Developer & IT Pro Days is the main conference in Belgium for developers and IT pro's that are interested in learning about current and near future products and technologies. Some of this year's highlights:

• Pre-conference on 27 March with Wintellect's Jeff Prosise on ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX and WPF/E
• More than 60 sessions during the 2 day main conference
• Opening keynote by David Chappell
• Several industry experts already confirmed: Thinktecture's Ingo Rammer and Christian Weyer, Jeff Prosise, Roy Osherhove. There are a few other amazing speakers in the pipeline currently; I hope David can confirm them really soon...
• Ron Jacobs, the man behind the ARCasts, will host an architecture track
• If you register on or before 28 February, you get 15% off the normal registration price.

After the good feedback we received on last year's venue, we decided to host the event again in Ghent. I hope to meet you there...

No blog silence at all. Although I must admit that I've neglected this blog for quite a while. For several reasons, I decided to blog on 2 different sites. Each site will have its specific content.

All things related to software development stuff, Visual Studio and MSDN in Belgium and Luxembourg will now be posted on my MSDN Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/tommer/. This blog at http://www.vsdotnet.be/blogs/tommer/ will remain active but will change focus to other topics that interest me and that I come across in my role of audience marketing manager at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg.

In short, developers reading my blog will now get the same kind of information from me on http://blogs.msdn.com/tommer/. People interested in audience marketing, web 2.0-stuff, etc, can continue reading this blog.

Now I need to find some time to update the layout of both websites... Urgently...

Following MSDN Evenings are currently scheduled at the Microsoft offices in Brussels:

• October 18: MSDN Evening: Developing solutions with Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Office SharePoint Servers 2007, presented by Joris Poelmans
• November 15: MSDN Evening: Introducing Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals, presented by Gunther Beersaerts

The event starts at 18:00 till 20:00 and always covers 1 topic.

Cross posted at Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.

These are the currently scheduled Belgian user group events:

VISUG - Security Development Lifecycle
Wednesday 25 October 2006
The software industry has been struggling with how to create and release software that is more security-enhanced and reliable. The Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) provides a methodology that works; it is a critical way to help reduce the number of security defects in code at every stage of the development process, from design to release. When compared to software that has not been subject to the SDL, software that has undergone the SDL has experienced a significantly reduced rate of external discovery of security vulnerabilities.

During this presentation Wim Verhaeghen, content master for MSDN Belux, will introduce you in the process of developing software that needs to withstand malicious attack.

ACCB.NET User Group Brugge - Strict On Programming
Wednesday 18 October 2006

SQL Server User Group Belgium - SQL Server Integration Services
Thursday 23 November 2006
Nico Verheire, BI-consultant at Dolmen, will talk about Integration Services for about 1 to 1,5 hours. After the break, you are free to share and show your experiences / troubles on some desktops available in the room. Of course, you can also bring a portable with your "case". It is not a consulting evening, so no guarantee about the outcome, but the ideal place to share ideas and experiences with others.

All events can be attended free of charge. The .NET User Group Brugge requires membership of the user group.

Cross posted at Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.

Steven Van de Craen's latest article was published on MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg.

Customizing the Content Query Web Part XSL
The Content Query Web Part can be used to display a dynamic view of content from your site on a web page. This article discusses how you can extend this Web Part to show additional information about your SharePoint items (news articles, announcements, events, documents, etc.)

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.

Tags: Sharepoint MSDN Belux CAML

We recently published a new article from Kurt Claeys on the MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg website:

State Machine Workflows in Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Workflow Foundation allows us to implement workflows as state machines. This article uses a simple case and demonstrates how to develop a state machine workflow and solve the requirements of a case.

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.

You are invited on October 11 for an event at Microsoft in Luxembourg, where David Boschmans, development platform advisor at Microsoft, will show you how to manage the Software Development Lifecycle with Visual Studio 2005 Team System.

Visual Studio 2005 Team System is a productive, integrated, and extensible suite of lifecycle tools that expands the Visual Studio product line to enable greater communication and collaboration among software development teams. With Visual Studio 2005 Team System, organizations can ensure greater predictability and quality early and often throughout the development process.

There are 2 sessions scheduled:

• October 11 from 9:00 till 12:00
• October 11 from 13:30 till 16:30

Location:

Microsoft Luxembourg
Zoning industriel "Cloche d'Or"
NCI Office - Laccolith
rue Eugène Ruppert 20
Luxembourg

By attending this event, you’ll gain knowledge on the features and capabilities of Visual Studio Team System.

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.

There's one thing that everyone agrees on about Bart De Smet: he is not the regular nine-to-five developer. During his daily-blogging-mission in September, he wrote a few posts on how to create barcodes on the fly in C# (without requiring 3rd party software):

• Code 39 barcodes in C#
• EAN-13 barcodes in C#
• ISBN to EAN-13
• An ASP.NET .ASHX HTTP handler for Code 39 barcode generation

Please join me in congratulating Bart for the 4th consecutive year he's been awarded as a Visual Developer MVP. All of this, and a lot more, made us decide to make Bart our Belgian "MVP in the spotlight" at MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg during October.

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.

DasBlog 1.9 was recently released by Omar Shahine and Scott Hanselman. Several features have been improved and a lot of new ones have been added. One of the new features ("multi-user/blogger support") was added by a Belgian developer: Christoph De Baene. You might also know Christoph as a board member of the Visual Studio User Group - VISUG - in Belgium.

Scott also points to a blog post of Kris van der Mast, another Belgian developer and VISUG member, on writing custom macros for DasBlog.

Congratulations to the entire DasBlog team for this getting this release out, and a special shout out to both Belgian developers for their contribution...

Cross posted on Tom's MSDN Belux Corner.
Tags: MSDN Belux Community, DasBlog

Cyra Richardson - lead program manager for layout and rendering in the Internet Explorer team - is touring across EMEA for making developer aware of the changes in IE7. Although initially she wasn't going to visit Belgium, David managed to get here coming over to Belgium for delivering a MSDN Evening session on 29 September. From the website:

Internet Explorer provides rich new experiences around three pillars: great user experience, secure/trustworthy browsing and powerful web developer platform. Learn how your sites shine up on Internet Explorer 7 by taking advantage of better HTML and CSS standards support, RSS, search integration, and new security features. We will also take a deep look at what you can do and how we can help to prepare your existing sites for IE7.

The capacity for the event is limited to 50 people as it will be hosted in the training rooms at Microsoft in Belgium. Please only register if you're absolutely sure that you'll attend.

More information and registration.

Incredible: 3 weeks after I first blogged about our "MSDN Event: .NET Framework 3.0 Development", we had to switch theaters to increase the event capacity with 50%. Now, one and half weeks later the event is almost  fully booked again. Only 25 seats available at this moment... No more seats available! This means Peter and Ingo will inform more than 600 developers on the .NET Framework 3.0.

Updated on 12 September 2006.

From the MSDN Windows Workflow Foundation website:

"Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine and tools for quickly building workflow enabled applications on Windows. It consists of a .NET Framework version 3.0 (formerly WinFX) namespace, an in-process workflow engine, and designers for Visual Studio 2005. ..."

Scott Guthrie lists a couple of good resources covering Windows Workflow Foundation. One of those resources was written by probably the most famous Belgian developer/student: Bart De Smet. Congratulations for this... Bart's three posts, that Scott refers to, are:

• Getting Started with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
• WF - How to make a workflow dynamic? (Part 1)
• WF - How to make a workflow dynamic? (Part 2)

 Tags: Windows Workflow Foundation workflow .NET WinFX

Get ready now for the future mobile market! With this special kit for MSDN Connection members you will receive all of the professional tools, technologies and technical resources you need to create innovative applications for Windows Mobile. Thinking about having your solution certified one day? If you're not yet familiar with MSDN Connection: Become a member and you too can benefit!

Order it here on MSDN Connection (Belgium only!).

On Friday, we published a new article by Jan TIelens (Belgian MVP for Sharepoint) on the MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg web site. In this article Jan shows the different web part platforms and developments techniques a developer can choose from for building Sharepoint web parts.

Here is the article summary:

Web Parts are a great opportunity for developers to customize SharePoint, both to extend the existing functionality and to bring functionality or data coming from external applications in SharePoint sites. You can say that web parts are the building blocks for a SharePoint site. Since web parts are around for quite some time now, and you can develop web parts by using more than one technique, it can be hard for developers to decide how to build their web parts. This article is discussing the different development techniques and web parts platforms available today and in the near future.

Tags: sharepoint, development, asp.net, microsoft, msdn

The Microsoft patterns & practices team is already active for quite some time. In that time, they've released a lot of valuable information, libraries and "software factories", such as the Enterprise Library, Composite UI Application Block, Upgrading Visual Basic 6.0 applications to VB.NET and VB 2005 guide, and much more...

Another of their projects is the "Guidance Automation Extensions and Guidance Automation Toolkit". This toolkit falls under the software factories initiave workbench category at MSDN. From the web site: "The Guidance Automation Toolkit (GAT) is an extension to Visual Studio 2005 that allows architects to author rich, integrated user experiences for reusable assets including frameworks, components and patterns. The resulting 'Guidance Packages' are composed of templates, wizards and recipes, which help developers build solutions in a way consistent with the architecture guidance."

Jelle Druyts has been diving deep into the toolkit and wrote a series of blog posts on this topic:

• Part 1:Introduction to the Guidance Automation June 2006 CTP
• Part 2: Creating a Guidance Package
• Part 3: Creating a C# project
• Part 4: Adding project references
• Part 5: Tuning the C# projects
• Part 6: Generating classes

Early in August, Jelle also gave a talk on this topic for Belgian Visual Studio User Group members. He also shares his Powerpoint presentation of this meeting.

Some extra personal thoughts on this: I must say that I'm very impressed with such community engagement. It must have taken Jelle quite a lot of time to learn and write that much about this topic. It also shows the benefit of joining a user group, as such topics are not typically covered during our MSDN events in Belgium (you know: "so much to tell, so little time").

Extra resources on the Guidance Automation Toolkit:

• Tom Hollander's blog (Microsoft employee)
• Wojtek Kozaczynski's blog (Microsoft employee)
• Daniel Cazzulino's blog
• Oscar Calvo's blog
• Community web site GuidanceAutomation.net

Tags: Microsoft development software factories community

Are developers eager to know more about the Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation, CardSpaces and the Windows Presentation Foundation? It must be so. With the exception of a few mentions (like in the MSDN Belux Flash and on the MSDN Belux website), we didn't make lot of promotion for our next MSDN Event on .NET Framework 3.0 (on September 25, 2006 in Kinepolis Brussels). Therefore I'm a bit surprised that just a few minutes ago already the 430th person registered for this event.

In the 4 years that I work on/for the Belgian developer audience, I've never seen registrations come in that fast with so little effort. I'd better ask a bigger theater for this event, shouldn't I...

Now, I wouldn't mind hearing from you why you think this event is so popular...

• Is it because of the speakers: Peter and Ingo? (They are great, aren't they?)
• Maybe you'd like to ask David in person if he can get you a free ticket for TechEd: Developers? (Good luck, but don't count that you'll succeed: he's responsible for the web development track at TechEd: Developers, not for the registration.)
• Has it been too long ago that you've seen a good looking registration desk hostess? (With that many people we'll need a lot of registration desk hostesses again.)
• Do you hope that we'll distribute a voucher for 10 free Windows Vista Ultimate boxes? (I can already tell you: we won't.)

