Greg opened the meeting. There were 2 new attendees that introduced themselves. Greg introduced our speaker for the night, and thanked our sponsors. Our meeting sponsor was Red Gate Software, who also donated a copy of SQL Compare as a door prize. Greg did a brief demo of the product.

The presentation proceeded as follows:

Discussed history of interactive web history. Options for providing user feedback. Discussed why AJAX provides a good technology for user feedback and is a good programming environment.

Will show how to create a web site with AJAX. It will be a mortgage calculator. (Available in downloads with slide deck)

Hello World Demo

Using Visual Studio 2005 TS, Bryan created an AJAX-enabled web site.

Created a single page that calls a webservice GetData.asmx.

Coded a script in the page that calls the JavaScript proxy for the webservice. (doWork()). The call to the web service takes three delegates

• OnComplete
• OnTimeout
• OnError

Coded up empty functions for each of these.

Set up a <div id="xxx"> to provide a place to put the returned data. Added code to OnComplete to put the resulting HTML in the <div>.

Added a button to trigger the call. Ran the example, pressed the button and saw the results returned from the web service.

Real Mortgage Calculation Application

Created webservice with methods

• CalculatePayment
• CalculateAmortization
• Defined class PaymentDetail that gets the detail of individual payments

Ran the service methods interactively in IE to show that it works

Showed a method that formats each month of amortization data as an HTML table row. The Amort method will return a full HTML table, instead of raw data (XML). This isn't ideal, since the data can't be reformatted on the client.

Added a stylesheet into the page.

Bryan discussed something that was brought up during the break, that is that UpdatePanels are not inherently bad, as some have said. The method he is showing is an alternative to them and is a more abstracted form of using AJAX. Update panels are simplier to use and require less coding, but are also less flexible.

Continued with putting the Javascript in the page to call the web methods on the service and to process the results.

Showed the web page and how the payment calculation is returned and displayed. Went on to show how the amortization method is called to show the pmt amortization schedule.

Obviously the example app lacks polish. Bryan listed a number of things that could be done to clean it up and make it more professional. However, even without these things, the example provides a good, real-world example of using AJAX for creating more responsive web applications that give users better, more immediate feedback.

Bryan reminded that the user interface is intended to communicate, not decorate. So don't overuse AJAX just because you can.

After the presentation, members turned in their eval forms. We had a good supply of door prizes tonight. We gave away several tee-shirt / USB Key sets, a copy of Component One Suite, Office Professional and the copy of SQL Compare.

Our next meeting will include a presentation by member Eric Johnson on Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services. Eric elaborated a bit on what he will cover.

June’s meeting began with Mike Jackson opening the meeting to questions from the group.  We are trying to do this each month so that we can address problems or questions our group members may be having in the world of .NET.  One of our members asked whether anyone had used DirectX sound and video in .NET.  Our June speaker, Javier Lozano, recommended check out Avalon and www.seewindowsvista.com for alternatives to DirectX.

Other than that, Greg Sohl and Jason Coyne are both looking for developers for their respective companies Fiserv and Rockwell Collins.  Fiserv needs a Senior Object Oriented Developer and a Systems Architect.  Rockwell Collins is seeking a Principal Programmer and a Senior Programmer.

As mentioned, Javier Lozano was our June speaker.  He came to us from the Des Moines .NET user group to speak about .NET Enterprise Services.  Javier first explained what .NET Enterprise Services are.  They are COM+ services integrated into managed code.  They also simplify COM writing. Finally, they incorporate best practices.

Javier also explained why it is recommended that we use .NET Enterprise Services.  There are several good reasons just of few of them are that you can develop within time constraints without building all of the plumbing.  Another reason is that ADO.NET transactions don’t solve the problems that Enterprise Services can.  They also simplify your code, support queuing, support object pooling and interoperability.  For more reasons, check out Javier’s presentation.

