LINQ To XML

Andy's Blog

Andy Beaulieu will present: Silverlight 3 Silverlight 3 Beta was recently released, and has some really cool enhancements for graphics and animation. This session will explore improvements coming to Silverlight 3 for those who want to push the graphics envelope - including Perspective 3D, Pixel Shaders, GPU Acceleration, Bitmap API, Animation Easing, and MPEG4 Support.

Andy Beaulieu is a professional software developer and trainer with over 15 years of experience building applications for Windows and the Web. Located in Syracuse, New York, he is well versed in many Microsoft technologies including Silverlight, ASP.NET, ADO.NET and WindowsForms. Andy has been awarded a Microsoft MVP Award for Silverlight, and is a member of the WPF and Silverlight Insiders group. He is also involved in the .NET community and is the Group Leader for the Central New York .NET Developers Group, as well as the INETA Membership Mentor for much of the Northeastern United States. The food for this meeting is sponsored by TEKSystems.  We are grateful for their loyal support of VDUNY.

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 6:30 PM Microsoft Offices, 100 Corporate Woods

Steve Maier, Principal Software Engineer at InfiMed, will present: Microsoft Certifications           Benefits of Certification Exam Preparation Tips and Tricks for Exams Steve Maier  is a Principal Software Engineer with InfiMed developing digital medical imaging systems. Steve is also the Database team lead and software lead for the next generation of products. His website is http://strugglingthru.net/ where there are posts on certification and .NET . Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 6:30 PM Bryant & Stratton College, 150 Bellwood Drive Kathleen's Blog Kathleen Dollard will present: Your Application in Pieces – Managed Extensibility Framework and Managed Add-In Framework Decoupling portions of your application has tremendous payback during both development and maintenance. Your application becomes more testable and flexible and can more easily evolve to meet changing demands. Decoupling your application also allows a new level of partnership with external groups because you can safely incorporate their code in your application without recompiling or releasing source code. Microsoft has exposed different provider models in many areas of the framework and libraries, and this year has moved toward consolidating its efforts at decoupling with the Managed Extensibility Framework, or MEF. This tool differs from an IoC container because its focused directly at simplifying the extension of applications and focuses at extensibility, discover, and composition. The underlying engine can support Microsoft efforts like Visual Studio and your own applications. MEF comes up short when you encounter isolation and versioning issues, such as wanting that external code to run in its own AppDomain. The Managed Add-In Framework, or MAF, focuses on these problems and the significant complexity they bring with System.AddIn namespace of .NET 3.5. You’ll learn more about architecting applications in pieces and the sweet spot of using MEF and MEF together. You’ll leave ready to evaluate the role of MEF and MAF in your applications. Kathleen Dollard is a consultant, author, trainer, and speaker. She’s been a Microsoft MVP for over ten years and has spoken about .NET in 28 states and 5 countries. She’s written dozens of articles including the “Ask Kathleen” column in Visual Studio Magazine. She also wrote “Code Generation in Microsoft .NET” (Apress). Her passion is helping programmers be smarter in how they develop by learning to better use .NET languages, libraries and platforms. She works with WPF, WF, as well as core technologies including System.AddIn. She’s currently creating template infrastructure for code generation using VB XML literals. After working on the problem of capturing business intent in metadata and test definitions for years, she’s working with industry improvements in these areas. She’s also working on full life cycle improvements, such as unit testing, better debugging and static analysis (FxCop). When not working, she enjoys woodworking, snowshoeing, and kayaking depending on the outdoor temperature.   This event is sponsored by INETA.  They will cover the cost of the food and refreshments.  VDUNY has been a member of INETA for over four years.  Each attendee will be required  to complete a speaker evaluation form for this program before VDUNY can receive full reimbursement for these costs.  Your cooperation will be appreciated.                             Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 6:30 PM Microsoft Offices, 100 Corporate Woods Kyle Korndoerfer, Senior Software Engineer at Xerox, will present: Code Analysis, Metrics, & Style           Static Code Analysis using FxCop or Visual Studio Code Analysis Code Metrics (Visual Studio Team System) Code Style using Microsoft StyleCop Visual Studio Add-On Kyle Korndoerfer  is a Senior Software Engineer with Xerox Global Services Document Outsourcing and Communication Services team developing Web and SmartClient Applications that facilitate the flow of documents through internal and external digital production systems while reducing costs. Kyle is also the Lead Database developer and Architect. He spends some of his off time with his dad as a pyrotecnician with Young Explosives making controlled detonations of custom designed indoor/outdoor, aerial/ground firework displays. Download the slides for this presentation.                             