Event July 2010

Date: 15/07/2010, Nicosia
Members Present: 7
Location: Microsoft Cyprus Office
Presentations: Windows 7 Development Using Managed Code / SQL Server 2008 R2: Features for Developers and IT Pros

Many thanks to the hospitality and support of Microsoft Cyprus, for hosting our User Group's last offline event before summer holidays!

This event was celebratory. It was the last offline event before summer holidays. The next offline event will take place after two months time, in September 2010.

Due to the nature of this event, we had two sessions! The first session, dedicated to Windows 7 Development was presented by Ioannis Stavrinides (MCP, MCTS) - (Blog, Twitter), active member of our User Group. The second session was preseneted by Artemakis Artemiou (CDNUG Lead, SQL Server MVP, INETA Country Leader for Cyprus, MCP, MCTS, MCITP) - (Blog, Twitter).

So, after having a Greek frappé coffee and some sweets, we started the event!

Then, Ioannis started his presentation by first introducing to us WPF:

The attendess were amazed by the capabilities of WPF:

Then Ioannis showed with many live demos how we can use WPF and the Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework through Visual Studio 2010 for building Jump Lists, Progress Bars, Tabbed Thumbnails and Tabbed Toolbars. Also, we saw how we can make use of the Icon Overlay feature.

After Ioannis's great session, Artemakis started presenting his session. Artemakis talked about the new features for Developers and IT Pros included in SQL Server 2008 R2. He started his presentation by talking about the Database Engine - Manageability Enhancements in this release of SQL Server:

Then, after presenting some more slides, he jumped into a series of live demos, showing all of these features in action!

Some of the key features / tools shipped with SQL Server 2008 R2 are:

• Connectivity to SQL Azure
• Data-tier Application Upgrade
• SQL Server Utility
• Master Data Services
• StreamInsight
• Enhancements in Reporting Services
  
• ...and much more!
  

In this photo Artemakis is showing a demo of using SQL Server Utility Explorer:

And of course, the session could not be considered completed, without showing a live demo of SQL Server PowerPivot!

The last demo featured Master Data Services:

This was our last offline event before summer holidays. We really enjoyed it as besides the technical discussions, we are a group of people sharing a common passion for technology and it is always a pleasure to get together. This is after all the exciting part of belonging to a technical community. Before saying a goodbye for summer holidays, on the following article, Artemakis talks about the significance of techical communities. It is an article that explains the purpose of technical communities and the benefits of being a part of such a community.

We would like to express our gratitude to Microsoft Cyprus & Malta for supporting our events throughout all these years.

We would also like to personally thank Evangelos Hadjichristodoulou and Karl Davies-Barret for actively supporting our User Group.

Last but not least, a huge thank you to our User Group members for actively participating to our events as speakers and attendees, thus making it possible to share the common passion for technology. Thank you!

See you all after summer holidays!