2009
06.18

The Talk

The development of components for use in SharePoint is a complex process, and often seems to fly in the face of what is considered good development practice in a Test Driven Development world.

In this session Richard will show how using some good design practices and tools such as Typemock Isolator you can develop testable components for Sharepoint without even having to have Sharepoint on your development PC.

Speaker Biography

Richard is the Engineering Director of Black Marble Ltd a Microsoft Gold Partner based in the North of England. Black Marble specialises in BizTalk & SharePoint based business automation. As Engineering Director Richard is responsible for the delivery of systems and tools to allow the company, and their clients, to deliver solutions efficiently. All Black Mable’s development activity is underpinned by Team System using Scrum as a process model. Richard is a Certified Scrum Master. Richard is a regular presenter at community events in the UK and Ireland (and the rest of the world given a chance) where his most common subject is software testing and development process.

Agenda

  • 18:30 Doors Open & Refreshments
  • 19:00 Welcome
  • 19:10 Developer Testing for Sharepoint (Part 1)
  • 20:10 Break
  • 20:20 Developer Testing for Sharepoint (Part 2)
  • 20:50 Feedback and Prizes
  • 21:00 Close and Repair to the Bar

Venue

We are meeting the the Broker Suite at the Ramada Jarvis Glasgow City Hotel at 201 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1DQ.

More Info

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/359662761

2009
06.18

Session details

Decades after object orientation design altered programming, it’s still evolving, and we’re still learning to use it better. Many changes in the tools we use and how we write applications affect the approach we take to OOD. Some of these changes relate to architecture where new approaches like SOA and the layering revolution behind Silverlight alter the place of traditional OOD within the bigger picture of architecture. Other changes are language improvements that alter the very meaning of the phrase “object” from a design point of view. While touching on architecture, this talk focuses primarily on the effect of language features like generics, extension methods, delegates/lambda expressions, partial classes/methods, reflection, anonymous types, and declarative programming. I’ll the growing role of interfaces as a contractual base in block based development and show a roll your own example of dependency injection so you understand this basic technique more often accessed through a tool. You’ll come away ready to leverage new features while retaining solid overall design.

Speaker Biography

Kathleen is the Chief Technologist for AppVenture (www.appventure.com) where she leads the application generation efforts. She has been a Microsoft MVP for 11 years and is a member of the INETA Speaker’s Bureau. Kathleen has worked extensively with application code generation and is the author of Code Generation in Microsoft .NET (from Apress). She has published numerous articles on a range of .NET technologies and writes the monthly column “Ask Kathleen” in Visual Studio Magazine (www.visualstudiomagazine.com). Kathleen is also active in the Northern Colorado .NET SIG, Denver Visual Studio User Group, Northern Colorado Architect’s Group, and IASA Denver.

Venue

We will be meeting at the offices of Baillie Gifford & Co, Calton Square, 1 Greenside Row, Edinburgh.

Agenda

18:30 Doors open
19:00 Introduction
19:10 Rethinking Object Orientation
20:00 Break
20:10 Rethinking Object Orientation
20:50 Fill in feedback & Prizes
21:00 End

More Info

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/309237939/

2009
06.18

Kathleen Dollard will be talking about the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) and the Managed Add-in Framework (MAF)

Talk Description

Decoupling portions of your application has tremendous payback during both development and maintenance. Your application becomes more testable and flexible and can more easily evolve to meet changing demands. Decoupling your application also allows a new level of partnership with external groups because you can safely incorporate their code in your application without recompiling or releasing source code. Microsoft has exposed different provider models in many areas of the framework and libraries, and this year has moved toward consolidating its efforts at decoupling with the Managed Extensibility Framework, or MEF. This tool differs from an IoC container because its focused directly at simplifying the extension of applications and focuses at extensibility, discover, and composition. The underlying engine can support Microsoft efforts like Visual Studio and your own applications. MEF comes up short when you encounter isolation and versioning issues, such as wanting that external code to run in its own AppDomain. The Managed Add-In Framework, or MAF, focuses on these problems and the significant complexity they bring with System.AddIn namespace of .NET 3.5. You’ll learn more about architecting applications in pieces and the sweet spot of using MEF and MEF together. You’ll leave ready to evaluate the role of MEF and MAF in your applications.