2008 Meetings Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 Matthew Roche of Integral Thought & Memory presented What's New in SQL Server 2008  Microsoft SQL Server 2008 was released to manufacturing on Wednesday, August 6, 2008, and with its release many database developers will begin to explore its many new features and enhanced capabilities. In this interactive session, SQL Server MVP Matthew Roche presented a selection of his favorite new features in SQL Server 2008 with plenty of demonstrations and lots of time for Q&A. Wednesday night, May 28th, Charles Baldo presented Telerik RAD Controls for ASP.NET. Some of the important features of the Telerik RAD Controls: They’re built on top of Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX framework and are a comprehensive UI suite with over 20 controls with unique features and performance optimizations to ensure a good user experience.  They have very wide cross-browser compatibility so that look and feel is preserved. Chuck’s presentation will showcase the RAD Window control that enables developers to circumvent the Win XP SP2 Popup Blocker to implement cross-browser "modal" dialogs and splash screens.  He will also touch on several other controls in the Telerik suite.  We have given away a number of licenses for the Telerik controls over the last year, but this is the first VDUNY program to demonstrate their use. Charles Baldo is a Line of Business programmer developing business and web database applications in both enterprise and small business situations. February 27th, 2008 Charles Baldo presented Telerik Reporting Telerik Reporting is a .NET managed reporting service. The demonstration will create a Telerik report from scratch using Visual Studio and an Access database. The report will produce a PDF file as output with headers, footers and groupings as well as aggregate functions. Some of the important features of the Telerik reporting tool are: ·        Fine-grained CSS-like styling ·         Extensive data source support ·         Rich set of measurement units ·         RTL Language and Globalization Support ·         "Report Wizard" with themes and templates ·         Windows and Web report viewers ·         Visual Studio-identical datasource wizard ·         Report converters ·         Variety of export formats ·         Full Visual Studio 2008 integration ·         Reasonably priced ($599 – even less with the user group discount) Charles Baldo is a Line of Business programmer developing business and web database applications in both enterprise and small business situations. January 23rd 2008Andy Beaulieu, coordinator of theCentral New York .NET Developers Group presented Silverlight 2.0. Silverlight 2.0 Silverlight 2.0 will allow for the creation of Rich Internet Applications which are much more robust, capable, and maintainable than their AJAX cousins. While this exciting technology is still under development, we have a good foundation available in the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha. We'll talk about how to quickly get started with the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Preview and Expression Blend 2 and we'll look at some interesting game code and mashups. Andy Beaulieu is a professional software developer with over 10 years of experience in creating web and Windows applications. He has worked on many software projects in the financial and health care industries, and as a trainer for several companies and training centers, and holds MCT, MCSD.NET and MCSD certifications. Andy is also involved in the .NET community and is the Group Leader for the Central New York .NET Developers Group, as well as the INETA Membership Manager for much of the Northeastern United States. 2007 Meetings   Wednesday December 19th 2007 Matthew Roche of Integral Thought and Memory presented SQL Server Integration Services Deployment Best Practices Matthew discussed SQL Server Integration Services deployment best practices, focusing on the tools, techniques and practices that take the pain out of deploying SSIS applications in the real world. Topics covered included SSIS configurations and expressions and the DTEXEC and DTUTIL command line utilities, as well as recommendations and guidelines for using them to achieve a reliable and repeatable deployment process. There were plenty of opportunities for questions and answers and it was a fun evening. Matthew Roche is Microsoft Certified Trainer and software consultant who specializes in business intelligence and data warehousing using Microsoft SQL Server business intelligence tools. Matthew lectures on SSIS topics across the United States and the world, and has contributed to several books on SQL Server and business intelligence, but spends most of his time building data warehousing ETL solutions using SQL Server Integration Services. Download the PowerPoint Slide Deck.   Wednesday November 28th Peter Traeg of Eastman Kodak Company presented An introduction to Adobe Flex Of interest to many web application developers today is the concept of Rich Internet Applications.   There are a number of ways in which these can be constructed.  In prior VDUNY meetings we've seen demonstrations of ASP.NET AJAX, and Microsoft Silverlight.   A long standing alternative for RIA development has been Adobe/Macromedia Flash.   