Feel free to drop me an e-mail or a comment on this post with what you think is the reason. There are at least 5 MSPress books on the MSDN shelves waiting for a new owner. The "best" answers will get a copy.

Update 26 August: 460 people registered...

Tags: Microsoft, WinFX, .NET, development, Windows Vista

From the website:

Virtual Lab Express is the fastest and easiest way to test drive Microsoft products and the Virtual Lab environment. These are 20-minute hands-on overviews of some of your favorite Microsoft products and developer tools. Try them out online now - no need to download full trial versions or dedicate test machines.

Express: What’s New in ASP.NET 2.0

In this lab you will learn to:

• Create, prepare and utilize master pages
• Add TreeView and Menu navigation controls
• Use the new Login control

Express: What’s New in Visual Studio Team System

In this lab you will learn to:

• Create an application
• Create unit tests
• Determine and enable code coverage testing

Express: What’s New in Visual Studio 2005

In this lab you will learn to:

• Utilize improvements to the IDE
• Utilize the refactoring capabilities in C#
• Utilize new debugging features

Express: What’s New in BizTalk 2006

In this lab you will learn to:

• Quick Setup Review
• Import a BizTalk 2006 Application
• Examine Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
• Deploy a Package as an msi file

Express: What’s New in SQL Server 2005

In this lab you will learn to:

• Use the SQL Server Management Studio
• Use the Try/Catch blocks in SQL
• PIVOT and UNPIVOT data

I'm currently on holidays, but it's nice to see that the rest of the MSDN Belux team is still active. We've just announced our next MSDN Event. On Monday September 25, we'll give you a full day event of .NET Framework 3.0 development in Kinepolis, Brussels. A more detailed agenda will be published on the site by the end of the month.

PS. Wim, the guy that works on the MSDN Belux website, assembled this graphic using Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer. He's using this tool for some time already and seems to be happy about it...

Update: the agenda is now also published. For the first time on such an event in Belgium, you can choose the sessions that you find the most interesting ones. And if that isn't enough, the event will be hosted by two Microsoft Regional Directors: Peter Himschoot (RD for Dutch speaking part of Belgium) and Ingo Rammer (RD for Austria). Both have a solid reputation when it comes to speaking engagements, technical skills and .NET Framework 3.0 knowledge.

Tags: Microsoft, WinFX, .NET, development, WIndows Vista

OSCON 2006, O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, was held in Portland, Oregon (US) at the end of July. The team of Port 25, the website of Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab, was there too. And they got to interview two famous open source software advocates and conference organizers:

Bill Hilf interviews Tim O'Reilly
Tim O'Reilly is the CEO of O'Reilly Media and amongst several other things, he is known as an Open Source Software advocate. From the website:"In this interview Bill and Tim discuss the redefinition of 'Open Source', Web 2.0, and some other topics that arose in the first two days of the conference."

Bill Hilf interviews Matt Asay
Matt Asay is VP of Business Development at Alfresco, co-founder of OSCON, and thus also an Open Source Software advocate. From the website: "In this interview Matt and Bill discuss Open Source business models, monetization opportunties for open business apps, and thoughts on the first days of OSCON."

Related background information:

• Q&A on Microsoft's Open Source Software Lab
• Bill Hilf's short bio

Some user groups are announcing their next events:

• VISUG meeting on the "Guidance Automation Toolkit" (Wednesday 9 August) 
• SQL Server User Group on "Advanced monitoring and tuning techniques in SQL Server 2005" (Thursday 14 September)
• .NET User Group Brugge on "Visual Basic and C#" (Wednesday 20 September)

VISUG will also soon announce a redelivery of their Visual Studio Team System workshop.

It's .NET Framework 3.0 (previously known as WinFX) time at MSDN's Showtime. The sessions are taped during "WinFX On Tour" in some European countries earlier this year. Unfortunately the tour did not come to Belgium, but here is your chance to see the presentations too.

Introducing Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), CardSpaces (previously InfoCard) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
Run time: approx. 50 minutes
Language: English
Recorded at "WinFX On Tour" on April 20th 2006 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
Run time: approx. 59 minutes
Language: English
Recorded at "WinFX On Tour" on April 20th 2006 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Tags: Microsoft WinFX .NET development webcast

Our colleagues at MSDN in Germany posted a "simple" 3D game, written using Visual C# and managed DirectX: Rocket Commander. It comes with a Coding4Fun tutorial article, 10 step-by-step video tutorials (each 30 minutes), many links and resources and of course, the full source code. Feel free to modify the code and create "mods" of the original version. You can find some of such mods on the RocketCommander.com website.

You can also download an installer for the game only. .NET Framework 2.0 and the Managed DirectX version of December 2005 are required to play the game.

Here's a screenshot from the original Rocket Commander and one of the "Mod" Pizza Commander:

Tags: Microsoft .NET development directx game

I'm still at MGX, Microsoft's yearly field gathering, in Orlando, Florida. Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to have a discussion with Dan Fernandez, the guy with the best job at Microsoft - at least according to himself. He's the lead product manager for Visual Studio Express and a great guy. You might remember him as speaker at the MSDN "On Tour" Event on Visual C# and Windows Forms last year in Brussels.

Dan showed some really cool stuff, which I absolutely want to share. Here is the first one:

 
Picture by Clint Ruskas

Clint actually used Visual C# to create an application to control his custom-build LED Disco Floor. Have a look at some of the videos that Clint posted on his blog that demonstrate the capabilities of his Disco Floor and the application. If you want to know how this was built in about 10 months, be sure to check out the Disco Floor article for MSDN's Coding4Fun website. And of course Clint Ruskas' blog at BetterThanEveryone.com.

I must say, I'm amazed... This is absolutely cool. Thanks for sharing, Dan!

Tags: Visual C#, Microsoft, technology, software

It's already announced for 2 weeks on MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg: there is a new book of the month. During July and August, MSDN Connection members can get a 40% discount on the book "MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit: Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0—Application Development Foundation". This book helps developers prepare for taking Microsoft Certification exam 70-536.

A few days before this promotion went live, I received some annoying news from Microsoft Press. Apparently the book was far more popular than forecasted. As a result, we could only get about 10% of the ordered number of books in the participating shops at the start of the promo. But I just received an e-mail that the rest of the order has now been delivered to the shops.

Now do I find this book and the certification interesting? Well, I didn't read the book. But yes, I do find it interesting because I see value in certifying your developer skills. Yes, I was a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for Visual Studio 6.0 and I'm still a Microsoft Certified Professional. You can check out my MCP transcript at https://mcp.microsoft.com/authenticate/validatemcp.aspx: use transcript ID 674356 and access code X7S3vApN68. (Note: If you're an MCP, you can also publicize your MCP transcript by logging on to the MCP Secure Site and choosing "View My"/"Transcript Sharing Code" from the menu.) Although these credentials matter less in my current (community manager) job at Microsoft Belgium, they helped me in several ways during the time that I was a self-employed developer. I'd be glad to explain all this in person, so don't hesitate to ask me about certification.

I personally studies for my MCP exams using Self-Paced Training Kits (on top of several other resources, such as website articles and experience of course). And I've never failed for any of them. OK, for some exams, I also used exam simulators to be better prepared. Today there is also the Skills Assessment website that helps you evaluate your current skills.

As an alternative for preparing with Self-Paced Training Kits, you could also attend in-depth training classes at any of the Microsoft Certified Partners for Learning Solutions (here is a list of Belgian and Luxemburger CPLS's).

In my previous post, I already mentioned that we recorded several outstanding presentations for developers and make them available for viewing online. Besides that series of ASP.NET videos of my previous post, there is also a series of presentations about Visual Basic 2005.

What's new in Visual Basic
For line of business application developers, Visual Basic 2005 was designed to be the most productive tool for building applications which target Windows, Office, Web and Mobile applications. See how language and environment features such as the My namespace, IntelliSense code snippets and AutoCorrect can help to simplify some programming challenges. Brought by Jay Roxe and Tyler Whitney from Microsoft's Visual Basic product team.

Windows Forms 2.0 development and deployment
Building professional looking applications with Windows Forms has been greatly simplified due to new Controls delivered in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Take an in-depth look at the new Windows Forms data features and see how to use these features to bind custom business objects to Windows Forms controls. Finally, see how ClickOnce deployment gives you the ability to easily deploy and version your application and all of its prerequisites.

Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 using Visual Basic 2005
For the Visual Basic 2005 programmer, the new release of ASP.NET 2.0 makes web application development more accessible than ever. The new features in ASP.NET 2.0 can be grouped into three broad categories: controls, improvements to the Page Framework, and new services and APIs. Visual Studio 2005 combines rich site layout features, simplified Web data access, dynamic Web projects, and other features that enable rapid construction of dynamic Web applications. Learn about enhancements to the visual designers and coding tools, as well as features that facilitate code reuse, visual consistency, and aesthetic appeal across your Web sites.

Smart Client Development using Visual Studio Tools for Office and Windows Mobile
Have you ever wanted to take advantage of Excel or Word in one of your Visual Basic applications? Do you have a Smartphone and want to see ways that you can write applications for it? See how your Visual Basic 2005 skills give you the ability to target these new environments.

Tags: Microsoft Visual Basic .NET development webcast

With MSDN's Showtime, you can watch world-class presenters bring their best presentations from several big events around the world. On MSDN's Showtime, you can currently watch the following "blockbuster" movies:

ASP.NET Differences
In this session Dave Webster looks at the key differences between ASP 2.0 and previous versions of ASP.

ASP.NET Tips and Tricks
Interested in the latest tips and tricks for ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005? Stefan Schakow gives an update to Scott Guthrie's famous tips & tricks session from the 1.x days redone, updated, and improved for ASP.NET 2.0!

ASP.NET 2.0 Data Controls
This talk discusses the fundamentals of data access and how to render data ina web site using the new data source and data-bound controls in ASP.NET 2.0. Topics covered include binding to a SQL database, performing sorting, paging, update, insert, and delete operations, building data access and business object layers, rendering customization using templates, and improved performance through caching. This talk also covers aspects of Visual Studio 2005 Express and SQL Server 2005 Express for building data-driven web sites.

ASP.NET 2.0 - Master pages, themes, and site navigation
Properly integrating the powerful features of ASP.NET 2.0 into a high quality, professional site design is often difficult. In this talk, we will look at specific best practices, tips and tricks, and other lessons learned to help you more easily customize Master Pages, Site Navigation, themes, and more to build the most attractive and functional Web Sites possible.

ASP.NET "Atlas" (a.k.a. building AJAX applications with ASP.NET)
Take a first look at "Atlas", a new set of technologies that will build on innovations in ASP.NET 2.0 and make it easier to build Web applications that deliver rich, interactive, and personalized experiences in the browser using technologies such as DHTML and XMLHttp. Atlas includes a 100% JScript cross-browser client script framework that allows you to easily build browser applications with rich UI and connectivity to Web services, full integration with ASP.NET application services such as user profiles, a set of ASP.NET server controls for "Atlas", and a set of client application services. Learn how you can use the "Atlas" preview release and ASP.NET 2.0 to start developing richer Web applications.

