A general blog about specific things

Monday, 10 October 2011

DDD North Wrapup

On the 8th of October 2011 the Developer Developer Developer (DDD) brand of conferences came to Sunderland in the form of DDD North. The University of Sunderland was invaded by attendees and speakers all ready for a solidly packed day of talks and discussions around all aspects of software development and management. The topics for the day included Behavior Driven Design, Android Development, Continuous Delivery in software and NodeJS.

The DDD brand is a growing brand of software conferences that strives to bring a top class conference event for a low low price (actually the cost of admission to the attendees is free!). Speakers are asked to submit their sessions online and then the community votes for what sessions they would like to see. This is a great concept as this means that it is down to the community to decide what sessions they would like to have at their conference.

The man behind DDD North is Andrew Westgarth one of only two IIS MVPs in Europe. Andrew did a fantastic job of organizing the event and had a great team of support and helpers to ensure a very smooth running event. Thanks to all involved for making from a speakers side of things, a conference that was very easy to speak at.

My session on Defensive Programming 101 was picked up for this event (thanks to those of you that voted for it) and I had the pre-lunch slot.

This can be a difficult one because its usually when the attendees are hungry and wanting to get out early. So I shortened my session by five minutes so that they could be first in line for their lunch and also I bribed them with sweets to ensure that they stayed awake. It was a fairly full session with good audience participation so thanks to all who came to it. Original picture credit for the photo on the right to Ian Battersby and for the photo on the left to Martin Cunningham.

The lunch was surprisingly good. A good quality sandwich, a choice of drink, some fruit and a chocolate bar. I am always glad when event organizers put fruit in the lunch menus because its too easy to put just junk and nothing healthy in the packs. It aint just the mind that you are feeding on a day like this so kudos for that.

During lunch there were some Grok Talks, which to the uninitiated are short talks about a subject. They tend to be about 10 minutes long and don’t, contrary to popular opinion have to be on something technical. If you are trying to get into public speaking these types of talk are a great intro on that.

One of the things I love about conferences is the interaction, networking and discussions between sessions. During the lunch break I got to talk to a lot of people including Peter Shaw of LIDNUG and later there was a spirited discussion between some speakers and delegates about the way certain products were going.

After lunch, I caught Paul Stack’s talk on CI/CD. It was a highly enlightening talk delivered by a great speaker. Paul answered questions, opened it up to the floor and gave some very inspiring advice on how to enter into the world of Continuous Delivery and why it will save you time, money and heartache. He made some very compelling arguments on why you should be doing this.

The post DDD North dinner was generously sponsored by those nice folks at DevExpress. They very kindly treated a lot of hungry developers to a proper English dinner of roast beef and pork. The chefs at the Stadium of Light did this traditional fare justice and it was a great end to a solid day of learning and inspiration.

A word of thanks again to Andrew Westgarth for a fantastically organized and well run event. I hope that DDD North runs again. The general buzz from the community was that it was beyond expectations and will become a fixture on the northern developers event calendar. There are plenty of pictures from the event from Craig Murphy, Martin Cunningham and Ian Battersby.

To follow up on my session here are the links for the different security tools, websites etc.

IIS Security What If Tool - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229694
URLScan – http://www.iis.net/download/UrlScan
IIS Configuring security - http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/88/configuring-security/
MSCASI tool - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954476
IIS Lockdown - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd450372%28WS.10%29.aspx
AntiXSS Toolkit - http://wpl.codeplex.com/
IIS Security Tools - http://www.iis.net/community/Security
Advice from SDL - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sdl/archive/2008/05/15/giving-sql-injection-the-respect-it-deserves.aspx
http://www.security.nnov.ru/
http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/32493/1763/page/1
http://cwe.mitre.org/top25/#Brief
https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Main_Page
Barry Dorans blog - http://idunno.org/

UPDATE: 11-October - Code samples from my presentation can be downloaded from here

And my presentation on SlideShare

Defensive programming 101 1

View more presentations from Niall Merrigan.

