Recently in Events and Conferences Category

I spent considerable time at the recent MVP Summit here in Redmond (Feb 16-19th) trying to get some answers to a number of nagging questions and issues that I and my customers keep asking. Windows Live Meeting (WLM) was high on the agenda. Ironically, several of the Microsoft employees with whom I spoke were fighting many of the same WLM issues but they could get no help at all because they didn’t have support accounts and could not get past the script-readers.

The company that hosts my monthly webinars (9-18 hours a month) hires a third-party company that hosts and records the Windows Live Meeting sessions. They and I have been unable to adequately address any of the following issues: (Updated Feb 22)

I spent considerable time at the recent MVP Summit here in Redmond (Feb 16-19th) trying to get some answers to a number of nagging questions and issues that I and my customers keep asking. Windows Live Meeting (WLM) was high on the agenda. Ironically, several of the Microsoft employees with whom I spoke were fighting many of the same WLM issues but they could get no help at all because they didn’t have support accounts and could not get past the script-readers.

The company that hosts my monthly webinars (9-18 hours a month) hires a third-party company that hosts and records the Windows Live Meeting sessions. They and I have been unable to adequately address any of the following issues:

After my last debacle with Windows Live Meeting where all four cores of my processor were pegged, my heat alarm was beeping and my patience was being quickly exhausted, I decided to give up on WLM—at least before Microsoft stepped in. When I got back in town from my penance trip to Leavenworth, Kansas and the biker wedding at the tattoo parlor in Ruidoso, NM (film at 11), I called up the WML support team (866-493.2825) (on a Saturday afternoon). To my delight a friendly voice answered and was able to offer a number of suggestions. Apparently WLM has free support 7/24. So, what were the suggestions?

• Disable Hardware Acceleration on the video card. This is easier said than done in Windows 7 as I’ll explain next. The support pro told me that this solves 90% of the performance problems. It did occur to me that if this is really the case (as it seems to be), why doesn’t WLM just make this change on its own as it starts?
• Use the Content tab to choose just those applications to share—not the entire desktop. Again, this makes it harder to run a smooth demo unless you open up the applications to share ahead of time and add them to the Content tab. However, this can lead to poorer performance as WLM might be overwhelmed by the increased workload. Since I have two monitors and many windows open that should not be shared (including gadgets) I can see how this would help. I would like to see an option where WLM shares applications on a specific monitor. While one can setup a sharing window, I could never get this to work correctly—perhaps if this was fixed…
• Don’t share your screen-cam  Window—it’s okay to get WML to show your video, just don’t include it as one of the shared windows.

Turning off video card hardware acceleration has always been a problem with screen scrapers and application sharing. I should have remembered this trick as we ran across it a decade ago while I was evaluating screen sharing programs at MSTE in the 90’s. My problem is with Windows 7—it seems the dialog to change these video card settings has been disabled for some reason. This means you can’t use the Advanced Settings | Troubleshooting | Change Settings  technique that we could use in XP and Vista to make this change.

Fortunately, I discovered that if you install the DirectX SDK, you can disable hardware acceleration in Windows 7 by clicking on the DirectDraw tab and un-checking the Use Hardware Acceleration checkbox as shown below. The DirectX SDK can be downloaded from here.

hth

Progressive Business and Beta V have partnered together to present another series of technical webinars. The current series focuses on SQL Server and Reporting Services and consists of six 90-minute talks given two a day for three days. The next scheduled offerings are September 9-11, October 13-15 and November 2-5th. See the following link for an outline and pricing details. Note that this series includes a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition) as well as a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services—once we get them from the publisher…

Visual Studio, SQL Server & Reporting Services: 6 High Impact Training Sessions
This is a set of 6 seminars given in two parts—one that focuses on SQL Server, the second on Reporting Services. This high-impact series of training webinars is for anyone who wants to leverage Visual Studio, SQL Server and Reporting Services best practices—learning what works, what doesn't and why. These sessions are for developers, architects and managers who want to know how and (more importantly) when to leverage the power and benefits of SQL Server and Reporting Services.

Progressive Business and Beta V have partnered together to present another series of developer-centric webinars. The current series focuses on SQL Server and Reporting Services and consists of six 90-minute talks given two a day for three days. The next scheduled offerings are September 9-11, October 13-15 and November 2-5th. See the following link for an outline and pricing details. Note that this series includes a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition) as well as a copy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services.

Visual Studio, SQL Server & Reporting Services: 6 High Impact Training Sessions
This is a set of 6 seminars given in two parts one that focuses on SQL Server, the second on Reporting Services. This high-impact series of training webinars is for anyone who wants to leverage Visual Studio, SQL Server and Reporting Services best practices- learning what works, what doesn't and why. These sessions are for developers, architects and managers who want to know how and (more importantly) when to leverage the power and benefits of SQL Server and Reporting Services.

The webinars I’ve already recorded (and those I’m going to present) can be found by visiting this site. Look under the “IT” heading to see links to the content. The recorded sessions might be repeated in the future but the recording are available:

CLR Executables: Stored Procedures, Functions, Aggregates, & User-Defined Types
(presented May 13, 2009)

• This session will discuss how to create CLR executables in Visual Basic.NET and C#. We'll see how to create CLR stored procedures, functions, aggregates as well as user-defined types. The session demonstrates CLR executable development through use of Visual Studio as well as SQL Server Management Studio.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio & SQL Server Reporting 

(presented April 7, 2009)

• This session discusses how Visual Studio developers can leverage the power of the Report Definition Language to manage and generate client-side reports or launch SQL Server Reporting Services reports. We'll discuss the latest MicrosoftReportViewer control as well as the Business Intelligence toolset exposed in Visual Studio 2008.

Managing and Writing High-Performance SQL Server Stored Procedures
(presented March 12, 2009)

• Stored procedures have been recognized by database administrators and developers as the most efficient mechanism to access and protect SQL Server databases. When written and executed correctly, these server-side blocks of code can significantly improve performance, security and developer efficiency.

This has just gone online. While the picture is a bit dated, the subject is not…

Here I talk about using RDL and the ReportViewer to build sophisticated applications with far less code.

http://www.dnrtv.com/

I’m currently prepping the content for a series of six 75-minute lectures on SQL Server and Reporting Services for Progressive Business Technology. Instead of having to leave the office, get on a plane and fly to a conference, these webinars give developers the opportunity to get quality content right from the office or from home. These lectures might be the key factor that makes you a better developer or candidate for that new job. Consider that a single paid attendee can include any number of co-workers on the same call, watching the same content over the Internet. You’ll also get a chance to ask questions in real time (as time permits). Unlike previous sessions, this workshop includes a copy of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services” and “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server (7th Edition)”