Tags: Microsoft ASP.NET .NET development webcast

If you ever have a question regarding purchase of an MSDN Subscription or need support for your MSDN Subscriptions, you can contact the MSDN Information Center (for EMEA). Just for your reference (and mine :)), here is an overview of the ways to get in touch with MSDNIC:

• By phone (works only from Belgian landlines): 0800/80.138
• By phone: +353 (1) 8831014
• By fax: +353 (1) 883 1013
• By e-mail: msdnic@eu.subservices.com

We already released CTPs (community technical previews) of 2 parts of the Microsoft Expression product line:

• Microsoft Expression Graphic Designer and
• Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer

Today, we announce the availability of the first CTP of the third part, the Microsoft Expression Web Designer. This is an ideal opportunity for web designers to get their hands on this technology and start working with it. Expression Web Designer is a new tool that enables an easier and closer collaboration between web designers an web developers. It supports all the features that you would expect from a modern website design tool, such as CSS 1.0, 2.0 and 2.1 support, XHTML support (strict and transactional), easily build views based on XML data, and of course ASP.NET support.

The first CTP can be downloaded (224 MB) from the web. If you want to get a quick overview first, be sure to check out the features list and the feature tour demo videos.

Update: It seems some people (including me) can't install it and get an error message "The installation of this package failed." Hopefully this gets resolved quite soon.

Update 16 May 2006: The installation problem should be solved if you download the software again.

Tags: Expression Web Designer

Yves Goeleven just sent us an e-mail asking to be added to the MSDN Belux list of Belgian bloggers... We will do that next week; meanwhile, here is the link to Yves' blog: http://www.goeleven.com/professional/.

Do you also want to be added to the MSDN Belux list of Belgian .NET bloggers, send us an e-mail at msdnbewm@microsoft.com and include the link to your blog as well as a short abstract.

Although VISUG (the Belgian Visual Studio User Group) is really late with this announcement, the opportunity to hear Clemens Vasters talk about WinFX and the Windows Communication Foundation might be a good reason to free up your agenda for next Wednesday evening (17 May 2006).

More information is available on the VISUG website.

David was the first to blog it: our first podcast at MSDN Belux is live. David Boschmans and Bart De Smet talked to the Visual Basic product team at one of our local MSDN events. Get the techie details at David's blog. I'll stick to the organizational side of things.

I'm going to be honest about it: we don't have a publication schedule for next podcasts (yet). First of all, we don't want to "compete" with Channel9 or with On10.net.  So you'll get new podcasts if we have new interesting and relevant local (i.e. Belgian and Luxemburger) information. Secondly, this is something extra that we do in our free time. It's not really part of our official work commitments. But we see value in it and therefore we do offer you these podcasts through MSDN Belux.

Dan Fernandez blogs that Visual Studio Express is completely free, not just till November 2006, but permanently. He also has some nice other Visual Studio Express related announcements over at his blog.

Last Monday, we had 2 guys from the Microsoft Visual Basic product team in Belgium for the MSDN Event: "Visual Basic On Tour". During 5 presentations Todd Apley and Paul Yuknewicz gave an overview of the new features in Visual Basic 2005. OK, one presentation was also given by Alexander Holy, developer evangelist at Microsoft EMEA.

In my previous life, I've did quite some Visual Basic development and I'm still proud of that. I'm also still convinced that Visual Basic is the perfect language for doing rapid application development. Combine the easy-of-use of Visual Basic with the advanced capabilities of the .NET Framework and you've got a application development tool on steriods. But before starting a religious language war, let me just say once more that - given my VB background - I was very happy to welcome the guys that actually worked on Visual Basic in Belgium.

Here are some links that may be of interest to Visual Basic developers:

• Jacob Cynamon lists the webcasts in the Visual Basic 2005 Today! series that he'll be doing...
• Tobin Titus writes about 202 Visual Basic samples (for version 2003 and 2005)
• Brad McCabe says the free eBook "Introducing Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 for Developers" was recently updated.
• And there is a lot more on the Visual Basic Developer Center at MSDN.com.

www.flickr.com

Very very late notice, but the .NET User Group Brugge has a meeting tomorrow on ADO.NET, focussing on the differences between Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005. The meetings are held in Dudzele (near Bruges).

Unfortunately I won't be able to join them...

VISUG, Belgium's Visual Studio User Group, is having a meeting next Thursday (March 30 at 18:00) in Leuven Zaventem, as reported by Steven Wilssens, the user group's president. Topics of the meeting:

• discussion on presentation topics for upcoming meetings,
• discussion on membership conditions,
• discussion on Developer & IT Pro Days,
• presentation of advanced generic in Visual Studio 2005.

Did you know that VISUG together with MSDN Belgium offer a limited number of free memberships to the user group? Register for the Belgian MSDN Connection program and claim your free membership now. There are only a few free memberships left.

I'll do my best to drop by, but there is also the Dutch spoken MSDN Belux webcast on ASP.NET 2.0 running at that time...

Update: Steven had to change the location to the Compuware offices in Zaventem, because of the high number of attendees.

A few weeks ago, I blogged that the renewed Beta Experience was open for registration. If you also like the  "pleasure of testing" software, you should definitely register for this new Beta Experience. You'll receive a newsletter once every 6 weeks during the beta period, and once available, you'll be able to download the public beta's/CTP's of the software. This allows you to get hands-on experience with the new Windows Vista and 2007 Office System.

Find the sites:

• Beta Experience (Belgium - Dutch)
• Beta Experience (Belgium - French)
• Beta Experience (general)

Gérard Leblanc, respected professor in Belgium, recently sent me a copy of his updated French book on C# and .NET for version 2 of the .NET Framework. It's nice to see that one of the successful books on .NET was written by a Belgian..

A few days ago, we announced the next MSDN Belux Event on Visual Basic 2005. It will all happen on April 3rd (first day of the Easter Holidays) at Kinepolis Brussels. What's not yet mentioned on the website is that the sessions will be delivered by the Visual Basic product team. In fact, they are so excited to come to Europe that Jay Roxe and a few of his team members recorded a short video about it.

Some weeks later we're organising (together with Microsoft EMEA and Microsoft HQ) hands-on labs on Visual Basic 2005 and hands-on labs on ASP.NET 2.0.

But before all that, both our Regional Directors will host a webcast on website skinning with ASP.NET 2.0 and cascading style sheets. Peter Himschoot will present the webcast in Dutch, while Grégory "Rédo" Renard takes care of the French spoken webcast. A few months ago, I already blogged about the power of CSS for skinning websites and I still find it very cool...

Thursday evening I had a chat with Kris Hoet, marketing manager at MSN Belgium. Normally our conversation would have been very short as the person he was looking for was not at the office. I can't recall how we started the conversation, but we talked for more than one hour on Windows Live.com.

First of all, I'm very fond of the brand new "infinite scroll" of Windows Live Search. No more clicking to go to the next page of the search results. You just keep scrolling. Really neat. And so far the upgraded search engine seems to return precisely the results I'm looking for. Nathan Weinberg explains a lot of the features of Windows Live Search at the Inside Microsoft blog news channel:

• First look at Windows Live Search
• Windows Live Search Macro's
• Windows Live Image Search

After my chat with Kris, I also replaced the currently installed MSN Toolbar and Desktop Search with the new Windows Live Toolbar (Beta). Now I have also access to Onfolio and Live Favorites. These Live Favorites allow me to synch my favorites across all PC's I work on. One of the other neat features is that you can basically use any search engine from within the toolbar's search box.

It seems many people also added quite a lot of bots to their Messenger account. Up till now, I didn't. But after talking a bit about it, several potential ideas for using a Messenger bot popped-up. I'm pretty sure that we'll see more and more of these bots in the near future. Kris sent me a link to a website that contains a lot of Dutch and English Messenger bots: http://www.mensmerk.nl/chatbots.html. Go and try them yourself.

You need a special SDK (software development kit) to develop such bots. For a limited time, Conversagent offers a free license of such an SDK. A few days ago, Dutch Cowboys blog (in Dutch) reports that Oberon Medialab from The Netherlands is Microsoft's first European Messenger ISV (independent software vendor) that offers a Messenger (ro)bot platform. As said before, this is only the beginning...

Bots aren't the only software you can create for MSN Messenger. You can also develop your own "activities" that can be used during chats. A lot of examples are available on the MSN Messenger World's Best App contest website. What about the Live Translator: you chat in one language and your correspondent sees the text in his own language? I remember seeing this as part of an Imagine Cup 2005 finalist application, but now it is available in the real world.

More information on developing for MSN Messenger is available on the MSDN MSN Messenger Developer Center. That's also the site where you'll find the Messenger Activity SDK.

You can personalize the Windows Live website with several gadgets. Not only just the set that Microsoft thinks to be useful, you can also develop your own gadgets. For more gadgets and information on developing them, check out the Microsoft Gadgets website. It seems there are also Belgians that submitted their gadgets already...

After the opening keynote of Developer & IT Pro Days some people asked me what the difference is between the live.com and start.com websites. You can find the answer on Sanaz Ahari's blog.

Do I think Windows Live is important for developers? Well, it's important for a lot of companies and thus it will become important for a lot of developers. On top of this, I think it's fun to build these bots, activities and gadgets for Windows Live, so don't hesitate to experiment with this stuff now... And feel free to let me know if you built something...

You can check out the latest Windows Live products at http://ideas.live.com/.

The Belgian Extreme Programming (XP) / Agile User Group announced their next meeting on Visual Studio Team System and MSF For Agile. The meeting will be held on March 16 at the offices of Info Support in Mechelen. Abstract from the user group's website:

Many development teams have adopted "agile" methodologies to manage change and to improve software quality. These methodologies promote continuous integration as a practice to build and test software products incrementally as new features are included, bugs are fixed, and code is refactored. So how does Visual Studio® 2005 Team System and Team Foundation Server facilitate the process of agile development and continuous integration?

This presentation gives an overview using agile concepts such as test-driven development (TDD), creating a team project using Team Foundation Server and use this technology's extensibility features to build a custom Web service that enables continuous integration to build the application as code is checked into source control.

The "patterns & practices" team released new guides on best practices for developing with the .NET Framework 2.0 and with ASP.NET:

• ASP.NET 2.0 Security Guidelines
• ASP.NET 2.0 Security Checklist
• ASP.NET 2.0 Security Practices at a Glance
• How To: Perform a Security Code Review for Managed Code and the Security Question List: ASP.NET 2.0
• patterns & practices ASP.NET 2.0 Security Guidance Index
• patterns & practices Web Application Security Engineering Index

Find more of them at the "patterns & practices" development center on MSDN.

For security fans (which includes every developer, right), there is also The Code Room episode on security: Breaking into Vegas. From the site: "The Code Room is a 1/2 hour internet TV show that exposes technologists to the latest tools and technologies for tackling real-world software development issues."

Brad Abrams reports that his book "Framework Design Guidelines" is the 19th best selling book in the category "Computing & Internet" at Proxis... So is Belgium really becoming a center for framework design excellence (or are we it already :) )?

