MS Roadshow: it was ... OK.

Alright,

I just got back from the seminar building. It was interesting, but not quite what I expected. I think I probably got my expectations a little bit too high. They presented ASP.Net 2.0 and the new VS.Net IDE.

ASP.Net:
well, I don't know what to say. The architecture is surely better than previous versions and the new features are lovely. Here's what I've been able to gather:

at the bottom of the architecture, you've got everything related to your data store (Windows - considered as a data store, XML, SQL Server, anything you can think about where data can be stored and retrieved). Then at the top of that, you've got what they called patterns such as Membership, Navigation, Themes and Skins, Master Pages, and a few others. Basically what those patterns do is to help you the deveoper build a bunch of things without really thinking about the code. Something like Master pages is for example excellent when developing in teams because the designer can set areas that are not *editable* and then the developers can write code for the editable areas (isn't it what Smarty and its derived children do in PHP?).

The other interesting thing which is a great plus (IMHO), is the fact that now solutions do not need to be in only one language. What I mean is from the demonstration, you could have a VB.Net solution and write a C# *code-behind* in it. This is very useful for a team made of various skills, basically, each developer would just leverage whatever skill they have and still get the work done.

A new feature is the fact that now, solutions can be built anywhere on a computer and the developer doesn't even need to have access to an IIS server (if your computer came with Windows XP Home edition like mine, you'd understand how useful this is). All the developer has to do is to define a directory anywhere on his computer or local network, tell VS.Net to use it to store the various files and then during debugging, VS.Net instantiates an internal webserver that is used to check out the projects during coding. The webserver runs as a localhost on a specific port and is not available from outside the computer.

There are a few more things that have been discussed. But all in all, I like what ASP.Net is going to look like. I have no idea whether there is currently any document on the web with an insight on what's coming up and what have been presented today. I'll have a look at it and if I am able to grab anything, I'll put the link here.


For those interested in .Net South African developers communities, here are a few links they provided us with:

• SA Developer (http://www.sadeveloper.net/)
• SA Architect (http://www.saarchitect.net/)

They also spent sometime explaining to us what are the graduate programs available and what it takes to be in one of those. And finally, we've been told about the Firefly project http://www.projectfirefly.co.za/.

All in all, I was hoping for more, but it wasn't bad either. ;-)