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Editor's//Comment

Building Community

By David Riggs

We at asp.netPRO have always advocated building community; within our readership and within ASP.NET developers, in general. We feel it is an important aspect — if not the very foundation — of what we do and who we are: the premier information resource for the ASP.NET developer community. We teach by example. By showing valuable programming techniques in action — through real-world applications and code — we help professional software developers build, deploy, and run the next generation of dynamic, distributed Web applications.

To further extend our community development efforts, asp.netPRO is proud to announce that we are teaming with select members of INETA North America (http://www.ineta.org) to provide the very best solutions for the many challenges faced by today’s developers.

In this new column, “INETA Community Voices”, asp.netPRO will spotlight the work of a different member of the INETA developer community — work that will help foster growth in the ASP.NET community at large. Providing real-world tips, tricks, and techniques, this column will be from developers, for developers. By partnering with INETA and bringing INETA members’ expertise to the pages of asp.netPRO, we can extend and expand their reach into the ASP.NET development community.

INETA (International .NET Association) represents the very best in the .NET community. INETA provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft .NET user groups. INETA offers assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsoft’s .NET technologies. INETA welcomes all facets of the .NET user community, from developers and architects to project managers and IT professionals. INETA North America has more than 275 user groups, with approximately 300,000 members.

We’re excited to kick off this new “INETA Community Voices” column with an article by Rachel Appel. In addition to being active in INETA, Rachel is the senior technology consultant at Appel Consulting. She’s also an ASP.NET MVP, a member of ASPInsiders, and she holds MCT, MCAD, MCSD certifications. We are pleased to have her share with asp.netPRO readers her expertise of developing solutions that align business and technology using the Microsoft .NET family of products.

Rachel’s article, Dynamic Data Primer: Integrate ASP.NET Dynamic Data into Existing ASP.NET Projects, starts with an overview of ASP.NET Dynamic Data, covering its features and its benefits. She then describes how to enable Dynamic Data for an existing ASP.NET Web site by modifying the web.config and global.asax files. She then delves deeper into the Dynamic Data manager, various controls, creating field templates, incorporating third-party controls, custom validation, and more.

I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Daniel Egan, the president of INETA North America. Daniel approached me with this idea several months ago, and his excitement for sharing the wealth of knowledge represented by members of INETA was contagious. Daniel was also instrumental in getting this project off the ground within INETA. He, along with Chris Love, took charge of creating, organizing, coordinating, and shaping this new column (frankly, they made my job a lot easier— all I had to do was create some space in the magazine). We are looking forward to what they have in store for us next.

(Here’s a sneak peek at what’s in store for the next “INETA Community Voices” column: “Developing a Map-centric Web Application in Silverlight” by Al Pascual. A second-year Microsoft ASP.NET MVP, Al is a senior software engineer at ESRI, where he works in the Professional Services division. A great feature in Silverlight 2.0 is how it communicates with JavaScript and ASP.NET — specifically, how it allows the user to replace a few controls on an application without rewriting the whole solution. In his article, Al explores the fundamental steps for developing map viewers for the enterprise. With plenty of code samples, he looks at a client-centric user interface architecture programmed against an ASP.NET back-end, focusing on Microsoft technologies using ASP.NET, with the 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5 .NET Frameworks, Silverlight, and JavaScript.)

Also new to asp.netPRO in this issue is Brian Mains, the author of the cover story, Data Application Tricks: Performance, Reliability, and Accuracy. Brian is a consultant with Computer Aid Inc., and a recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award the last two years.

In his article, Brian explains how data-driven applications are becoming more and more common, and the need for data at a user’s fingertips is more imperative. These types of systems have different requirements, relying more on performance, reliability, and data accuracy than look and feel (and sometimes functionality). But although each application has different levels of criticality, the goal is the same: provide data at a user’s fingertips. To that end, Brian provides tips and tricks covering a variety of topics.

Cole Shiflett, a solutions architect, rounds out our cast of new writers in this issue with his article, VSTA Point: Programming against the InfoPath 2007 Managed Code Object Model in VSTA. Cole focuses on the VSTA (Visual Studio Tools for Applications) programming environment within InfoPath, as well as how to use a few .NET XPath objects to manipulate data entered into InfoPath forms.

We present this new content for your benefit, in the hopes it helps your professional growth. Just like all our other content. All the tips, techniques, and teachings right at your fingertips. Like the incisive opinions of Jonathan Goodyear (Tradeshow Exhibiting for Dummies), the down-to-brass-tacks content from Dino Esposito (Inject Services in ASP.NET Pages), Steve C. Orr (XML Transformations), Michele Leroux Bustamante (Securing Workflow Services), Auri Rahimzadeh (Manage Client Expectations), and Alvin Bruney (Assess Your Access), as well as the invaluable contributions of many others — all presented to help you in your everyday development endeavors.

That’s a lot of content for one issue of asp.netPRO (you probably noticed a bit more oomph in this issue). Because of the abundance of great content we receive, we are pleased to present 16 extra pages of content in this issue. We hope you enjoy the additional material, and we look forward to providing more of the same great content you’ve come to expect from asp.netPRO. It’s all part of our effort to help build, promote, and maintain a thriving, vibrant ASP.NET community.

Thanks for reading.

David Riggs is editor-in-chief of asp.netPRO and its companion e-newsletter, asp.netNOW. Reach him at mailto:driggs@informant.com.