Category Archives: Technology Events
Houston Area SQL Server User Group – 03/08/11
I attended the March Houston Area SQL Server User Group meeting. Below are my notes.
Announcements
- SQL Saturday – Dallas is April 2/2011
- Tables and Views
- Derived tables
- Common Table Expressions
- Table Value Functions
- Join
- Apply
- Pivot & Unpivot
- Matching records from both tables
- Often used for code lookup
- Can also be used in an Update and Delete statement
- Partial Join (Left or Right) – All records from one table and matching records from another table (example: orders and shipments)
- All records from each table combined where matching
- Null values for columns not matched
- Example: Customer activity combining order and shipments
- Nulls on a full outer join – do not compare
- Every row in one table is joined with every row in another table
- Visualize as a matrix or spreadsheet
- Example: Tally table ( http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/t-sql/62867)
- Right side is evaluated for each record on the left side
- Outer Apply/Cross Apply
- Best used with Table-Value Functions
- Example: Geo-Spatial functons
SQL Saturday #57 – Houston
I attended/volunteered at the first SQL Saturday (57) Houston. The event took place this passed Saturday at the Bammel Church of Christ and with about 185 in attendance (350 registered), the event was a success (IMO).
Main Picasa Photo Set for SQL Saturday #57
My Picasa Photo Set for SQL Saturday #57
Photos taken by Sri Sridharan of SQLRocks.com
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Below is a roundup of SQL Saturday 57 recaps and reviews. I will update it as I see new posts come up.
- SQLSaturday #57 Thanks – @NancyHidyWilson
- SQLSaturday #57 Recap – @NancyHidyWilson
- SQLSaturday #57 – @sqlrocks
- SQL Saturday #57 – Houston – @midbightdba
- Review – SQL Saturday #57 Houston – @sqlavenger
- Wheeling, WV to Houston, TX – A SQL Saturday #57 Recap.. – @johnsterrett
- SQLSaturday #57 – @ryanjadams
- SQLSaturday Round-Up (Jan. 27-Feb. 2)
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Can’t wait to see what the next Houston SQL Saturday holds…
Houston C# User Group – 01/18/2011
I attended the Houston C# User Group monthly meeting last Tuesday evening. There were about 18 in attendance.
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Below are the notes I took
Book: Accelerated C# 2010 – Trey Nash
Operator Overloading
Common Operator Overloading
- Concatenating strings
- Hooking and unhooking events
Design methods instead of overloading operators
Exception Handling
Bobby demonstrates the basics of exceptions through sample code. He defines the Try, Catch and Finally blocks as well as how to create your own exception.
Who should handle exceptions
Catch where you can fix the problem
Avoid using exceptions to control flow
Exceptions are expensive to generate and handle
void ExceptionNeutralMethod()
{
//block 1 all code that could thro exceptioms
//block 2
//chages are commited
}
Disposable and deterministic destruction
Some system resources need to be returned to the system pool when finished
The garbage collector doesn’t necessarily get around to destroying the resource in a timely manner
Disposable objects can guarantee deterministic destruction. (mostly easily done with a using() statement)
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Gang Of Four – Design Patterns
http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx
Patterns discussed tonight
- Observer
- State
- Strategy
- Template Method
- Visitor
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As always – Free Magazines 
2010 Houston Techfest
This year’s Houston Techfest had what appears to be the biggest turnout. There were people everywhere. Venkat Subramaniam gave a fantastic keynote address. I have seen Venkat speak before and he is an extremely talented presenter. The sessions I attended were all very good as well.
Below are the sessions I attended -
- JQuery 101 – Rod Paddock – Presentation Material
- Virtual Brown Bag – Claudio Lasalla – Presentation Material
- ASP.NET Razor – Wally McLure
- No SQL/MongoDB – Mohammad Azam
I had to leave early, so I did not attend the last two sessions.
My photos from Houston Techfest
Twitter Hashtag – #htf2010 – #houstontechfest
As always, Houston Techfest was a great conference. Can’t wait until next year!
SHDNUG Meeting – 05/26/10 – Recap
I attended the May South Houston .NET User Group meeting this passed Wednesday. Jason Aubrey did a presentation on iPhone Development Using Monotouch.
High Points Gleaned
Some downfalls of iPhone Development
- Requires a Mac
- XCode/Objective C is difficult to learn
- Objective C is outdated (1986)
- The app store is crowded
- App approval process is painful
Alternatives to Objective C
- XCode is the IDE used to develop for the iPhone.
