Status Report – February 7, 2002

Lots of goings on this week – including more white papers, newsgroup blasts, and an introduction…

1. I’ve mentioned the past few weeks that we’re hoping to standardize chats – well, looks like we’ll be having a weekly chat (probably Tuesday at 1pm starting on March 19). We’ll be focusing on various topics of interest to the VB developer – let us know if you have any ideas. See below for the first few chats that have been arranged already… We’re going to have a few different types of chats – some will be based on whitepapers, some will be ad-hoc as folks (both outside and inside of MS) request specific topics.

2. We had our first Newsgroup blast this week – 14 of us got together over lunch and we went thru Microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb answering a number of the questions that were posted. We hope to turn this into a regular thing – with folks from the team available to answer questions. Please note that folks are really busy working on products, so (other than me) they may only be able to get online every once in a while (besides the newsgroup blasts), but we’re gonna try to have more people online.

3. Down the road we’re planning to introduce topical blasts – where we answer questions on a pre-posted topic. This will probably have to wait a month (more on this later).

4. Look for a message from Megan Shult – a documentation manager in our UE group. She’s going to be asking for feedback on how the help system can be improved.


I also want to let you know what’s going on with me and my life over the next few weeks… I’ll be at VSLive! next week – I’ll be in customer meetings and in the VB.NET area on the show floor – COME BY AND SAY HELLO! <g>

After VSLive!, I’ll be heading out of the country for around three weeks (till March 8) – basically going to see my new godson (friend in Paris just had his first kid), and then to Israel to surprise my father for his 70th birthday. So, I won’t be online too much the next month or so.

However, this gives me a great chance to introduce y’all to Seth Grossman, a programmer/writer in our User Education group. He’s going to be handling a bunch of stuff while I’m gone – including these status reports, and making sure the chats and newsgroup blasts keep on truckin’. <g>

Hope to see y’all in San Francisco!



-yag





Upcoming chats (http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats):

Windows Forms
Tuesday, February 12, 2002, 1:00 – 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 – 22:00 GMT)
While this session will initially cover the material in the "Essential Code for Windows Forms Dialog Boxes", "Shaped Windows Forms and Controls in Visual Studio .NET", and "Using Windows XP Visual Styles With Controls on Windows Forms" whitepapers, please feel free to ask any Windows Forms-related questions you may have.


Executive Chat with Jim Allchin: Visual Studio .NET
Tuesday, February 12, 2002, 3:00 – 4:00 P.M. Pacific time (23:00 – 24:00 GMT)
Visual Studio .NET is the comprehensive tool for rapidly building and integrating XML Web services and applications, dramatically increasing developer productivity and enabling new business opportunities. Talk to Jim Allchin, Microsoft Group Vice President, about how Visual Studio .NET improves developer productivity and enables new business opportunities.


Get Into the Visual Studio .NET Integrated Development Environment
Wednesday, February 13, 2002, 4:00 – 5:00 P.M. Pacific time (24:00 – 1:00 GMT)
Visual Studio .NET provides a single shared integrated development environment (IDE) to improve developer productivity and to provide an extensible foundation for 3rd party .NET languages and tools. In this session Doug Hodges, Software Architect for the IDE, will be available to answer your questions and provide tips and tricks for improving your development productivity.



Executive Chat with Eric Rudder: Global XML Web Services Architecture
Monday, February 18, 2002, 4:00 – 5:00 P.M. Pacific time (24:00 – 1:00 GMT)
The Global XML Web Services Architecture (GXA) provides principles, specifications and guidelines for advancing today’s XML Web services standards. This allows XML Web services to address more sophisticated and complex tasks in standard ways. Through the GXA, XML Web services will continue to advance while remaining the interoperable fabric of application internetworking. Microsoft Senior Vice President Eric Rudder will be available to answer your questions about the GXA and what it means for XML Web services.



