For those that are interested, I have a zip file that contains the presentation and project files from my SSIS tutorial presentation.

SSISPresent_NovaCodeCampSouthMar2008.zip (1.77 MB)

I was shocked....SHOCKED...to realize that an hour and 15 minutes is not enough time to cover this material. Seriously, a minimum of 2 hours is required to get a good understanding of the basics of SSIS. A good understanding of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 is recommended.

Learning Tree uses an entire week to cover the material, but the end result of their hands on training is that you walk out being able to practically apply SSIS immediately on the job.

Working with Microsoft MVP, Jeff Schoolcraft, we have organized a wonderful developer learning event on Saturday, March 29th at Strayer University in Woodbridge, Va.

CodeCamp SOUTH

Speakers include:

• Brian Noyes, Microsoft MVP
• Jonathan Cogley, Microsoft MVP
• Sahil Malik, Microsoft MVP
• Frank LaVigne, Microsoft MVP
• Antonio Chagoury, DotNetNuke Team Lead

and many more.

Topics to be covered include a host of new technologies along with some introductory courses. Here is a sample (you can see the rest at the NovaCodeCamp site).

• Visual Studio 2008
• SQL Server 2008
• SharePoint 2007
• DotNetNuke Module Development
• Office 2007 Development
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Development
• Ajax
• Silverlight

For you developers, this is a golden opportunity to see presentations that would typically be presented at high priced conferences like Microsoft TechEd and VSLive. And it is FREE. However, registration is limited to the first 100 that sing up - so make your reservation today!

OK, I'm a little slow. But, here are the two presentations I made at the Richmond Code Camp two weeks ago. These are in Microsoft Powerpoint.

XQuery for DBAs and Developers (Powerpoint)

Richmond Code Camp XQuery for DBAs and Developers.pptx (980.39 KB)

XQuery SQL Demonstration File (.SQL)

XQuery Presentation.sql (42.59 KB)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; SQLCLR for DBAs and Developers (Powerpoint)

SQLCLR Richmond Code Camp Oct 6.pptx (620.63 KB)

Well, I have really done it now. I'm giving two presentations tomorrow at the Richmond CodeCamp. Andy Leonard is putting on another show, and if this one is as good as the last, everyone coming should be in for a real treat.

See you all Saturday!

Located below are the SQL, data and VB project files from my presentation at the Richmond Code Camp

RichmondCodeCampXquery.zip (12.6 KB)

Here is my powerpoint presention. It is more than a little light because the focus of CodeCamp is the CODE!

Richmond Code Camp XQuery Tips and Tricks.ppt (2.34 MB)

I would like to thank Andy Leonard, Susan Lennon, and the rest of the Richmond crew for a well run operation.

When working on code developing a SQLCLR stored procedure for my upcoming presentation at the Richmond Code Camp, I ran into this problem with the SqlPipe output.

Here is my code:

<Microsoft.SqlServer.Server.SqlProcedure()> _
Public Shared Sub procExtractSubjectDetail ()
'Return a string of Subject IDs/XML seperated by a ";"
Try
'Connect to database, notice the context connection
Dim Command As SqlCommand = New SqlCommand
Command.Connection = New SqlConnection("Context connection=true")
Command.Connection.Open()

'Generate the SQL query
Dim strSQL As String = "SELECT ID, Study FROM StudyDetail"

'Attach query to command object
Command.CommandText = strSQL

'Execute command object and get results back in a SQL reader object
Dim reader As SqlDataReader = Command.ExecuteReader()

'Create an efficient stringbuilder to hold the results
Dim Subjects As StringBuilder = New StringBuilder

'Add an emtpy string
Subjects.Append("")

'Collect the results
While reader.Read
'String output size limit is 4kb
'so let us restrict our output for this demo
Subjects.Append(reader.Item(0).ToString() + "/")
Dim sXml As SqlXml = reader.GetSqlXml(1)

Subjects.Append(sXml.Value.ToString)
End While

'Close and release the reader
reader.Close()
reader = Nothing

Dim strResult As String = Subjects.ToString()

'Is it too big?
Dim iSize As Integer = strResult.Length

'Send the results
SqlContext.Pipe.Send(strResult)

Command.Connection.Close()

Catch ex As Exception
'Catch the error and resend it. You could add more error code handling here.
Throw New ApplicationException("An error occurred. " + ex.ToString())
End Try

End Sub

--

This was failing when I ran the code. The issue? SqlContext.Pipe.Send(STRING) only allows a string size of 4k bytes. My output was over 7k.

Check out the picture of Scott Lock, President of CAPAREA.NET, and Regional INETA Director for the Mid-Atlantic and Stan Spotts, Microsoft PA Evangelist, and expectent father, squaring off. Is Scott flipping Stan off?

Nice job by Andrew Duthie. Here is the code camp photo album.

Here is me flailing around as usual up in front of the audience.

You can find the files for my presentation here:

Presentation Slides

Demos

Andrew Duthie, Microsoft, put on a great show. There are Code Camps being organized all over, and this one last Saturday was hosted at Microsoft's Reston offices. 

This wasn't a marketing session, it was about developers talking to developers. We had some top-flight folks presenting. Brian Noyes, Sahil Malik, Vishwas Lele, Julie Lerman, Jonathan Cogley, to name a few. We also had many local developers give presentations, so it was a good mix of top flight presenters/MVPs and local or first time presenters.

This whole event was free. Similar type conferences cost about $400 per day, so those that attended in the developer community really made out. There is talk of doing more of these, and also doing them in other locations (like Roanoke).

User group representatives were out in force, too. We had members and representatives from Roanoke, Richmond, Hampton, Baltimore, Vermont, and nearly every .NET group in the DC area (NovaSQL, CAPAREA.Net were well represented). We even had Cold Fusion folks attend. And INETA was well represented with Julie Lerman (congratulations on being named to the INETA board) and Scott Lock, Regional INETA director for the Mid-Atlantic region in attendance. 

I gave a presentation on XQuery for the Data track (we had 5 different tracks). Good group of presenters: Sreedhar Koganti, Carney Clegg, Julie Lerman, Sahil Malik, and Jeff Schoolcraft in our group. Carney and I should have switched the order of our presentations because he showed some good stuff on how to consume XML and make it show up in a grid. Using XQuery, I showed how to extract data out in an XML format. It would have really been interesting to show me pulling data from SQL Server 2005 in XQuery, and Carney's demonstration showing how it could be consumed and presented at the interface level.

I gave away a red-handled crescent wrench to an attendee that could name the two types of XQuery calls that can be made in SQL Server 2005 (XPath and FLOWR) similar to the one in my first blog entry.

Anyway, hats off to Andrew Duthie for putting on the Code Camp. I think he maxed out his expected attendance goals. Over 300 signed up and over 200 attended (not bad for the Saturday before Mother's Day).