Thanks Rudi for sending me the link to Brad's post...

Soma had quite some nice announcements the past few days. First of all, Team Foundation Server - the collaboration server of Visual Studio Team System - will be available in March.

As good developer, you already knew about the availability of the .NET Enterprise Library v2.0, didn't you? :)

It's also nice to have a look at the future, isn't it? So check out the new CTP's of the Expression tools, such as the Expression Interactive Designer (previously know as code name "Sparkle"). Or maybe you like Visual Basic 2005 (version 8.0), so why won't you check out the new Visual Basic 9.0 CTP?

Geez, when I read about all this new stuff

Warning: Marketing Content is following after this sentence! If you want to know more about Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server, book your ticket for the Developer & IT Pro Days now... There will be plenty of sessions on these subjects. And you'll be able to fire your questions at experts that have real life experience with these products.

Did you know you can already register for a new Beta Experience with Windows Vista and Office "12"? It's free and will deliver you quite some benefits such as "valuable resources, specialist knowledge and bonus material".

You'll also receive a 6-weekly newsletter. For Belgians, this newsletter will also contain quite a lot of information on local activities and communities. If you want to have us include your content (articles, code samples, ...) in the Belgian Beta Experience newsletter, don't hesitate to send the MSDN Belux team an e-mail at msdnbewm@microsoft.com. I promise you that I or someone from the MSDN Belux team will get back to you quite quickly.

I've been very quiet on the blogging front lately. For a big part this has to do with the preparation for the Developer & IT Pro Days 2006. After a lot of work, we've finally been able to open the registrations for this event. Have a look at the site (http://www.dev-itprodays.be); the agenda is almost completely finalized.

To give you a little insight, here are the people that are part of the event core team:

• Ritchie Houtmeyers and I are the project owners.
• David Boschmans and Arlindo Alves are responsible for the content and speakers
• Wim Verhaeghen is working on the website
• Lut Goedhuys is dealing with all marketing and communication activities

PS. The first 400 people that register will receive an MSPress book...

There are already quite some user groups in Belgium focussing on development on the Microsoft platform:

• Belgian Information Worker User Group
• .NET User Group Brugge
• Visual Basic Group

I already blogged about the user group for French speaking developers that Rédo and his friends want to start.

Two other guys, Steven Wilssens and Peter Himschoot, are starting the Belgian Visual Studio User Group. Their first meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday (25 January).

Rédo wants to start a new user group for developers in Belgium that work on the Microsoft platform. Therefore he put up a survey to know what potential members would be interested in. This will help him and the other user group leaders to compose a nice and compelling agenda for the next year.

For the French speaking people: Donc, si vous parlez le Français et vous souhaitez que votre avis soit pris en compte, complétez le questionnaire.

Are you using C++ as your programming language? You might be interested to hear about Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 from the Group Program Manager of this product... Check out the MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg events page for more information and free registration.

MSDN Evening on January 5th, 2006: A Lap Around Visual C++ 2005
With Ronald Laeremans, Group Program Manager Visual C++ team at Microsoft Corporation

Come and see why Visual C++ 2005 is a must have upgrade. You'll be taken on a whirlwind tour through the 2005 release in this demo-heavy session. Get little know tips and tricks for the IDE and debugger. Learn how to improve the performance of your code using whole program and profile guided optimizations. And see how you can easily leverage the .NET libraries from your existing Win32 or MFC C++ application.

Timing: 18:00 - 20:30
Location: Microsoft offices in Diegem (near Brussels)
Registration: See http://www.msdn.be/events

Steven Wilssens just blogged that he is planning to start a Belgian Visual Studio User Group. Interested to participate? Check out his blog...

Warning: commercial content following...

Together with my colleagues at the Microsoft Press front, we were able to extend the Launch Event promotion on the following 2 books:

• Working with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System for 21,60 EUR
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Pocket Consultant for 19,99 EUR

Recently Rédo and Aurelien showed me a very nice website that demonstrates the power (and flexibility) of using CSS to skin your website. Probably I should already have known this, but it was a real eye opener that one can easily work this way.

The concept is quite easy: you have one HTML file and you have to change its appearance only by modifying a CSS file. Graphic artists can submit their CSS to the site owners. After they approve it, the design can be viewed from the site.

All of that on http://www.csszengarden.com/. Choose different designs in the right hand column.

Only a few days left to start a free 90-day subscription to Microsoft E-Learning. You can register for the following courses free of charge till November 17, 2005:

• Clinic 2551: Introduction to Visual Studio Team System
• Course 2924: Building Data Components in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
• Course 2925: Building Managed Code for SQL Server 2005 and Creating SOA Applications with Visual Studio 2005
• Course 2926: Building Windows® Forms Applications with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005
• Course 2927: Building Web Applications with ASP.NET 2.0
• Course 2928: Implementing Data Access and Security in an ASP.NET 2.0 Web Application
• Course 2929: Implementing Wizards, Site Navigation, State Management, and Configuration in ASP.NET 2.0
• Course 2930: Implementing Master Pages, Personalization, and Web Parts with ASP.NET 2.0

After November 17, these trainings will still be available but not for free.

Blatantly copied from the site:

Watch Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduce SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 in the worldwide launch event in San Francisco. See how this next generation application platform makes the next leap in productivity, scalability and availability for mission critical applications.

So tune in at 18:00 (if you live in timezone GMT+1) -- http://www.microsoft.com/emea/steveballmerlive/

Over the past few weeks, we have published several articles from different Belgian & Luxemburger authors on the local MSDN website. Here's an overview:

Visual Studio 2005 Walkthrough: ASP.NET 2.0 Web Services and ADO.NET 2.0
In this walkthrough Wim Uyttersprot learns you how to create an ASP.NET 2.0 Web Service that returns and updates an ADO.NET 2.0 DataSet. The dataset is consumed in a Windows Form and bound to a DataGridView instance, using the new asynchronous patterns of .NET 2.0. The dataset is serialized in XML. Using a XSD schema, a typed dataset is created.

Extend Windows Media Player with Visual C++ Express and Advanced COM Interop - Part I
Learn how to create cool plug-ins for Windows Media Player. Ianier Munoz guides you to the process of enhancing the user experience of Windows Media Player with new visualizations, audio effects and other power toys.

Remote monitoring of mobile device applications
Philippe Cailleau explains how to get back information about memory usage during execution time in order to spot key points that could be useful to identify the source of strange memory consumption.

Enterprise Source Control with Visual Studio Team System
In his latest article Peter Himschoot talks about the source configuration management features of Visual Studio Team System, and shows what features are important for us developers in day to day development. Some features are compared with Visual Source Safe. There is even a hands-on lab includeded so you can try for yourself.

Do you also want to share your knowledge with the developer community by authoring articles? If you're Belgian or Luxembourger, please send an e-mail to msdnbewm@microsoft.com. Everyone else can check out the article submission section on MSDN.com.

Over the past few weeks, I've received some questions about running different parts of Team System on 64-bit operating systems. Rob Caron has just clarified this...

Man man man, we've crossed the barrier of 2.000 registrations for the Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 Launch Event here in Belgium on 10 November. I'm sure we'll have to close the registration really soon. Together with all questions and inquiries I received over the past few weeks on Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Team System (because of RTM), it's obvious that this launch is really getting the attention of the Belgian developer community.

You'll also be able to meet several partners/sponsors on the launch event that are as happy as we are about this release. They'll show you what Visual Studio, SQL Server and BizTalk Server means to them. I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but it will be worthwhile to visit them...

Oh, I'm talking too much fluff here... but that's only because I feel so happy about this Launch and its products. Please forgive me.

No need to say more... http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/

Looking from the .NET Framework 2.0 download? Find it here.

Exciting, exciting, exciting... I didn't know that I would actually feel so strange/good after reading the news.

Did you already notice that MSDN.com contains local Belgian headlines on its home page?

If you don't see headlines for Belgium, you can change this by clicking on the "Change" link.

You can of course still subscribe to the local MSDN Belux RSS feed too.

The Belgian Launch Event for Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 is scheduled for November 10th in Court-St-Etienne (this is near Brussels). The Launch Event website is at http://www.microsoft.be/events/ready or you can go directly to the registration page (Dutch / French).

Keynote speaker is S. "Soma" Somasegar. If aliens don't abduct him, Clemens Vasters will give a brief overview of Visual Studio 2005 while Astrid Hackenberg will do the same for SQL Server 2005.

MSDN has published a white paper on Visual Studio 2005 and its security features.

Visual Studio 2005 makes it easier for developers to write secure applications. Write unmanaged code that's safe, or get IDE tools that help you to build and deploy managed applications that take advantage of Code Access Security.

You can read it here.

David Boschmans arranged that Robert Scoble, Microsoft Geek Blogger and A-list blogger, will pay our little country a visit on December 7 and 8. More info on David's blog at http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/davidb/archive/2005/09/20/132825.aspx.

The Belgian blogging community was quite active at the PDC (Professional Developers Conference) last week in Los Angeles. Here's an overview of their PDC-related blog posts:

• Notes on Keynote Day 1 (http://blogs.bartdesmet.net/bart/archive/2005/09/13/3539.aspx)

• PDC05 Keynote (http://jelle.druyts.net/2005/09/13/PDC05Keynote.aspx)
• Keynote 2 (http://jelle.druyts.net/2005/09/14/PDC05TheSecondKeynote.aspx)
• Keynote 3 (http://jelle.druyts.net/2005/09/15/PDC05TheThirdKeynote.aspx)
• PDC05 Pre-Con: The Art Of Building A Reusable Class Library (http://jelle.druyts.net/2005/09/16/PDC05PreConTheArtOfBuildingAReusableClassLibrary.aspx)
• Static Classes And The HasShutdownStarted Property (http://jelle.druyts.net/2005/09/16/StaticClassesAndTheHasShutdownStartedProperty.aspx)

• PDC Day 1 - After the presentations (http://www.pixato.com/?p=67)
• PDC Day 2 - After the presentations (http://www.pixato.com/?p=68)
• PDC Pictures (including Office “12” pics) (http://www.pixagogo.com/6001135117)

• You know why PDC '05 is held in LA? I do! (http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2005/09/12/424925.aspx)
• Son of SmartPart: more details (http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2005/09/14/425192.aspx)

• Photos from PDC05 uploaded (http://jopx.blogspot.com/2005/09/photos-from-pdc05-uploaded.html)
• High expectations for PDC05 concerning SharePoint and MCMS (http://jopx.blogspot.com/2005/09/high-expectations-for-pdc05-concerning.html)
• .Net Language Integrated Query (http://jopx.blogspot.com/2005/09/net-language-integrated-query_14.html)
  Windows Workflow Foundation and SharePoint (http://jopx.blogspot.com/2005/09/windows-workflow-foundation-and.html)
• Windows Vista at PDC05 (http://jopx.blogspot.com/2005/09/windows-vista-at-pdc05.html)
• Office 12 - you got it first at PDC (http://jopx.blogspot.com/2005/09/office-12-you-got-it-first-at-pdc.html)
• Enhancements in SharePoint V3 (http://jopx.blogspot.com/2005/09/enhancements-in-sharepoint-v3.html)
• IBF has a new brother, here comes BDC (http://jopx.blogspot.com/2005/09/ibf-has-new-brother-here-comes-bdc.html)

