HttpCode

I stumbled across a pretty cool feature of SQL Server Management Studio the other almost by accident. It turns out there is an option to send the operation you are doing to script. For example my screen shot shows the create new login dialog. Now there is no excuse for developers not to check in database change scripts (I'm referring to all those point and click database developers).

Well pigs must be flying, a couple of weeks ago I bought a black MacBook. My friend who is a mac user pretty much pressured me into it, the MacBook was some stock that was being replaced by the new MacBooks, so it represented a good savings.

So for the last week or so I've been playing with OS X.

Well its all official I've got my Tech-Ed 2007 ticket, I can't wait!

I last attended in 2005 and had a ball. This time I know a few more people who are also attending so it going to be so much better.

I'm looking forward to hopefully attending some sessions on silverlight and WPF.

After having a good read of the Family.Show reference application I've been blown away with the power of data binding. I think that with all the hype over how easy it is to now create fancy UI's, WPF may be overlooked for general business development, when in fact its perfect for your average business process application.  Of course that's not to say that these applications couldn't use an interaction specialist to help improve the users productivity, until business catch on that WPF has a slightly different development model (one with more focus on usability) it might be hard to justify the extra cost initially.

I've also just read Paul Stovell's data binding example based on winforms technology, it's not be as widely written about, but it seems that some pretty powerful data binding features exist in winforms today, it's just a matter of getting into the mind set. Its pretty cool how WPF databinding is introducing some new concepts to old technology.

I've spent some time looking at the Vertigo WPF reference application Family.Show. It's a really cool application, while I was playing around with it Rebecca saw it and immediately wanted it installed on her computer, she's been busy entering data into it. I hope an open source community forms around it.

The most interesting thing I found was a presentation by Scott Stanfield at Mix 07, he describes some of the lessons learnt from building this application. From the sounds of it the problem domain caused the bulk of the problems. It's certainly a testament to the design of the WPF that guys who have never used it before can produce something so stunning and the code is very nicely laid out.

Its about time I installed some new blogging software.

My previous blogging efforts are in the archive.