrency checking without having to rewrite your whole application.

Conceptually, you'll get a better sense of what's in LINQ versus what's in LINQ to SQL by considering things like the fact that CRUD operations are a part of LINQ to SQL, not LINQ. And that the CRUD equivalent in LINQ to XML for example is a save/load of the whole document.

Architecturally, Jim explains why passing DataContext objects across tiers is a bad idea, and what parts of your LINQ objects you should and shouldn't pass. He also touches on how ADO.NET Data Services (Project Astoria) will be able to expose anything that implements IQueryably to the outside world, and how it will be extended to allow updates as well.

Practically, Jim runs through how he updated the data access layer of the Personal Website Starter Kit (an ASP.NET 2.0 sample). You can do this yourself, and it's a great chance to learn about applying LINQ to an existing architecture. He also illustrates how (forgetting data access for a moment) LINQ can help you write better loops and finds, and gets you ready for parallelism in LINQ.

Also, for no good reason, Jim also shows a neat trick for writing a single VB statement on multiple lines by using XML literals.

About our guest: Jim Wooley

Jim is a Microsoft MVP and has been working with .Net since the initial PDC bits in 2000, releasing his first application 1 week before the .Net 1.0 go-live. He has been active evangelizing LINQ since it's announcement in 2005. Jim is actively involved in the Atlanta developer community and is a frequent speaker. He is a co-author of the recently released “LINQ in Action” http://www.manning.com/marguerie/. Jim's blog is http://www.thinqlinq.com

geekSpeak recording: Tame Your Software Dependencies with James Kovacs

glengo — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:20:47 GMT

For your viewing enjoyment, here is a very thought provoking geekSpeak episode. James Kovacs is the guest, and he really shows us the the shortcomings of tightly coupled architectures from the perspective of testing and maintenance.

James gives lots of guidance on how to avoid introducing dependencies that result in too-tightly-coupled a design. The decoupled approach makes a lot of sense once you see it, and you've probably been doing it to a lesser degree without even being aware of it.

There's also a lot of good discussion in here about Test Driven Development, and how tight coupling impacts the ability to create effective tests that are poor at isolating the errors you need to fix. James shows how using unit testing frameworks can reveal this coupling nicely.

James also introduces the concept of mock objects, and compares them to fake objects. He also shows off a couple of interesting tools.

Watch this geekSpeak to learn more about how you can create more nimble code bases and avoid ripple effects when code is changed. Also, see if you can figure out where Glen's audio got disconnected! Be sure to read the article James wrote for MSDN magazine to extend your learning.

More resources related to this geekSpeak can be found on our geekSpeak blog.

About our guest: James Kovacs

James is an independent architect, developer, trainer, and jack-of-all-trades, specializing in agile development using the Microsoft .NET Framework. He is passionate about helping developers create flexible software using test-driven development (TDD), unit testing, object-relational mapping, dependency injection, refactoring, continuous integration, and related techniques. He is a founding member of the Plumbers @ Work podcast, which is syndicated by MSDN Canada Community Radio. James is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Solutions Architect and card-carrying member of ALT.NET, a group of software professionals continually looking for more effective ways to develop applications. He received his master's degree from Harvard University. James can be reached through his blog http://www.jameskovacs.com

geekSpeak recording: Advanced ASP.NET with Michele Leroux Bustamante

llangit — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:43:16 GMT

Michèle Leroux Bustamante is chief architect of IDesign Inc., Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, and Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Connected Systems. At IDesign, Michèle provides training, mentoring, and high-end architecture consulting services focusing on Web services, scalable and secure architecture design for Microsoft .NET, federated security scenarios, Web services, and interoperability and globalization architecture. Michele participates in software design reviews for products in the Microsoft road map, including Windows Communication Foundation, CardSpace, and other security-focused products. She is a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA), a frequent conference presenter, conference chair for SD West, and is frequently published in several major technology journals. Michele is also on the board of directors for IASA (International Association of Software Architects), and a program advisor to University of California San Diego (UCSD) Extension. Her latest book is Learning WCF (O'Reilly, 2007)—see her book blog here: www.thatindigogirl.com. Reach her at www.idesign.net and her main blog at www.dasblonde.net.

In the geekSpeak, Michele discusses timely topics in ASP.NET such as extending the ASP.NET profile service by appropriately using custom HttpModules to support dynamic implementation of master pages, application localization and more. She goes on to discuss improvements to ASP.NET like the AJAX-programming paradigm with asynchronous access to data, and then the ASP.NET 3.5 extensions - new MVC, new ADO.NET data services libraries.