• Live from PDC (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/peter/archive/2005/09/14/9036.aspx)

• Pack PDC 2005 ! (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/13/11160.aspx)
• Parfois... (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/13/11199.aspx)
• Introducing LINQ by Paul Vick !!! (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/14/11205.aspx)
• Atlas Unleashed... by Scott Guthrie (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/14/11206.aspx)
• Quand mono rime avec zéro ! (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/14/11214.aspx)
• Première journée PDC ... Que du bonheur !!! (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/14/11249.aspx)
• Nouveautés annoncées : C#3, VB9, LINQ Project (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/15/11253.aspx)
• Anders Hejlsberg, Just do it !!! (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/15/11257.aspx)
• Visual Basic .NET 9 : Future Directions in Language Innovation (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/15/11310.aspx)
• Paul Vick, Just do it (Part2) !!! (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/15/11312.aspx)
• C# 3.0 Language Enhancements + Chat C# 3.0 le 22 septembre !!! (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/15/11315.aspx)
• Après la première journée... la suite : Acrylic, Sparkle, Quartz, XAML, Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) ... (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/16/11321.aspx)
• Migrez vos applications de .NET 1.x vers .NET 2.0 (http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo/archive/2005/09/18/11404.aspx) 

• Arrived at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005 (http://www.wiver.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,fb997e2e-dfc1-4f82-8af0-82ed9bb277aa.aspx)
• Be Ready for the Wave (http://www.wiver.com/blog/PermaLink,guid,1424b21d-04f7-4e28-a65a-22659be84f04.aspx)

• Windows Vista UX Guide available (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/davidb/archive/2005/09/12/132516.aspx)
• Visual Studio 2005 Release Candidate (RC): live on MSDN (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/davidb/archive/2005/09/12/132518.aspx)
• PDC 05 - 1: ASP.NET 2.0 Pre-conf (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/davidb/archive/2005/09/13/132525.aspx)
• PDC 05: An exciting Day 1 (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/davidb/archive/2005/09/13/132559.aspx)
• PDC 05: Coolness and Belgian Community on stage! (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/davidb/archive/2005/09/14/132601.aspx)
• Migrating to Team Foundation Server (http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/davidb/archive/2005/09/16/132625.aspx)

• VSTO 2005 developers and Office 12 (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/09/12/8946.aspx)
• VSTO 2005 Pre-Conf and the rest of day 2 (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/09/13/8992.aspx)
• ‘Son of the SmartPart’ Technology Preview (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/09/13/9033.aspx)
• Where's my menu? (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/09/14/9107.aspx)
• SharePoint Day at PDC (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/09/15/9142.aspx)
• CAML vNext (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/09/15/9146.aspx)
• Reflecting on PDC (http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick/archive/2005/09/17/9172.aspx)

Did I miss a blog post from a Belgian somewhere? Feel free to leave a comment to have this rectified...

Blatantly copied from David Boschmans's blog:

... Huge was my suprise when Mike Ammerlaan introduced the "Son of the SmartPart" aka SmartPart version 2. If you are wondering what this is all about check the Son of the SmartPart's post with details at http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/archive/2005/09/14/425192.aspx. I am amazed to see that a community tool driven by a very smart Belgian guy is picked by the Microsoft WSS teams at Microsoft Corp. and is considered as "the way" to make it possible to host ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts or user controls in the current version of Windows SharePoint Services. So congrats Jan and keep up the great community work or as Mike Fitzmaurice blogs it "Rock on, guys!".

Well done, Jan and Patrick...

I just encountered the following on the ASP.NET Development Center. Web developers, here you go:

Watch presentations on ASP.NET 2.0 from the experts that know it best. We have dozens of hours of video to help you learn ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Web Developer.

• Scott Guthrie walks you through the new features in ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005
• Learn Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition with Bob Tabor of LearnVisualStudio.net
• Learn ASP.NET 2.0 with Interactive Computer Training
• Learn ASP.NET 2.0 with Jeff Prosise of Wintellect
• TechEd 2005 presentations

Just a quick note that you can all mark your agenda's and make sure you make no appointments on November 10! Because November 10 is the date that we will launch Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 in Belgium. Save the date!

More information will be available on the official Microsoft Belgium website soon, but now you already now the date...

Update: I'm not going to spoil the surprise by already giving his name, but we managed to have a fabulous, fantastic, superb keynote speaker for the event. (No, it's not me ;)) Let me give you some teasers:

• He works at Microsoft Corporation
• His job title sounds good (well, that is according to me)
• He's part of the Developer Division
• He has 2 kids
• He blogs

Could be anyone, right? Not! A good internet searcher should be able to get into the right direction.

Bernard Vander Beken sent me mail, informing that he and Kris Lauwereins started a new user group for .NET developers in the region of Bruges (Brugge for the Flemish). Their first meeting is on September 21st.

Visit their website (in Dutch) for more information: http://accbnet.ccat.be/.

On September 23rd, we'll be hosting an event in Brussels on Visual Studio Team System with 2 great presenters from Microsoft Corp in Redmond: Michael Leworthy and Sonal Pardeshi. Both are product managers on Visual Studio Team System and are of course very knowledgeable on this subject.

As usual with our MSDN Events in Belgium, the show can be attended for free but we do ask you to register upfront.

For more information and registration, see http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/msdn/events/2005/vsts_ontour.mspx.

Other community information:

• .NET Rocks audio talk show on VSTS
• Visual Studio Team System forums on microsoft.com

Patrick Tisseghem announced the start of a new user group in Belgium: the Belux Information Worker User Group (or BIWUG in short). He has been working on this start for quite some time already, so I'm glad to see the public announcement now. As the user group's name suggests, the participants will focus on information worker technologies. People that know Patrick, know that he's very knowledgeable in this subject, that he's an active community participant (blogging, speaking at conferences, participating in podcasts, writing top notch articles, ...) and that he's also a nice guy.

More information on the user group and how to join is available on Patrick's blog.

This is my first blog post ever that I do from a Windows Vista powered PC. I know that this os is still pre-beta, so I don't mind refreshing my HTML skills to write this post in plain HTML (DasBlog uses FreeTextBox but it apparently doesn't render in this Internet Explorer).

Anyway, the experience I'm currently having ROCKS tremendously! It is difficult to describe how I feel while playing around in Windows Vista; one could compare it to an energizing excitement. Currently the plans are to have Windows Vista Beta 1, targeted at developers and IT professionals, available by August 3rd 2005. Dev's going to PDC -- be prepared for any incredible experience. (And the ones that stay at home, please do too...)

Oh oh, it seems there is only a limited number of free Beta Experience kits available. So if you want to receive a copy of Visual Studio Team System Beta 2, SQL Server 2005 April CTP and a WeFly247 training CD for free, it's time to act now (if you live in the EMEA region): http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience.

At this moment there are only 5796 kits available, but the number lowers almost every minute.

Direct links for:

• Belgium (English): http://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/betaexperience/nlbe/
• Belgium (French): http://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/betaexperience/frbe/

Steve Lanuit is a Belgian developer that is rather experienced with Managed DirectX and he's blogging. Steve is one of the developers of the "New World" project, the Belgian Imagine Cup 2004 finalist in the software design invitational.

You can find his blog at http://zeknight.blogspot.com. He already posted 2 HLSL examples with source code.

This is way cool... You can give the home page of your Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone or Pocket PC a nice Beta Experience look-and-feel. (For those that don't know the Beta Experience, have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience.)

This is an example at how your Smartphone/Pocket PC home page can look like if you install the themes:

Smartphone theme

Pocket PC theme

You can install it on your own phone by following these steps:

• Download the file to your desktop PC.
• Copy the file to your mobile phone. (I placed it under "Storage/Windows", but I guess you can place it anywhere.)
• Start up the File Manager and go to the location where you stored the file.
• Click on the file and confirm the automatic installation of the theme.

It is possible to switch back to other home page skins at any time through the Settings menu.

Do not hesitate to drop me a note if you've installed them on your Smartphone/Pocket PC.

Note: If you decide to install the home page skin, you take full responsability for it. I had no problems installing it on my Windows Mobile 2003 powered Smartphone, but I cannot guarantee that it will work with yours too. Damage to your device, data loss or earthquakes (or anything else) are your own responsability if you decide to download and install these home pages.

Update: The files are now available from the Microsoft.com Download Center. I also updated the instructions.

Update April 2006: a new Beta Experience campaign started and a new Windows Mobile theme is available now.

On April 29th, the Visual C# and Windows Forms product teams are coming to Brussels for a full day of presentations on their products and technologies in Visual Studio 2005. Both Dan Fernandez (C# Product Manager) and Joe Stegman (Lead Program Manager for .NET Client team) are very experienced and good speakers. In fact, I still remember one presentation by Joe Stegman on WinForms 2.0 on PDC. In fact, I was so impressed that I even blogged about that particular session. More information and registration on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/msdn/events/.

BTW: Dan Fernandez invites for a meet up when he's in Brussels.

See you all in Brussels on April 29!

It seems we are teasing both our developers and IT professionals...

• Visual Studio 2005 - Beta Experience (live on April 11th 25th, now only information) 
• Gatekeeper Test (live on April 4th, now teaser video's available)

I know that "exciting" and "marvelous" and similar words tend to be perceived as "marketing talk". So to avoid these words, the least I can say is that it certainly looks promising.

It's more than one week ago that we had the Developer & IT Pro Days. Amazingly enough, we are receiving a very high number of evaluations. Would the Motorola MPx-220 Smartphone contest have to do something with that?

Most of you already know by now that a few weeks ago I became the new developer audience manager and product manager for developer tools at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg. While I already did parts of the job for several months on "ad interim" basis, now it is official. And I'm sure we'll all continue to be part of a vibrant developer community.

On March 2nd, the "ASP.NET 2.0 On Tour" event will be helt in Belgium (Kinepolis, Brussels). It appears you are all very interested in learning about this upcoming technology according to the number of registrations that are coming in. I don't remember ever having that high number of registrations after only one week.

Every attendee of the MSDN Event on December 2nd will receive a very cool DVD containing even more cool products that all integrate very nice in Visual Studio .NET 2003. What would you think about:

• A full version of ActiveReports for .NET
• AmberPoint Express
• CodeObject
• DeKlarit
• Sax Communication, Community Edition

And much more... 67 products (full versions, trials and demo's) in total. Great stuff! Register now for the MSDN Event and get your own copy by attending the event: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/msdn/events/msdnevent.mspx.

Of course, you'll also get some great content:

• SQL Server 2000 Notification Services (this is not Reporting Services, for those that might be confused)
• Upcoming Patterns & Practices' Enterprise Library - A Sneak Preview
• Developing applications with Authorization Manager in Windows Server 2003
• Practical real-world examples for using XML features in Office System 2003

Metablogging the InfoPathHelper .NET library from Jelle Druys that adds offline support to InfoPath forms.

My Wix overview article (written in Dutch) for the .NET Magazine is now available for download. Belgians can register for a free subscription to the .NET Magazine at http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/msdn/community/netmagazine/default.mspx. Please note that the magazine is only available in Dutch. (Reason is that it is actually published by our colleagues in The Netherlands, but you'll find many Belgian authors in the magazine too...)

