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Call for Speakers
The call for speakers is now open. If you would like to submit a proposal you can submit it to support@scottishdevelopers.com. Your submission must include:
- Your name
- Your email address
- Your phone number
- Your blog or website (if applicable)
- A personal biography - A short paragraph.
- A session title
- A session abstract - No more than 2 paragraphs.
- Level the talk is aimed at:
- Beginner: Audience is expected to have no previous knowledge of the technology.
- Intermediate: Audience is expected to have used the technology to some extent.
- Advanced: Audience is expected to have used the technology extensively already.
- Dependencies. i.e. other technologies the audience is expected to have used in order to fully understand the session.
You can submit on any topic you like if you think software developers will be interested in it. The sessions go to a community vote so the community decides what they ultimately want to see. You will be informed if you session is picked approximately two months before the event.
Session Abstracts
While the call for speakers is open the sessions are listed in the order in which the submission was received. Once the community voting opens they will be re-ordered by category.
Expand All | Contract All
- What's New in C# 4.0?
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At PDC 2008 Microsoft unveiled C# 4.0 and all of the new features within. So now we start the roller-coaster of catch up all over again as we desperately struggle to keep up with what’s new and why we should be interested in the latest flashy feature. In this session we will look at dynamically typed objects, optional and named parameters, type embedding, type equivalence, loose type coupling and more. In addition if we have time we will look at the “compiler as a service” feature to be released after C# 4.0.
- How To Achieve World(-Ready) Domination In Silverlight
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So you’ve written your Silverlight application and you want it to work in another language? Then this session is for you. World-Readiness is all of the work that a developer needs to do to globalize an application and make it localizable (i.e. capable of being localized). Whereas these concepts are well established in Windows Forms and ASP.NET, Silverlight is not only a cut-down version of the .NET Framework but also cross platform and client-side. In this session you will learn how to localize Silverlight applications using .resx files, download culture-specific resources on demand so that users only download resources for the culture they need, understand what System.Globalization types and properties Silverlight does not support and why, what CultureInfo and RegionInfo support you can expect on Windows, Linux and the Mac, what the Silverlight installation user experience is for non-English users and what language support you can expect from the Silverlight framework.
- Top 10 WCF Tips & Tricks
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A personal selection of things to help your development with WCF from not using using, bad behaviours, migrating ASMX and another 7 useful pointers.
- Microsoft Source Analysis (or How To Start A Fight)
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In May 2008 Microsoft finally released Source Analysis (aka StyleCop). Source Analysis does for C# source code what FxCop does for assemblies – it applies ‘good practice’ rules to your source code. This means all those controversial code beauty issues like spaces, where to put curly braces, how and when to use blank lines and over 200 similar rules. This session gets you started using Source Analysis, investigates a selection of rules, shows how to integrate Source Analysis into Visual Studio and your build process and finally shows how to write your own custom rules. This is a low tech session on an essential tool that all C# developers should be using.
- Automating Testing With Virtual Server 2005
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Virtual Server 2005 is a free virtualization download from Microsoft. It allows you to run and maintain multiple virtual machines running different Microsoft operating systems in different configurations. Virtual Machines allow you to test your software in different configurations without the need for buying and maintaining separate physical machines. Virtual Server 2005 includes an API for programmatically controlling these virtual machines. This session describes this API and shows you how to use it to run automated tests on multiple platforms.
- Visual Studio 2005 & 2008 IDE Tips and Tricks
-
Visual Studio is a treasure trove of functionality and productivity. The problem is that many developers don’t know what’s there. In this session we will cover some simple and not so simple tips and tricks and improve your productivity and enjoyment of Visual Studio. The majority of tips and tricks are common to both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.
- 10 Things To Know Before Internationalizing An Application
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The global market place is creating an ever increasing demand for internationalized Web and Windows applications. The basics of .NET internationalization are easily acquired in a short timeframe. However, the gotchas & best practices of internationalization demand specialised knowledge & experience. This session shows you the top 10 nuggets of .NET internationalization facts & tips for Web & Windows applications that you should know before you start your next internationalized application.