Michele gives her perspective on RIAs, including Flash, Silverlight, typical web applications and WPF (or rich client) - when to use which one from an architectural perspective.

She goes on to discuss SOAP vs. REST WCF services and the evolution of the programming model from raw SOAP message construction to REST-based calls which include wrappers and then onto JSON-based WCF services. Next she shows the the ServiceHostFactory, and the WebScriptServiceHostFactory. She then presents the ASP.NET extensions ADO.NET data services (formerly Astoria). She concludes with an interesting discussion of when to use which type of service - SOAP or REST.

geekSpeak recording: Building Animations in Silverlight with Cal Schrotenboer

glengo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:19:44 GMT

Recorded on March 12th, 2008.

In this installment of geekSpeak, Cal Schrotenboer walks us through various ways of creating animations in Silverlight. In addition to the raw XAML, Cal shows us some interesting tips inside of Visual Studion and Expression Blend. There are some very effective techniques illustrated here, and can be viewed live in action by visiting the site Cal uses in the demonstrations - http://www.drinkmate.com. This show was hosted by Glen Gordon and Mithun Dhar

Guest information: Cal Schrotenboer

Cal is a Microsoft Visual C# developer with experience building Windows Forms application front ends for Microsoft SQL Server databases. He also teaches several programming classes at Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California, and Microsoft Network Administration (MCSE) classes at Mission College in Santa Clara. Recently Cal has been specializing in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). He has presented several MSDN webcasts on various WPF topics, and has spoken to user groups and code camps throughout California about WPF. Cal maintains a WPF blog at www.WPFLearningExperience.com. In his spare time, Cal enjoys travel and photography.

For upcoming geekSpeaks, visit the geekSpeak blog.

geekSpeak Recording: Extending SQL Server Integration Services with Reza Madani

glengo — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:46:46 GMT

Recorded on February 13th, 2008.

In this installment of geekSpeak, Reza Madani shows you many useful tips for extending Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) with scripts. Highlights include learning the proper way to pass parameters to scripts, how to log effectively, and more. In addition to the numerous demos, Reza manages to answer quite a few questions from the audience. This show was hosted by Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar

Guest information: Reza Madani, Principal, Harbor Objects

Reza Madani is a principal at his own Microsoft .NET Framework development company, Harbor Objects, where he architects and implements solutions on the .NET platform. Reza's firm specializes in Business Intelligence and Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies built on Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Reza is very active in the Southern California user group community, leading several local .NET developer groups that are based there.

For upcoming geekSpeaks, visit the geekSpeak blog.

geekSpeak: MSDN geekSpeak Webcast: Problems and Solutions When Implementing a Windows CardSpace Iden

glengo — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:10:21 GMT

This episode of geekSpeak (recorded February 6, 2008) features Barry Dorrans talking about problems and solutions when implementing a Windows CardSpace identity provider in the real world.

After giving some great explanations and analogies about identity management on the web, Barry dives into some details related to EV Certificates, identity providers, and more.

The hosts for this geekSpeak are be Mike Benkovich and Glen Gordon. For resources related to this geekSpeak, visit the geekSpeak blog.

Guest Information: Barry Dorrans, Author, Idunno.org.

Barry has been "playing" with computers since the days of the "dead flesh" keyboard on the ZX Spectrum. Graduating to .NET via RPG, QuickBasic, C, C++ and VB his time has been spent in various markets from banking through telecoms and even parts of the record industry. He specializes in .NET and Microsoft Technologies looking at "whatever takes his fancy" and running with it to see where it goes, with a passion for sharing the knowledge gathered during each of his code expeditions.

geekSpeak: Security from a Public, Anonymous Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Site with Jim Wilt

glengo — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:41:29 GMT

In this installment of MSDN geekSpeak, Jim Wilt covers a topic that is popping up in many of his current projects—the creation of secure, membership Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 sites that have a public-facing side with an input form that often requests sensitive information. Making a secure form for gathering sensitive, private information from an anonymous accessible site can be easily accomplished with a custom list using some creative features of Windows SharePoint Services. Jim fills in the details for you during this installment of geekSpeak.