Next, Javier showed us how to use .NET Enterprise Services.  He took us through several demos.  He pointed out several key pieces that need to be in your code.  It’s important to import the System.EnterpriseServices namespace.  If you assign a ProgId the service can be called as an object.  In the project’s assemblyInfo it is important to set comVisible to “true” or else your service will be unavailable.

Javier had several wonderful examples and many resources listed.  Be sure to check out his power point presentation for a list of resources. Below are 2 links Javier mentioned that are not in his presentation.

.NET Enterprise Services Performance – It’s a little dated (2004)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dncomser/html/entsvcperf.asp

 Performance of ASP.NET Web Services, Enterprise Services, and .NET Remoting
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwebsrv/html/asmxremotesperf.asp

Finally, to wrap up the meeting, we asked a new member to introduce himself to the group.  We also gave away several prizes.  It seems traditional that our random drawing always chooses the new member for the largest prize and this meeting was no different. Congratulations to everyone that has won and we hope to see you next month!

As a final note, we discussed who might be attending TechEd and the Heartland Developer's Conference this year.  Check out HDC's website and learn about this great (and reasonably price) regional conference.  www.heartlanddc.com

This was a smaller meeting but there was plenty of discussion.

First, we have an amazing speaker coming from INETA in August, Michele Leroux Bustamante. She will be presenting about Window Communication Foundation.

Michele is a Chief Architect with IDesign, Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, Microsoft MVP for Web Services and a BEA Technical Director. In addition, Michele is a member of the board of directors for the International Association of Software Architects (IASA). At IDesign Michele provides high-end architecture consulting services, training and mentoring. Her specialties include architecture design for robust, scalable and secure .NET architecture; localization; Web applications and services; and interoperability between .NET and Java platforms. Michele is a member of the INETA; a frequent conference presenter at major technology conferences such as Tech Ed, PDC, SD and Dev Connections; conference chair for SD’s Web Services track; and a regularly published author. Michele’s next book is Windows Communication Framework Jumpstart for O’Reilly, due out in early 2006. Reach her at www.idesign.net or visit her blog at www.dasblonde.net. We hope everyone can attend!

Registration for the Heartland Developers Conference has begun.  The conference is 10/26 and 10/27 in Omaha, Nebraska.  Register early to receive the early bird discount.

We started the meeting by discussing members’ questions.  Some of these questions have been opened in our forums.  Be sure to contribute.

Greg Sohl, Chris Sutton, and Jason Brunken all shared their favorite tools, sites, and resources.  A detailed list, with links, is available in the power point presentation (above).  In it you will find regular expression tools (http://regex.osherove.com) and sites (http://regexlib.com).

There are also timing and execution count profilers and memory profilers (http://memprofiler.com).

They have links to code generators and ASP.NET version switchers.  Not to a mention a link to Visual Studio Express.  Did you know it’s FREE?!  Not just for a year, but forever!  If you don’t have Visual Studio 2005 yet, a free Express version will get you almost all of the functionality.

There are even resources not directly related to .NET.  Check out the XML doc formatter, nDoc (http://ndoc.sourceforge.net).  There are more documenting tools like GhostDoc, which allows you to comment code based on templates.

If your mind is cluttered and you need to make sense of it all, try FreeMind!

The presentation has links to SQL Comparison tools, Code Metric tools, File Comparison tools, and snippet compilers.

More than one member says that Microsoft OneNote has changed their lives.
There are desktop search engines to help you make full use of your computer.

Once you start using all of these tools at once, if you can’t keep track of your day any more, there’s a tool for that!  Try Time Snapper.  It will record everything you done on your PC and you can play it back on demand to see what you’ve been doing. (www.timesnapper.com)

Log files can be overwhelming.  Try the log file parser at www.logparser.com.

Now that you have so many tools running you may need to keep track of what they are doing.  Process Explorer, a new task manager from SysInternals.com.

If you want to get back to basics and just use notepad to get things done.  There’s a better version of that.  Try NotePad2!  It’s free and provides code color coding and simple features that make Notepad more useful.

