Hello, I'm   Jason

I’m not sure who saw the post before, but Julie Lerman posted awhile back about a VB.NET Whidbey Demo Video. If you didn’t know already, VSLive! in Orlando was this past week. During VSLive!, there were some hints about Whidbey. You can read about them here. Sounds kind of interesting.

Surprisingly, week 1 is already here and gone. Overall it has been a very simple week. The ClassKnowledge app is starting to take some shape and the class will be able to fully access it by this coming Monday’s class. The app is similar to a Linux-based class management software called Moodle. I hope to clean it up and release beta 1 by Christmas.

Today I released my personal website in beta format. After the final compilation last night, it is version 0.7.4.0. I’ve included my ASP.NET Blog, my SQL Junkies Blog, my ASPAlliance Articles, and my college courses. I also listed some key partner sites that have provided me with the help or information necessary for the information. Various non-profits that I participate in are also listed there as well. If you have any insight or sites that you think I should link to, let me know.

After creating a few controls in C#, I will admit that C# does come more fluent. However, I found something in C# that I completely despise. For VB programmers that didn’t already know, C# likes everything in lowercase. There is no String, it is string. If you declare a variable as type String, you can get an error. But, there is one catch. The most used routine in all of web programming, Page_Load, is not spelled page_load. In fact, if you use page_load, the page loads, but without anything that was in your page_load. When creating a custom control then adding it to the page in code behind, it was very difficult to pick out what the issue was. I must have “combed” my code a thousand times making sure I added all child controls to the parent and then added the parent to the uc, etc. Finally it hit me. :-)

Today I was creating a custom template for a DataGrid (something I don’t do too often). I created one template and it worked just fine. On my second template I received an error:

Last night at our user group meeting, Steve Smith presented custom controls and caching. Though the group was the second smallest ever (very, very small), Steve did an excellent job of presenting and formulating his speeches around the members that were present. In my opinion, each individual that attended last night walked away with some additional knowledge. Our group looks foward to having Steve back in the future.

Also, there are a few user group updates that I have. First of all, our meetings will be switched from the last Tuesday of each month to the last Wednesday with our next meeting being on Wednesday, September 24th at 6pm. Secondly, our site has been fully switched over to our new ISP. Also, sometime in the next week or two, I am going to convert the site from the old beta version of the StarterKit to the most recent version.

I recently received word from our CIO that he would like to implement an enterprise portal company wide. We currently have an in house helpdesk system that tracks technology issues and inventory. However, we are attempting to decide whether to develop in house or to choose a canned package. Let me know what you think. Vote here:

.Net Valley Meeting

When: Tonight 6-8pm Where: Waterfront Banquet & Convention Center, Wilkes-Barre PA Who: Anyone who wants to attend Sponsor: International .NET Association (INETA) Speaker: Steven A. Smith (http://www.dotnetvalley.com/Speakers/169.aspx) Cost: Free!

.Net Valley will be hosting its next event at the Waterfront Banquet & Convention Center. There will be plenty of swag to hand out including Books, Software, and more! The first topic of the night will be covering “Custom Controls.” The second topic of the night will be covering “Caching.” If there are any questions regarding the meeting, please contact Jason at jgaylord@aspalliance.com. More information about this event can be found at http://www.dotnetvalley.com/Events/160.aspx.

If you plan on attending, please sign up online by noon on August 26th. Sign-ups can be taken at http://www.dotnetvalley.com/Discussion/General+Discussion/161.aspx.

One of the magazines I receive called Application Development Trends (www.adtmag.com), had an article written by David Chappell (www.davidchappell.com). The article was titled, One more time: What exactly is .NET? The article discussed the many reasons why Chappell felt the .NET name was dropped from most of the Microsoft lines. He also mentioned something very important. He said that Microsoft’s technology strategy has not changed. I would disagree.

Awhile ago I was discussing with a few other peers on the ASP.NET forums regarding relational and object-oriented databases. In my opinion, it seems as though a .NET programmer would find an object-oriented database more useful than a relational database because you would then be allowed to pass entire objects to the application. However, the only object-oriented database that I’m aware of is called Caché by InterSystems (www.InterSystems.com). I have not had the opportunity to fully test their system. However, I do know some valuable information about the database and .NET development. OO databases allow for objects to be created and then passed between applications. .NET doesn’t directly support the Caché database nor any other OO databases. To get the OO database to work with the current framework, you can either use it as a relational database or pass the objects to web services; none of which uses the speed of an OO database. So, it will be interesting to see what OO databases will do in the future. I’m wondering if a future version of MS SQL will contain OO technology. Hmmm…  :-)