Covered: available heap space on x86 systems, thread memory consumption, CLR-managed threads: ThreadPool pros and cons, Async I/O (see FileStream.BeginRead for sample code) pros and cons, timers, RegisterWaitForSingleObject, thread abuse (I wonder… ‘expanding down the WCF’ anyone?)

Did you know that .NET thread inside of lock() block is automatically promoted to ‘Above average’ priority by CLR?

Tips: When you create a thread, give the name to it. Makes life easier.

Tool: WinDbg and Son of Strike

Worth working with? Sure. As a matter of fact, I am going to invite him to ESRI (if my mgr approves) to give full versions of his presentations.

ALSO, VERY NEXT SESSION:

Chris Mullins [see above for info] presented:
.NET Garbage Collection [see above for descriptions]

Covered: generational garbage collection, Server CLR, Workstation CLR, Concurrent and NonConcurrent CLR modes.

Also covered: weak root references (useful for caching)

Useful info: Richter’s Garbage Collection column in MSDN

Also covered: abuse of GC.Collect() and memory fragmentation problem. CLR performance counters related to GC. Profiling memory leaks. Abuse of Finalizers.

Tool: Scitech Memory Profiler (the best)
Tool: Red-Gate Memory Profiler (expensive)
Tool: VSTS Memory Profiler (expensive, lousy, sometimes is good)
Tool: CLR Profiler from MS (free, you get what you pay for)
Tool: WinDbg, Son of Strike (use only as last resort)

Did you know that registering event handler actually creates a reference? Statics of that class and event handler itself are not deleted unless you do this in Dispose(). NOTE: Check for details

NOTE: COM and Win32 calls pin memory and create memory fragmentation.

Book: Jeff Richter “CLR via C#” and his other book. Also, check blogs of MS-ers on GC topics.

Well, it’s really ‘slick’ but kinda… proprietary-ish. For instance, all your mashups are stored|saved on popfly.ms. You can export them as sidebar widgets for Vista, however.

Unfortunately, I skipped session about Google Mashup Editor, so I really can’t compare right now.

Author’s blog: http://artificialignorance.net

Worth working with? Ok.

Tool: NUnit

Advices to presenter: (1) calm down (2) stop moving the mouse erratically all over the screen (3) go less ‘beginner’ already.

Worth working with? Who knows…

I said to staff that they should introduce ‘discussion panel’ presentation type and move all these panels to the end of the day, to leave some time for the discussion itself. :)

(if you already know what the web service is, you can skip this post. I am giving this info for the sake of completeness)

API Types (broadly): Data, Service, Communications, Storage
API Formats (broadly): Name/Value pairs, POX (plain ol’ XML), REST, RSS\ATOM, SOAP\XML Schema, AJAX\JSON, Flex, Silverlight – and others.
API Catalogs (some): StrikeIron, XMethods, Programmable Web, API Finder, Remote Method, IBM SOA, eSigma
(I also add ESRI’s Geography Network)

Sample mashup link: http://housingmaps.com

Tool: Notepad2

Links: Dave is all over the Web :)

Любит поговорить.

Worth working with? Sure!

Covered: Nullable and its use, Debug.Print (yes I know it exists, it’s just hard to get used to!), static member String.Format() (oh yeah I somehow missed this as well), ‘using’ with IDisposable objects, ‘active windows’ triangle button, some Reflection (binding to Enum etc), some anonymous delegates, using writeXML method of DataTable (cool for fast prototyping!), VS template files and SNIPPETS – using, creating, modifying :)
Also: Class Designer and its uses, Server Explorer window(Database-neutral – COOL! – I can even run and debug my stored procs there!)

Rumors:  Lambda expressions are coming in Orcas. Also, unit testing is moved to ‘Pro’ version, which is great – we don’t have to buy special license for ‘VS for Testers’ anymore.

Disappointments: C# has a lot less snippets than VB.NET. This sucks. Better check for more snippets online.

Tool: latest VisualStudio

Links: check ‘Deborah Kurata’ on the Web, lots of useful info.

Worth working with? Sure!

Actual quote: “They made things really complicated, you know… because of security…”

keywords: WSS, WS-Policy, WS security policy, signed endorsed encrypted supporting tokens

Tool: MS Indigo Security Policy Configuration Editor

Conclusion: Beginning… ok, intermediate workshop, masked as ‘advanced’. Anyway, I got introduced to the standards, which is always useful.

Worth working with? Only if I paid for doing this. My accent meets his accent and… BOOM! :)

When asked about possible performance problems, avoided answering it until I dropped the subject :)

keywords: WCF, service contracts, versioning, singleton across the galaxy, fault isolation per class level, build-in concurrency management, MQML, performance throttling through app.config
books: “Programming WCF Services” by Juval Lowy. O’Reilly 2007

links: http://www.idesign.net

Tool: .NET, WCF

Conclusion: Clever marketing, disguised as a programming workshop

Worth speaking to this person again? Definitely yes!