Shawn Weisfeld [MVP]

SQL PASS 2008 Talk

If you attended my talk at pass last week, you can get the slides & downloads here (http://www.developerroundtable.com/Libraries/Downloads/PASS_SQL_CLR.sflb.ashx). I hope you enjoyed the talk. Feel free to send me feedback!

MS Popfly

I am tired of forgetting the link to this darn site and people keep asking me about it, hence this blog post. A while back at a presentation by Russ Fustino (http://blogs.msdn.com/rfustino/) he demoed this application. MS Popfly (http://www.popfly.com/) allows you to create online game and mashup’s using silverlight. A very cool tool, get an account and check it out.

Here is a mashup I created by doing a live picture search for me and binding it to a Carousel in all of 5 min.

http://www.popfly.com/users/ShawnOnetug/ShawnPictureMashup
(Note if it doesn't display try selecting one of the alternatives from the menu on the right hand side of the page.)

WCF & Using Statements

I was attending the Dallas Connected Systems UG last night (http://biztalkusergroup.com/) and during the presentation I made the bold assertion that one should NOT use the "using statement" when working with WCF. Now I am a HUGE proponent of the using statement in normal circumstances. IMHO if it implements IDisposable use the using statement, except with WCF. This has to do with the way that WCF errors out and when that happens how the connection gets closed. . .

Doing my best LeVar Burton "But you don't have to take my word for it" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Rainbow). Microsoft even says it in the documentation, "You should not use the using statement (Using in Visual Basic) because it may mask exceptions in certain failure modes. " (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms735103.aspx)

Also check out a post by Dan Rigsby that goes into more detail. http://www.danrigsby.com/blog/index.php/2008/02/26/dont-wrap-wcf-service-hosts-or-clients-in-a-using-statement/

Microsoft Web Platform Installer

While I was not able to attend PDC, Microsoft did good by the community and has provided free recordings of many of the sessions (http://www.microsoftpdc.com). While this is cool and has some great content, the purpose of this blog post is to talk about the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebPlatformInstaller.aspx). This tool allows for single deployment model for all the bits and pieces needed to put together a clean PC image for a developer use (i.e. VS.NET, SQL SVR, and IIS). IMHO this is a great idea and Microsoft is only scratching the surface of what they could  do in this space. Currently the tool works for the express editions, which is good for the hobbyist and more importantly at schools. With my experiences teaching .NET at the University anything that helps bring students into a working development environment faster and easier is goodness. However this will become much more valuable when it gets pushed into the enterprise environment. Currently one of the most frustrating jobs that I have my day job is helping team members with the setup of development machines. Anything that MSFT can do to stream line and reduce errors in the process of installing the entire suite of development tools is much appreciated.