.NET Rocks!

This week we had a very informative discussion about messaging with Benjamin Mitchell and John Bristowe. Benjamin and John cut through the WS-AlphabetSoup set of specifications, avoid frequent references to SOA and cover what the benefits of web services are, why you might want to use WSE (security, policy, addressing and support for TCP), how to use web services in your applications today and where Microsoft is heading with web services and Indigo in future. Michele Leroux Bustamante joined us unexpectedly in the second half, and she even told a great joke!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

John and Barry talk with us about Test-Driven Development, Unit Testing, and other aspects of Extreme Programming that are being used today. We had given lip service to unit testing in past shows, but John and Barry were able to explain the benefits as well as the how-to of test-driven developmentSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Rocky Lhotka talks about his new book, the CSLA framework, and makes the case for business objects in this world of DataSets and XML. He also talked a bit about WhiteHorse, Microsoft's new designers for SOA and classes shipping in the Whidbey timeframe. This was a great show, and we're always glad to talk to Rocky about all things .NET.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

In this, our first show after a much-needed vacation, we take you to TechEd 2004 in San Diego. We walked around on the show floor and talked to some of our former and future guests about TechEd, what's new, and what they're interested in.We recorded most of this show on video, and as such will be airing ".NET Rocks! The Movie" as soon as we possibly can. Until then, enjoy some of the more interesting sonic tidbits of the film.In the first half we spoke to Tim Huckaby, Keith Nicholson, Billy Hollis, Don Kiely, Stephen Forte, Don Box, and Jon Lam.In the second half, we spent about 40 minutes in an INETA Birds Of a Feather (BOF) Session that we recorded Sunday night, in which Bob Reselman showed up and got things juiced up. There is also a lot of obvious interest in the Visual Studio Team System, which was announced at TechEd. We spoke with Paul Sheriff, Brian Noyes, and Chris Kinsman about their impressions of the Team System, and then we caught up with some Microsft team members to talk about it.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

What started out as a show about the DevConnections Developer Conference morphed into a round-table chat with Dan Appleman, Kathleen Dollard, Mark Dunn, Don Kiely, Robert Scoble, Chris Sells, and Bill Vaughn about developer conferences like DevConnections, writing books, speaking, and various other aspects of the industry. Of course, it was lots of fun too.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Rory chat with noted author, developer, and MVP Kathleen Dollard about Code Generation, or writing code that writes code. Don Kiely also shows up to talk about working with Kathleen on her book Code Generation in .NET. Carl and Rory also check in with Sunny Day to talk about the price of gasoline in Maine.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Rory somehow convinced DonXML to drive up to the .NET Rocks! Studios for our first Thursday-night live show.Don Demsak (a.k.a. DonXML) is all about XML and related technologies, and as such he told us Why XML? for the as-of-yet unbeliever. Other topics include what the community gets wrong with XML, what's wrong with typed datasets, Object Constraint Language (OCL), what's wrong with the XML DOM, declarative programming and XAML, and SVG.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

In the first hour Vic Gundotra and Steve Cellini from Microsoft talk about Longhorn and Evangelism at Microsoft. Evangelists are concerned with getting technical information to the developer community. During the break, Rory interviews the MSDN Channel 9 team about Channel 9After the break, Lenn Pryor and some of the Channel 9 team join Carl and Rory for more talk about Longhorn and Microsoft's efforts to get technical information to developers everywhere.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

This show is all about architecture from Why to How. Keith and Harry bring the developer's and architect's perspective to the discussion, respectively. The discussion starts with the importance of good design and architecture, to techniques, tools, standards, and the like.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

This week's guest is Bob Reselman , author of Coding Slave, a book that claims the software industry doesn't want you to read it. We'll be talking about software, outsourcing, technology, and of course - the book.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Tony Bain talks with Rory and Chris Sells about the issues developers face when building SQL Server based applications. Topics include optimization strategies and tools, how DBAs can help, transaction and concurrency control, locking, isolation levels, good database design, and good strategies for accessing SQL from Visual Studio.NETSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Markus Egger of CoDe Magazine and EPS Software fame joins Carl and Rory this week to talk about OOP, Windows Forms, Visual Inheritance, and Tablet PC development.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Jon Box and Dan Fox are on the show this week talking about smart devices, the Compact Framework, and their book, "Building Solutions with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework"Even if you are not currently developing for smart devices, this show is worth the listen. Jon and Dan talk about smart device past, present, and future, and offer real insights into and development strategies for development with the .NET Compact Framework.Topics include pInvoke, memory usage, UI design, storage, local file access, synchronization, asynchronous programming, and more.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Chris Flores, Jay Roxe, and Brian Goldfarb from Microsoft tell developers what they can expect from DevDays, a one-day conference in your local area hosted by Microsoft and your local Regional Director. For about a hundred bucks you can get the PDC build of Whidbey and some incredible sample code that you can use right away to build and secure smart client and ASP.NET applications.1 HourSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Rory talk with Kevin about ObjectSpaces (a new business object management tool coming in the Whidbey timeframe), UML, Object Role Modeling (ORM), Visio, and his Mere Mortals Framework, an application framework for .NET developers based on best practices and patterns. This is a good show for anyone interested in using patterns and practices, maximizing development time, and tools the help you design and build business objects.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