- Mono – open-source, cross-platform port of .NET
MonoTouch – C#/.NET SDK for iPhone (developed by Novell)
Requirements for MonoTouch
- XCode
- iPhone SDK
- Mac
- Mono for the Mac
- MonoTouch SDK
- Mono Develop–
- ^..^
Austin Code Camp 2010 – Recap
I attended the 2010 Austin Code Camp and like the previous two years, it did not disappoint. There were six session tracks for a day of learning.
Below are the sessions I attended
Powershell Awesomeness in Your Deployment Scripts
Speaker: Eric Hexter (@ehexter)
High Points
- Powershell is basically a command shell on steroids
- Great for scripting
- MS Deploy
- Web PI – Platform installer
- PSake – Powershell build automation tool
- PStrami – Powershell deployment automation tool
- You can bootstrap Powershell via a batch file
- Powergui – IDE for Powershell
Introduction to MongoDB
Speaker: Chris Edwards
High Points
- NoSQL Movement – A movement promoting a loosely defined class of non-relational data stores.
- SQL is not always the best option, nor is it the only one.
- MongoDB – Document-oriented database, schema free
- MongoDB is commercially supported by 10Gen
Other features of MongoDB
- Document-based queries
- Map reduce
- Grid fs
- Geo-spacial indexing
Sites using MongoDB
- SourceForge
- GitHub
- ShutterFly
- bit.ly
Supported OS: OSX, Linux, Solaris, Windows, FreeBSD
MongoShell – the grammar of the shell is pure JavaScript
Aspect Oriented Programming in .NET
Speaker: Keyvan Nayyeri (@keyvan)
High Points
AOP isolates cross-cutting/supporting functions
It is mainly supported by the Java community
Cross Cutting Concerns
- Logging
- Thread synchronization
- Caching
- Lazy Loading
- Dependency Injection
- Data Binding
Principles of AOP
- Joint-point – points in the codebase where code is executed
- Point-cut – join points using a set theory of advice
- Advice
- Potential Issues – Debugging, efficiency
Weaving – Object oriented code with integrated aspects
Frameworks
- Aspect J
- JAC
- LinFu
- PostSharp
- Spring.Net
- Loom.net
- nAspect
- Links: Slides
Advance Your Debugging Skills with VS 2010
Speaker: Rob Vettor
High Points
Data Tip – Hover over variables and objects for drillable tips in VS2010. There is also a way to keep the tips visible during debug mode. Using the Pin Tips, you can build your own custom debug windows.
Breakpoint enhancements – Add labels to breakpoints and filter based on those values.
Intellitrace is only available with the Ultimate version of Visual Studio.
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Twitter hashtag: #austincodecamp
My Austin Code Camp 2010 Photos
I did not realize until I was leaving, how close I was to where the plane crashed into the Echelon I building here in Austin a few months back.
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Until next year…
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HDLUG Meeting – 05/04/10 – Recap
I attended the April Houston Dynamic Languages User Group Meeting this passed Tuesday. Jeremey Barrett gave a great talk on the Scala language.
High Points Gleaned
- Native on the JVM
- Statically Typed w/type inference
- More concise syntax
- Pure Object Oriented, Mix-ins (traits – kind of like an interface)
- (Sca)lable (La)nguage
- First class functions, closures, etc.
- Erlang-style actors (not distributed)
- Message-passing concurrency
- Operator overloading
- Everything is an object, including functions (functions can be sub-classed)
- Pattern matching – “Structural Typing”
- Java + Ruby + Erlang = Scala
- Lift – Popular web framework written in Scala
- Twitter uses Scala on their backend
Links
- Scala-lang.org – Official website
- Programming Scala: Scalability = Functional Programming + Objects – Book
- Programming Scala: Tackle Multi-Core Complexity on the Java Virtual Machine – Book
- Programming in Scala: A Comprehensive Step-by-step Guide – Book
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- ^..^
ALT.NET Houston Open Spaces 2010
I attended my first ALT.NET Houston Open Spaces Conference this weekend. It was very different than any tech event I have ever seen. This kind of conference instills a sense of collaboration which is a really cool thing.
The process is quite ingenious if you ask me. On Friday evening, the attendees come together to suggest topics and then vote on the suggested topics. Next, the facilitators basically set up the agenda for the next 2 days.
Four Principles of Open Spaces
- Whoever comes is the right people
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
- Whenever it starts is the right time
- When it’s over, it’s over
The Law Of Two Feet: If, during the course of the gathering, any person finds him or herself in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their two feet and go to some more productive place.