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

70-515 Essentials – Exam Topics Hot List

This post comes from a comment on one my earlier posts that the 70-515 prep guide was a little too much for the average person who is revising for the exam. It was a very valid comment and the poster also suggested maybe doing a “hot” or “must read” list for this exam and I have to say it was a very good idea.

So here is that list. A quick note on how I compiled this list. I took what I know from previous exams and what are considered the hot topics in ASP.NET 4 and what also has changed from ASP.NET 3.5 to 4. This is not an insiders guide, it is just one guys attempt to predict what may or may not be on the exam. If you are already certified on .NET 3.5 this will give you an idea of what you need to look over.

If you are so inclined check out he the change lists at ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 Web Development Overview

Now the caveat: This guide is for use at your own discretion and the author accepts NO liability in relation to incorrect or missing information. Also note that using this guide to study does not imply you will pass the exam

Now with that out of the way, here goes nothing. With each topic and part that I have placed on this list, I give an explanation where possible as to why its there.

Developing Web Forms Pages (19%)

Configure Web Forms pages.
- ClientIDMode – Since this is new in .NET 4 you can be sure there will be at least one question on this
- ClientIDMode
Handle page life cycle events
- dynamically creating controls – I am putting this in because it’s a problem that a lot of developers encounter and is considered one of the basic things you should know
  - PlaceHolder
  - Dynamic Web Server Controls and View State
- overriding page events – This should be be just a refresher for the page lifecycle. Exams typically contain one or more questions based on where a piece of code should be placed in the lifecycle
  - PreInit
  - Init
  - InitComplete
  - PreLoad
  - Load
  - LoadComplete
  - PreRender
  - PreRenderComplete
  - SaveStateComplete
  - Render
  - Unload
Implement caching. – Caching is one of those things you should just revised and know what should go where
- How to: Set Expiration Values for ASP.NET Page Caching – Have seen this on previous versions of exams and tends to be a topic that repeats
Manage state – State management always comes up so know the reason for each of the different state management types
- ASP.NET State Management Recommendations

Developing and Using Web Forms Controls (18%)

Validate user input. – Validation is always big. Know the validators available and what should be used where.
- Client side
- Server side
Create page layout. – Not much here as most of the controls are standard.
Implement user controls – Know how to reference a control, create and expose events, properties
Implement server controls – Main thing if this is asked based on previous experience, its how to make it available in the toolbox.
Manipulate user interface controls from code-behind – Security is usually a hot topic (consider that Anti-XSS was added to the core libs in ASP.NET 4.5)
- HTML encoding to avoid cross-site scripting
- Control.RenderingCompatibility – New in V4
- RenderOuterTable – New in V4

Implementing Client-Side Scripting and AJAX (16%)

Add dynamic features to a page by using JavaScript
- How to: Add Client Script Events to ASP.NET Web Server Controls – General refresher if you aren’t too hot with JavaScript
- Script combining
- Page.clientscript.registerclientscriptblock
- Page.clientscript.registerclientscriptinclude
Alter a page dynamically by manipulating the DOM
- Adding, modifying, or removing page elements – Most likely to be asked. Tricky to put in what you should know. Be aware of available methods
Handle JavaScript events
Implement ASP.NET AJAX
- Creating a script service – Common scenario
  - WebMethodAttribute
  - ScriptServiceAttribute
- Multiple update panels – How to handle multiple update panels on the one page
- UpdatePanel.UpdateMode – What update mode is best for a given scenario
Implement AJAX by using jQuery.
- $.get – Most common action and probably will be asked

Configuring and Extending a Web Application (15%)

Configure authentication and authorization
- Roles – Tends to be a big topic going back to ASP.NET 2.0
- Location element – Securing through the web.config always comes up
  - How to: Configure Specific Directories Using Location Settings
- Protecting an area of a site or a page
Configure providers
- aspnet_regsql.exe – Know what it does and why its there
Create and configure HttpHandlers and HttpModules
- Asynchronous handlers – Know w
Configure initialization and error handling – Tends to come up quite often
- Capturing unhandled exceptions -
- Custom error section of web.config – Especially the different attributes such as mode and redirectMode
- Redirecting to an error page
Reference and configure ASMX and WCF services – Expect more of WCF than ASMX
- Adding service reference – Common task
- Changing endpoints – Common task
Configure projects and solutions, and reference assemblies
Debug a Web application
- JavaScript debugging – Since Ajax is more prevalent
  - How to: Attach to Script
Deploy a Web application – Usually a big topic
- ASP.NET Web Application Project Deployment Overview
- Web.config File Transformation – Big enhancement in .NET 4 expect a question
- How to: Transform Web.config When Deploying a Web Application Project