However, while Flash is great for graphic designers the Flash development paradigm has been foreign for application developers.   Adobe Flex was developed to allow application developers to rapidly develop RIA applications on the Flash platform.   Demonstrations included: A Tour of Flex Capabilities The development language (MXML and ActionScript) Flex Builder IDE A Flex applications leveraging a REST based HTTP service. An ASP.NET application remoting objects to a Flex frontend application. About Peter Traeg: Peter Traeg is a Senior Software Engineer/Architect for the Eastman Kodak Company.   He is currently working on new product development for the Kodak EasyShare Gallery web site.   He has been working with .NET since it was in beta back in 2001.   He currently serves as the Kodak .NET product custodian for Microsoft .NET.    Peter has been developing web applications since 1995 and has particular interest in web based user interface technology. Download the PowerPoint slides from Peter's presentation. Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 6:00 PM. Data Access Layers through Code Generation Data access is often a tedious and error-prone part of an application.  Greg will demonstrate the automatically generated data access layer his company built to address common problems encountered by all applications, but especially web apps.  He?ll also discuss the properties that any good data access layer should have, and compare the benefits of other data access layers that the audience has an interest in.  There will inevitably be some discussion of code generation and its benefits in general. Greg Smalter graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology before co-founding Red Stapler Software, LLC; a company specialized in providing web applications to small businesses in order to automate their workflow.  Greg enjoys giving talks throughout the northeast on data access, validation, and web application frameworks.  He has also consulted for Xerox and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Link to downloads of slides and demos. Greg Smalter Red Stapler Software, LLC 585-455-6476   Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 Chris Bowen (http://blogs.msdn.com/cbowen)  presented Visual Studio 2008 (ORCAS).  Visual Studio 2008 brings a host of new features and technologies to the developer?s workbench, including IDE improvements, .NET Framework 3.5, LINQ, C# 3.0, and VB 9. In this session, we?ll introduce these main enhancements and new features, with a primary focus on the IDE. There is native support for the .NET 3.x technologies including designers for WPF and WF and tools for WCF. Web developers have ASP.NET AJAX out of the box, new CSS design tools, and IntelliSense support for JavaScript development, including type inferencing. Also new is the inclusion of the unit testing framework with the Professional version of the product. Time permitting, we?ll also touch on how Visual Studio 2008 and .NET improve data access through the powerful functionality of Language Integrated Query (LINQ). May 23rd, 2007 Andy Beaulieu from CNY presented AJAX With ASP.NET AJAX , developers can quickly create web applications with richer, more responsive UI's and more efficient client-server communication. This introduction to ASP.NET AJAX will explore many of the available features and controls and how to build both Server-Centric and Client-Centric AJAX applications using the framework. We'll also explore add-on tools that can greatly ease development using any AJAX framework. April 25th, 2007 Craig Frey of Cornell University  presented LINQ LINQ is the biggest addition to the next version of Visual Studio (Orcas) and the .Net framework (version 3.5). LINQ adds query and set based operations to C# and VB. In this presentation we'll talk about LINQ, how we got here, why now, and most importantly how does it work. I'll also demonstrate how you can take the samples provided by Microsoft and get them to work in your own application. About the speaker Craig became an MCSE, MCSD, and MCT about ten years ago and taught the Microsoft curriculum for SQL Server, VB programming, and web development in Burlington , VT. He then switched to becoming a full time SQL developer, also teaching a full slate of CISSP security courses. Craig is now employed by Cornell University as a developer using Oracle, Cold Fusion, Java and .Net. His language of choice is C# and can now say with authority that SQL Server is better than Oracle. February 28th, 2007 Walt Ritscher, an instructor and consultant with Wintellect  presewnted Windows Presentation Foundation. By now you?ve probably heard of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). But how well do you really know WPF? It?s been my experience in talking to .NET developers that many have no idea of how powerful WPF is. Some think it is a watered down graphics engine that can animate buttons on a form. Others think it is a new API for Vista and has no impact on applications they are currently building. But they are wrong. WPF represents the first significant change to the Windows graphics engine in over ten years. What is trivial to build with WPF is difficult or impossible in Microsoft's current Winforms technology. The WPF API is chock full of improvements for constructing rich client applications. WPF is hardware accelerated, using the graphics rendering engine in your GPU for faster processing of UI primitives. It is vector based, via Direct3D, which provides truly scalable