- Overview of Creating a Custom DSL with BOO
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- Speaker:
- Paul Cowan
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- CLR, C#
Domain Specific Languages is a topic that is very 'in' with developer buzz word popularity. Boo is a statically typed OO language with a Python based syntax. It supports Macros, an open compiler pipeline and has specific features that were explicitly designed to make DSL building easier. This overview will walk through the creation of an English like grammar that is used to build, configure and install software components as used on the horn project.
- The SQL Server 2008 Optimiser – Expansion, Making better plans through Constraints and real-world techniques to aid the Optimiser.
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- Speaker:
- Tony Rogerson
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- SQL Server
The SQL Server 2008 Optimiser is a wonderful piece of technology, however, it still does not possess the ability to fully understand your data. We take a look at Expansion – how Table Expressions are expanded and optimised; we then look deeper into how we can influence the optimiser to gain our optimal plan. As part of the talk we also look at how we can now move away from Dynamic SQL for optional parameters and use a little known feature of SQL Server 2008.
- REST Double Session
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- Speaker:
- Alan Dean
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- Web Development
- NOTE:
- This is a 2 hour presentation
Part 1 "REST: Separating Facts from Fallacies"
Still not sure what REST is or why it might be important to you?
REST(Representational State Transfer) is still a deeply misunderstood architectural style. This presentation is designed to dispel some of the myths surrounding REST.
Part 2 "Delivering RESTful systems with Azure"
The new Windows Azure platform allows .NET developers to deliver a variety of cloud-based systems. In particular, Microsoft provides support for REST (Representation
State Transfer) style architectures.
This session will provide a tour around the key enabling features of the platform allowing highly scalable systems by leveraging the benefits of REST -
identifying patterns for success and warning of anti-patterns.
- Customizing ASP.NET MVC Framework
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- Speaker:
- Chris Canal
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- ASP.NET MVC
The new Microsoft ASP.NET MVC Framework represents a new direction Web Developers can take when creating Web Application on the .NET Platform. Offering fantastic extensibility points, the MVC Frameworks work allows developers to easily replace core parts of the Framework for tools they are comfortable with. In this presentation we will explore taking advantage of these extensibility points by integrating an Inversion of Control container, using IronRuby or IronPython to write our views and take a look at other extensibility points supplied by the ASP.NET MVC Framework.
- Unobtrusive JavaScript with ASP.NET MVC Framework and jQuery
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- Speaker:
- Chris Canal
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- ASP.NET MVC, jQuery
With jQuery being officially bundled with the ASP.NET MVC Framework, the number of JavaScript powered Web Applications will only increase. However, one of the most overlooked aspects of creating JavaScript based applications is supporting Unobtrusive JavaScript (UJS). Developing your applications to support UJS will guarantee a pleasant end user experience with and without JavaScript and should be something that all Web Developers are aware of. In this presentation we will cover what is involved in achieving this with the ASP.NET MVC Framework and jQuery; from the client side code to what’s involved within our Controllers and Actions.
- Stop your web site being stung
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The OWASP Top 10 vulnerability list is the resource for discovering the most popular attacks on the internet right now. This session aims to go through them,
demonstrate them and show you how to protect your ASP.NET web site from them.
- AOP with Castle Windsor and PostSharp
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- Speaker:
- Chris Canal
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- -
Aspect Oriented Programming is one of those fuzzy buzzwords that are thrown around without too many solid examples and has left me and a good few other people scratching their head. In this presentation we will cover that AOP is and two options available on the .NET Platform: Castle Windsor and PostSharp. We will looking beyond the oft used logging example and see what value AOP can bring to our applications.
- Make Patterns With Patterns
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- Speaker:
- Ray Booysen
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- C#, Basic WPF
You can draw nice patterns and stuff with WPF, but unless you get organised, the design suffers. Using the MVVM design pattern, you reign in defects, allow for
top down unit testing and better change management. In a nutshell, allowing your developers and designers to do what they do best.
With code demonstrations throughout, this presentation's aim is to show a proven method of development and demonstrate how real-world WPF applications can be written and
to make your life easier!
- How do you do - Hierarchies?
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- Speaker:
- Martin Bell
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- -
The most common way to model hierarchies in a relational database is to use the Adjacency List model, with the new hierarchyid in SQL Server 2008 should we all
be using the Materialised Path model or not? In this presentation Martin will look the methods used for each method and the advantages and disadvantages of
using each method, so that you may decide which is the best for you!
- What use are the different new security features in SQL Server 2008?