Finally, if you want to jump into the AJAX revolution, Microsofts Atlas tool give you a headstart.  http://atlas.asp.net!

For the full descriptions and more links, download the presentation and explore at your own pace.

Thanks!  We’ll see you next month.

The user group surveys that we sent around last month were very helpful.  The surveys asked for feedback on the facilities, the topic, and the speaker.  The survey also asks for topics you would like addressed at CRINETA meetings.  The CRINETA officers were able to gain insight into the attendees' topics of interest.  Because of this we should no longer have to dedicate entire meetings to figuring out future topics.  Of course, you have to attend to fill out these surveys so if you want to make an impact on the direction of the group, be sure to attend our monthly meeting.

We briefly discussed some users' favorite .NET web sites.  Some highlights included 4 Guys from Rolla, Experts Exchange, and DevX.  These and many other favorite sites should be found in our forum.  Please read through them and contribute some of your own.

In this month's meeting was regarding using managed code with SQL Server 2005.  Mike Jackson gave a lively presentation covering some of the broad issues within this topic.  Please refer to his presentation for all of the information. 

One issue that many developers will be facing is when to use managed code and when to use Transact-SQL.  According to Mike's presentation...

Use Managed Code for

• Procedures with Complex Logic
• Access to .NET Framework class library
• CPU intensive functions

Transact-SQL for data access with only basic procedural logic.

Please be sure to check out our forums for discussions resulting from the meeting and anything else going on in CRINETA.

At our March meeting, CRINETA's very own Speaker Liaison, Greg Sohl presented on Application Security.  Specifically Greg focused on securing your application through coding practices and techniques.

With the overwhelming amount of information Greg was able to bring to focus.  He highlighted several very important and common vulnerabilities that must be identified and handled.

Greg summarized techniques in identifying threats.  Specifically, he discussed Threat Modeling and classifying threats.  A very useful tool that he recommended is the FREE Thread Model Tool from Microsoft, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=62830f95-0e61-4f87-88a6-e7c663444ac1&displaylang=en.

The group was taken through some of the most common application vulnerabilities.  We saw how code could be exploited for malicious and criminal purposes.  Greg stressed the importance that none of us trust input coming from the client, especially in web applications.  All input must be authenticated and authorized before ever making it to our data.

There is an overwhelming amount of information on this subject.  Be sure to download Greg's presentation for a collection of some of the best resources available on this subject.

Other than a great presentation, the CRINETA officers introduced a new audience feedback form.  Everyone that attended the meeting was able to give their opinions on the speaker, presentation, and hopefully they chose to share some of their ideas for future meetings.

Next month we will have our final Bring a Buddy meeting so be sure to round up all of your buddies interested in learning more about .NET and bring them to our April meeting.

See you next time!

We had a great turn out for this meeting.  Chris started us off by discussing the CRINETA Forums.  About half the attendees seemed interested in seeing the forums grow.  The CRINETA officers have some ideas on how to generate more interest.  We will be making some announcements soon.

Jason demonstrated some of the ways to seperate the Presentation, Control, and Components Layer of a .NET application.  By doing this, his web applications could be changed dramatically with very small changes to the code.  See the code and explanations in documents above.  You can find even more information in the ASP.NET forums, www.telligent.com and www.communityserver.org.

Former CRINETA President, Eric Johnson was also in attendence.  He shared some of the latest developments coming out of Microsoft.  First he plugged the new map feature http://local.live.com (It's even better than Google Maps!)  He also recommended that we check out www.live.com and www.start.com in order to see what is coming up for Microsoft.

Greg Sohl (who is CRINETA’s speaker liaison) announced that our August speaker will be Michele Leroux Bustamente from the INETA Speaker’s Bureau.  She will be one of the two speakers that INETA provides us a year (we receive 3 per year but we donate one to the Heartland Developers Conference).   Greg also reminded the attendees that our non-INETA speakers come mainly from within the group and if there is a topic that someone would like to present on, we would be more than happy to accommodate them.