Executive Chat with Yuval Neeman: Enterprise Development
Wednesday, February 20, 2002, 3:00 – 4:00 P.M. Pacific time (23:00 – 24:00 GMT)
Enterprise product development, in many ways, is very similar to traditional development. However, enterprise customers tend to be very systematic as opposed to opportunistic in their approach to building applications. Successfully building complex enterprise applications requires a solid architecture and a common understanding of requirements across the development team. Talk to Yuval Neeman, Microsoft Vice President, about Enterprise development challenges today and how Visual Studio .NET Enterprise toolset addresses some of these challenges including design, development, deployment and security.



Programmatically creating web server control templates
Tuesday, March 12, 2002, 2:00 – 3:00 P.M. Pacific Time (22:00 – 23:00 GMT)
This is a follow on to the white paper located at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vbvcstechart/html/vbtchCreatingWebServerControlTemplatesProgrammatically.asp and will focus on your questions about creating web server control templates.



Becoming a Help Power User
Tuesday, March 12, 2002, 2:00 – 3:00 P.M. Pacific Time (22:00 – 23:00 GMT)
There is a lot of great material in the Visual Studio help file. This session will cover various tips and tricks for getting the most out of it and will collect your feedback on the help system.



DataGrid Web Server Control
Tuesday, March 19, 2002, 1:00 – 2:00 P.M. Pacific Time (22:00 – 23:00 GMT)
This chat is a follow up to the white paper located at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vbvcstechart/html/vbtchTopQuestionsAboutASPNETDataGridServerControl.aspand will focus on your questions about the DataGrid Web Server Control.



Working with Single File Web Form Pages
Tuesday, March 26, 2002, 1:00 – 2:00 P.M. Pacific Time (22:00 – 23:00 GMT)
This chat is a follow up to the white paper located at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vstchWorkingWithSingle-FileWebFormsPagesInVisualStudio.asp and will answer questions about how to work with single-file pages in Visual Studio, and how to convert single-file Web Forms pages to code-behind Web Forms pages.



Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect Tools
Tuesday, April 2, 2002, 2:00 – 3:00 P.M. Pacific time (22:00 – 23:00 GMT)
Successfully building complex enterprise applications requires a solid architecture and a common understanding of requirements across the development team. The role of an architect is typically to help their organizations build applications that scale, integrate with existing systems, fulfill business requirements, and be maintainable over multiple versions of the product. In this session, Keith Short, Software Architect for enterprise features within Visual Studio will answer your questions about the tools Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect provides for architects to build enterprise applications in a systematic, repeatable and predictable manner.



White Papers released this week – available from http://msdn.microsoft.com/net/guide/ (dates after the title are tentative chat dates):

XML Web Services Technology Map
The XML Web Services technology map is your guide to getting started with the new Microsoft® .NET technologies for Web services development. Microsoft ASP.NET (part of the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK), ATL Server, and .NET Remoting provide the ability for developers to create and use Web services based on their past programming experience. ATL/C++ developers get a big boost from ATL Server. Developers with experience in Web development will find ASP.NET to be a familiar environment. For those of you who need the functionality provided by COM+, you have .NET Remoting.



Getting Started with XML Web Services in Visual Studio .NET
Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET and XML Web services provide a simple, flexible, standards-based model that allows developers to assemble applications regardless of the platform, programming language, or object model. This article will help you get started creating and accessing XML Web services with Visual Studio .NET.



Using Web Services Instead of DCOM
This document examines the advantages of using XML Web services over DCOM and demonstrates how to implement an XML Web service and consume it with a Microsoft .NET client application.



Comparing System.Xml in Visual Studio .NET to Microsoft.XMLDOM in Visual Studio 6.0
Describes the DOM parser in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and how to work with XML documents within the Microsoft .NET Framework. This article also explains the differences between the Visual Studio .NET DOM parser and Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Microsoft.XMLDOM.


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Yair Alan Griver
Lead PM/Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.