February 2011 - Posts
Meet Me at MIX11
As you know (or you found out just now) I’m suppose to attend MIX11 conference. 
Since I’m going to arrive on Monday and I’m not attending the pre-conference Boot Camps, I’ll have some spare time. So I decided pronounce two opportunities:
- On Monday April 11, I’m going to give away four 15 minutes consulting sessions FOR FREE! about anything from ASP.NET, Entity Framework, OData to whatever you like. All you have to do is to contact me through my Blog’s Contact Form with your details and what do you want to talk about. I’ll contact the first four who will send a request and will give them the details when and where we will meet.
- You will also have the opportunity to meet me and my Sela colleagues (12 senior .Net consultants will attend the conference) at MIX11 for beer or just to talk. Just contact me through my Blog’s Contact Form if you are interested.
Hope to meet you there!
My SDP Lecturer Interview
Last week Sela conducted a live broadcast with trailers to the sessions that will be presented on stage
in the SDP conference. The broadcast was recorded if you want to see me “making a fool” of myself in the live broadcast you can watch the recording of my interview here (in Hebrew).
I’m reminding that I’m going to have two sessions:
Creating OData Services with WCF Data Services
Data is a first-class element of every application. The Open Data Protocol (OData) applies web technologies such as HTTP, AtomPub and JSON to enable a wide range of data sources to be exposed over HTTP in a simple, secure and interoperable way. This session will cover explain what is the Open Data Protocol and how to create OData feeds using WCF Data Services.
Not Just a Designer: Code First and Entity Framework
Entity Framework 4 brings many new opportunities for building complex data driven applications. Code First is a new EF capability that provides a code-centric experience for interacting with models and databases. The session will cover several new and future EF features such as Code First, and provide an overview for what to expect from EF in the future.
Also, I’m attending a tutorial day with Ido Flatow and Erez Harari about Entity Framework in Depth and a MVP Panel which is an ask the experts session.
Hope to see you at the conference!
Interview on MicrosoftFeed
Yesterday an interview with me was published on MicrosoftFeed Blog.
You can read it here.
Which Development Product will You Suggest Your Boss?
Today I was asked to help in a decision making 
of buying products for developers in a company that I’m consulting for. The manager gave me the information about his budget and asked for suggestions. I suggested two products which doesn’t exists in the arsenal of tools at that company – one for developers productivity and refactoring and the second for profiling the developers products.
If you got a budget for buying a product for developers, which product will you suggest to your boss to buy and why?
ODAC Entity Framework and LINQ Beta was Released
If you use Entity Framework in Oracle environments the following news are for you. Oracle published a Beta release of ODAC (Oracle Data Access Components) that supports Entity Framework.
From Oracle site:
”ODAC Entity Framework and LINQ Beta has arrived! It includes support for Entity Framework, LINQ to Entities, Model-First, Entity Data Model Wizard, and more.
The beta includes the 32-bit Oracle Database client 11.2, which can access Oracle Database server 9.2 and higher. It requires Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.”
If you want to download the Beta and check it out go to this link.
Enjoy!
MIX11 Winning Open Call Sessions Were Announced
The MIX11 Open Call phase is over and there are twelve winning sessions. 
My proposed sessions didn’t make it to the final twelve but this was a competition and the best sessions won. From the list of twelve sessions that won, I’ll defiantly attend Elijah Manor’s “Good JavaScript Habits for C# Developers” session and Maarten Balliauw’s “Fun with ASP.NET MVC 3 and MEF” session (they got my vote while I was voting). I want to thank whoever vote for my sessions and to tell you that if you’ll attend Sela SDP conference you have the chance to hear both of my proposed sessions live!
Even though I’m not included as a presenter in the conference I’m going to be there so you’ll have the opportunity to meet me there. I’ll keep you informed about things that I’m planning for this year MIX in a few weeks so stay tuned.
See you there!
.NET Reflector is Becoming a Paid-For Product
Red Gate announced a few days ago that .NET Reflector will become a commercial product from the end of February 2011. Here is what Neil Davidson, Red Gate’s Co-CEO, wrote as an open letter to the .NET community:
”Red Gate has announced that it will charge $35 for version 7 of .NET Reflector upon its release in early March. Version 7 will be sold as a perpetual license, with no time bomb or forced updates.
As many of you know, our original intention was to maintain .NET Reflector as a free tool. But, after two-and-a-half years of providing it without charge, we realized that we could not make the free model work. We know that this will cause pain for some people in the .NET community, and we apologize for the change in policy.
As a commercial company, we need to charge at least a nominal amount to keep .NET Reflector up-to-date and relevant. Without revenue coming in, we cannot dedicate a team of developers to ensure that Reflector remains a valuable part of .NET developers’ toolboxes.
As always, your feedback is important to Red Gate, so please contribute any thoughts on this subject to our .NET Reflector forum.
Sincerely,
Neil Davidson
Co-CEO, Red Gate Software”
Since Red Gate bought .NET Reflector I expected this change to come. But what I didn’t expected is that the product will have no free version at all. This is bad news for the people who use it on a daily basis (like I do). I know that $35 isn’t a lot of money but I want to refer you to Lutz Roeder’s announcement when he sold .NET Reflector to Red Gate – “Red Gate will continue to provide the free community version and is looking for your feedback and ideas for future versions.”
What do you think about this Red Gate announcement?