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- Speaker:
- Martin Bell
- Level:
- Intermediate/Advanced
- Prerequesites:
- -
There are many great new features in SQL Server 2008 including 3 new types of auditing feature. In this presentation Martin will demonstrate the
difference between the new Auditing features, Change Tracking and Change Data Capture along with Transparent Data Encryption which are particularly
useful for anyone implementing forms of compliance.
- Everything you wanted to know about Refactoring but were afraid to ask.
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- Speaker:
- Gary Short
- Level:
- All levels
- Prerequesites:
- -
Refactoring is a skill all modern developers need. In this presentation
we'll take a deep dive into refactoring, starting with what problem
refactoring solves, before moving on to look at some refactoring patterns
and finishing with a look at tooling and why we should use a refactoring
tool. Throughout this presentation there will be many code examples
demonstrating the patterns and topics being discussed.
- Authentication and the internet
-
So you have a web site and you want to allow your users to register and authenticate. There are lots of options out there from forms authentication,
through OpenID, LiveID and even Information Cards. This session aims to take you through all of your options, comparing and contrasting, pointing and
laughing and showing you how to implement each one.
- The Science of Social Networking
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- Speaker:
- Gary Short
- Level:
- Advanced
- Prerequesites:
- -
Social Networking is now a fact of business life. It touches many facets
within the enterprise. As such it needs to be measured against other
business practices, but how can you measure the effectiveness of a Social
Network? In this presentation we will look at the science behind Social
Networking and I will demonstrate a number of techniques that you, as
developers, can use to firstly understand what constitutes a Social Network,
and then to measure how effective a Social Network is for any given
scenario. Using these techniques you can write software that will allow you,
or your company, to target social networking effort where it is most
effective.
- Oh I do Like to be beside the Seaside!
-
- Speaker:
- Gary Short
- Level:
- Beginner
- Prerequesites:
- -
Seaside provides a layered set of abstractions over HTTP and HTML that let
you build highly interactive web applications quickly and with reusability
and maintainability baked in. It is based on Smalltalk, a proven and robust
language that is implemented by different vendors. In this presentation I
will introduce you to this framework and give you a primer that will enable
you to download it and become productive straight away. This presentation is
a must for those developers already interested in Ruby on Rails or ASP.Net
MVC.
- Snake charming : A demonstration of IronPython via communication in Second Life
-
IronPython 2 is about to hit .Net, and it can make your .Net life much easier. In order to demonstrate some of the capabilities of the language,
I'll demonstrate an app I wrote against a C# Second Life library ( http://www.libsecondlife.org/wiki/Main_Page
) to create a bot in second life.
No previous experience of Second Life or IronPython is required. Everything you need to know will be explained during the session.
- jQuery Deep Dive
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- Speaker:
- Andy Gibson
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- Javascript, HTML, CSS and AJAX preferably
The javascript framework jQuery is now being used by the big hitters of the internet world: Google, Dell, Digg, Technorati, etc. But what is it that this
very compact (and unobtrusive) framework does that draws attention and how? This session will dig deep under the jQuery hood and will show you some of the
powerful features of the framework, how to use them and how you can get the most out of them. Items covered include the jQuery core, selecting and traversing,
manipulating the DOM / CSS, event handling and Ajax. If you are looking to implement jQuery in your projects and need info on the "juicy bits" then this session
is for you!
- Array of Light
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- Speaker:
- Martin Bell
- Level:
- Intermediate/Advanced
- Prerequesites:
- -
With the release of SQL Server 2008 and the new Table Valued Parameter feature, should we all be using them or are they still the spawn of the devil?
Martin will look at what options are available in the different versions of SQL Server and compares the performance and practicalities of using each one.
- Oslo, Microsoft's Vision for the Future of Modelling
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- Speaker:
- Robert Hogg
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- -
Microsoft unveiled Oslo at the PDC its future direction for Modelling. Oslo is a wave of products forming the foundation of Microsoft’s next
generation modelling platform along with Dublin which will provide new ways of developing, hosting and managing WF, WCF bound with a modelling
solution to allow focus on business design that is the future centre of IT architecture. This session will aim to provide an overview of the unified
future of WCF, WF, BizTalk, Dublin, the Oslo core, end to end modelling in an enterprise environment and how Oslo delivers these models into the business.