Displaying and Manipulating Data (19%)

Implement data-bound controls – Know the reason for each control
- DataList
- Repeater
- ListView
- FormsView
- DetailsView
- GridView
Implement DataSource controls – Know the available sources and their uses
Query and manipulate data by using LINQ
- LINQ Samples – Be able to read LINQ and know the different options such as filtering and grouping/joins etc
Create and consume a data service.
- WCF – Due to it being the communication channel of choice for MS
  - How to: Define a Windows Communication Foundation Service Contract
  - Exposing WCF Services to Client Script – Common scenario
Create and configure a Dynamic Data project – Be aware of how to use Dynamic Data and scaffolding
- ASP.NET Dynamic Data Overview
- Walkthrough: Creating a New Dynamic Data Web Site Using Scaffolding

Developing a Web Application by Using ASP.NET MVC 2 (13%) – Depending on your knowledge of MVC2 this will be a make or break.

Create custom routes – Routing is a core part of MVC so that will come up
- ASP.NET Routing
- Route constraints
Create controllers and actions.
- Controllers and Action Methods in ASP.NET MVC Applications – Core functionality will be tested – revise Actions
- Action Filtering in ASP.NET MVC Applications
Error Handling & Security– My own one but error handling always comes up
Structure an ASP.NET MVC application

Walkthrough: Organizing an ASP.NET MVC Application using Areas

Create and customize views.

RenderAction

I will probably update this list with some more information when I think a bit longer about but for the moment this is the hot list for the MCTS 70-515 Web Applications Development with Microsoft.NET Framework 4.

Thanks to the original comment poster for the idea.

Monday, 9 May 2011

Resources from DDD Scotland 2011

On Saturday 7th of May 2011, I presented Defensive Programming 101 at DDD Scotland 2011 in Glasgow. This was the second time I have presented at DDD Scotland and I was thankful to be invited back. Like last year, it was the same presentation.

I was lucky in my presentation that most of the audience was awake and didn’t mind me asking them questions. Or maybe they did and just didn’t complain! The session went smoothly enough and I would like to say sorry for the human failure in the middle when I mixed up my demo a bit.

Thanks again to the organizers, who did a fantastic job in making sure the day went smoothly.

Based on last years feedback I changed the slides, to remove most of the wordy slides which in turn, made my presentation into a collection of pictures. However at the end I had a lot of resource links and I am publishing them here for those who wanted a copy of them.

Resources Slide 1

IIS Security What If Tool - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/229694
URLScan – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/cc242650
IIS Configuring security - http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/88/configuring-security/
MSCASI tool - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954476
IIS Lockdown - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd450372%28WS.10%29.aspx
AntiXSS Toolkit - http://wpl.codeplex.com/
IIS Security Tools - http://www.iis.net/community/Security
Advice from SDL - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sdl/archive/2008/05/15/giving-sql-injection-the-respect-it-deserves.aspx

Resources Slide 2

The demo bits are available from here and here (they are done as separate posts)

Finally the copy of my presentation on SlideShare

Defensive programming 101

View more presentations from Niall Merrigan

Monday, 10 January 2011

MCTS ADO.NET 70-516 – Objectives List Part 1

Another new year, another set of posts to help you study for an exam. This series focuses on the objectives for the exam 70-516: MCTS Accessing data with Microsoft .NET Framework 4.

Disclaimer: This guide is for use at your own discretion and the author accepts NO liability in relation to incorrect or missing information. Also note that using this guide to study does not imply you will pass the exam.

Modeling Data (20%)