Speaker Biography

Kathleen Dollard is the Chief Technologist for AppVenture (www.appventure.com) where she leads the application generation efforts. She has been a Microsoft MVP for 11 years and is a member of the INETA Speaker’s Bureau. Kathleen has worked extensively with application code generation and is the author of Code Generation in Microsoft .NET (from Apress). She has published numerous articles on a range of .NET technologies and writes the monthly column “Ask Kathleen” in Visual Studio Magazine (www.visualstudiomagazine.com). Kathleen is also active in the Northern Colorado .NET SIG, Denver Visual Studio User Group, Northern Colorado Architect’s Group, and IASA Denver.

Agenda

  • 18:00 Doors Open
  • 18:30 Welcome
  • 18:40 Your Application in Pieces – MEF and MAF (part 1)
  • 19:30 Break
  • 19:40 Your Application in Pieces – MEF and MAF (part 2)
  • 20:20 Feedback and Prizes
  • 20:30 Pub (back bar at Waxy O’Connor’s on West George Street)

Venue

Room M126 of the George Moore Building at Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow G4 0BA

More Info

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/202772498/

2009
06.18

Our first proper event, An Evening of O/RM, sold out in 3 days!  I’m really chuffed that there was such a great response and would like to take this chance to thank Mike Perrin and everyone else at ScottLogic for supplying the venue!

It appears there might more standing room if anyone missed getting a spot and would like to come along.  If you are interested, please leave a comment or send me tweet, @chriscanal

It should be an awesome evening, I’m excited to see what Paul and Colin have to say, and I hope everyone leaves with a good impression of how they can get up and running with NHibernate quickly and easily.

2009
06.11

O/RMs help us bridge the gap between the database and the code base we love to write. On the night we will be looking at two O/RMs, NHibernate the most mature O/RM in the Alt.Net space and Microsoft’s recently released Enitiy Framework, the young pretender to the O/RM thrown.

ScottLogic, a leading financial software and consultancy company based in Edinburgh, have been kind enough to offer the use of their premises for an evening of O/RM knowlege sharing and dicussion.  The event will take place on 2nd of July at 7pm, 17 Gayfield Square Edinburgh EH1 3NX.  All are welcome!

The agenda for the evening is as follows:

7.00 – 7.30 Paul Cowan – An Introuction to NHibernate
7.30 – 8.00 Chris Canal – FluentNHibernate
8.00 – 8.10 Break
8.10 – 8.40 Colin Gemmell – NHibernate vs Entity Framework – which is best?

After the meeting we will retire for a beer and some heated discussion.  If you are planning to attend, please let us know by registering at the Scot Alt.Net Edinburgh EventBrite page (http://altdotnetedinburgh.eventbrite.com/).

About the speakers

Paul Cowan has recently started his own business Cutting-Edge Solutions.  He is a keen advocate of iterative development, test driven development, continuous integration and modern techniques.  Paul is a regular committer to the horn open source project.  He recently gave a presentation on horn at the Dsl DevCon at Microsoft in Seattle.  You can follow his blog here.

Chris Canal has worked at a Web Developer for the past 7 years. Starting with procedural languages like ASP and PHP, he quickly moved onto the .NET Platform when first released. A great believer is continual–improvement, Chris is constantly looking for new technologies, tools and methodologies that will help in creating robust and maintainable software applications. Having felt the pain of using Microsoft “Demoware”, Chris has become an active member of the Scottish Alt.Net Community to share his findings and ideas with like-minded developers.

Colin Gemmel is a Web/Application Developer working in the Medical Faculty of Glasgow University for the past 3 years. An avid follower of agile principles and practices he is always happy to pass on his views of software development to anyone that will listen. Colin is also a regular participant of the Scottish Alt.Net Community