- Developer Testing for Sharepoint
-
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 I 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.
- Make your own search engine with Lucene.Net
-
- Speaker:
- Scott Cowan
- Level:
- Beginner
- Prerequesites:
- C#, ASP.NET
Learn how to use the popular indexer Lucene to power a .Net based search website. This session will take you thru implementing a site including
crawling, indexing, and using NHibernate.Search for querying.
- Natural Language Parsing with ANTLR
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A set of tutorials showing how to parse a natural language input using ANTLR and C# when Regular Expressions just aren't powerful enough.
ANTLR is a lexer and parser generator which you build using grammar files. It is used primarily for compiler design but can be used easily
for DSLs and letting your applications understand natural languages.
- The Principle of Least Astonishment - Developing Custom Web Applications in SharePoint 2007
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- Speaker:
- Iain Angus
- Level:
- Beginner/Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
A lot of companies are moving to SharePoint 2007. If you want to develop custom ASP.NET applications using SharePoint, where do you start?
What choices are available?
This session will look at some of the development possibilities - web parts, custom ASP.NET pages and the Business Data Catalog.
- Virtualisation for developers - What, Why, Where?
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Not used virtualisation technology yet? As a developer, you are missing out on some great time saving technologies. Concentrating on the use of Virtualisation
for developers on workstations and servers; What is virtualisation ? What virtualisation tools are available (especially for free) ? Why is virtualisation
advantageous ? Where should you utilise virtualisation ? Tips and tricks - configuration and tweaking performance. Legacy application development
(VB6, VS2003), installation tests, clean client images, documentation for screen capture as well as confirming how to get to configuration settings,
consolidation of development hardware, internationalisation, breaking the 3Gb memory barrier, CI/build/test servers? .....
- Hyper-V for Developers
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We'll be taking a thorough look into Microsoft's latest virtualisation technology Hyper-V. How do you install Hyper-V under Windows Server 2008 and as
the standalone Hyper-V Server. What management tools are available? How to write your own code or use Powershell to automate your Hyper-V installation to
automate tasks such as scripting VM backups and scheduling automated testing across multiple VMs.
- CI Factory - Continuous Integration 101
-
You might already realise that unit testing your code is becoming more important and that it is a crucial aspect of continuous integration.
But what are the principles of continuous integration? If you're too afraid/poor to install TFS what are the options? If you've looked around at open
source solutions but were wary of the learning curve of Cruise Control .Net, NAnt and MSBuild, CI Factory might be the solution for you.
This will be an introduction to CI Factory (see
MSDN Magazine, March 2008). CI Factory is a setup program written be Jay Flowers which installs a default
project layout complete with various code analysis tools, hooking into your version control system and running automated builds under Cruise Control .NET.
We will conclude by installing a complete CI server (.Net Framework, SubVersion, code analysis tools, and Cruise Control) on a blank Windows Server 2003 Server,
and within 25 minutes have it ready for a Vista client check in code for the CI server to build.
It's time to kick start your use of unit testing with continuous integration.
- Pay Attention People!
-
- Speaker:
- Ray Booysen
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- C#
C# is pretty and all with all the 3.0 features but have you got the lowdown on what
it can really do? Join us for an in depth discussion on some cool ideas and concepts
that the C# language can do. We'll cover LINQ, XLINQ, lambdas, anonymous types and
all the other goodness that is out there.
- WPF - What's in it for me?
-
- Speaker:
- Ged Mead
- Level:
- Beginner
- Prerequesites:
- .NET, Visual Studio, WinForms
If you saw any of the Beta version demonstrations of WPF, you’ll probably remember that a lot of them
seemed to focus heavily on eye-catching glitz, like flying animations and video displayed on spinning 3D
cubes. Impressive though they may have been, you may well have wondered what earthly use all that eye
candy could be to you as a developer in the real world.
This presentation sets out to discover what practical benefits WPF can offer. There will be a complete
absence of flying ducks and spinning objects, but there will be plenty of examples based on the day to
day tasks of a Windows Forms developer. If you are still not sure if it is worth your while setting out
on another learning curve to master yet another new technology, this session may help you decide.
Code samples will be a mix of C# and VB, plus XAML.
