Microsoft Research has released their WorldWide Telescope program, avaliable in the link below;

http://worldwidetelescope.org

It's pretty unreal!

Mike

Hi Guys,

I'm pleased to announce that Queens will be holding a reMIX event on Campus on November 28th, I'm calling it QuMIX which is technically not an offical name but I'm using it anyway :)

In a run up to the event date I'll be hoping to post some information about the people talking, as well as some information about what they will be talking about. The first thing I'm going to do in this blog post is point to a session done in UCC which is just 1/3 of what will be happening in Queens!

The Multi-National, Multi-Talented, Multi-Lingual, Multi-Skilled All Star lineup for the QuMIX event is:

Vincent Vergonjeanne

Martha Rotter

Liam Cronin

Schedule and Info to come!

Thanks,

Mike

well day 3 was pretty productive if you ask me! I completed a great Hand's on tutorial for both c# 3.0 and Silverlight 1.1. I'm actually really looking forward to trying to build some 1.1 apps now! One of the talks I went to inparticular was excellent called Top Ten ASP.net Scaling Tips by Stephen Forte.

 Stephen is a big player in large scalable systems, having experience with NFL super bowl sunday sites and the NASDAQ - it's a pretty impressive resume. Below are some of the key parts:

 What is Scalability - A system is scale if we can add more workload to a system without increasing the cost of the system per unit of workload.

 Characteristics of a Scalable System

• It can ramp up to a large number of users quickly
• It can do so without increasing the cost per use (CPT)
• It can do so while keeping the cost per user as low as possible

Top 5 Key ways to increase performance via code

1. Eliminate view state - Reduce data sent to and from client
2. Eliminate session state - use as few session variables
3. Output caching - use caching
4. Fragmented Output caching - put anything that can't be cached normally into a user control, then cache that.
5. SQL Server Query notification - check SQL Performance

Images 

Every file on your server that you access is counted as a 'round trip', so if you have 20 images it does a request 20 times. So if you have a site thats got a 100ms overhead it'll be 20x100ms. By using a single image with

Session State

Try to store alot of none-secruity information in hidden fields on your web page. Try to remove session view state by using tools like strangeluke

•  R = (payload/bandwidth) + Round Trip Time+ (AppTurns(RTT)/Concurrent Requests) + Cs(Server Side Compute time) +Cc (Client Compute time)
• App Turns = Http Requests
• RTT Round Trip TimeTry PayLoad/Bandwidth first then Compute Time

Datasets

Try using stored procedure algrorithms that return items in ranked order. So first 100 items, then next 100 etc. Be sure to do this on the sql server

LINQ

Stay away from LINQ in large sites, stick to using stored procedures. use linq on quick sites.

Stored procedures

Really good performance, very secure. Ideal database should have all its I-O's threw stored procedures, and only those stored procedures are allowed to run select/update statements.

One day gone already, boy where does it go!

So we only really made it to the keynote and a hand's on tutorial before spending a good 2 hours looking for our hotel, then another hour getting back to the conference centre, but there was some good bits in the keynote.

Microsoft will release VisualStudio 2008 to MSDN (should probaly include MSDNAA) at the end of this month, a good 3 months before its RTR. If you are looking to run some Javascript projects, or update a few of your existing applications to .net 3.0 then its really worth picking this up as quickly as possible. The beta 2 release was very stable, so it can only get better.

They also demo'ed some new extensibility for VisualStudio, that will allow 3rd party companies to deploy modules to visualstudio, such as the already developed World of Warcraft mod editor. Which was surprisingly well intregrated and included things you would expect from visualstudio like full Intellisense and libarys.

They also talked a bit more popfly, and showed the new popfly explorer for visualstudio.

What would you think of free .net hosting for students? With MS SQL 2005, ISS 7.0, AJAX, Project Server & Sharepoint? At no cost?

 That is what I would like to offer and with the help of Microsoft, I think we can. The benefits would be outstanding to any student developer who wants to get a taste for .net and .net with other Microsoft Technolgies.

 If you would like to see this happen then please leave a comment with something supportive and I'll compile them into my submission with Microsoft.

Thanks,

Mike

Clare Dillon has announced the join microsoft europe page with some great videos from the team of what its like to work in Microsoft.

 You can find the video's here:

http://www.joinmicrosofteurope.com

 It's proof that Microsoft is taking Ireland seriousily as a development base!