Presenter:  Adrian Peoples, Diamond Technologies

Topic:  Delivering a Hybrid MOSS 2007 Implementation using VS.NET 2005, ASP.NET, C#, Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007, Microsoft Excel 2003, Web Services, and WSS 3.0

Adrian started right off by showing us a live site that demonstrates the proof of concept project that Diamond Technologies created for a client.  The client wanted data entry through Excel 2003, stored it in SQL Server 2005, and accessing the data through MOSS 2007.  In this demo, Adrian showed some interesting techniques for using MOSS.  He showed how the MOSS application creates dynamic sharepoint sites using WSS 3.0.  He demonstrated how to create a .aspx page that will run inside a sharepoint site.

Code Camp Registration is OPEN!

In between sessions, Bill demonstrated how he sets up the meetings on the web site.  He even opened up Code Camp registration during the meeting!

Presenter:  Kevin Goff, Common Ground Solutions

Topic:  LINQ

LINQ is a really exciting new technology.  Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is a new addition to the .Net Framework.  It is built in to VS2008 which is still in Beta.  Kevin suggests running it in a virtual machine only!  He showed 4 of the key types of LINQ:  LINQ to SQL, LINQ to XML, LINQ to DataSets and LINQ to Objects.  LINQ to SQL allows a programmer to write .Net code in a strongly typed manner and access data in a SQL db.  He used sqlmetal (a cmd line tool) to create objects for him.  It is similar to a strongly typed dataset but it is a class.   The syntax is similar to SQL but still quite different.  LINQ to Objects is really cool.  It allows you to execute "sql like" queries on collections of objects.  Kevin also showed how you can take a LINQ result and load it into a DataSet using reflection.  Since Kevin was running a little late, there wasn't much time to show LINQ to DataSets and XML but he did a quick run through on the basics.

LINQ is pretty cool stuff.  We'll all be using it soon so it is a good idea to start reading up.

Hopefully I'll have Kevin's source code to post soon.

Check out his blog for all sorts of information.

here are some resources that Kevin recommends:

http://thedatafarm.com/blog

http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com 

http://codebetter.com

http://www.linqdev.com/publicportal

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu

Meeting Sponsor: Diamond Technologies... Thanks for the sandwiches and snacks!  

Additional Door Prizes courtesy of:   , Microsoft