Jason Brunken mentioned that next months meeting will be our second “Bring a Buddy” meeting and that we are still waiting on our book shipment for our first BaB event.

Chris Sutton did a great presentation on the benefits of developing in .NET using Continuous Integration.  Chris’s presentation explored the benefits, setup and use of a number of free tools including CruiseControl.NET, Nant, NantContrib and NUnit.

This was our first meeting in our new location.  Thanks to Robert Half Technology for sponsoring our hotel meeting room.  We were able to fit all 40 of our attendees.  This was a new record for attendance and we hope to continue to grow in future meetings.

This was also our first meeting for the “Bring a Buddy Campaign”.  We had 11 members, bring 13 buddies!  That means Microsoft will be giving away 24 books.  Also for the members that brought more than one buddy they will be entered into the Xbox 360 drawing more than once.  That means there are 26 chances for someone from CRINETEA to win an Xbox 360.  I hope all of our new members enjoyed the meeting and we look forward to seeing you in the future. Remember that your next chance to bring a buddy for this campaign will be the February meeting.

The CRINETA Visual Studio 2005 Launch Event was lead by Mike Jackson.  Many attendees had already seen some information about VS 2005.  Mike took us through some of the highlights including Master Pages, Security, and Data Access.  He showed that the new interface allows a great deal to be accomplished without even needing to type a line of code.  Some questions were raised which you can find in our Forum section.  These include the following:

• Can master pages be inherited across projects?
• Can the web.config file support connection strings for different environments?
• If so, can the connection be auto-selected?

Please check out these discussions to learn more.  You may download the power point files and other files associated with this meeting in the link above.

There were a few big announcements that preceded Jeff's presentation.  First, the CRINETA Visual Studio 2005 Launch event will be December 5, presented by Mike Jackson.  We will be giving away some great prizes at this even including multiple launch software packages.  This should be a huge meeting, and our group has out grown the space available at New Horizons.  Therefore we are hoping to find a space that can seat 50+ attendees, has internet access, and a video projector.  If you know of such a location please contact CRINETA immediately.  In related news, you really like launch events, you can also head up to the official North Central Region Launch event in Minneapolis on December 14th. 

Another announcement, Eric Johnson, longtime president of CRINETA, has accepted a new position with Microsoft.  Due to this Eric has stepped down as President of our organization.  Eric has been responsible for much of CRINETA's success and his contributions have been greatly appreciated.  Thankfully, he will remain active in the community and we'll continue to follow his good example.  All of this resulted in an election.  Your new administrative panel is...

President - Jason Brunken
Vice President - Chris Sutton
Communications/Secretary - Jason Schroeder
Webmaster - Mike Jackson
Speaker Liaison - Greg Sohl

As you may have noticed Travis Wilson and Bill Tobias have moved out of the team.  Thanks for all of your hard work guys!  We also welcome two new participants Chris Sutton, who used to be involved in a Colorado User Group, and longtime active member Greg Sohl.  Welcome to the team!

Finally, Jeff Brand, Microsoft DE for the North Central Region and also our speaker for the evening, is working with regional .NET user groups on expanding membership.  This has inspired the Bring a Buddy Campaign.  The rules are simple.  Current CRINETA members should bring a new, unregistered buddy to a CRINETA meeting.  At the meeting this new member will be registered and become part of the CRINETA flock.  As a reward, the CRINETA member and their buddy will each receive an MS Press Book and be registered to win an XBOX 360 through a drawing in April.  The Bring a Buddy Campaign will run every other month starting at our December meeting.  So arrange a buddy for December, February or April.

