Interesting article in the XML Journal about XQuery.

Yesterday (May 25th), ACRITECH had a vendor booth at the NSWCDD 14th Annual Industry Day and Small Business Opportunity  Fair down at Dahlgren, Virginia. In spite of rain, we talked to a lot of folks.

We demo'd the LogiXML Info product running against SQL Server 2005! Pretty cool.

We should have some pictures up in a day or two.

For those interested in why XQuery is not in .NET Framework 2.0, Arpan Desai's blog has a short summation here. Also, one of the outstanding issues is that XQuery will not reach Recommendation status by W3C until sometime next year while Framework 2.0 is set to be released this year.

Not that I know, but I would venture to guess that we will see XQuery in the .NET Framework with an updated version (2.1?) which will probably be available around 2007.

If you downloaded the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 and expected to find the Database Projects, that allow you to create CLR stored procedures, user defined functions, etc., within the Visual Studio 2005 environment, you will be disappointed.

The VS 2005 Beta 2 download is for the Standard version of the VS2005 product. To get the Database Projects you need to have the VS2005 Professional version. This isn't available, yet, in the MSDN subscription downloads. To get it, you need to download the VS 2005 Team System (which integrates VS Professional 2005). If you download it prepare to wait - it's a 3.9 GB iso image.

This link to the Visual Studio 2005 online documentation explains what is available in the different versions (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/8czxd086(en-us,vs.80).aspx). I wish I had this before I downloaded the Standard edition.

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

Picture of me, Andrew Duthie and Sahil Malik at a recent CAPAREA.NET meeting.

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).

Occassionally, I do book reviews for Fawcette Publications Visual Studio Magazine. Here is the book I'm currently reading for them. So far, I have found it excellent.

I'll be making a presentation about XQuery in SQL Server 2005 at Code Camp this Saturday.

Here is some info for those interested in attending:

The first Mid-Atlantic Code Camp will be held on May 7th from 9am to 9pm at the Reston Microsoft Technology Center. Registration is open, and you can register here.

I'm testing my blog.