On December 2nd, we will have another MSDN Event for Belgian and Luxemburg. It will take place in Kinepolis, Brussels. IMHO, we have some extremely interesting content; but I guess everyone says that about the events they work on, not?  :) Anyway, we will have sessions on "Enterprise Library", "Using Authorization Manager", "SQL Server Notification Services" and real-world examples of using "XML features in Office".

More information on MSDN Event "Unleashing the Potential of the Microsoft Platform" and registration is available on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/msdn/events/msdnevent.mspx.

This is what we've been working on the last few weeks:

And finally the website is live at http://www.dev-itprodays.be. Oh, almost forgot to mention that Bill Gates will give the opening keynote!

Microsoft EMEA (EMEA = Europe, Middle East and Africa) gives you the possibility to order the MSDN Web Developer Kit (shipping and handling costs apply) or to download parts of this kit.

MSDN Web Developer Kit
Flexible, multipurpose and effective: Developing web applications has never been easier than in the .NET environment. We’d like to offer you the chance to evaluate how your development projects could benefit from the unique advantages of .NET through our Web Developer Kit. Read on to find out how...

Here are some direct links:

• Belgium (Flemish)
• Belgium (French)
• The Netherlands
• United Kingdom
• All other countries, visit this page.

Was just browsing the MSDN Product Feedback Center and saw the following announcement by Anson Horton (Microsoft):

I'm happy to report that based on your feedback we have decided to implement E&C for C#. It will be first available in the upcoming community tech preview drop. Please let us know what you think!!

More information on Edit and Continue in C# is available on Microsoft's Vice President for the Developer Division Somasegar (a.k.a. Soma).

In the year 2000 I saw him in person for the first time. It was on a Visual Basic developer conference in Orlando, Florida. At that time, I already read several of his articles and 2 of his books, both in the "Hitchhiker's Guide" series. He was THE data access guru; he knew everything about ODBC API’s, DAO, RDO and ADO in combination with SQL Server. Wow, William “Bill” Vaughn certainly impressed me... Well, he's still active and he's still a renowned SQL Server data access expert. And guess what: he's coming to Belgium! Therefore I'm really excited that I can invite you on the Brussels SQL Server Day in Kinepolis (at the Heysel in Brussel). This free event is produced by SQL Server Magazine on October 26. Now, of course, you don’t have to take my word on William's SQL Server expertise. Just check out some of his articles and the books he wrote. To register for this free event or to learn more, visit the Brussels SQL Server Day web site.

In a blog post about SharpDevelop, Tim Anderson writes that SharpDevelop contains a built-in editor for WiX.

The SharpDevelop GUI in the background and a sample of an executing MSI on top.

But after having a closer look, I was somewhat disappointed:

• SharpDevelop contains indeed a template for a creating a setup with WiX, but that template is far from complete. There are no "Select Feature", "Modify", "Repair" or "Uninstall" dialogs forseen. Only the absolute minimum for getting an application installed is prepared.
• No autocomplete feature for the WiX source code (i.e. "Intellisense" in Microsoft jargon).
• No nice GUI, you still need to edit the XML source code.

On the positive note:

• It's a good starting point, but you'll soon extend this template to create your own.
• It contains custom bitmaps. This was one of my own concerns: I'm a lousy graphics artist but I didn't want to rip (which would probably be illegal) graphics from other MSI's (or MSI tool builders, like InstallShield and Wise Solutions).

Below you can find some screenshots from a MSI that was created from the SharpDevelop Setup template:

While Rédo is a developer celebrity in France, he is actually living in Belgium. Grégory (that's his official name) is an MVP for ASP.NET and a Microsoft CodeWide Community member for his website http://www.asp-php.net. Most of the posts on his blog are written in French, but sometimes he also writes in English. You can find the RédoBlog at http://blogs.developpeur.org/redo.

Registration is now open for the following TechNet Evening sessions in September, which will both be held at the NH Hotel in Diegem (near Brussels):

September 15: SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 Update for DBA’s
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is Microsoft’s next-generation data management and analysis software that will deliver increased scalability, availability, and security to enterprise data and analytical applications while making them easier to create, deploy, and manage. The speaker will give an overview of the new features in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for database administration, database availability, scalability, and security.

September 29: Deploying ISA Server 2004
Get an overview of Microsoft Internet Security and Accelerator (ISA) Server 2004, the advanced application layer firewall, VPN, and Web cache solution that enables you to easily maximize existing IT investments by improving network security and performance. This informative session is open to IT Professionals who are familiar with ISA and people who are new to the product.

More information and registration is available on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/technet/events/.

Want to get some developer insights about the recently released Windows XP Service Pack 2? If you rush you can still register for the upcoming Belgian MSDN Evening session on Windows XP Service Pack 2. After an overview of the developer implications of this service pack, you will get some tips and experiences from a developer that tested several applications of his customers on compliance with Windows XP SP2.

There are only a few seats left for this event, so if you plan to attend, do not hesitate to register now!

Update: the session will be redelivered next Wednesday on September 8th at "Living Tomorrow" (a.k.a. "The House Of The Future") in Vilvoorde. There are still seats available: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/msdn/events/#xpsp2redelivery.

Rob Mensching posted an update to the WiX toolset, including many bugfixes.

In this post I share some of the interesting blog posts of the past month that will also appear in the MSDN Belux Flash.

Belgian community

• Jonathan de Halleux is excited about a matrix algebra package for .NET.
• Yves Kerwyn: "SharePoint users might fall in love with Windows Briefcase"
• Christof Claessens blogs about BizTalk Server 2004.
• Christoph De Baene wrote SharpBrowser.
• Jan Tielens: "SharePoint, Code Access Security and the SmartPart"
• Tom van de Kerkhof created a Treeview navigation webpart for Sharepoint, using SmartPart.
• Jonathan de Halleux has created several add-ins for .NET Reflector.
• Find a list of all Belgian and Luxemburger .NET bloggers on MSDN Belux.

From the Microsoft bloggers

• Robert Scoble: "The Express Edition team is blogging".
• Dan Fernandez likes the RSS Screen Saver Starter Kit in C# Express.
• Kent Sharkey blogs about the Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition and the Personal Web Starter Kit.
• Sara Williams shares some thoughts about the MSDN Product Feedback Center.
• Want in-depth BizTalk Server information? Read the BizTalk Core Engine blog.
• Gilles Zunino explains why you should not use the Office Object Model when processing Office documents with BizTalk Server 2004.
• Brian Johnson links to the Platform SDK for Windows XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 2.
• Josh Ledgard lists some new Microsoft team blogs.
• Paul Vick has a list of "community-approved" Visual Basic blogs.
• Josh Ledgard kept a diary of a 3 day "Program Manager App Building" on the VSCore team. Read his diary for day 1, day 2 and day 3.
• Chris Brumme talks about the future of the .NET Common Language Runtime in this video interview on Channel9.
• Denis Bauer updated his FileDisassembler for Reflector.
• Fiona Fung: "Beginner's tips on Visual Studio .NET's Find and Replace using Regular Expressions"
• Robert Scoble shares some ways to talk with the Internet Explorer team.
• Laura John links to Jan Tielens' and Fons Sonnemans' SmartPart Webpart.
• Duncan Mackenzie links to an article on drawing a 3D Pie Chart in C#.
• Jonathan Wells refers to a CodeProject article: "Bubble.NET" for Pocket PC.
• Rob Mensching answers questions that Microsoft employees keep asking about his Windows Install XML toolset (WiX).
• Paul Vick discusses For Each and Option Strict.
• Suzanne Cook on how to debug an InvalidCastException.
• Eric Lippert: "What's the Difference between WScript.CreateObject, Server.CreateObject and CreateObject?"

International community

• Find the most interesting blog posts of speakers, attendees and community about Tech•Ed 2004 Europe at http://techedbloggers.net/.
• Dino Esposito wrote an article on TheServerSide.net about developing shell extentions with C#.
• Sam Gentile raves about Code Complete, 2nd Edition.
• Bill McCarthy links to an OPML file of Visual Basic bloggers.
• Eric Gunnerson discusses grouping classes within an assembly.
• Clemens Vasters invites you to download The FABRIQ.
• Ingo Rammer links to a dotnet.tv episode on XML Web services.
• Dana Epp reviews the Visual Studio Team System.
• Alex Campbell extended the ASP.NET Repeater control with a NoData template.
• Steve Maine: "... you can now easily call Web Services via e-mail".
• Rocky Lothka wrote an article on 15Seconds about Data Binding in Windows Forms with the .NET Framework 2.0.
• Maxim V. Karpov wrote an article about partially trusted code.
• Cathi Gero has several tips and tricks for .NET.
• Dino Esposito: "Got Attributes? Be an Attribute-based Programmer, Then"

Ianier Munoz did it again... After his articles on using Managed DirectX 9.0 and C# to write a drum machine for Windows and on porting it to Pocket PC, he now has a new article on writing a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) plug-in for Microsoft's Windows Media Player 9.0 using C#. He certainly knows what Duncan Mackenzie means with "Coding for Fun"...

Writing A Complete DSP Plug-in for Windows Media Player 9 in C#
This article shows how to build a complete DSP (Digital Signal Processing) plug-in for Windows Media Player 9 in C#. The accompanying sample code comprises of a Phase Shifter DSP plug-in and a User Interface plug-in for controlling the DSP plug-in parameters in real-time.

Just a few hours ago, the finalists of the Imagine Cup 2004 were announced in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The two Belgian teams were both still in the last final round. In the "Software Design Invitational" the Belgian "New World" team ended on the 5th place and in the "Rendering Invitational" the Belgian "Nautilus" team ended on the 3rd place. Congratulations to all finalists for their accomplishment and a special shout out to 2 the Belgian teams.

Links:
H2Ocean project by the Nautilus team (Charles-Frederik Hollemeersch, Elisabeth Hollemeersch, Wesley De Neve)
New World project (Steve Lanuit, Laurent Mazzapicchi, Pierre Ioannatos)
Belgian Imagine Cup website

Update: Howard Lo has some more results...

Update 2: Microsoft's official press release

Update 3: Channel9 interviewed Microsoft's Imagine Cup team.

Gunther Beersaerts, the famous .NET speaker in Belgium and Luxembourg and Microsoft employee, started a blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/guntherb/.

Strangely enough, no Belgian bloggers (that I am aware of) blogged about some of the announcements at TechEd in Amsterdam yet. They probably had better things to do, like attending sessions, etc. :)

Update: Jelle was the first Belgian to link to these products. Others have just mentioned it. And some Belgian bloggers just aren't in Amsterdam. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that first paragraph... :( That said, here are the links once again:

Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1
Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 will be available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads soon. People without an MSDN Subscription will be able to order the beta for a nominal (small) fee.

MSDN Product Feedback Center
Microsoft's public online bug and suggestion database.

Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta
"The Express products, expanding the Visual Studio product line to include lightweight, easy-to-use, easy-to-learn tools for hobbyists, enthusiasts, and novices who want to build dynamic Windows applications and Web sites."

