Thursday, February 2, 2012, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

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Before you use a new feature with SQL Server, you naturally would wonder about its performance implications. Will it improve or degrade performance, and by how much? You can search on the web for answers, or you can come to this session where we’ll discuss a variety of test results that may help you handle such features as hyperthreading, hardware NUMA, disk fragmentation, log file fragmentation, parallelism, SQL audit/trace, snapshot isolation levels, SQLCLR Try/Catch blocks, and many more.

Linchi Shea has been working with SQL Server since version 4.21a. He works in the financial services in the NYC area. Among other things, he is interested in analyzing and improving SQL Server performance. You can find him blogging at sqlblog.com. Linchi has been a Microsoft MVP since 2002.

Thursday, February 2, 2012, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Please join Peter Laudati and us on February 2nd for the INETA 10 Year Birthday Celebration! INETA has been instrumental to not only our user groups, but to the entire Microsoft user group community!

Have you heard of Windows Azure? Maybe you have, but the concept is all fuzzy. Can I really use this cloud stuff? In December 2011, a whole slew of new Windows Azure features and improvements shipped. We’ll take you on a whirlwind tour of the platform and detail some of the new features and announcements from December. We’ll look at hosting cloud applications with Windows Azure Compute, and cover some data patterns for hosting data in the cloud with Windows Azure Storage and SQL Azure. Thinking of trying Azure out for a test drive? It’s easier than ever now and we’ll show you how.

Peter Laudati, the “JrzyShr Dev Guy,” is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in the New York/New Jersey area. One of his roles is supporting and educating developers working Microsoft technologies. Peter supports the developer community in the NY Metro area by speaking at user group events, Code Camps, and various tech conferences. Peter is also the co-host of the “Connected Show” (www.connectedshow.com), a podcast focused on the cloud and connecting Microsoft technology with non-Microsoft technology. His blog can be found at http://www.peterlaudati.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @Jrzyshr.

Thursday, January 12, 2012, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Get ready for a brand new development environment! With the upcoming release of SQL Server 2012, the new SQL Server Data Tools will serve as your primary development environment for building applications on top of SQL Server. While SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) continues to serve as the primary tool for database administrators, SSDT plugs in to Visual Studio as a new database project type designed specifically for the application developer.

With SSDT, developers can finally enjoy building database applications without constantly switching between Visual Studio and SSMS. In this session, Lenni will demonstrate how SSDT can be used to develop for (and deploy to) on-premise and SQL Azure databases. In addition to replicating most of the functionality found in SSMS in connected scenarios, you will learn how to use features such as code navigation, IntelliSense, and refactoring with your database model—indispensable tools previously available only for application development in Visual Studio. We’ll also cover the new declarative model that allows you to design databases offline and under source control right from within solution in Visual Studio. Don’t miss out on this demo-centric information-packed session on the next generation of database tools for application developers!

Leonard Lobel, SQL server MVP, is chief technology officer (CTO) and co-founder of Sleek Technologies, Inc., a New York-based development shop with an early adopter philosophy toward new technologies. He is also a principal consultant at Tallan, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Programming since 1979, Lenni specializes in Microsoft-based solutions, with experience that spans a variety of business domains, including publishing, financial, wholesale/retail, health care, and e-commerce. Lenni has served as chief architect and lead developer for various organizations, ranging from small shops to high-profile clients. He is also a consultant, trainer, and frequent speaker at local usergroup meetings, VSLive, SQL PASS, and other industry conferences. Lenni is also lead author of the MS Press book “Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2008,” currently being updated for SQL Server 2012.

Thursday, January 5, 2012, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

For the past 4 years my nose had been buried in spreadsheets, budgets, PowerPoint presentations, and meetings. Shortly after starting at Microsoft my manager challenged everybody in my role to come up with a better way to manage a shared spreadsheet. How could we get multi-user updating on-the-go? Here is how I got an app up and running using Windows Phone 7 and Azure. This is not a polished presentation by a MVP full of coding best practices. It is how I stumbled my way through a project using two platforms I have never touched before. It is essentially a coding by dummies for those who are interested in getting started or entertainment for the rest.

Leo Junquera is a Technology Strategist for Microsoft. Formerly he was CIO of PartnerRe Capital Markets Group, a $20 billion dollar asset manager in Greenwich. Leo is a co-founder of the Fairfield/Westchester .NET and SQL Server User Groups. He has a background in development with a heavy emphasis on SQL.

Thursday, December 8, 2011, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Presentation Material

Have you ever gotten whiplash as you twist your head in fifty directions, trying to research all the new features in a product? In this session, I’ll go through all the new features in SQL Server Denali. I won’t focus excessively on any one feature – instead, I’ll go through as many new features in SQL Server Denali as time permits.  Everything from new database management features like the new Column Store index, new T-SQL Language Features, new SSIS features, as well as new features in PowerPivot 2.0 and the new Business Intelligence Semantic Model.  I’ll also give a brief presentation on the new visualization features in Project Crescent.

Kevin S. Goff (http://www.kevinsgoff.net) is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP, SQL Server/Business Intelligence Practice Manager for SetFocus LLC, author of 2 books, regular columnist for CoDe Magazine on .NET, SQL Server, and Business Intelligence topics, and a frequent  speaker at community events in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Thursday, December 1, 2011, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Presentation Material

Threading is one of those topics that is both a little complicated and very misunderstood. It seems it is a topic of extremes. Developers either don’t use it all or overuse it completely. Adding multi-threading capability to your application is not for the faint of heart, but it’s also not always useful. This session introduces you to threads in .NET and how to properly use them; more importantly when to properly use them. There are plenty of code samples here showing you various threading techniques, and hopefully demystifying what is otherwise a pretty advanced topic.

