Status Report - March 28, 2002

Well, I’m in my new office – not unpacked, but why should it be any different than my new abode? <g>

1. The VB Community intranet is going live this Friday (tomorrow as I post this). It will include links to public threads of interest, auto-sign ups for chats, metrics on how we’re doing, etc.

2. I held a brown bag lunch for the VB team here that focused on community efforts. The results included a number of volunteers for chats and a discussion about how to balance time working on new features with time on newsgroups, speaking at user groups, etc. The current idea is to let people go on as often as they can – and I ask you to please be nice if people come in and then go away as they get busy on a key feature, or whatever. I’m hoping to get everyone to commit to get into some community activity on a regular basis. I’ll still be around pretty much every day. One exciting outcome is that Rob Copeland, our Product Unit Manager has committed to being online once a week to read and respond to threads of interest. Please, again, understand if he can only be on that once a week. <g>

3. Plans continue for the VB.NET 3rd party site. The budget has been set. I’m working on getting the resources I need.

One other note – I’m in a week-long training class next week, so I don’t know how much movement will happen on various fronts. I’m also finalizing my conference plans for this month, so I may (*may*) be at Tech Ed in 2 weeks.

-yag


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


Becoming a Help Power User
Tuesday, April 2, 2002, 12:00 - 1:00 P.M. Pacific Time (21:00 - 22:00 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.


Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect Tools
Tuesday, April 2, 2002, 2:00 - 3:00 P.M. Pacific time (23:00 - 24:00 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.

Consuming Web Services in VB.NET
Tuesday, April 9, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

VB .NET makes it easy to consume web services. This session will focus on how to consume them and the security issues involved.


Creating Multithreaded Applications with Visual Basic .NET
Tuesday, April 16, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

This session will discuss how you can use multithreading techniques to
improve the performance and responsiveness of Visual Basic .NET
applications.

Whitepaper: Multithreaded Programming with Visual Basic .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechar
t/html/vbtchasyncprocvb.asp



Emulating Control Arrays
Tuesday, April 23, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

While this session will initially cover material in the Creating Control
Arrays in Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET whitepaper, please feel free
to ask any questions you have relating to collections, event handlers, and
delegates.

Whitepaper: Creating Control Arrays in Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechar
t/html/vbtchcreatingcontrolarraysinvisualbasicnetvisualcnet.asp



Working With Data at Design Time in Visual Studio .NET
Tuesday, April 30, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Talk about the tools available at design time for incorporating data access
into your Visual Basic or Visual C# application, as well as working with
your database from within the Visual Studio Environment (IDE).

Whitepaper: Design-Time Data Tools in Visual Studio .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechar
t/html/vbtchDesignTimeDataToolsInVisualStudioNET.asp?frame=true




Exception Handling in Visual Basic .NET
Tuesday, May 7, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Join us for a chat covering the things to keep in mind and best practices of
exception handling in Visual Basic .NET applications.

Whitepaper: Introduction to Exception Handling in Visual Basic .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechar
t/html/vbtchexceptionserrorsinvisualbasicnet.asp



Deploying Visual Studio .NET Applications
Tuesday, May 14, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Join Microsoft in an online chat about the brave new world of deployment
using Visual Studio .NET. This session will use the "Deployment Changes in
Visual Basic .NET" whitepaper as a starting point; please feel free to ask
any deployment questions that you may have.

Whitepaper: Deployment Changes in Visual Basic .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechar
t/html/vbtchdistributingapplicationscreatedwithvisualbasicnet.asp


White Papers

How-To: Use the DialogResult Property
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q315711&SD=MSDN
This article demonstrates how to use the DialogResult property in Windows Forms. You can use the DialogResult property to create dialog boxes in Windows applications.

How-To: Use COM+ Transactions in a Visual Basic .NET Component
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q315707&SD=MSDN
This step-by-step article shows how to use COM+ (Component Services) transactions in a Visual Basic .NET class. A set of database operations is considered as one unit. The operations either all succeed, or, if one operation fails, the entire transaction fails. In the latter case, any database operations that were attempted are not posted to the underlying database.

How-To: Use ADO Recordsets in Visual Basic .NET
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q315974&SD=MSDN
This article explains how to create a small console application that uses COM Interop to create an earlier version (legacy) ADO RecordSet, convert it to an ADO.NET DataSet, and then display the record count. You will see how easy it is to use COM components from within Microsoft Visual Studio .NET.