and resolution independent UIs. WPF makes it easy to integrate video, audio, text, animation and 2D-3D graphics into a seamless montage You may not need 3D in your business application but I bet you have UI ideas that are difficult to accomplish with the current set of graphics tools - like GDI. If you truly care about creating a great user interface, you owe it to yourself to see what WPF can do. 2003-2004 Meetings 1/26/2005 The evening's program will be presented by Patrick Chefalo. The following is a summary of what he has planned to discuss: In pre .Net days, did you ever want a Windows form control that was more powerful than what came in the normal Visual Basic toolbox? (Assuming you used Visual Basic, otherwise there was no toolbox at all!) For instance, did you ever want to add properties, additional events, different event actions, validation logic, a more user-intuitive look? In the old days, you could sometimes use API code to access properties that were inherent in the Windows controls but not exposed by Visual Basic. You could add events by sub-classing the control, peeking at the Windows message loop for messages addressed to the control, and then add or substitute actions. You could use the more obscure events to trap keyboard and mouse actions and write code to handle them. Or you could BUY a more sophisticated control from a third party -- an industry developed around third-party controls! It was pretty difficult to "roll-your-own" controls. Anything that required a visual interface required delving into low-level graphic calls, etc. Distributing was impossible without third-party help since VB DLLs were "persona non grata". However, VB.Net makes it very easy to combine standard controls into a single user control that becomes a class library (dll) that can be re-used with your projects. A significant number of properties and events are inherited. You can easily add custom properties in the constructor and handle events across the control. Pat Chefalo is a long-time member of VDUNY (actually at the first meeting.) Recently he started a project that involved user input of data that was destined for a database, where it would be the object of queries, etc. Validation of the data is therefore important. To reduce the validation code for the various forms involved, "smart" data input controls are desirable. Pat will interactively demonstrate the creation of a user-control, with some guidance on pitfalls into which he fell (and will show you his bruises --- NOT) and will also seek advice from the audience on improvements from their experience. This will hopefully be a give-and-take, learning experience for all involved. March 24th, 2004 Speaker: Jeff Leist (Microworx Serviceland) Topic: PC Hardware: Upcoming Changes This presentation will discuss the big changes that are expected for PC hardware in the coming months (64 bit, AGP buss going away, etc.) and how they may affect all of us. We will also have an opportunity to ask Jeff a few questions and to learn some of the things to watch out for when building a PC from component parts or upgrading an existing machine. February 25th, 2004 Speaker: Pat Chefalo Topic: The VB Shuffle ? Dancing From VB 6 to VB.Net A look at the porting of a simple, fat-client database query tool from the old VB to the new. Features: Programming philosophy; Thunder versus Win Forms; Bah, who needs control arrays?; Cursors, Foiled Again - ADO and ADO.Net; The simple replacement for the very complex Printform. January 28, 2004 Speaker: Jason Sherron Topic: Internationalization With .Net We will examine the successful internationalization of a large-scale consumer Web site, with an emphasis on the tools in Microsoft's .NET environment. We will cover the fundamentals of internationalization in .NET, review the history of globalization on the Microsoft platform, discuss major "lessons learned" from a technical and functional standpoint, and demonstrate a "live" site that uses the new .NET globalization facilities. If time permits, we will view a short code demonstration. November 19, 2003 Speaker: Timothy Lippa and Perry Pellerino Topic: Building Dynamic Applications With C# .Net Reflection And XML The software community strives to build reusable applications quickly. The .Net platform assists software developers in this area. Using C#, Microsoft provides an environment with which software developers can build dynamic applications easier than in the past. This tutorial will cover C# .Net Reflection in depth. It will also include a short introduction to XML. The tutorial will culminate with a real world example of using .Net Reflection and XML to build dynamic C# .Net applications. October 22, 2003 Speaker: Keith Bozek (Kodak) Topic: Storing And Transforming Data In The .NET Framework One of the best features of the .NET framework is its data management subsystem. A developer has a rich set of storage, pattern matching and transformation tools in the .NET framework. Via .NET streams, a developer can easily transform data from one format to another and even encrypt this data. ADO.NET provides the developer with tools to both store and shape data. This presentation will help a developer better understand of these systems by providing a live demonstration of working VB.net and C# applications. September 24, 2003 Speaker: None Topic: General discussion of plans for the year. We also had a few programming questions and related topics that were discussed. May 28, 2003 