Microsoft Community Launch Program 2005: Training Content and Schedule

Visual Studio Team System: Managing the Software Lifecycle with Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Visual Studio 2005 Team System is an extensible life-cycle tools platform that significantly expands the Visual Studio product line and helps software teams collaborate to deliver modern service-oriented solutions. DEV004 spotlights key features of Visual Studio 2005 Team System and demonstrates how integrating Team System into the development process reduces the complexity of delivering high-quality, fully tested applications. The software developers at Whidbey Rocks use Team System to orchestrate the construction of their concert ticketing and promotion system, which includes Web applications, smart client applications, SQL Server 2005 databases, and BizTalk Server 2006 integration. The presentation incorporates five roles: project management, infrastructure architect, application architect, developer, and tester. While most of the actual development will be performed in the DEV001, DEV002, and DEV003 sessions, this kick-off session will allow us to explain the goals of the software, set up the team project, select a methodology, identify the team, design the architecture, and send out tasks to each of the team members (the other presenters) to construct individual components of the application.

Design and Development Tools for Building Mission-Critical Applications
SQL Server 2005, BizTalk Server 2006, and the .NET Framework 2.0 offer a compelling platform for building mission-critical service-oriented applications. DEV001 introduces the features of Visual Studio 2005 that enable devs and dev teams to build high-performance, secure, and reliable solutions using innovative designers, advanced code profiling and analysis tools, and an enterprise-ready platform. Among the highlights: how to use Visual Studio 2005 to incorporate SQL Server 2005, BizTalk Server 2006, and other operations infrastructure early in the design process.

Building Scalable Web Applications
Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 combine to form a rich platform for building, testing, and deploying state-of-the-art Web applications. ASP.NET 2.0 is replete with new features, from data source controls and master pages to membership and role management services—features that reduce the amount of code required to create a typical Web site by up to 70%. Visual Studio 2005 features an all-new Web development interface that speeds the development process while offering a rich design-time experience and seamless integration with Visual Studio 2005 Team System. The primary goal of this presentation is to introduce developers to ASP.NET 2.0's most compelling new features and to the Visual Studio 2005 features that support them. A secondary goal is to demonstrate some of the ways in which Visual Studio 2005 Team System can benefit Web developers, and to drive home the message that ASP.NET 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, and Visual Studio 2005 Team System offer a compelling upgrade to Visual Studio 2003 and ASP.NET 1.1. An important take-away is that these products are second to none when it comes to building scalable, high-performance, Web applications.

Smart Client: Rapid Application Development
Whidbey Rocks, a rock concert promoter, employs phone-sales operators as well as will-call booth operators. Direct ticket sales are handled by the company's Web site. However, employee satisfaction and productivity demands a rich user-experience for the phone and will-call applications. Meanwhile, IT personnel expect flexibility in deployment and updates of all applications. Finally, Whidbey Rocks analysts and employees in finance prefer to view and chart sales data in the familiar and flexible Microsoft Excel application environment. Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 greatly simplifies the development and deployment of smart client applications targeting both the Windows and Microsoft Office platforms. DEV003 demonstrates how to create sophisticated, online/offline-capable applications and smart documents using Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office 2005, and Windows Forms 2.0. Attendees will also learn about ClickOnce, Microsoft's new deployment technology which combines the power of Windows-based development with the flexibility of Web-based deployment. Highlights include how to use Visual Studio skills to create rich applications that take advantage of existing functionality in Excel, Word and Outlook, all of which are part of Microsoft Office 2003. The central message of this presentation is that end-users and developers alike prefer software that provides a rich user experience—software that enriches and simplifies the user's experience in the most natural way for the task at hand. A supporting theme is one of data access that best suits the end-users' software-use lifestyle as well as situational environment. For example, we show data that is accessed by a ticket-sales tool, which is connected, but then the same data is accessed from an Excel-based application in both the connected and disconnected states. Additionally, the Excel-based application demonstrates the use of VSTO to provide a flexible and familiar environment for a professional, such as an analyst, who can benefit from the rich features of Excel rather than learn a custom application. (Though in fact, the Excel workbook is also a custom solution.)

Building Mission Critical Databases with SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2005 boasts key database engine enhancements to make this the most highly available version of SQL Server to date. In this session, you will get an overview of the features in SQL Server 2005 that will enable you to build and manage a highly available enterprise data platform including Database Mirroring, Online Index Maintenance, Peer-to-peer replication and Snapshot Isolation.

Architecting Scalable, Flexible and Secure Database Systems with SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2005 offers new features to give you options to architect solutions for today's most demanding system needs. These new technologies can ensure your systems are more secure, scalable and available than ever before. In this session, you will see, among other things, how built-in support for XML and XML-relational hybrid designs, .NET procedural code, and database-enabled middle-tier cache coherency can increase your design and deployment choices allowing you to build true enterprise class database systems.

Delivering Business Insight with SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2005 offers world class Business Intelligence features that allow you to better leverage the power of the data stored in your organization. This session will provide a glimpse at the new features, following data as it arrives in the operational store, as it is transformed and loaded into the data warehouse and as it flows into Analysis Services and generates Key Performance Indicators and then into Reporting Services reports; watch as SQL Server 2005 "Integrates, Analyzes and Reports".

Managing and Monitoring the New Data Platform using SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 Team System
Keeping today's complex systems running reliably takes proactive design, a variety of technologies and a consistent maintenance and monitoring system. Problem solving and early detection/prevention are two directives at the core of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio Team Systems 2005. Visual Studio Team Systems 2005 has tools for code analysis that can alert you to potential SQL injection errors as well as customizable business rules to help validate the application for production. Once in production, SQL Server 2005 has DMVs, the Agent, and Profiler for monitoring resources and application usage to automatically detect and respond when problems occur, resolving problems before they become catastrophic. Understanding how to best combine these technologies and leverage integrated managements systems like MOM, you will have the edge to keep your system more manageable, automated and consistent! This session will highlight the tools and features included and show practical examples of how they can reduce the complexity of delivering modern data-driven solutions in today's most challenging environments.