Jeff had come to town more than just promoting the Bring a Buddy campaign though.  He gave a wonderful overview on the now released Visual Studio Team System 2005.  Jeff covered the three main SKUs of Team System including Architect, Developer, and Tester.  He covered the features that each version of Team System offers and showed the potential uses from several job perspectives.  Team System looks like a very valuable tool for large development teams and there are several ways it can be used for smaller shops as well.  For all of the details, check out the demo Zip file or Jeff's website, www.slickthought.net.

There are some major events coming soon.  As many of us know, the Heartland Developer's Conference is October 12 through 14 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Everyone that has registered should make sure they've paid so they don't lose their spot.  We'll see everyone there!  http://www.heartlanddc.com

In addition to HDC, the Microsoft Launch Events are coming up.  http://www.microsoft.com/events/2005launchevents/default.mspx.  The official launch is November 7.  CRINETA will have a local launch even on December 5.  We anticipate that this will be a large meeting as the information shared will be important to several companies.  Plus we will be giving away major prizes related to the Launch.  The meeting location will likely be somewhere other than New Horizons.  Check back to get updates on location and times.  Finally our regional launch event will be December 14 in Minneapolis.  Eric Johnson and Mike Jackson will be manning a booth and representing our chapter.  They invite anyone to reach them if they are interested in meeting at the event or carpooling; check the About Us page for contact information.

At this months meeting Mike Jackson gave a presentation discussing migrating from Classic ASP to ASP.NET to ASP.NET 2.0.  He shared several of the major differences that an ASP developer needs to learn.   We discussed the importance of a presentation layer being separate from the business logic in .NET.  He also reviewed the importance of programming using objects rather than coding everything in the page itself.  There are major differences in ASP and ASP.NET, and many ASP developers have trouble making the migration.  However, diligently learning best practices and discussing the technology in our user group meetings and in our forums can help ease the switch.

Review Mike's Power Point presentation for more information.

This meeting was one of our best attended meetings this year. Perhaps the crowd was a sign of how powerful and important Generics are in .NET 2.0. Jason Brunken gave a very thorough presentation on the uses of Generics starting with the definition, “A programming language mechanism by which a single piece of code (function, object, interface, etc.) can manipulate many different data types without explicitly having a separate entity for each data type. “

The rest of his presentation effectively demonstrated the use of Generic data types and their key benefits, which are Code Reusability, Type Safety and Performance. Read through Jason’s presentation and example source code, found above.

Remember, the Heartland Developers Conference (http://www.heartlanddc.com) is filling up fast. Sign up soon and pay early to be sure to get in on the action. This is a great opportunity to attend a high caliber event for very low cost. We’ll see you there!

Special thanks to Robert Half Technology for providing our pizza for this meeting!

There is more information available for the Heartland Developers Conference.  They now have details on sessions, speakers, and sponsors.  Rob Howard will be speaking.  There will be some amazing prizes given away.  As well as a Game Zone with 32 stations and a DJ to provide background music.  It's shaping up to be a conference of national caliber.  If you haven't registered yet, get to http://www.heartlanddc.com and get it done.

This meeting was to discuss the topics for our future meetings.  We established several topics for the coming months and have a tentative schedule for each topic.  Please keep in mind that the dates and topics can change depending on speaker availability and other factors.

September 12 - Generics presented by Jason Brunken
October 3 - ASP Classic to ASP.NET presented by Mike Jackson
November 7 - Team Suite 2005
December 5 - .NET 2.0 Changes
January 9 - Developing Secure Web Applications
February 6 - Enterprise Library
March 6 - Remoting/Web Services/WSE/Indigo
April 3 - Master Pages
May 1 - SOA in C#

We are hoping to get Microsoft or INETA speakers to present some of these topics.  We need to have record attendance when we bring in such renowned speakers.

In November, CRINETA will be part of a launch event for the new Visual Studio 2005.  If you would like to be involved in this event contact webmaster@crineta.org.

Eric opened the meeting giving us an update of the Heartland Developers Conference.  The conference will be October 12-14.  The price is $75 but is limited to 500 attendees so register early.  For a schedule and a list of speakers go to http://www.heartlanddc.com/.  Don't forget to register early!