Speaker: T.R. Kolankiewicz Topic: Moving from VB6 to VB.Net...Part 2 Part II of the presentation from April. Tom covered many of VB.NET's new features and changes, and some of the ?oddities? which one experiences as they proceed to implement IT Windows Forms applications using VB.NET. April 23, 2003 Speaker: T.R. Kolankiewicz Topic: Moving from VB6 to VB.Net for Windows Application Development At our past two user group meetings, David Stevenson presented us with well-organized overview of many of the VB.NET (and C#) language features. In this first part of a two-part presentation, Tom led a wide ranging discussion of VisualBasic.NET, with a focus on Windows Application Development. The intended audience was developers who are adept with VB6 and transitioning to VB.NET. He was able to toggle between the VB6 and VB.NET IDEs to some of the key differences. March 26th, 2003 Speaker: David Stevenson Topic: Introduction to Visual Basic.NET, Part II David returned to give a follow-up talk to his talk from February. He continued to provide excellent sample Visual Basic.NET (and equivalent C#) programs, covering the following language features: Accessibility modifiers for data, methods and classes; Properties, parameterless and parameterful; Delegates and events; Arrays; Namespaces and Imports; Late binding (no C#); Conversions; Exceptions; Boxing and unboxing; Cloning. It was a very informative presentation. And David was good enough to provide CDRs with the presentation info, sample files, and more. For those who attended, you can download the updates to the CD files. If you missed the talk here are the complete presentation materials (1 MB). February 26th, 2003 Speaker: David Stevenson Topic: Introduction to Visual Basic.NET Visual Basic.NET now truly supports Object Oriented Programming, including features such as inheritance, interfaces, parameterized constructors and overloading. With Object Oriented Programming, data takes center stage, supporting not only reference types but also value types. However, pitfalls await the unwary for those who do not understand the nuances of copying and boxing. Error handling takes a major step forward with Structured Exception Handling. You can throw away your old On Error GoTo statement. You won't be needing it. For those more inclined to C#, I will be providing examples in both Visual Basic.NET and C#. This will be bi-lingual education at its finest. We'll begin with a fast-paced tutorial with lots of code. We'll conclude with a brief description of the differences between VB.NET and C#. Presentation Materials (1 MB). January 22nd, 2003 Speaker: Patrick Chefalo Topic: .Net On A .Diet - The Web Matrix Project How long did it take to install VS.Net on your development PC? How much disk space did it take? How much did it cost? Wasn't .Net technology released to standards groups for use by third parties for free? This talk was an interactive introduction to the Web Matrix IDE, an alternative way to build ASP.Net solutions, well within the budget of any developer -- it's FREE for downloading to a licensed Windows 2000 or XP PC! It consumes less than 3Mbytes of disk space ... and takes about twenty minutes to install. In addition to the IDE, there's more to be had: a developmental Web server and a database engine. Of course, the amenities are a little Spartan compared to the play-for-pay tools, but they beat Notepad and xBase. Pat took us through the user interfaces and contrasted the Web Matrix-MSDE with the VS.Net IDE ? SQL Server Enterprise Manager. Download the PowerPoint presentation and supporting materials 2002 November 20th, 2002 Speaker: Thomas Stone Topic: Converting an ASP Classic site to ASP.NET, Part II Due to the wealth of topics that can be discussed in ASP.NET, Tom Stone was asked to speak again and pick up where he left off in October. During that presentation he described the approach he took in upgrading a dynamic, database-driven website formerly coded in ASP Classic to the new ASP.NET platform. During this second presentation Tom provided additional code example handouts for much of the earlier material and quickly discussed some of these details. He then covered new material, including Post-Back forms with Validation controls, Sending an Email in ASP.NET, Banner Ad Rotation options, and his file deployment approach. He closed by pinpointing the parts of the .NET SDK that he has found the most helpful, and also noted the Quickstart Tutorials and the IBuySpy application as helpful for learning ASP.NET programming. There was a wealth of ASP.NET discussion throughout the presentation. Download the combined Oct/Nov presentation PowerPoints October 23rd, 2002 Speaker: Thomas Stone Topic: Converting an ASP Classic site to ASP.NET Tom Stone discussed his experiences in converting a dynamic, database-driven website from ASP Classic to ASP.NET. The site, EpistemeLinks.com, has a database with approx. 