Sessions I attended
- Git
- NoSQL MongoDB
- Virtual Brownbag – One Year Later
- Build Scripts w/Powershell
- Promoting an Atmosphere of Refactoring
- Design Patterns
Links and Resources
I will definitely be attending this conference in the future and highly recommend for any developer.
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^..^
SxSW 2010 – The Experience
This week, I attended South by Southwest in Austin, TX for the first time. What an experience and I only saw a portion of what this conference/festival has to provide.
South by Southwest (SxSW) is an enormous conference that provides a convergence of original music, independent films, and upcoming technologies. It is broken into three “sub” conferences: Music, Film and Interactive. This year I was able to attend the Interactive part of SxSW.
There were so many people…I heard someone say there were at least 5,000+ registered for SxSW Interactive alone.
Exhibit Hall
The Exhibit Hall was huge. There were so many booths, I am still unsure if I visited them all or not.
Here are a few booths that I did stop at and either have or plan to try their products –
Austin
Of course, after all the sessions, there was Austin itself. I have always loved this city.
There were so many parties going on in the evenings that I can see why the guy below was tired…
Below are my posts that recap the sessions I attended:
After my first experience with SxSW, I will definitely be attending again.
My Picasa Photo Album for SxSW 2010
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SxSW 2010 – Sessions (pt 1)
Below are the sessions that I attended on Saturday (3/13) and Sunday (3/14) at SxSW Interactive.
Moon 2.0: The Outer Limits Of Lunar Exploration
Twitter search based on hashtag #Moon20
Description from SxSW.com: Discussion of how the use of web and mobile technologies create opportunities for participation in future exploration of the Moon. The panel focuses on how X PRIZE, NASA, commercial space companies, and others generate greater interaction and interest in Moon missions using collaborative platforms and social media.
Panel was as follows:
- Veronica McGregor (Site | @veronicamcg)
- Nicholas Skytland (Site | @skytland)
- Amanda Stiles (Site | @glxp)
- Dave Masten (Site | @dmasten)
- Cariann Higginbotham (Site | @cariann)
Some Astronauts on Twitter
- Mike Massimino (@Astro_mike)
- Jeff Williams (@Astro_jeff)
- Nicole Stott (@Astro_nicole)
Links of Interest
- Google Lunar xPrise
- Space Tweep Society
- Space VidCast – Making Space Commonplace
- Unmanned Spaceflight
- Data.gov
- SpaceHack.org
What Can Carl Sagan Teach Us About The Web?
Twitter search based on hashtag #SXSagan
Description from SxSW.com: 2010 is the 30th anniversary of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. Not only is his explanation of our universe relevant today, it can teach us a great deal about how to create better websites.
Presenter: Mark Trammel (Site | @trammell)
Links of Interest
How Webhooks Will Make Us All Programmers
Twitter search based on hashtag #webhooks
Description from SxSW.com: Programming will increasingly be the most empowering skill on earth… how do we bring it to more people? We can’t rely on better academic programs if nobody is taking them! We have to bring back easy discovery and instant utility. See how webhooks (user-defined HTTP callbacks) are the missing link!
Presenter: Jeff Lindsey (Site | @progrium)
Links of Interest:
Why You Aren’t Done Yet
Twitter search based on hashtag #whyyouarentdoneyet
Description from SxSW.com: The deadline is looming, you’ve tweeted how busy you are four times this week, and yet you just can’t get the project wrapped up and out the door. Real artists ship and you want to be a real artist, real bad, but you’re not. Let me show you how to rework…
Presenter: David Heinemeier Hansson (Site | @dhh)
Links of Interest
Coding for Pleasure: Developing Killer Spare-Time Apps
Twitter search based on hashtag #codingforpleasure
Description from SxSW.com: Every startup origin story is about a couple of developers who abscond to a garage and end up building the Next Big Thing. But money and fame don’t need to be your end goal. You can significantly improve your life–and impact others’ lives–by coding for pleasure in your spare time.
Panel was as follows:
- Links of Interest
Everyone Can Be a “Professional” Photographer
Twitter search based on hashtag #anybodypro
Description from SxSW.com: Everyone is a photographer: a camera in every cellphone, a powerful point-and-shoot in every pocket and bag, a digital SLR camera in every bag or home. With new platforms to create, distribute and sell to a wider range of clientele, everyone can be a *professional* photographer and sell photography.
Panel (Dual) was as follows:
- Allen Murabayash (Site | @photoshelter)
- Taylor Davidson (Site | @tdavidson)
Links of Interest
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- ^..^
