Rhonda Tipton's Blog » Technology Events

Houston Area SQL Server User Group – 03/08/11

Rhonda — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 15:27:34 +0000

I attended the March Houston Area SQL Server User Group meeting. Below are my notes.

Announcements

SQL Saturday – Dallas is April 2/2011

Main Topic – Keeping Up with the JOINes

Speaker – Brian Dudley

From Clause can include

Tables and Views
Derived tables
Common Table Expressions
Table Value Functions
Join
Apply
Pivot & Unpivot

Inner Join

Matching records from both tables
Often used for code lookup

Self-Join – join a table with itself

Can also be used in an Update and Delete statement

Outer Joins

Partial Join (Left or Right) – All records from one table and matching records from another table (example: orders and shipments)

Full Outer Join

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

Cross Joins (Cartesian Product)

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)

Apply

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

Rhonda — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 17:49:53 +0000

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.

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Can’t wait to see what the next Houston SQL Saturday holds…

Houston C# User Group – 01/18/2011

Rhonda — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 02:52:40 +0000

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

Rhonda — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:19:49 +0000

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

Rhonda — Sun, 30 May 2010 18:31:03 +0000

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

Unity – C#/Python
PhoneGap – Javascript
Corona – Lua

XCode

Mono

MonoTouch – C#/.NET SDK for iPhone (developed by Novell)

Requirements for MonoTouch

XCode
iPhone SDK
Mac
Mono for the Mac
MonoTouch SDK
Mono Develop–

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Austin Code Camp 2010 – Recap

Rhonda — Sat, 22 May 2010 22:12:57 +0000

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

Links: Slides | Code

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

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

Rhonda — Sun, 09 May 2010 14:41:14 +0000

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

Rhonda — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:16:01 +0000

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

Rhonda — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:29:48 +0000

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)

Rhonda — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:24:19 +0000

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

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

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos on Hulu

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:

Gina Trapani (Site | @ginatrapani)
Adam Pash (Site | @adampash)
Matt Haughey (Site | @mathowie)

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

SxSW 2010 – Sessions (pt 2)

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