Miguel Castro is an architect with IDesign with over 26 years of experience in the software industry. He’s a Microsoft MVP, member of the INETA Speakers Bureau, and ASP Insider. With a Microsoft background that goes all the way back to VB 1.0 (and QuickBasic in fact), Miguel speaks regularly at numerous user groups, code camps, and conferences in the US and abroad. He has also been featured on several technology talk shows on numerous occasions. He specializes in architecture and development consulting and training using Microsoft technologies. Miguel is also a regular author with CoDe Magazine and a proud father of a very computer-savvy 7-year-old girl.

Thursday, November 10, 2011, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Presentation Material

Zoho is a suite of online applications. The company offers apps for just about every conceivable productivity task, from word processing to meeting hosting to calendar tracking, presentations, and accounting.

One of the applications is Zoho Creator. With Creator you can build online databases. Nothing is stored on your local computer. All of the programming tools, source code and data are stored in the cloud. This reduces development costs and improves communication with the users.

Herb Wexler has been writing software for nearly 40 years. He started Micro Edge, Inc. in 1987. The company specialized in software to manage medical offices.  Clients who purchased the product over 20 years ago are still effectively managing their practices. Mr. Wexler sold the company to WebMD in 2000. Mr. Wexler currently provides consulting services for medical software and builds online databases with Zoho for customers around the world. More information about Herb can be found on his website, www.PreventingMediocrity.com.

Thursday, November 3, 2011, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Presentation Material

With so many dominant players in the mobile space, each with its own stack, the thought of developing for all of them is daunting but unavoidable. Strange as it may seem, .NET developers are actually in the best position of all to do just that. While .NET is native on Windows Phone 7, products like MonoTouch and Mono for Android allow developers to leverage the .NET framework on iOS and Android as well. This allows the core of an application to be shared across all platforms, while still providing a native user experience for each. In this session I’ll introduce each platform, and describe how developers can take this approach to building mobile applications, including examples of how to maximize code reuse across them.

Greg Shackles is a Senior Software Engineer at OLO Online Ordering, based in New York City. He is an active member of the .NET community as well, and speaks regularly at user groups and regional events. In addition to technology, he is also an avid fan of heavy metal, baseball, and craft beer, sometimes all at once. His blog focuses mostly on .NET topics.

Thursday, October 13, 2011, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

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The next version of SQL Server, code-named “Denali,” steps up Microsoft’s BI game significantly. To start with, PowerPivot’s technology is now part of Analysis Services, in the form of BI Semantic Model (BISM) databases, and there are improvements to PowerPivot itself that everyone should know about. Next is project “Crescent,” which provides ad hoc, interactive data visualization and analysis. And even the non-BI world gets BI functionality in Denali, now that the VertiPaq columnar engine has been implemented for SQL Server relational databases. In this session noted MS BI Expert/influencer Andrew Brust will review all of these new capabilities with you in a demo-heavy manner. He’ll also discuss updates to Master Data Services and the introduction of Data Quality Services, Microsoft’s new data cleansing tool. Come to this session and get caught up on what’s next in Microsoft BI.

Andrew J. Brust is Founder and CEO of Blue Badge Insights, an analysis, strategy and advisory firm serving Microsoft customers and partners. Brust is also a member of Microsoft’s BI Partner Advisory Council; co-author of “Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2008″ (Microsoft Press, 2008); a Microsoft Regional Director and MVP; an advisor to the New York Technology Council; and a frequent speaker at industry events. Brust pens the “Redmond Review” column and writes the “Redmond Diary” blog for Visual Studio Magazine and Redmond Developer News. He’s been a participant in the Microsoft ecosystem for nearly 20 years, and has worked closely with both Microsoft’s Redmond-based corporate team and its field organization for more than a decade. Brust is also a member of several Microsoft “insiders” groups that supply him with insight around numerous technologies out of Redmond.

Thursday, October 6, 2011, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

Presentation Material

jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML, and it’s easily the most popular JavaScript library in use today. If you’ve been burned by JavaScript, or the conflicting document object models (DOM) between browsers, jQuery frees us from having to worry about (99% of) these differences, allowing us to see JavaScript in a new light.

In Mark Freedman’s opinion, the reason there’s been so much hate on JavaScript over the years is not really due to JavaScript issues, but mainly because of DOM differences, causing us to use JavaScript to hand-code for those differences. Those days are over. jQuery really does make coding JavaScript fun. It frees us to learn about the more interesting aspects of the language, without the DOM differences getting in our way.

In this session, Mark will give an introduction to jQuery. We won’t get too deep, because it takes several sessions to get into all the features of jQuery. But we’ll get a sense of what it can do for us, and what resources are available to help us get to the next level. With more focus on responsive websites, understanding modern client-side programming techniques is critical. And with tools such as ASP.NET MVC becoming more popular, it’s imperative that we take control over the client-side aspect of our projects.

Mark Freedman is a software professional with over 27 years of experience. In 2011, he returned to the consulting arena after being in management for several years. He’s been a founding partner of a successful software consulting firm, a technical community leader, and a 2010 INETA Champion.

Mark has been an architect, developer, mentor, and leader, and is a strong believer of continuous, life-long learning through every available resource. He is the author of the popular and continuing series about returning to development after becoming “stuck” in management. You can read those articles and more, on his blog at http://MarkFreedman.com.