I've posted the updated slides and samples for my DevConnection sessions. As usual the content here has changed a bit from what's on the conference CD as I tend to work and update samples right on up until the last day usually. If you attended the conference these updates should also be available from the conference update site in a few days once the staff post them.

Note that the LINQ to SQL and some of the User Interface sessions are based on .NET 3.5 and Beta 2. Some changes will be required to these examples for RTM and I will post them to the same links once RTM of .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 is available. Specifically the changes revolve around changes to LINQ to SQL which has a few method name changes and some changed behavior for disconnected data.

Dealing with Long Running Requests

This session showed various ways that you can deal with long running requests, starting off with UI fakes of disabling and hiding content and displaying typical 'processing' content, then demonstrating several  of the asynchronous features of ASP.NET that allow simultaneous requests to run side by side and to offload of the main ASP.NET thread without losing the HttpContext for the request. Finally there were several examples of a distributed messaging implementation that allow offloading of long running tasks and for two-way communication between the calling process and the long running operation via a shared messaging component. There's also a high level control that uses the messaging component and provides both client (using AJAX) and server side implementations using a simplified event driven mechanism where the control handles spinning up the worker thread and automatically displaying progress information.

www.west-wind.com/files/conferences/LongRunning.zip

Building a LINQ-Based Business Layer for ASP.NET Applications

This session's sample provides a small business framework wrapper for LINQ to SQL (discussed here) as well as a sample application that uses the business framework for all of its business logic and LINQ to SQL for all data access. The sample is a small time tracking application that allows punching in and out, viewing of entries, and a basic time report, as well as security and a few other related features. Note that this demo is for Beta 2 of .NET 3.5. There will be changes for RTM, and I will be updating this demo for RTM once .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 is released.

http://www.west-wind.com/files/conferences/conn_LinqToSqlBusiness.zip

User Interface Options for Web Development

This session was fairly high level and discussed various user interface technologies, starting with Web and Ajax, Silverlight, Flex, Visual Web GUI as well as XBAP and WPF (which I didn't get to - gulp). The samples shown followed a common theme of a time tracking applications shown in Web, Flex and VWG for the form centric portion of the talk. There are also a couple of Silverlight examples that demonstrate the strength and complexities of building more than a Helloworld sample. I want to thank Dan Wahlin who kindly let me use his Amazon Album Viewer Silverlight 1.0 as a showcase of functionality and what's involved in creating a Silverlight application.

Note these samples require some set up in that all of the Time Trakker related projects use the same set of business objects provided by TimeTrakkerBusiness application. The business object project uses LINQ to SQL for the middle tier so these samples require .NET 3.5 (based on Beta 2). Please check out the the _readme.txt for more info. The Silverlight examples are self contained and don't require any special configuration.

www.west-wind.com/files/conferences/conn_HtmlAlternatives.zip