David E. Myers' Blog ( www.DavidEMyers.com )

OttawaSQL.net and Ottawa .NET Community February 12th Event: You can do *that* with Entity Framework, Julie Lerman

Feature Session: You can do *that* with Entity Framework?, Julie Lerman

The ADO.NET Entity Framework is Microsoft’s new data access technology that can change the way you perceive and work with your application’s data.  Julie will present a very high level overview for newbies then dive into some of the not quite so obvious things that can be done with Entity Framework such as adding business logic to entity classes, writing generic (reusable) code, taking advantage of Entity SQL and working directly with foreign key values.

Speaker: Julie Lerman, The Data Farm

Julie Lerman is an independent consultant and .NET Mentor who has been designing and writing software applications for over 20 years. Julie is well known in the .NET community as a Microsoft MVP, ASPInsider and INETA Speaker.  Julie lives in Vermont where she runs the Vermont.NET User Group.

Julie is the author of O'Reilly's "Programming Entity Framework" (available for pre-order at Amazon.ca). You can read Julie’s blog at www.thedatafarm.com/blog.  She is a prolific blogger, a frequent presenter at technical conferences around the world and author of articles in well-known technical publications.

Product Showcase: RedGate Software’s SQL Refactor, David E. Myers

SQL Refactor is an excellent choice for any SQL developer’s tool kit.  David will demonstrate the ‘Layout SQL’ feature that increases productivity by formatting T-SQL code quickly and consistently across the development team.  He will also show the capability for applying changes to database objects while effortlessly keeping dependant objects in sync.

Speaker: David E. Myers, Upper Canada District School Board

David is a DBA and SQL Developer and is the OttawaSQL.net Executive Director for 2008.  He primarily works with SQL Server but is increasingly working with the SharePoint Business Data Catalog and Microsoft BI technologies.  David recently presented at Tech Days Canada 2008 in Montreal and Ottawa.

Registration:

http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=135501

Arrival:  5:30 PM to 5:45 PM
Product Showcase:  5:45 PM to 6:00 PM
Feature Session:  6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Refreshments: Pizza and Pop

Event Sponsors:

Windows 7 Experience, Change, and Features I Like (Part 1)

I’ve been using Windows 7 for a while now and I have to say that like others have already said the performance improvements over Vista are fantastic.  Beyond the obvious features that jump out at you like the change to the task bar and application switching, I’ve found a lot of little touches that I was looking for in Vista.  Collectively these improvements add to my productivity and overall satisfaction with the product.

Personally I like to keep up with the technology changes and not try and stay stuck with my way of working.  In my conversations with others in the IT profession I find that much of the resistance to change comes from power users.  They are used to the product working one way and do not like it when something changes, even if it makes the product easier to understand or work with as a new user.  I’m a bit more understanding… if it is a case where change has been made just for the sake of change then I’m not a fan, but if there is some improvement to usability or reduction in the learning curve then I would rather adapt my outlook than resist the change.

Take the start menu for instance.  When our organization was making the change from Windows 98 SE to Windows XP the corporate image was setup to use the classic start menu.  I resisted the instinct to avoid change and started using the new version.  From my perspective change is inevitable and it is much easier to deal with when you take a proactive approach.  I can understand the idea of a controlled release of change so that end users are not overwhelmed but I don’t agree with sticking to the old approach until it is removed from the product.  Many of the product changes directly drive productivity improvements so the net benefit to the organization comes when people leverage them.

Okay enough about philosophy and on to the goodies… here is one of the new features I like:

1. Run as different user

With the changes introduced in Windows Vista related to UAC (user account control) the previous ‘Run As’ command had been replaced with ‘Run as administrator’.  The reasoning behind this was to allow the person to run their everyday applications with a ‘Standard’ user account and then elevate their privileges to use the ‘Administrator’ token.  This option is still available under Windows 7 and look like this:

Great!  I get the concept, but my problem is that in a domain environment I am using one domain account as my standard user and a separate domain account for SQL Server administration.  If I want to run a single program on my machine as the other domain account I was relegated to writing a batch file to use the command line runas:

Okay, so this wasn’t a show stopper.  I was able to write a batch file to launch SQL Server Management Studio so that I could make a Windows Authentication connection to the database server and avoid using a SQL Server login (that represents a different security compromise).  But for the more ad-hoc use of the run as feature it was annoying!

Well, I guess I wasn’t the only one annoyed with this.  To my pleasant surprise their is a new addition to the context menu if you hold down SHIFT when you right click the icon - Run as different user:

Awesome!  Now I get this wonderful dialog box when I select it:

Okay, so maybe this isn’t earth shattering stuff… but it is the kind improvements that add up to gains in overall efficiency!

2. Sliding Remote Desktop Client Menu Bar

I use the remote desktop client a lot.  In fact I even use it to connect 100% of the time from my laptop to my workstation at the office.  I travel a lot and take my laptop to conferences and user group events so I like to avoid ever having any confidential documents on the machine.  Even with technologies like BitLocker I am paranoid and prefer to not take the risk.  End result is that I’m spending nearly 100% of my time in an RDP session in full screen mode, often with additional nested RDP sessions running on the office workstation which are also running in full screen mode.  The end result is a set of overlapping menu bars:

   

(machine names removed to protect the innocent :) )

Now I find that the menu bar for the Windows 7 RDP connection (in blue) can slide to any position across the top of the screen.  This allows you to see the connection details of the second RDP session that would normally be hidden underneath the top menu bar:

 

Okay, again not a major new feature but it is a welcome one.  Stay tuned for more Windows 7 feature details as I get a chance to blog about them.