This week, Carl and Rory talk with noted ADO and ADO.NET guru Carl Prothman about ASP.NET, being an MVP, INETA, ADO.NET, ASP.NET Security and Visual Studio.NET. There were lots of callers during the show. This may be the best show we've ever done on ADO and ADO.NET issues. CP also talked about how to prevent the most common types of ASP.NET attacks.Regular segments: Fan mail, Google Weirdos, Linux Vulnerability of the week, and a lucky listener wins a copy of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise with 25 licenses compliments of the Microsoft Regional Director ProgramRory also unleashed some of his own music during the intermission! All in all, this is a very informative and lively show.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Ted Neward and Bruce Tate talk about the relationship between Java and .NET, underscoring the issues with interop between the two platforms. Also discussed: cultural differences between the Java and .NET communities, the Pet Store Benchmark, the Jump Toolkit and J#, Naked Objects, unit testing, refactoring, the Standard Widget Toolkit, Mono, Rotor, Java on the client vs on the server, Swing, Sun vs Microsoft ideology, rabid zealotry in the Java community, languages vs platforms, open source, and the future of Java IDEs.Dan Appleman stopped by to talk about languages and what's new at Desaware.As always, Rory does Google Weirdos, and Carl exposes the Linux Vulnerability of the WeekSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

He's back and he's pissed! Not really, but we've always wanted to say that. Scott Hanselman talks with Carl and Rory about the following:* ASP.NET* Declarative Programming* "Word Documents have no teeth"* Client Side Validation* Code Generation - CodeSmith* Caching* Performance Counters in ASP.NET* Perf Testing* "A caste system for APIs"* other ideas: blogging trends, usenet, google, toolbars, future interfaces, * where he's speaking this quarter....* DevDays* WhidbeySupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

In this, the second installment in our ongoing ".NET Success Stories" series, Carl talks with Jesse Ezell and Chris Kinsman about projects they have developed and successfully deployed with Microsoft .NET languages, tools, and technologies.Chris talks about a huge project done for an insurance company that successfully uses ASP.NET and Windows Forms with autodeployment. As well, he talks about some applications he wrote for slot machine management at a casino.In the second half, Jesse Ezell discusses an application he helped develop for Articulate Software that utilizes Flash as a server application to convert Powerpoint presentations to Flash.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Chris Sells and Rory Blyth interview Carl about communications programming (serial, sockets, and MIDI), teaching, and the meaning of life. It's a fun and informative show, that you shouldn't miss.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Hey, it's our first Live .NET Rocks! Show EVER! Oh yeah, we recorded a show live at the PDC, but we didn't broadcast it live! What's more, Carl's co-host is none-other than the infamous Rory BlythThis show is 2 hours long, and commenced Friday, January 30, 2004 at 12PM EST, 9AM PST. In the first hour, Bill Vaughn and Peter Blackburn talk about SQL Reporting Services, Microsoft's foray into the data reporting market.In the second hour, Carl and Rory welcome noted VB and PC guru Dan Appleman to talk about marketing hype, how developers are spending their time, and his new book Always Use ProtectionRory is moving to New London March 1st. So, the new live show format will commence March 5th, and will be only format for .NET Rocks! going forward. Remember! Friday's at Noon Eastern!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

In our first post-Mark show, Carl interviews developer and author Brian Noyes. Brian has focused his studies and development efforts on Smart Client development, and in this interview brings us from AutoDeployment of Windows Forms applications into ClickOnce, the next-generation deployment and update technology from Microsoft that will ship with the .NET Framework 2.0. We talk about the issues around AutoDeployment, and how Microsoft is addressing those issues with ClickOnce.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

