June’s meeting began with Mike Jackson opening the meeting to questions from the group. We are trying to do this each month so that we can address problems or questions our group members may be having in the world of .NET. One of our members asked whether anyone had used DirectX sound and video in .NET. Our June speaker, Javier Lozano, recommended check out Avalon and www.seewindowsvista.com for alternatives to DirectX.
Other than that, Greg Sohl and Jason Coyne are both looking for developers for their respective companies Fiserv and Rockwell Collins. Fiserv needs a Senior Object Oriented Developer and a Systems Architect. Rockwell Collins is seeking a Principal Programmer and a Senior Programmer.
As mentioned, Javier Lozano was our June speaker. He came to us from the Des Moines .NET user group to speak about .NET Enterprise Services. Javier first explained what .NET Enterprise Services are. They are COM+ services integrated into managed code. They also simplify COM writing. Finally, they incorporate best practices.
Javier also explained why it is recommended that we use .NET Enterprise Services. There are several good reasons just of few of them are that you can develop within time constraints without building all of the plumbing. Another reason is that ADO.NET transactions don’t solve the problems that Enterprise Services can. They also simplify your code, support queuing, support object pooling and interoperability. For more reasons, check out Javier’s presentation.
Next, Javier showed us how to use .NET Enterprise Services. He took us through several demos. He pointed out several key pieces that need to be in your code. It’s important to import the System.EnterpriseServices namespace. If you assign a ProgId the service can be called as an object. In the project’s assemblyInfo it is important to set comVisible to “true” or else your service will be unavailable.
Javier had several wonderful examples and many resources listed. Be sure to check out his power point presentation for a list of resources. Below are 2 links Javier mentioned that are not in his presentation.
.NET Enterprise Services Performance – It’s a little dated (2004)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dncomser/html/entsvcperf.asp
Performance of ASP.NET Web Services, Enterprise Services, and .NET Remoting
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwebsrv/html/asmxremotesperf.asp
Finally, to wrap up the meeting, we asked a new member to introduce himself to the group. We also gave away several prizes. It seems traditional that our random drawing always chooses the new member for the largest prize and this meeting was no different. Congratulations to everyone that has won and we hope to see you next month!
As a final note, we discussed who might be attending TechEd and the Heartland Developer's Conference this year. Check out HDC's website and learn about this great (and reasonably price) regional conference. www.heartlanddc.com
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