Don Xml's Grok This

Disclaimer: I do not work for Microsoft, but I am a Microsoft MVP.  The following is all derived from public information, and any inferences or extrapolations are entirely the work of my imagination, and is not something that I know that Microsoft is working on.  If I knew Microsoft was working on things like this, it would be covered ...

I announced this about a week ago on the NJ Code Camp site, but I’ll put it up here to help get the word out. The next New Jersey Code Camp will be held on Saturday, June 3rd at the Microsoft office in Iselin, NJ (the same place as the first one). We are currently looking for presenters, so please send your abstracts (download the form ...

Michael Otey has an article in the Feb. 2006 SQL Server Magazine called LINQ to the Future along with an online editorial LINQ—The Missing Piece of Database Development where he continually uses the term LINQ, instead of the correct term DLINQ, which will just make things more confusing for the SQL Developer.  Let’s set ...

Here’s an update on my .Net Community Contest.  I’ve decided what I’m doing with my three MSDN Universal subscriptions, and I’m going to give them away to people in the NJ .Net Community that have stepped up to the cause and tried to help grow our little community.  I’ve talked to some other folks that were ...

Microsoft recently sent out the notices for the January 2006 MVP awards (I think it is done quarterly), and if you read .Net oriented blogs,  you probably already saw that some people got their status renewed, some are first timers, and others didn’t get renewed (I’ll refrain from linking to everyone).  I was one of the ...

The great folks on the Visual Studio team just sent me a couple one-year subscriptions to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite with MSDN Premium Subscription and ask me to “give them away to individuals of my choosing in the community”.  I’m sure I’m not the only one that got these subscriptions to give ...

Back in May, 2004 I wrote the blog post, Why Shouldn’t Authors Self-Publish? and like most decent posts, it garnered some attention, and then slowly faded into oblivion, only to be found by people searching about self-publishing.  Over the holiday weekend someone added it to the social bookmarking site Reddit ...

It has been a long time coming, but NJ will finally see the return of a SQL Server User Group.  I’ve been trying to get this group going for about a year now, and the biggest hang-ups has been trying to get a location, and finding volunteers to help run the group.  Well, we solved both issues with the help of the great folks at ...

I’ll be at the NYC Launch Event Nov. 22nd, and was asked to hang in the Ask The Experts area for the Developer Track (although I’m sure I’ll find my way into the Data Track, too).  Unfortunately, if you haven’t already registered, you are too late, the event is full.

Chris Sells wonders about data binding and web services, and askes if someone should create a WS-CRUD standard.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see someone attempt such a foolish thing, but I would prefer that they call it WS-Dataset instead.  This way any real web service developer would know to avoid it, just like avoiding exposing ...