Resources mentioned in this geekSpeak are available at http://blogs.msdn.com/geekspeak/archive/2008/02/04/resources-for-geekspeak-security-from-a-public-anonymous-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-site-with-jim-wilt.aspx

Guest Information: Jim Wilt, Chief Software Architect, Metrics Reporting, Inc.

In his principal role as chief software architect with Metrics Reporting, Inc., Jim Wilt focuses his deep experience and seasoned problem-solving skills toward helping his customers architect the best possible solutions for their thorniest problems with system design, collaboration, data integration, and business intelligence (BI). Having a passion for the advancement of higher education, Jim participates on an advisory board at Central Michigan University (CMU), serves on the Microsoft Certified Architect advisory council, and is a 2006 CMU Distinguished Alumni award winner.

For information on past and upcoming geekSpeaks visit the geekSpeak blog or the webcast site.

Recorded on January 30th, 2008.

geekSpeak: The Web Client Software Factory with Paulo Morgado

glengo — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:33:41 GMT

This geekSpeak features Paulo Morgado (all the way from Portugal!) guiding us through some demonstrations of the Web Client Software Factory in action.

About our Guest

Paulo Morgado works at Espírito Santo Informá¡tica, ACE as a developer and software architect. He has a bachelor's degree in electronics and telecommunications (digital systems) from the Instituto Superior de Engenharia at Lisbon, a degree of licentiate in informatics from the Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade Nova at Lisbon, and is also a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) for the Microsoft .NET Framework. Paulo contributes to Microsoft Portuguese newsgroups and the PontoNetPT community, answering posted questions about .NET Framework software development. His growing interest in software architecture also drives his participation in the Portuguese Group of Software Architecture (GASP). Paulo's contributions to the community have earned him a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award.

geekSpeak recording: Kate Gregory talks about the Vista Bridge

llangit — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:10:58 GMT

In the geekSpeak, C++ expert, Kate Gregory answers questions about the Vista Bridge. This is a little-known, hidden gem found the in the Windows Vista SDK. This show has little or no C++ content and is aimed at .Net dev who want to access cool 'Vista goodness' without the C++/CLI approach.

Here's more about Kate:

Kate Gregory has been the Microsoft regional director (RD) for Toronto since January of 2002, and is a founding partner of Gregory Consulting. She has almost three decades of scientific and engineering programming experience in a variety of programming languages. Her recent programming work is almost exclusively in Microsoft Visual C++ and Visual Basic .NET, on a variety of projects, for both enterprise and independent software vendor (ISV) clients.

Kate is the author of over a dozen books including 'Microsoft Visual C++ .NET 2003 Kick Start' (Sams, 2003). She teaches .NET, XML, UML, and C++, and is in demand as an expert speaker on tours for Microsoft Canada, and sessions in the United States, Europe, and Africa. Kate is a founding sponsor of the Toronto .NET Users Group, the founder of the East of Toronto .NET Users Group, a member of the INETA speakers bureau, and a member of adjunct faculty at Trent University in Peterborough. She has been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) designation for Visual C++, and won the Regional Director of the year award in 2005.

geekSpeak: about CardSpace with Michele Leroux Bustamante

llangit — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 22:31:27 GMT

Listen to MLB (as we call her) talk about her experience architecting Federated Identity Management solutions in the real world over the past year. In particular this geekSpeak focuses on implementation of CardSpace.

About Michele:

Michèle Leroux Bustamante is Chief Architect of IDesign Inc., Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, Microsoft MVP for Connected Systems. At IDesign Michele provides training, mentoring and high-end architecture consulting services focusing on Web services, scalable and secure architecture design for .NET, federated security scenarios, web services, interoperability and globalization architecture.

Michele participates in Software Design Reviews for products in the Microsoft roadmap, including WCF, CardSpace and other security-focused products. During the Beta 1 phase Michele participated in prototyping elements of the CardSpace technology for the product team. She is a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA), a frequent conference presenter, conference chair for SD West, and is frequently published in several major technology journals. Michele is also on the board of directors for IASA (International Association of Software Architects), and a Program Advisor to UCSD Extension. Her latest book is Learning WCF (O’Reilly 2007) – see her book blog here: www.thatindigogirl.com. Reach her at www.idesign.net and her main blog at www.dasblonde.net.

geekSpeak: BizTalk BAM and ESB implementation with Brian Loesgen

llangit — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:41:38 GMT

Based in San Diego, Brian Loesgen is a Principal Consultant with Neudesic, a firm that specializes in .NET development and Microsoft server integration. Brian is a Microsoft MVP for BizTalk Server. Watch Brian demo BAM and ESB and hear him answer listener questions.

