Event June 2009

Date: 18/06/2009, Nicosia
Members Present: 10
Location: Microsoft Cyprus Office
Presentation: ADO .NET Data Services for the Web / Visual Studio 2010: A First Look

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 somehow "celebratory". It was the last offline event before summer holidays. The next offline event will take place after two months time, in September 2009. During summer months (July and August) we will be having online events (live meeting sessions).

Due to the nature of this event, we had two sessions! The first session, dedicated to ADO .NET Data Services, was presented by Artemakis Artemiou, SQL Server MVP, INETA-Europe Country Leader for Cyprus and CDNUG Lead. The second session was dedicated to Visual Studio 2010, where we had the joy to discuss the upcoming release of Visual Studio with Karl Davies-Barrett, Developer Platform Evangelist for Microsoft Malta & Cyprus, and great friend and supporter of our User Group.

Here is a photo of our two speakers!

ADO .NET Data Services (also known under the code name "project Astoria") is a new, exciting Microsoft technology which enables the developer to create robust data services for integration with the web.

In an interesting session, Artemakis explained to the members of the User Group what the ADO .NET Data Services is and what is does offer to the developer.

The ADO.NET Data Services framework consists of a combination of patterns and libraries that enable the creation and consumption of data services for the web. Though, this is not restricted only to web applications. The framework can be easily used on desktop, mobile or any other type of platform.

To create a data service using the ADO .NET Data Services Framework you need to perform the following (in Visual Studio):

• Use the Entity Framework for defining the data model for a relational database or custom LINQ provider for other sources.
• Use the Data Services component for defining the data service and refine its security.
• Last but not least is defining the Hosting/HTTP Listener. Out of the box ADO.NET Data Services integrates with WCF and WF hosted within an ASP.NET web page. Also, the developer has the capability of authoring his/her own host.

Clients can consume the service by communicating with it through the HTTP stack. To this end, there are different levels of abstraction that can be used. On the very lowest level, HTTP commands can be composed (using HTTP GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). At a higher level, an AtomPub client or an Atom parser can be used instead of manually composing HTTP commands (can be used in non-Windows environments). At the very top level of abstraction are a selection of clients which run on Microsoft Windows.

Artemakis also presented several demos helping in this way the attendees to realize how easy it is to use the ADO .NET Data Services Framework.

The attendees found the session very interesting and some really long discussions took place!

In the second session, we discussed with Karl about Visual Studio 2010. Visual Studio 2010 will provide the .NET developer with a huge variety of new enhancements in areas such as: Application Lifecycle Management, Developer Experience, Cloud Development, Web Development and last but not least, Parallel Programming. The discussion was very interesting and as always, Karl answered to all of our questions regarding this exciting new version of Visual Studio! Additionally, Karl has offered to deliver a live meeting session for CDNUG dedicated to Visual Studio 2010. Thanks Karl!

For more information on ADO .NET Data Services you can visit this link.
Also, for more information on Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, you can visit this link.

Many thanks to Microsoft Cyprus & Malta for supporting our event and especially to Karl for speaking at our event!

Our User Group is supported by Microsoft-Cyprus, Microsoft-Malta and INETA-Europe. Thanks to this support it is going stronger. There are much more events to come. Make sure you check our website often!