- This One Goes Up To 11, or How To Write Scalable ASP.NET
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So you've written the new MySpace and it's getting lots of use - but the more users you get, the
s-l-o-w-e-r the whole thing runs.
In this session we'll discuss strategies, hints and tips that you can use to write ASP.NET that scales
effectively as your user base grows. This will include: How to cache HTML output so your page doesn't
have to render every time. How to cache data so you don't have to get it from the database every time.
How to reduce your Viewstate to a few bytes in just three lines of code. How to shrink your JavaScript so
it gets to the client faster. Why letting the GridView do its' own paging is a bad idea. How to do
successful load-balancing.
- Data Warehouse Scale-up improvements in SQL Server 2008
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- Speaker:
- Geert Vanhove
- Level:
- Intermediate/Advanced
- Prerequesites:
- SQL Server Query Plans
This session will cover the most important - data warehouse related - improvements within SQL Server
2008. A number of demo scripts will be used to explore what has changed under the hood of SQL Server
2008 and what can be configured additionally compared to what was available in SQL Server 2005. At
the end everybody should be convinced to upgrade their SQL 2000/2005 DW's.
- Selenium - from the first crush to a healthy relationship
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Selenium is a very attractive tool for web application front end testing. It is very easy to get
started with thanks to Selenium IDE. But soon the early crush fades and Selenium starts to show its
real persona.
But there is no need to dump Selenium because there are ways to cope it and get most out of it.
Selenium can be used as part of continuos integration and it is even capable of testing AJAX
applications. The presentation covers necessary steps to get serious with Selenium.
- Azure to WPF – What tastes good in .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010
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- Speaker:
- Alex Mackey
- Level:
- Beginner/Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- -
We will take a look at some of the great new features available in Visual Studio 2010 and .net 4. I am
currently writing “Beginning .NET 4.0 with supporting technologies” for Apress and will share my
discoveries & thoughts so far. The contents of this session will be partly dependent on what
Microsoft release in the coming months but will probably include the more finished areas such as Azure,
Language enhancements and Parallel programming.
- Real-world MVC Architecture
-
- Speaker:
- Steven Sanderson
- Level:
- Beginner/Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- Traditional ASP.NET (i.e. Web Forms)
If you could rewrite your current web application from scratch, how would you architect it?
In this session I'll show how ASP.NET MVC supports up-to-date thinking in clean software design,
including key domain driven design principles, test-driven development, and swappable data access
technologies using repositories. I'll even throw in a bit of Silverlight, to show how a strong domain
model lets multiple UI technologies share not just data but also a single set of business rules. The
focus will be on code, not slides or abstract explanations.
- RDF, OWL, SPARQL and the Semantic Web
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- Speaker:
- Seb Rose
- Level:
- Beginner
- Prerequesites:
- -
The Semantic Web (a.k.a. Web 3.0) was first popularly articulated by
Tim Berners-Lee in an article in Scientific American in 2001. Since
then there have been a lot of acronyms under the bridge but precious
little visible progress to the end user. The use of
RDF by the largely
ignored RSS 1.0 specification was a highpoint in a process that has
had precious few widespread successes (FOAF is one).
However, there has been a lot of progress in the areas of
standardisation and tooling and we may see an accelerated uptake of
Web 3.0 technologies over the next few years.
This tutorial will very briefly cover the motivation behind the
Semantic Web before diving into some of the technologies that underpin
its potential. We will examine the basics of RDF,
RDFS and
OWL before
developing a minimal
ontology. This will enable us to explore some of
the similarities and differences between modelling in RDFS/OWL and
Object Oriented modelling and introduce us to some of the simpler
patterns used by ontologists. Finally, we will look at
SPARQL, the
standard query language, and look at the usage and adoption of SPARQL
endpoints in some of today's commercial and open source software.
- C++/CLI - Why, oh why?
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- Speaker:
- Seb Rose
- Level:
- Intermediate
- Prerequesites:
- .NET, C++
Focussing on interoperation between .NET assemblies and 'legacy' C++
code we will explore why C++/CLI was invented and what it is for. This
session will visit most of the extended syntax and explain why it was
considered necessary. We will briefly compare C++/CLI to other popular
.NET languages in the context of interoperation with legacy code.
Particular attention will be paid to what is going on 'under the hood'
to give a feel for some of the issues that must be considered when
designing in C++/CLI.
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