In addition, Brian has been involved with advanced Enterprise Service Bus solutions, and was a key architect/developer of the “Microsoft ESB Guidance” released by Microsoft in Oct 2006. He is a co-author of 6 books, including the recent “BizTalk Server 2004 Unleashed”, and is currently working on “SOA with .NET”.

He has written technical white papers for Intel, Microsoft and others. Brian has spoken at numerous major technical conferences worldwide. Brian is a co-founder and past-President of the International .NET Association (ineta.org). He is the President of the San Diego .NET user group, leads the San Diego Software Industry Council SOA/Web Services SIG, and is a member of the Editorial Board for the .NET Developer’s Journal. Brian is also a member of the Microsoft CSD Virtual Technical Specialist Team. Brian’s blog is http://geekswithblogs.com/bloesgen .

geekSpeak: About DotNetNuke with Shaun Walker

llangit — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 18:11:38 GMT

Listen in to MVP Shaun Walker on best practices for real-world ASP.NET development and more. Shaun is the founder of DotNetNuke. On this geekSpeak he answers lots of questions about general ASP.NET development as well as his very popular application.

Listen in and enjoy.

Here's the URL for DotNetNuke - http://www.dotnetnuke.com/

geekSpeak recording - httpHandlers and httpModules with Chris Love

llangit — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:46:18 GMT

It's not called 'geekSpeak' for nothing! This week's show is pretty darn geeky, with guest expert Chris Love diving into the details of ASP.NET httpHandler and httpModule implementations.

Listen in to hear best practices for the implementation of these features.

Here's bio information for Chris.

Chris Love has over 14 years of experience in software design, development and architecture. He has been the principal developer for over 250 small and medium ASP and ASP.NET web sites over the past 7 years.

Chris has been active in a leadership role in the Raleigh, NC, area user group TRINUG for over 5 years. He frequently presents and organizes Code Camps around the country. He has recently completed his first book, ASP.NET 2.0: Your Visual Blueprint for Developing Web Applications.

geekSpeak recording - WPF with Bil Simser

llangit — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 03:43:27 GMT

In this installment of geekSpeak, WPF-expert Bil Simser answers developer questions about WPF. He's inclusive, answering basic 'why do I care?' to detailed 'how do I implement x feature?' questions.

Bil is a MVP hailing from the Great White North, otherwise known as Canada and has an impressive resume:

Bil Simser lives and works in Alberta, Canada, as an independent Solutions Architect Consultant. He specializes in .NET, Agile, XP, TDD, and computer game programming and is the lead developer for many open source projects including several tools for the Maxis game The Sims. Bil is the Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) in Calgary. He is also a member of the MSDN Canada Speakers Bureau and speaks publically at technical conferences including TechEd, PDC, and DevConnections about SharePoint, Agile, and C#. When he's not talking about himself in the third person, Bil is a pretty nifty guy when you get to know him.

Enjoy the show!

December 2007 geekSpeak schedule

llangit — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:03:12 GMT

December 2007 3 shows this month

All shows LIVE at Noon to 1 pm PST

Registration links

Dec 5 - Bill James - LINQ to SQL

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359603&Culture=en-US

Dec12 - Brian Loesgen - BizTalk Adapters

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359319&Culture=en-US

Dec19 - Shaun Walker - DotNetNuke

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359088&Culture=en-US

geekSpeak Recording: LINQ to SharePoint with Bart De Smet

glengo — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:37:46 GMT

geekSpeaks are a great opportunity for some innovative members of the developer community to show off what they've been working on.

One such fellow is Bart De Smet. As of this recording, Bart had only been with Microsoft for 3 weeks. We arrange geekSpeaks a few months in advance, so technically Bart was still part of the community. :) Here's his bio:

A former Visual C# MVP, Bart De Smet now works at Microsoft Corporation on the WPF dev team in an SDE role. Prior to this new challenge, Bart was active in the Belgian community evangelizing various Microsoft technologies, most of the time focusing on CLR, language innovation and frameworks. In his evangelism role, he's been speaking at various events and attended several international conferences including TechEd Europe, IT Forum and the PDC. In 2005, Bart graduated as a Master of Informatics from Ghent University, Belgium. Two years later, Bart became a Master of Computer Science Software Engineering from the same university.