10,000 records, and has a couple of dozen data-display pages, including several calendars. It has been online since early 1997, was converted to an ASP/VBScript site starting in 1998, and has recently been converted to a site that uses ASP.NET and C#. Tom discussed his general approach, what .NET goodies he used (User Controls, Code-Behind, Components, DataGrid control, Repeater Control, Calendar Control, Web.Config settings, etc.), and what problems he encountered while doing the coding. Lively discussion took place throughout the presentation. Download the combined Oct/Nov presentation PowerPoints September 25th, 2002 Speaker: Chuck Baldo Topic: C# Whois & C# IPlookup Presentation Chuck Baldo will did a demonstration using C# that highlights the System.Net.Sockets namespace (class). One of the functions and classes presented was TcpClient(), which allows a programnmer to connect to a host via a specific port. He used a stream reader to retrieve data via a byte[] array. He also used the new and valuable StringBuilder() class. All of this was embedded in an ASP.NET web page. April 24, 2002 Speaker: Beth Laffey Topic: Access Reports Tips and Tricks Beth Laffey provided us a host of her tips on how to use Access reporting features in a more robust way. The first group of topics were Data Source related tips, such as changing a record source flexibly, using a form to create flexible filters and creating reports based on cross tab date information. Next were sorting and grouping tips, including the use of flexible sections and sort order based on the choices made in a form, using odd and even pages, using different info for first, middle and last pages in a report, changing the starting page number, and using Roman numerals for the page number. There were also some general formatting tips, including putting a border around the page, concatenating information, using conditions to show information, and using sums and counts. And finally, Beth showed a completely flexible report where using a form you could choose the fields, order, sorting groups and totals. Access Database from Presentation March 27, 2002 Speaker: Tom Stone Topic: XSLT and Some Practical Uses Tom Stone gave a presentation on XSLT, which can be used to ransform one XML document into another, or into HTML, plain text, or most any other format. Knowing that most in the audience were not poised at present to use XSLT at work yet, Tom set the following as a challenge for himself for the talk: to get everyone excited about learning XSLT for use at home, that is, for personal projects. He began with an overview of what XSLT is, how it is used in conjunction with XML, and then discussed some of the most essential elements of the language (using simple datafile demos as he went along). He met his challenge during the second half of the presentation. He first demonstrated how you can use XSLT to transform data in a RealJukebox playlist?which is stored as XML when exported?into an HTML page that is arranged to print correctly as a CD label. In this way, you can easily create CD labels (with graphics!) when burning your favorite tunes. His second example was a solution to the problems of IE Favorites/Bookmarks being specific (local) to each computer you use (varied sets, never in sync, etc.). By using a simple database and ASP, you can naturally store your favorite links online and then access them from any computer. XSLT comes in for Tom as he actually sends an XML data island with the URLs to the browser, which is then transformed into HTML for display. The links can then be sorted by category or by the date last accessed by reapplying the XSLT stylesheet, bypassing the need for a run-trip to the server. Standards-based, client-side data manipulation is here! PowerPoints from presentation February 27, 2002 Speaker: Barb Brenner Topic: An Introduction to XML Barb Brenner provided an extremely valuable introduction to XML (eXtensible Markup Language), a technology that is becoming more and more pervasive in the industry everyday. She began with an overview of the numerous XML-related technologies that exist, including the various versions of the MSXML Parser, providing a solid context for the rest of her presentation. She then proceeded to define what XML is, what an XML Document, and what the relationship between XML and HTML is. Next came the concepts of Well-Formedness and Validity, which included a discussion and quick introduction to both DTDs and XSD Schemas. Validation was demonstrated using a simple VB application and the MSXML parser. The talk concluded with a discussion of the issue of elements vs. attributes as data containers, and also what kinds of XML tools are available on the market. Throughout the presentation, Barb kept the audience involved by having interactive activities and discussions. Those who attended certainly walked away with a better knowledge of XML. Powerpoint Presentation January 23, 2002 Speaker: Sandy Kinnear Topic: .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) Sandy Kinnear spoke on the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR). She explained that the CLR is the .NET Framework runtime environment?the software components that work together to provide managed execution of code. She focused on the unique structure and functionality of the CLR, and described how using managed code enables simple, fast development, improved application performance, cross-language inheritance, multiple-language integration, increased scalability, safe and easy application development, and more. Helpful PowerPoint slides were used to explain key concepts. An interesting discussion and exchange of ideas took place both during and after her presentation. Past Meetings Archive Index: 2007 Meetings 2002 Meetings 2001 Meetings 2000 Meetings 1999 Meetings 1998 Meetings 1997 Meetings 1996 Meetings ©1996 - 2012 Visual Developers of Upstate New York Group Leader And Webmaster: This site was entirely re-designed in early May 2002 by Tom Stone. Updated August 2006 by Bob Nims.