Jim Zimmerman - ASP.NET, MVC, Ajax and ORM

I am going to be doing a user group talk on January 28th 2008.  You will learn and see demos of some new data scenarios including MVC, ADO.NET Data Services, Dynamic data and the Entity Framework along with new Ajax history support and Silverlight controls for ASP.NET using the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview.  This release provides new features for ASP.NET 3.5 and ADO.NET in VS 2008.

Here are some good resources that you can tap into now and learn why this new stuff is so so cool.

• ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview
• ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Demos

I really hope that David Hayden shows up to keep me honest.  He is having also putting on an event called "Day of Patterns and Practices" on January 31st.  http://www.pnpguidance.net/  It should be a great event!

So I have had some sort of MP3 player since 2000 when I got my 6 GB hard drive creative mp3 player which looked like a cd player and hacked it to use a 20 GB hard drive.  So you could call me a veteran of MP3 players.  I used to download from Napster back in 2000 and started with subscription music with Napster in 2005, funny how we come full circle.  Anyway i have not even ventured out to find music for more than 3 years because i have had a subscription.  This is where the music industry needs to go and it is shocking that Apple would not offer it.  Anyway, back to my review.

I have to admit that while I have played with IPods, I have never actually owned one.  I have used a treo 600, then a treo 700w to play all of my music for the last 3 years.  I always like the approach of using an SD card to expand my space and now have a 4 GB card that only cost $30.  I have always been able to upgrade my space on my phone and can also download broadcasts since i use Verizon broadband from my phone.  My point is that all the features you see now with the IPhone and other phones have been around for years. 

So after the 300th podcast and 2 years on my phone from dotnetrocks and hanselminutes, I got sick of answering the phone and have it interrupt my listening.  That and having to remember to download it to my SD card which connected to the phone.  That is when i knew i needed a separate player for my podcasts.  I did not want an IPod because I prefer subscription music and I wanted wireless syncing.

Well now that I have been using my Zune 2 (80 GB version) for two weeks now, I am so thankful that I have one.  I get home and put it on my A/V Dock, which is just so cool that I can have it hooked up to my stereo and TV so i can see my videos and images along with listen to great music from my nice stereo.  Also with wireless syncing, as soon as I put the Zune in the A/V Dock, It starts syncing up with my computer that has already downloaded the latest podcasts for the day.  I was amazed when I accidentally found the power of this feature when I was working on my laptop upstairs while my Zune was charging in the wall and all of a sudden the Zune software pops up and starts syncing with my Zune which is downstairs.  So cool.  I am telling you Microsoft really handed Apple something to worry about with this device and software.  I already look at the IPod Classics as old school and although the ITouch is cool, it really is not that cool with only 16 GB max, more money and no wireless syncing. 

So i must say I am somewhat biased being a Microsoft MVP, but I have been waiting for a player like this for a long time and there is nothing quite like it on the market, so let the products speak for themselves.  If you like to listen to podcasts and do not want to have to pay for each track this the obvious choice.

I was just going over to Rob Conery's blog from Subsonic and saw that ASP.NET MVC (ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions) is finally out.  http://blog.wekeroad.com/2007/12/10/aspnet-mvc-is-here-ctp/

I am so excited to play with this.  I have been reading all of ScottGu's blog lately which has many tutorials for how this stuff works.

• ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 0): What is it?
• ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 1): Building an MVC Application
• ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 2): URL Routing
• ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 3): Passing ViewData from Controllers to Views
• ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 4): Handling Form Edit and Post Scenarios

Have fun!

For those of you who have heard about the ASP.NET MVC Framework, ScottGu recently published a very nice blog post answering many of the questions about how the new MVC Framework works using a simple e-commerce storefront application as an example.  You can check out the post at http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/13/asp-net-mvc-framework-part-1.aspx

I am excited to try  this new framework and am equally as excited to see how it will work with SubSonic.  Rob Conery has a quick Webcast showing a simple example of how he was starting to use SubSonic with the new framework.  It will be very cool to see how these two fit together.

I just downloaded and am installing visual studio 2008 RTM from MSDN today.  It took a while for me to uninstall visual studio 2008 beta 2 because I had a few programs open.  My suggestion is to uninstall the software with nothing else running and walk away from your computer for a few hours.  Also I noticed that there is not the team explorer install included in the Team Suite download, so you will need to download the team explorer for 2008 here if you use TFS

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=0ed12659-3d41-4420-bbb0-a46e51bfca86&displayLang=en

I am deciding to install it and go to bed so in the morning hopefully everything installed ok.  I am installing side by side as I have had mostly good experiences with the beta 2 build on my production machine that is also running 2005.  I am so excited to use the new IDE in production as a daily tool.

I have been using SubSonic for about a year now and have used it on almost every web project I have done in the last year.  I really have been wondering recently whether or not SubSonic was going to keep going with the MVC architecture that Microsoft is currently developing.  I can't even think of creating a website without it. 

Anyway I had started to think that maybe Microsoft would eventually try to hire Rob Conery especially after they just hired Phil Haack who also helped with SubSonic.  Well it looks like Microsoft is hiring Rob Conery as he posted here:

http://blog.wekeroad.com/2007/10/26/microsoft-subsonic-and-me/

I am pretty happy about this as now I believe that SubSonic is alive and well and that it will be the convention-driven toolset for Microsoft’s new MVC framework.  I am very excited to see where this goes.

If you are all interested in learning Silverlight here in Tampa, FL, you need to come to this event on October 17th from 9 - 5 p.m.!  Check out the details and sign up here:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032354162&Culture=en-US

They are giving away an Xbox 360 elite.  I am a little upset because since I am speaking so I can't win.  Not fair!

The session I am doing is called, How to build a dynamic database driven photo slide show viewer with Silverlight 1.0.  I am adapting the Silverlight Photoviewer open source project to work with dynamic data from the database.

I just saw that they put up my first session, "High-Speed Development with the AJAX Control Toolkit" , in 3 parts on the REMIX07 Videos page.  I have not looked at it yet, but there is nothing I can really do about it if I don't like watching myself talk. 

REMIX07 has been very educational and fun.  I am about ready to go to Miguel de Icaza 's session on Moonlight, "Silverlight for Linux".  Miguel is a really cool and smart guy.  It was pretty cool to see him speak at the keynote yesterday where he showed a demo of silverlight running on his Linux box.  I think that may be the first time a Linux laptop has shared the stage with vista and mac os x machines.  Pretty cool to see!