In this geekSpeak, Bart gives us a tour of a community project called LINQ to Sharepoint, which basically allows a developer to query lists and other things on a Sharepoint server as a data store, without having to resort to calling web services or mastering CAML.

I really love this project because it illustrates the power of LINQ and is a superb example of implemnting a custom LINQ to ... provider. It's also pretty cool to see Bart slip into some on-the-fly LINQ coding in response to the live questions.

So check out the video and be sure to try out LINQ to SharePoint and let Bart know what you think!

geekSpeak Recording: Programming for High-Performance Computing Environments with Dariusz Parys and

glengo — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:22:37 GMT

We're always trying to dig up esoteric subjects for geekSpeak, and here's one that is intriguing - High Performance Computing. Once strictly the domain of universities and the like, HPC is quickly becoming a cornerstone of business analysis, engineering and number crunching in general.

This geekSpeak features several Microsoft folks from Germany, including Developer Evangelist Dariusz Parys, Platform Strategy Manager Christian Binder and infrastructure specialist Steffen Krause.

These fine gentlemen get us all familiar with key aspects of developing and managing applications for a high-performance computing environment. Steffen gives a great overview of a typical infrastructure layout, which includes Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. We get some great tips for handling multi-threading through the use of OpenMP, as well as an overview of using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) to handle the communication to the cluster.

Steffen shares with us some information around using Excel services on Sharepoint actually installed on a cluster to provide some serious horsepower for server-based calculations. And we hear about a specific HPC scenario from Sorin Serban, with Visual Numerics, involving some amazingly complex algorithms.

All in all, a fascinating geekSpeak on the possiblities that high-performance computing offers.

Custom CRM Development with Aaron Elder

llangit — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:19:18 GMT

This week's geekSpeak installment features expert Aaron Elder. He is now the Chief CRM Architect for Ascentium and a CRM MVP. In this show Aaron answers listener questions about developer customization on the CRM platform.

Here listeners also benefit from his years of experience (including work on the CRM SDK itself) leading projects that implement customized CRM, usually also built out on the SharePoint platform.

Additionally, Aaron shares insight about the next version of CRM (4.0) - internally named Titan.

As is typical for geekSpeak, this show consists mostly of Aaron doing ad-hoc demos as he answers the listeners questions.

Enjoy!:)

geekSpeak - SharePoint Features with Paul Stork

llangit — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:23:22 GMT

Catch this engaging episode of geekSpeak with guest expert MCT and SharePoint developer Paul Stork. Here Paul explains and demos a commonly misunderstood aspect of SharePoint development - the use of SharePoint features.

During the show, Paul answers dozens of the most common listener questions around the use, customization and implementation of SharePoint features.

Also, co-hosts Mithun Dhar and Lynn Langit answer additional listener questions. This show is really action packed!

We've posted the demo source code and more references on the geekSpeak blog.

Paul has agreed to return to geekSpeak in the future to present more information and answer more developer questions on SharePoint. What particular aspects of SharePoint development would you like him to focus on? Let us know!

geekSpeak - SQL Server Reporting Service with Ted Malone

llangit — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 22:23:44 GMT

Listen in on this geekSpeak where expert Ted Malone shares his real-world experience implementing SQL Server Reporting Services and more. His company Configuresoft has created a a product built out around all of Microsoft's BI and collaboration tools.

Ted in an architect and developer who works with SharePoint, SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Service Integration Services and, of course, SQL Server Reporting Services.

Co-hosts Glen Gordon and G. Andrew Duthie get listener questions to Ted. They also engage in a useful discussion of 'What is BI?'

Demos and discussion also includes the what, why, when and where of SharePoint and SQL Server Reporting services integration, data and collaborative tools all working together. His talk also includes information about the BDC, or the Business Data Catalog.

geekSpeak WF and BizTalk with Mick Badran

llangit — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:03:53 GMT

When's the last time you talked to an Australian developer at 4am his time? Well, I don't think I really want you to answer that question!

Anyway, friend (you'd have to be, right?;)) and expert WF and BizTalk developer, Mick Badran joined the geekSpeak as 'expert-in-the-house.'

He did a great job not only explaining core differences between Windows Workflow and BizTalk orchestrations, but also elaborated, based on the usual tough listener questions, on pipeline implementations, exposing orchestrations as web services and more.

geekSpeak Generics (and more) in VB with Jim Duffy

llangit — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:46:14 GMT

Listen 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!