Cita LXXXII

La formulación de un problema es más importante que su solución.

(Albert Einstein)

Cita LXXXI

Nunca haríamos nada si quisiéramos asegurar, por adelantado, el éxito de nuestra empresa.

(Napoleón)

Gracias a Cristina

TechEd Developers Day 5

TechEd Developers has now closed here at Barcelona. Today we have had lunch with all the MSP (Microsoft Student Partner) from Spain here at TechEd. Also, like every day I have attended to three sessions. Let takes a tour for every one:

• Session Slot 18: Developing Sophisticated Composite Applications with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007

Rob Howard has explained us how to use SharePoint in order to build no-code composite applications. It means that solution creators don’t have to deploy server code. Use SharePoint platform to quickly build nice applications. Rob has shown lots of demos about this program and how to use its features like embedded RSS, connection with data base and many useful things.

• General Session: The Irresistible Forces Meet the Moveable Objects

Pat Helland has been the speaker for the general session. He has explained the difference between past and present in CPU, RAM and other components. He told us that speed in CPU won’t raise a lot in the next years because it’s very difficult, but we will have CPU with many cores, in fact now we have it with 4 cores (Quad Core) and in two or three years we will have 8 cores. Lots of exciting things in this session.

• Session Slot 20: New Cryptography: Algorithms, APIs and ARchitecture

Incredible session, maybe the best one of this five days. Rafal Lukawiecki, ten years here at TechEd, has explained lots of interesting things related with cryptography. For example, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 both have cryptography mechanism but it could be better consider using Windows Vista because it have very interesting cryptography features.

Lukawiecki has recommended not use: DES, IDEA, RC2, RC5, Blowfish and Twofish and in general all symmetric algorithms. In addition is better use Advanced Encryptation Standard and Symmetric Block-Cipher.

The final recommendation: Not use just an algorithm, better try to use a Cryptosystem.

 

 

And finally the better sentence of this five days:

 

Users think that your software sucks!!

 

 

Other Days:

Day 4
Day 3
Day 2
Day 1

TechEd Developers Day 4

Amazing day here at Barcelona. Very interesting sessions, today connected devices, web security and many, many things! Thanks to Pep Lluis Baño (Most Valuable Professional) in “Ask the Experts” for being with us during lunch time and then in “Ask the Experts”. We have attended to a brief explanation about how to develop with F# (Modular Language) with Windows Presentation Foundation. Let’s go to the sessions:

• Session Slot 13: Lessons Learned: Designer / Developer Workflow in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight

Session Cancelled

• Session Slot 14: Building Connected Device Solutions
  

Frank Prengel and Olivier Bloch have been the speakers of this sessions. First of all there is something absolutely true, there are lot of embedded devices and mobile applications which we need to connect in order to make life easier. Microsoft provides services (Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile), tools (Visual Studio) and technologies which are also provided by Microsoft Partners. We can use existing services or we can create our won services to satisfy our necessities.

• Session Slot 15: Top 10 Mistakes Developers Make – Tales of an Over-Worked IT Pro

The funniest session today has been spoken by David Aiken. Here there are eleven mistakes:

1. Ad-hoc Configuration

• What we do is make configuration changes to our machine manually.
• What we need to do is an script any change so it is repeatable.

2. Don’t make assumption about security

• Don’t assume that the user have administration rights. And in general this kind of things.
• Develop and test as an end user, no as a developer.

3. XCOPY = mistake!

4. Uninstall = format c:

• Do you have a way to uninstall your applications? We need to integrate installers AND unistallers for our applications.

5. Dependencies

6. Upgrade means reinstall

• Installation of patches require un-reinstall or even worse copy same version .DLL over original.

7. Patch breaks every thing else.

8. Administration Tools.

• Notepad is not and administration tools
• Visual Studio neither is.
• Use WMI, Wndows Event Logs, Windows Performance, Windows PowerShell, Microsoft Management Console…

9. Cannot troubleshoot application.

• User call helpdesk and this has no idea about the error.

10. How do you know your applications works?

• Session Slot 16: Web Application Security

How to sniff unprotected systems, the difference between http/https, man in the middle… All of this has been explained by Alik Levin. He tell us that it is very easy to sniff unsecure systems, we can obtain information about accounts and logins and also we can do it with privileged accounts. The speaker has shown tools, guidelines and advices about security in web applications. Disassembling .dll and then read it in .txt is very useful in these cases. But he told us “do not make this at home”.

• Session Slot 17: “Let’s Talk About It” – Spice Up Your Application with Speech

The last session today. With Yochay Kiriaty we have learned how to interact with speech and control our machine in Windows Vista. It works really good and there are a wide range of possible scenarios that we can develop and which we can play! Yochay has explained that sound is an important part of the user experience also as graphics design or even so the user interaction.

 

Other Days:

Day 5
Day 3
Day 2
Day 1

TechEd Developers Day 3

As every day, very good conferences today and very interesting. Today I have attended four sessions about Popfly, embedded systems, Software Factory…

• Session Slot 9: Building Fun, Cool Applications with Popfly

Dan Fernandez has explained how to make cool applications for newbies or for non-technical developers. With Popfly you can make in few minutes an incredible web plug-in or a even so a gadget for Windows Vista. It is very easy, you drag and drop blocks into your “work area” and then you must connect between them. Very useful and good demos in this session. Congratulations Dan.

• Session Slot 10: Server Communication with Microsoft Silverlight and ASP.NET AJAX

In this session Fritz Onion has explained lots of things related to communications and how to use properly Microsoft Silverlight and ASP.NET with AJAX.

• Session Slot 11: Build your Own Software Factory

Don Smith, Dennis Doomen and Olaf Conijn were been the speakers of this session. While Don and Dennis has explained how to build your own software factory, Olaf showed us a little bit hard demos with Visual Studio 2008. Definetely this subject session is not my passion but necessary for all of you that are interested in this subject.

• Session Slot 12: “Small is Beautiful” Building Solutions with the .NET Micro Framework

Are you interested in embedded systems? Do you love this kind of toys? Then Dave Baker and Rob Miles are the best in this subject. Very nice demos and good examples was been brought to us, showing to everybody that develop for embedded systems are beautiful and “easy”.

 

Other Days:

Day 5
Day 4
Day 2
Day 1