It’s becoming one of those yearly traditions in Belgium: rainy weather, great beers, … and since the last years also the yearly Community Day. This year there will be 40 sessions in total with 6 tracks! I’ll be there as well and hope to see a lot of community people. Azug, the user group of which I’m a board member will also be doing several sessions.

Grz, Kris.

Today I was trying to run a sample application for VS11 Beta that I found online: Download Hands-on Lab Source Files. However when trying to run the pages I encountered the following error:

Looking into the inner exception:

gave me the following:

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified).

Ouch!

Well, what I could’ve done is trying to fiddle around with settings of SQL Server, trying to get it right and working. However I noticed that Entity Framework was being used and in the code I found this little piece:

public class ProductsContext : DbContext
{
    public ProductsContext() : base("WebFormsLab-Products")
    {
    }

    public DbSet<Category> Categories { get; set; }
        
    public DbSet<Product> Products { get; set; }
        
    public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; set; }
}

Inherits from DbContext? Aha, that’s interesting. Now, let me see if we can get SQL Server Compact into play. Well, we can. There’s a nice Nuget package available:

This will update the web.config as well as besides downloading the package. Now running the same page again it shows the information nicely instead of giving that nasty error. Also it generated a new database file in the App_Data subfolder:

Super!

Conclusion: SQL Server Compact to the rescue together with Entity Framework Code First. It’s easy to integrate via Nuget and it simply works (disclaimer: on this machine).

Grz, Kris.

I just noticed I passed the 175.000 recognition points border at forums.asp.net. Cool! Does this mean something special? Well not at first glance but it does mean that I tried to help out a lot of people worldwide trying to solve their small or big problems while working on real world projects.

Grz, Kris.

Yesterday I was the main presenter at Microsoft WebCamps in Utrecht, The Netherlands. A total of 122 people attended with a very diverse public. Ranging from beginners to hardcore developers, user experience specialists, network maintenance specialists, … Students and even a person of 71 with whom I had a very nice talk during lunch. I really enjoyed it and apparently so did the attendees. It was a very nice experience in a special place: an old factory: http://www.defabrique.nl/. The catering had a traditional Dutch delicacy: broodje kroket and the company hired to organize it all did a great job.

Here are some action shots:

The agenda of the day itself was:

Part 1:

• State of the Union
• IE coolness
• WebMatrix 2

Part 2:

• Web API
• Introduction to HTML 5

Part 3:

• Do it yourself now: Hands On Labs

Grz, Kris.

It’s been something like 10 years that I didn’t write C++ code myself anymore. When I heard my friend Marc Gregoire started up his own user group BeCPP I decided to go and watch what’s happened over that decade. Frankly, a lot has seemed to happen. I was introduced to the new stuff that shipped with the latest C++ version and a second sessoin about the new move stuff. At some points I had to dig again on the information but overall I could still follow along.

A picture of both speakers: Marc Gregoire and Francisco Almeida:

For the people interested in both C++ and Metro be sure to check out their new session on May 8.

Grz, Kris.

I just noticed that the ASP.NET website has gotten a small but very interesting upgrade. Until recently it was somewhat hard to find the information about Web API and Single Page Applications (SPA). As the menu was already pretty crowded the site now has an extra menu called Solutions. From there on one can easily find all the major technology stacks with references to tutorials, videos, samples, …

If you want direct access, go ahead:

Grz, Kris.

Woohoo! And another year of being an MVP. I’m glad I made it again and that my contributions to the community get appreciated by that same community and Microsoft.

The last year for sure was busy with being active on the ASP.NET forums, being a board member of the Belgian Windows Azure user group (azug), I became a MEET member, …

Grz, Kris.

Likely you already found out that recently Windows 8 preview got released showing off some of the new ways Windows 8 will work for you and your company. Microsoft Belgium jumps on the bandwagon and organizes a cool concept: study at day, hack and code at night.

You can follow during the day the following program:

8:08 - 9:00
    Registration
9:00 - 10:30
    Opening keynote: Introducing Windows 8
    Platform for Metro style app and principles
        Speaker: Giorgio Sardo
10:30 - 11:00
    Break
11:00 - 12:30
    Building Metro Style Apps with XAML and HTML: everything .NET and Web developers need to know
12:30 - 13:15?
    Lunch
13:30 - 15:00
    Building Metro Style UI and integrating with Windows 8 Experiences
15:00 - 15:30
    Break
15:30 - 17:00
    Bringing Your Apps to Life
    Closing with Windows Store & Developer opportunity
17:00 - 18:00
    Closing drink

After that the hackaton starts:

18:00 - 18:30
    Welcome and setup
18:30 - 23:00
    Develop your app, code galore!
19:00 - 20:00
    Pizza & Red Bull
23:00 - 24:00
    Showcasing of apps, voting for the best apps
    Best app of the night prize!
24:00
    Closing or stay up all night :)

So if you like to start being creative for Windows 8 and you’re in Belgium, you know where you want to be on March 23 2012.

Grz, Kris.

Tech days Belgium 2012 was a jam packed load of interesting sessions. For those who couldn’t attend or, like myself, couldn’t follow the sessions due to having to choose between several sessions at the same time slot, we can now watch the recorded sessions online: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/techdays/2012/Home.aspx.

Grz, Kris.

Just as of today there’s a new update of WebMatrix 2 Beta for download. One of the direct changes that one can see is that WebPages 2 coolness dripped into it too.

For example, in the past one had to write:

<a class="order-button" href="@Href("~/order", featured.Id)" title="Order @featured.Name">Order Now</a>

And now that has become:

<a class="order-button" href="~/order/@featured.Id" title="Order @featured.Name">Order Now</a>

Notice the difference? Cool huh? And WebPages 2 holds more nifty cool features that will help out web developers all around the globe.

I’m looking forward to see this small yet powerful tool come to a final release. Hopefully soon.

Grz, Kris.