Don Kiely is from Fairbanks, Alaska and a member of the INETA Speakers Bureau.  He gave a great presentation highlighting the new security techniques available for SQL Server 2005.  Please look through his presentation and sample code available in the zip file above.

Some areas of particular interest to developers are the topics covering Schemas.  Users and schemas are seperate in SQL Server 2005.  The dbo is still the default schema, however, with the new seperation betweeen users and schemas new layers of securities and permissions are available.

Other sections of interest are Execution Context and Encryption.  Execution context discusses ways to allow users to "Execute As" other roles.  Encryption is a powerful tool in securing data.  Although it's security is valuable you need a strong understanding of it so you can determine if it is worth the strain encrypting and decrypting data can put on your processor.

For more information about Don Kiely or SQL Server visit his weblog at http://www.sqljunkies.com/weblog/donkiely/ or e-mail him at donkiely@computer.org.

We've been getting a lot of support from our new sponsors already.  Eric was able to give away hats, t-shirts, and product trial CDs from our new sponsor ComponentOne.

The new CRINETA web site is in development.  We encourage all members to check out the new site and let us know what you think by posting in the forums.  The new site is at http://crinetaorg0.web110.discountasp.net.

CRINETA member, Jason Coyne, gave a very interesting presentation on Compact Framework. His PowerPoint presentation can be found in Downloads. He discussed some of the differences in developing for handheld devices. He also explained that each handheld device has differences as well. The best practice is to program several interface options so that all devices are supported. Jason is currently involved in a project that uses cellular tower signals in order to locate a user's approximate position, essentially an improvised GPS. If you're interested in learning more about compact framework Jason suggests DevBuzz (http://www.devbuzz.com/content/init_compact_framework.asp) or OpenNETCF.org

We have two great speakers lined up for the coming months.  In June, Matt Hartleip will be discussing Best Practices. Matt says, "This will entail setting up a UI, Biz, and Data layer that work to encapsulate and hold true with pure OO techniques. We'll discuss domain logic, data mapping, and how this all works with an ASP.NET web UI".

In July a speaker from INETA, Don Kiely, will be coming. He offered us several options for topics. Most of them concerned security in either SQL Server 2005 or ASP.NET 2.0. The group is more interested in ASP.NET 2.0. Travis will pass this along to Don and we look forward to his presentation in July.

To begin the meeting Eric Johnson updated the group on our latest sponsorships. According to Eric, our new sponsors will be able to provide us with swag directly.  Which should make the process go smoother.  Check the main page to see a list of our latest sponsors.

User group member, Charles Ashbacher, gave a presentation on design patterns.  He introduced the group to several books covering the subject and then gave a broad overview of the concept of design patterns.  To see Charles' presentation, download Design Patterns from our Download section.

After Charlie's presentation, Eric gave us an update on the Heartland Developers Conference.  Although no date has been set yet, the event will tentatively take place in Iowa City and will involve INETA chapters from several midwest cities.

After the meeting, core members of the group stayed to discuss the web site and the adoption of new policies.  It was decided that our webmaster Bill Tobias has authority to control the web site as he sees fit.  Bill and Jason Brunken will be working to migrate our website to Community Server and hosting on DiscountASP.  It was also decided that presenters will be required to submit their presentations and any sample code to the site before their presentation.  This way the group will have a chance to review it before, during, and after the meeting.

Eric presented a detailed presentation on some of the new features of C# 2.0. He covered several upgrades and additional options.  Some of these included Anonymous Methods which use a key word delegate as an alternative to event handlers. Another new feature is Nullable Types which will support setting null to any data type. Plus several more new features.

CRINETA is looking for members that would like to design flyers to advertise our monthly meeting.  These flyers would be distributed to college campuses and professional locations in order to attract more members.  If you are interested, please contact webmaster@crineta.org.