In this, Mark's last show, Carl and Mark welcome Rory Blyth, who writes a very popular blog at neopoleon.com. Rory's blog has become well known at Microsoft and in the .NET blogsphere in general.Rory talks about the .NET community and the Open Source Software (OSS) community, writing, blogging, driving to the PDC from Las Vegas, Longhorn, and lots of other great stuff. This one is not to be missed!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Mark have a chat with Sam Gentile (pronounced gen-TILL-ee) about sci-fi authors, COM Interop's problems, Extreme Programming, dual programming, unit testing, Sam's thoughts on the state of the .NET Framework, Groove, what's wrong with Com Interop, the cross-platform potential of the .NET Framework, the CLI, Rotor and Mono.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Mark have a chat with the one and only Don Box about SOAP, WSE, Longhorn, Indigo, COM, the PDC, Band on the Runtime, and the meaning of life. Don reveals a few gems about Indigo, and talks about the ways in which Indigo makes web services better.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Mark talk to Robert about the new Visual Studio Tools for Office, VBA, XML, Office and DataSets, Scripting, and using Word and Excel as the User Interface layer for your .NET framework applications. Robert also talks about some features of up-coming versions of these tools in the Whidbey timeframe. This is great stuff! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl talks with pat about Security, from the general concepts to the practical tips and in between. Pat draws on his millitary background to render a keen understanding of how to secure today's complex systems. You will pick up some great tips, and hopefully start thinking of security issues in your everyday development efforts after listening to this show. Pat Rocks! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

A new episodeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Mark talk to Robert about Blogging, Longhorn, and the PDC. Lots of great stories, blogging for dummies, and a sneak peak at what happened at the PDC. They also talk about security, and Merrill Lynch's open letter to Sun, among other things. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Mark chat with Scott about the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 (code-named Whidbey). Scott's keen understanding of the high and low-level features of Whidbey, Yukon, and IIS 6.0 really shine through in this interview where the topics include performance, caching and cache dependency, VS.NET tools, data access, using Yukon with ASP.NET 2.0, sharing session state, backward-compatibility, and code enhancements as well as a time-frame for when to expect alphas, betas, and the like.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

This week Carl and Mark throw down a few pints at the historic Dutch Tavern in downtown New London, CT and you're invited! Listen to stories from their recent week of teaching a VB.NET class to 27 people, challenging code puzzles, interesting characters, and of course, beer.This is a very relaxed show, but don't think you won't learn a thing or two. C'mon! Just have one more Black and Tan! Note: The show starts out a bit noisy, then gets better. There were some rowdy people in there when we first started recording, and they left shortly afterwords.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

This is a rare opportunity to have a conversation with people at Microsoft who are so closely tied to VB and VB.NET. They talked about new features in Whidbey, the next version of Visual Basic expected out in 2004 sometime, including some features that nobody knows about outside of the Alpha program! You'll have to listen to find out what they are!Carl and Mark talked about the things they like and have disliked about VB in the past, and how VB.NET has really brought the language to the forefront of the serious development community. As well, they ask some interesting questions like, "what parts of the .NET Framework were written in VB.NET" and other goodies. There are plenty of laughs as well. If you're a VB programmer, you've got to hear this! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Her area of expertise is (obviously) the ASP.NET DataGrid. She talks with Mark and Carl about various aspects of the DataGrid. She talks about common mistakes, common solutions, workarounds, what is it best suited for, what is it not suited well for, etc. Marcie also talks about Inheritance and web controls, managing viewstate, custom columns, blogging, and some of her favorite books on ASP.NETSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Mark and Carl talk with Brent about intellectual property, namely assembly and application obfuscation: techniques used, and the resultant binaries. They also talk about Remoting and get Brent's take on the value of Remoting. But the big gem in this show, we think, is Brent's 5-minute description of how Code Access Security works, which we immediately recognize as something very special. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

This week, Carl and Mark talk to Juval Lowy about, among other things, the new version of C# (2.0). Of the new features, Juval's favorite is Generics. Generics allow you to define data structures without committing to actual data types. This results with significant performance boost, higher quality code and faster development, because you get to reuse data processing algorithms without duplicating type-specific codeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

This week Carl and Mark got to do a show they've been waiting for a long time to do. The conversation touches on the new application blocks (bluebricks - from the MS Patterns and Practices Group), string handling, using the BitConverter class for fast file i/o, serialization, XMLDataDocuments and XSLT, inheritance, instrumentation, the ASP.NET Cache object, and some great stories from the trenches, especially Mark's great training stories which always contain an array of shady characters and companies. All in all, its an hour well spent for .NET developersSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl engaged Matthew in a lively discussion about his incredible website (.NET 24/7) which provides instant gratification for help on any of the classes in the .NET framework in the form of links to published articles, newsgroup discussions, and blog entries. Matthew is a big fan of weblogs, which he discusses in the interview. They also talked about the C# vs. VB.NET issue, and other issues associated with particular languages. As well, the conversation touched on the next versions of the framework and VS.NET. Matthew is happy to receive comments or feedback on any topic via his webblog at weblogs.asp.net. Please don't send us email about the poor quality of the audio. The source recording was not good, and we have made it as good as it can be.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Tim talks about projects, demos, info-path, drinking water out of a vodka bottle, VS Tools for Office, Speaking at Tech-Ed, smart clients and all the stuff he learned working at Microsoft in Redmond.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