• Visual Basic 2005 Express
• Visual C# 2005 Express
• Visual C++ 2005 Express
• Visual J# 2005 Express
• Visual Web Dev 2005 Express

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition - Technical Preview
"SQL Server Express is a version of SQL Server 2005 designed for building simple, dynamic applications. SQL Server Express helps developers build robust and reliable applications by providing a powerful database that is also free and easy to use."

Summer Of Express - Worldwide Contest
And if you're interested, you could join the "Summer Of Express" contest at Channel9:
"The Summer of Express contest is a worldwide skill contest where developers are challenged to create “non-business” applications using the newly announced Express products."

A good place to stay up-to-date about TechEd is of course techedbloggers.net, an aggregated feed for the most interesting TechEd posts...

Approximatly one year and a half ago, there were about 3 Belgian .NET bloggers that I knew of. During this period, the list grew up to 21 Belgians and 1 Luxemburger. Not all of them are already listed on the MSDN Belux Bloggers page. If you are a .NET blogger from Belgium or Luxembourg, feel free to drop feedback (see the link at the bottom of the MSDN Belux website) with the URL of your blog and a short description and we will add your blog on that page. Meanwhile, everyone can find the updated Belgian bloggers list on my blog (the web interface).

Imagine Cup is an international contest for students, sponsored by Microsoft. This year there are four invitationals for the contest: software design, rendering, algorithms and short films.

I had the honor to be part of the jury that selected the entry in the "software design" invitational that would go to the worldwide finals in Sao Paolo, Brazil for Belgium. To be honest, we had a difficult task choosing between all the entries. Yes, we were pretty amazed by the quality of the entries of the 3 teams that participated in the Belgian finals for this invitational. The winning team is "New World" of the Haute Ecole Rennequin Sualem. They created a solution to help the treatment of young schizophrenia patients. For this, they collaborated with a psychiatric hospital. You can read a very short statement on their website. Hopefully they'll have a full website up and running soon.

But there is also another Belgian team participating in the worldwide Imagine Cup 2004 finals in Brazil. The Nautilus team will participate in the Rendering invitational. If I'm not mistaking, this team of Ghent University was selected by an online voting. For their entry, the students got their inspiration from the sea (and what is below). You can find their project with some really nice movies on the H2Ocean website.

Please join me in congratulating both teams and wishing them the best for the Imagine Cup 2004 Worldwide Finals on July 4th through 6th.

For the interested ones, a full list of official Press Releases is available at the Imagine Cup website.

Update: The white papers of both projects are available at the official Belgian Imagine Cup website at http://www.microsoft.be/imaginecup.

There's another amazing sample application online at MSDN: FotoVision.

The FotoVision sample allows you to easily share photos on the web and demonstrates a variety of .NET technologies including Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Web services, and the .NET Compact Framework. It consists of a desktop, web, and Pocket PC sample applications. This paper provides information so you can get the most from the FotoVision desktop application.

Many people have already asked me on several Microsoft Belgium events what the .mspx extention on the MSDN Belux and TechNet Belux (and other Microsoft.com)websites exactly are and how they work. Michele Leroux Bustamante, one of the US Regional Directors, answers this question.

From Paul Vick's blog: Visual Basic Power Pack released! 7 cool custom UI controls, written in Visual Basic .NET 2003 and delivered with full source. Sweet...

Microsoft's Ken Levy (VS Data Product Manager) and Yair Allen Griver (Group Manager for the Visual Studio Data group) were both invited by VFPSIG.NL to present the new Visual FoxPro 9. This event is free of charge and will take place on June 28 (starting at 18:30) in Haarlem, The Netherlands. Registration can be done on the site of the event's sponsor: http://www.wantit.nl/default.asp?docid=33 [link to a Dutch page].

Please join me in congratulating Jonathan de Halleux. He attended interviews for "Software Development Engineer in Test" (SDE/T) position at Microsoft in Redmond... The result is that Jonathan will move to Redmond in October.

He won't be the first Belgian in Redmond; Ronald Laeremans already works there for quite some years (and maybe there are even more Belgians there that I'm just not aware of). Still, it's a very nice achievement so please join me in congratulating Jonathan with his upcoming challenge!

BTW: There's a rumor that Jonathan will show up on the MSDN Evening session on Thursday June 3rd about "In-Depth SharePoint Development". And there are still some seats left, so you can still register for that event (which starts at 18:00).

Great! In a previous post, I referred to a post by Wesner Moise about the Nullable Types in the C# 2.0 spec. Steve Lasker, PM Visual Basic Data, blogs that these will also be available in Visual Basic .NET. The syntax is different from C#'s, but that is the case for many functions. The VB syntax is, as usual, more readable and longer. Luckily Intellisense comes to the rescue if you use Visual Studio 2005.

C#: public DateTime? DateShipped {get/set}
VB: Public Property DateShipped as Nullable(Of DateTime)

Cool!

Announced at Tech·Ed San Diego: Visual Studio 2005 Team System. This is going to be an awsome product, in my (humble) opinion. But you don't have to trust me, just check out the demos that are available for download.

More information is also available at the Ask Burton blog and Michael Platt posted some extra resources (like the downloadable demo videos).

Karim Hyatt's third installment of developing n-tier applications was just published on MSDN Belux. These are his current articles:

1. Introduction to n-tier application development
2. N-tier application development: implementing the business layer
3. N-tier application development: the data layer

But he's not done writing yet; Karim promises to write a fourth part on transactions in an n-tier application. Check them out...

We added a new article from one of our local authors to MSDN Belux website. This one is pretty cool too and is a follow-up to the "building a drum machine with DirectX":

Sound Synthesis Revisited: Porting the Drum Machine to the .NET Compact Framework
By Ianier Munoz
This article shows how to port the drum machine described in the previous article "Building a Drum Machine with DirectSound" to the .NET Compact Framework so that it can be run on the Pocket PC.

We've just published the Microsoft Belux Security Summit website. A must-attend event for developers, IT professionals and technology decision makers, held on May 4th at Kinepolis, Brussels. More info at http://www.microsoft.be/securitysummit. See you all there (and maybe we can have a drink afterwards?)...

I've read many posts about the IssueVision Smart Client and especially that it was not distributed on every DevDays (except the DevDays in the US). While preparing the Geek Speak section of this month's MSDN Belux Flash, I encountered a link on Frank Arrigo's blog where you can download an installer for the Visual Basic .NET version.

That same blog posts also contains presentations and sample code from the Security Summit held "Down Under" in Australia.

Update: The full and official IssueVision downloads can be found at windowsforms.net.

There is also another Microsoft Belgium blogger (the second one I know of): Rudi Larno. Rudi is a technology specialist for application development and has his desk next to mine. You can find his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/rudi_larno. Apparently the blogging virus is finally spreading at Microsoft Belgium too.

Yesterday the following article by Christof Claessens was published on MSDN Belux:

A basic introduction to BizTalk Server 2004 messaging
By Christof Claessens
BizTalk Server 2004 has just been released and a lot of people are planning to hit the road with it. While BizTalk Server 2004 has lot to offer, this article focuses on the core workings of this brand new server, more in particular: messaging.

We also welcomed a second new author on MSDN Belux: Jan Ceulemans. He wrote this article:

Inserting multiple records at once with the ASP.NET DataGrid control
By Jan Ceulemans
Very often a DataGrid control is used to insert just one new record in a database. However, sooner or later you might come into a situation in which the insertion of multiple new records at once is desirable. This article shows you how this can be achieved using a web form, a DataGrid control, a data access layer and stored procedures.

It has been a while since I posted the latest articles that appeared on MSDN Belgium & Luxembourg. If you're a Belgian or a Luxemburger and want to write articles for this website, visit the dedicated forum on MsBeluxForums.be. Please note that you can subscribe to the RSS Feed of all news items at MSDN Belux (most topics are in English).

Leveraging the .NET Framework in SQL Server "Yukon"
By Jurgen Postelmans
One of the major new features of SQL Server "Yukon" is the integration of the .NET Common Language Runtime into the SQL Server database engine. This article will give you an overview on how to write stored procedures, triggers and user-defined functions in SQL Server "Yukon" using C#.

N-tier application development: implementing the business layer
By Karim Hyatt
Many developers wonder how they should implement the business layer in a .NET application. This article explains how you can use ADO.NET in an object oriented way so that the business layer can leverage a maximum of the .NET Framework classes' built-in capabilities.

Developing Connectable Web Parts for Windows SharePoint Services
By Patrick Tisseghem
This third part in the "Building Web Parts for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies" discusses the creation of connectable web parts that can interchange data between each other.

And today we'll be adding 2 new articles.

The BackgroundWorker component in .NET Framework "Whidbey" allows to do asynchronous operations easier than in today's version of the Framework.

Juval Löwy, one of the respected Software Legends, posted a comment on my post on the new features of Windows Forms v2.0. He has created his own version of the BackgroundWorker component for the .NET Framework 1.1. You can get it at his corporate site on IDesign.com.

Until .NET 2.0 ships, and even long after, Windows Forms 1.1 developers are forced to use a cumbersome programming model when it comes to asynchronous execution of background work. The download contains IDesign's implementation of the .NET 2.0 BackgroundWorker control, done as a .NET 1.1 component, so that .NET 1.1 developers can use it, and ease the transition to Windows Forms 2.0.

Jeff Davis of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft announces the release of the long-awaited security fix for IE. Read his post or the Microsoft Knowledge Base article 834489 for more information. And... run Windows Update to update your installation (be aware that there are changes to the standard behavior of IE in some cases).

Yesterday Ezos demonstrated their hands-on lab on mobile development for the Developer & IT Pro Days 2004. And it looks nice, no, it looks awsome. Once again, I won't spoil the surprise by revealing what these mobile heros have prepared (lame, not? :)). So if you're attending this event, I advise you to have a look at this hands-on lab.

BTW, there will 2 hands-on labs on the event: one about mobile development and another about "Whidbey".

Update: we've spoiled the surprise on the event's website. If you want to know what the hands-on lab is about, check it out on http://www.dev-itprodays.be/program/handsonlabs.aspx.

There are more and more Belgian .NET-ers who are starting to blog. Jelle Druyts just wrote me a mail with a pointer to his blog. I met Jelle at PDC03, where he already told me he was blogging but that he kept it quite private for the time being. But from now on, Jelle wants to share his toughts about Whidbey and .NET in general with the entire world.

Read his blog at http://jelledruyts.homeip.net/.

Want to customize the interface of Outlook Web Access (OWA)?

This Exchange Online Book provides an overview of Exchange 2000, the Outlook Web Access architecture, and the individual components that make up Outlook Web Access. It also provides developers with the processes to customize and extend Outlook Web Access for their own solutions.

We just published Bart De Smet's article about database cache invalidation in ASP.NET "Whidbey" on MSDN Belux. An interesting read.

Database cache invalidation is one of the new features in the upcoming release of ASP.NET "Whidbey". This article explains the benefits of this feature and how to use it.

Jan wrote an article for MSDN Belux as introduction to ObjectSpaces, which will be available in Visual Studio .NET "Whidbey".

ObjectSpaces is one of the exciting features coming in the new version of .NET Framework, codename "Whidbey". This article will explain what ObjectSpaces are and will provide a step-by-step guide to a first experience with ObjectSpaces.