Eric gave us a quick update that Microsoft DevDays is still coming to Cedar Rapids. For now it appears Microsoft will be fully sponsoring the event, making the attendance FREE. However, the date and other details are still undetermined.

UPDATE: Microsoft DevDays is not coming to Cedar Rapids, please check the events section on the home page for locations and dates.

Mike gave a presentation covering several aspects of deployment; including a detailed demonstration using the Windows Installer tools.  He shared his experiences using several methods and gave recommendations.  Mike covered Windows Applications, Windows Services, Components, and Web Applications.

Eric discussed topics based on the results of the December meeting survey. It was decided that the focus of the user group meetings should be on emerging technologies. Users interested in current .NET software and techniques are encouraged to ask other users, discuss their questions in the CRINETA forum, or research solutions online. 

The following topics generated the most interest for discussion in 2005.

• ASP.NET 2.0
• Web Services 2.0
• Design Patterns
• Best Practices
• Deployment
• SQL Server 2005

Unless a speaker is arranged by our February meeting the topic will be Deployment discussed by Eric or Mike. We hope to discuss Design Patterns in the April meeting.  The rest of the months will be determined based on guest speaker availability.  The website will be updated as the schedule is determined.

Officers for 2005 were selected in an informal volunteer process. Eric will continue as President; Mike will continue as VP; Travis will continue as Speaker Liaison; Bill will continue as Webmaster; Jason Brunken will continue in Communications. New to the officers, Jason Schroeder volunteered to benbsp;Secretary.  3 people also volunteered to be on the website committee, Diana Ryan, Tim Holt and Jason Schroeder.

Jeff delivered a great presentation and QA session on ASP.NET 2.0 Whidbey.  Even though this meeting went a bit long, Jeff definitely kept the full attention of everyone in the group.  I know that our users expect our meetings to end on schedule, but when you have a speaker like Jeff, it's worth it to let him have the floor as long as wants to. 

We had a packed room for this meeting, 30+ attendees in a room that was meant to hold 24.  In addition to the 4 prizes that we presented, Jeff also gave away a virtual developers kit that include full licensed versions of: Virtual PC, Window 2003 Server, SQL Server Standard Edition, and Visual Studio 2003.  The Microsoft support that we are receiving is all due to Jeff's efforts to help build the .NET user groups in the Midwest.  We appreciate his presentation and support very much.  Thank you Jeff!

Jeff also gave us a mention on his blog at http://www.slickthought.net/blog.aspx.  Thanks for the advertising Jeff!

There was a discussion of the merits of VB6 versus .NET, and whether to migrate off of VB6 and how to do it. The concensus is that you should not try to migrate VB6 programs into VB.NET. Along with the hassles and shortcomings of programs that are supposed to convert the code should be the realization that in reality you are shifting architectures, not just languages. Randy Scott led this discussion and related his experiences in trying to migrate/convert the code. Others have had similar experiences. Bottom line: When moving from VB6 to VB.NET, move the logic, don't move the code.

An unintended consequence of the previous discussion was that it evolved into a discussion of the merits of VB.NET versus C#. Everyone seems to have an opinion on this, but the majority present agreed that due to many factors, C# is the language of the future. Some of the reasons suggested included: inherent OOP structure, Microsoft's promotion of C#, and better salaries for employees and consultants who know C#. Weigh in with your opinion on this issue by voting in our poll and joining the discussion in the Forums.

Discussed various .NET experiences during the past month.  Ali Zamurad developed a Windows app with an icon in the system tray. The app enumerated Windows Services. Written in C#.  Mike Jackson wrote a FileSystemWatcher service to monitor the root directory on C: for new files. The service wrote to the system event log when a new file appeared.

Mike Jackson wrapped up the ADO topic with a presentation on updating multiple rows simultaneously and handling update conflicts.  A group was formed to work on the Website. Some of the team met to install the dotNetNuke program, and then to configure it for CRINETA. New Horizons has graciously agreed to host the site for a little while during our search for a more permanent host.