The International .NET Association (INETA) provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoftr .NET user groups. INETA's mission is to offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsofts .NET technologies. INETA welcomes all facets of the .NET user community, from developers and architects to project managers and IT professionals. Members can be user groups or special interest groups that:Focus on a single aspect of .NET, such as VB.NET, C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, etc. Target the entire .NET platform Concentrate on other technologies but are also interested in .NET INETA is the next evolution in user group communities - a non-profit, independent organization, chartered with supporting all user groups interested in the Microsoft .NET platform. INETA is run by a board of user group leaders, elected by their peers, and supported by Microsoft Corporation and other sponsors.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

This show is a lively and candid conversation with three members of the Microsoft .NET Evangelism team. In this episode Mark takes a break to enjoy his sons last baseball game of the season. Carl talks to the team about what they do and how their efforts impact the quality of the framework and developer tools in general. Get a behind-the-scenes look at the daily operations of the .NET Evangelism team and how it operates. Other topics include companies that Microsoft has worked with as early adopters, Visual Basic.NET vs C#, why Regional Directors are so special (grin), why web services are the new focus of the .NET moniker and why it gives developers severe acid reflux, why developers are still stuck on nanosecond-level performance differences, differences between DevDays; Tech-Ed; and the Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Fascinating stuff. Also, Carl plays a wicked cool guitar piece in lieu of the first ad spot!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Chris talks with Carl and Mark about Longhorn, Working at Microsoft, his book with Don Box, his new Windows Forms book, dealing with Printer Margins, passing command-line arguments to auto-deployed applications, linking assemblies, the new Matrix movie, whats new in Ghengis, and answers the age old question "to GAC or not to GAC?"Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Mark talk to Jorge about how developers think, their approach to problem solving, how Microsoft makes development too easy sometimes, and about how developers think of their role in their companies. This is a fun interview. We even got to talk about music (Jorge is a bass player) and booze (of course!) in PeruSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl caught up with Ingo at the New Orleans Hilton during DevConnections, a conference where they were both speaking. Carl and ingo talk all about .NET Remoting, and Ingo shares some critical insights that come from his experiences with Remoting.Ingo also talks about the new WSE (Web Service Extentions). Nicolas Landry stops by and talks about his experiences at DevConnections, Java compatibility with SOAP, SmartPhones, and other intersting tidbits.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Russ talks with us about the Windows Server 2003 and Visual Studio.NET 2003 launch (recorded the same day), what's new in VS.NET 2003, upgrading, and what's new in the New England districtSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

He talks with us about the current blocks available, for ADO.NET and Exception Handling, and also gives us a sneak peek at the next bluebricks coming down the road, including a User Interface facade layer, an application updater (using the BITS Background Internet Transfer Service), and a Configuration Manager block for dealing with config files, including code for persisting connection strings. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Dino shares some valuable tips and insights into the innerworkings of ASP.NET security, IIS Impersonation, how VIEWSTATE is encoded, the serialization engine, how to store encrypted values in the registry, inline code vs. CodeBehind, and Italian Rock bands. We also learn that Dino has an extreme distaste for barbeque. Dino shares some topics of some of his best articles, including an ASP.NET control that generates a bar chart with pure html tables. He talks about one of the talks that he'll be doing at DevConnections in which he shows you how to write Plug-ins that users can add into your applications. He also talked about his new 1000-page book, Programming Microsoft ASP.NET Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Paul talks with Mark and Carl about ASP.NET performance tuning, tips, viewstate info, smart navigation, layout mode and more, and Paul shares some great insights and stories from the field. Lots of great tips and information here. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Mark talk to Andrew about data binding, data adapters, connected and dis-connected models, stored procedures, performance and encapsulation.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Carl and Mark talk with Ethan and Bob about the Good Old Days of the BASIC language, and some of their experiences early on in the first days of the industry, as well as PowerBASIC past, present, and future, crazy tech-support calls, and other stories.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations

Stephen talks about the International .NET Association (INETA - www.ineta.org), relates his .NET success stories, and talks about design patterns, COM Interop, Performance Anxiety, ASP.NET Forms Authentication, ViewState, Caching, and the DataGrid control. The DataGrid Girl (www.datagridgirl.com) calls and yaks with Carl, Mark, and Stephen about the ASP.NET DataGrid. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/net-rocks/donations