We just published the website for the Microsoft Belgium "Developer & IT Pro Days 2004". This event which targets... developers and IT professionals will be held at the ICC in Ghent on February 10 and 11, 2004.

Delegates will be able to attend sessions by

• Steve Riley,
• Ingo Rammer,
• Gianpaolo Carraro,
• Ronny Bjones,
• Patrick Tisseghem,
• Jurgen Postelmans,
• Astrid Hackenberg,
• Clemens Vasters,
• David Chappell,
• Nigel Watling,
• Hans Verbeeck,
• John Craddock,
• and others....

On the second day (February 11) the delegates can choose between 4 different tracks: PDC Highlights, Active Directory Internals, IT Forum Highlights Tour and Upgrading Applications to .NET.

All of this and much more on http://www.dev-itprodays.be/. By the way, would you like to drive a Ferrari?

Yet another quite interesting link on MSDN Belux about developing SharePoint webparts etc. It's the presentation and demo files of a talk Patrick Tisseghem gave.

There's a new hot article by Jan Tielens online on MSDN Belux about extending the DataGrid with CodeDom.

Patrick, the local SharePoint guru, wrote an article about using InfoPath data after it's saved to a SharePoint forms library. He explains how to process it with .NET and strongly typed classes.

<quote>
Some time ago, I had the opportunity to have a talk at the Belgium MSDN community regarding opportunities for .NET developers to extend the Windows SharePoint Services. In addition to the Web Part development (see also my 2 articles on building Web Parts), and the access to the SharePoint object model and related XML Web Services, I demonstrated how to create document event handlers in VS.NET that hook up to a SharePoint form library. The goal of the .NET code was to process the incoming InfoPath XML. In this article I provide an overview of how to accomplish this. In addition, it shows you how you can avoid complex XPath statements within your .NET code by generating an object model out of your InfoPath form and de-serialize the incoming XML to an object created from the root class. I hope it gives you some ideas to improve your productivity when developing these types of applications.
</quote>

In Bart De Smet's second article on MSDN Belux about hosting the ASP.NET Runtime in your own applications, you will learn how to create an application that enables running an ASP.NET application from a cd-rom.

Probably I'll be one of the latest to find it, but KC Lemson pointed out a URL of a "lastest files on Microsoft Downloads" RSS feed...

KC Lemson is a program manager at the Microsoft Exchange team. Keep up with his blog from some tips and tricks about Outlook and Exchange. There are some nices ones already...

A preliminary session schedule is available for the Microsoft Belux Developer-Tech Days 2004. This 2 day conference is for developers and IT Professionals...

It seems people tend to like collections of links to community tools and articles. MSDN Belux also has a list of international community stuff at http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/msdn/community/newsletter.mspx. The latest newsletter is the October edition, but the previous ones are still available. I use them as a reference guide for finding back some specific information that I know the community talked about...

Just received an e-mail from Infragistics to inform of a new release of their NetAdvantage Suite 2003. Currently their website does not contain the new information, but in that same e-mail they state the information will be put on their website shortly. Here are some of the new features they talk about:

•  .NET charting - NEW chart types and multi-charts, layering accessibility, data drilldown, zoom and scroll, data adapters, logarithmic axes, and many user-requested features! More, better Help files and samples!
  
•  .NET Framework (PLF) - All Text-entry embeddable editors are now INK-ENABLED via our PLF, and therefore our .NET grid, tree and selected scheduling controls are ink aware too (when using our ink-aware embeddable editors).
  
• .NET grid - NEW Major features include Excel export, fixed columns, Row Layout (Form view of a grid row data), enhanced Summary Row, and Ink-enabled in-cell editing when using our ink-aware embeddable editors. 
  
•  .NET editors - NEW have a new dropdown button which allows any control to be dropped down from a button-click. Now our .NET tree, dayview, weekview and multimonthview have embeddable editor support. 
  
•  .NET menus - NEW handedness built-in. Menus, dropdown controls and tooltips render directionally according to pen settings for Tablet PC application development!
  
•  .NET GUIs - NEW button and label, better than the Microsoft inbox!  

New ASP.NET Products and Enhancements Include: 

• ASP.NET Calendaring - NEW By popular developer request, calendar month view and NEW dropdown date chooser! The dropdown date chooser displays an eye-pleasing graphical calendar in a web application. It can be used as a stand-alone tool for date validation or integrated into our ASP.NET grid for a rich thick-client
  user experience in thin-client delivery. 
  
•  ASP.NET charting - NEW chart types and multi-charts, layering accessibility, data drilldown, zoom and scroll, data adapters, logarithmic axes, and many user-requested features! More, better Help files and samples!
  
• ASP.NET grid - NEW Performance improvements put our grid on par with the Microsoft inbox web grid, plus our new ASP.NET date chooser can be used in-cell in our grid! 
  
• ASP.NET menu and tree - NEW menu scrolling, flexible display options, HTML intellisense, 2003/XP/standard looks provided in easy to use style presets, Enhanced Client-side object model, and much more.

Plus, you can buy a subscription that includes the FULL SOURCE CODE of all their .NET components. Their license agreement highly restricts the use of the source code but I see it as an excellent learning source. To be completely honest, I must admit that I used Infragistics components and controls for over 5 years now. This might influence my view on their products. And I haven't worked with other component suites, like for example ComponentOne's Studio.

These are a few notes that I took from the MSDN Chat about "Visual Basic .NET Language Design". The statements are rephrased answers from the VB.NET team.

• The upcoming release will be the most thoroughly documented version yet, and the information will be the easiest to find.
• Samples are the area that is expanded the most. In addition to having a large number of fairly extensive samples, a series of short, task-based code sample topics will be introduced, and the sample code for the .NET members will be updated.
• (Freely interpreted) Documentation (or samples) will be updated to better demonstrate how individual components can fit together in a solution.
• The VB procedural library (Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll) will remain mandatory for supporting several VB-specific methods (e.g. "Like"). The reason for this is the VB runtime functions often provide a simpler and more comprehensible way to find functionality. The VB.NET team is even looking to expand them in "new and interesting directions". It is possible that the VB.NET helper functions will be split up into different assemblies to enable developers that don't want/need backwards compatibility with VB6 functions to remove these backwards compatibility functions.
• The "VB.NET" team is seriously considering implementing a C# "As" counterpart in "a future release".
• Operator overloading will be supported in the next version of VB.NET.
• C# 's XML Comments will initially be preceded by @ in VB.NET. They are also still considering " ''' " (3 apostrophes) or " /// " (like C#). No final decision has been made. (<grin>One participant suggested to support REMREMREM too...</grin>)

The full transcript of the chat will probably be available soon on the MSDN website.

For those who are interested in VB.NET, subscribe to Paul Vick's weblog. He's a Technical Lead on the Visual Basic .NET product at Microsoft. Duncan Mackenzie has collected a list of VB bloggers on the MSDN Visual Basic Developer Center.

BTW: In case you couldn't imagine this yourself: I like VB.NET and hope we won't see any "last minute changes" like we saw with the first release of Visual Basic .NET. I was really happy with some features that were introduced in the first beta of Visual Basic .NET (like short circuit evaluation) that I was a little disappointed when I read/experienced they were removed or were moved to different keywords (OrElse and AndAlso in case of short circuit evaluation). But such things can happen when you start working with beta software...

The Microsoft Belux DevDays 2004 will take place on 10 & 11 February 2004 in the International Congress Centre in Ghent. Gerd (Developer & IT Pro Community Manager at Microsoft Belux) asks for topics Belgian & Luxemburger developers would like to see on this event.

Update: Gerd announced that Microsoft has scheduled a PDC Highlights Tour on the second day as one of the event tracks, delivered by some international speakers.

Patrick asked me where I host my weblog. Since I'm really satisfied with this hosting provider, I'm sharing it's name with everyone: Webhost4life. I'm on the advanced hosting plan, featuring:

• Windows Server 2003
• ASP.NET 1.1
• 150MB disk space
• 150MB SQL Server ( or MySQL if you want)
• UNLIMITED bandwidth
• UNLIMITED domains to the same site (also pointing to different folders)
• UNLIMITED subdomains
• 100 POP3 & WebMail access
• UNLIMITED auto-responders
• 100 mailing lists
• UNLIMITED ODBC DSN's
• Really powerful Control Panel (for example: allows setting folder permission, creating IIS Applications, etc...)
• 24x7 support (it never took them longer than 12 hours to respond to my non-critical problems)
• Daily backup (costs $20 for a restore however, but you can make your own backups of course)
• Access through FTP or FrontPage Server Extensions (the last one can be enabled through the Control Panel)
• 30 dat money back guarantee (which I didn't use and I suspect you won't either)
• And much more...

Best of all: you get this all for a monthly cost of $9.95 (and a one time setup fee of $19.95)... Highly recommended by me.

Last Wednesday we launched the Microsoft Belux Forums. The purpose is to enable developers and IT professionals from Belgium and Luxembourg to communicate with each other and with Microsoft. We will also create a forum for every local event so that people can ask questions to the speakers and other attendees after the event.

We published a list of Belgian and Luxemburger .NET bloggers on MSDN Belux. If you feel that you should be included, feel free to drop us a mail at msdnbewm@microsoft.com. There's also another page about how to start participating in the .NET community.

Office 2003 Professional Suite has now been published in several languages on MSDN Subscriber Dowloads.

I suppose I'm late with the following link, but it's just too good to miss: Scott Hanselman created a list of his favorite developer tools. Most of them are free. This is a "must read" page for every developer that wants to save some time. Tools are appropriate for .NET and other developers.

In today's new content of MSDN Belux there's an article of Bart De Smet about hosting the ASP.NET runtime in a Windows Forms application (and even in a console application).

But also today, we published the renewed TechNet Belux site. This site will be updated weekly with new content. The purpose of TechNet Belux is not duplicate content from TechNet US, but to provide lots of Belux and international community resources. This includes information about local and international Microsoft events, but also links to different community initiatives... Do your IT Pro colleagues (sys admins, operators, etc) a favor and send them a link to TechNet Belux.

After TechEd bloggers aggregation site TechEdBloggers.net, Drew and Kevin (where is Mike?) created a site using the same concept for the Professional Developers Conference: PDCBloggers.net... Check it out!

Update: I'm also listed.

Jan Tielens wrote down his thoughts about client- and serverside validation in a SOA world. It ended up in a nice discussion.

Microsoft Watch reports that Whidbey (successor to VS.NET 2003) is officially in alpha stage and released to a limited number of testers. They also report, what we all hope for, that a beta of Whidbey might be distributed on the PDC2003.

Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) has been released. Documentation is available on MSDN. Looks promissing.

This night I dived into DasBlog source code and did some more testing. Apparantly a few (minor) bugs are still in this release. I fixed every bug I encountered and documented it on the DasBlog Bug Report page. I found it amazing how easy I could find the location of these bugs, without any design documentation whatsoever.

I also had a look at the template engine, since this intrigued me. Quite impressive to come up with a solution like this, and then sharing it with the community.

Come on, .NET developers blogging on Radio (Patrick and Patrick?), find yourself a .NET Framework 1.1 enabled server and switch to DasBlog. It even has a conversion tool for you. :)