Vukoje.NET

Vukoje's blog about software development

TechEd 2011 recommended sessions

Thanks to Sorpex I had a great pleasure to visit this year TechEd held in Atlanta. I got a chance to attend many interesting talks and also meet the people from Microsoft that build the tools I have been using for years. In the focus of the conference were the Cloud, Windows Phone and Application Lifecycle Management.

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Here are the most interesting sessions available online that I recommend:

· The Future of Microsoft Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management

Exciting introduction to new VS and TFS capabilities. I especially liked:

- Analyzing code for Code Clones / Find Matching Code feature – tries to discover code clones that are usually result of code Copy/Paste.

- Support for Code Review workflow through work items and code commenting like in Word.

· Deep Dive into Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Reporting

What reports are waiting for you in TFS and how you can add custom reports.

· Branching and Merging for Parallel Development

Excellent introduction to Branching strategies (by Release/Stability/Feature). Here are some of advices I found most useful:

- Avoid branching when possible. If it gets complicated, you will need full time release manager.

- Avoid cherry pick merge (partial merge).

- Always merge on branch that changes more (Merge down copy up pattern).

- Use branches to store releases instead of labels because labels can change and there is no version history support.

- Each branch is expensive because each has to have its own test environment and continues integration support.

 

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· Test Automation with Microsoft VS 2010: Coded UI Tests and Lab Management

This testing tool looks very impressive. The time will show how it will fit real life needs.

· NuGet: Microsoft .NET Package Management for the Enterprise

Great simplification of libraries distribution on the internet and inside companies.

· Microsoft Visual Studio IDE Futures

New VS is faster, simpler and more user friendly (parallel builds, less memory usage, async GUI, pinned tabs, enhanced search and navigation…)

· Busy Microsoft .NET Developer’s Guide to the Microsoft Cloud

You are thinking about the cloud? Listen to this scary real life stories and think again.

· Introducing Microsoft SQL Server Developer Tools, Code-Named "Juneau"

Impressive capabilities added to SQL server tools that could greatly simplify developer lives when it comes to database maintenance (DB compare/sync, Local DB runtime, Find All References on DB objects and Refactoring tools).

· AppFabric Caching: How It Works and When You Should Use It

Great introduction to MS distributed cache.

· Efficient T-SQL Querying with Itzik Ben-Gan

· Creating and Consuming Open Data Protocol (OData) Services