Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

Ready, Set, VS.NET

Chris Kinsman, Chris Sells, Bill Vaughn and I spoke at Ready, Set, VS.NET in Redmond yesterday.  Bill, ChrisS, and I are the "Microsoft Regional Directors" for the Pacific Northwest.  It was a long day for me indeed, waking up at 4 and taking a 6am flight to Seattle, getting on campus and talking at 9am.  Sigh.  I'm NOT even remotely a morning person.

NOTE: The Portland Show is only $60 and it's Dec 11th, so if you haven't registered, come check us out!

Anyway, I presented in the ASP.NET/Web Services track with one session called ".NET Framework: Shaken, not Stirred, with a twist of ASP.NET" and a reprise of my talk "Web Services: Behind the Music."

For the attendees I said I'd post the tools and widgets and code and such I used in these presentations, so here they are.  For those of your who've seen parts of this list before from other presentations, note that I've appended additional tools and goodness at the end of this one.

The Tools I used in the Presentations

• XSD.exe comes with the .NET SDK  ASP.NET XSD Online Demo
• WSDL.exe comes with the .NET SDK.  WSDL Explained
• YATT (Yet Another Trace Tool) from the fantastic Simon Fell 
• XML Spy 5.0 from Altova
• Mind Reef's SoapScope 1.0 (just released!)
• OmniOpera from Kamiak
• GotDotNet's Free WebServicesStudio
• Microsoft's Free SOAP Toolkit 3.0
• Apache AXIS (SOAP Implementation)
• IDL2SDL (and WSDL) from Infotects
• Google's SOAP API and WSDL (.NET code included!)
• Calling Google from PocketSOAP with a VBS Script from Simon Fell
• Simon's WSDL Tools
• XMethods Web Services Directory
• Blunck's ieHTTPHeaders for seeing HTTP Headers within an IE Explorer Bar
• Eclipse is a "Universal IDE" with a neat WSDL Editor available (screenshot)
• VMWare is pure love, letting me run betas of the .NET Server OS UNDER Windows XP Pro
• A version of Zoomin, the screen magnifier, is included with Visual Studio 6.0, but there is a freeware version from Brian Friesen.  Both are great, and I actually prefer the flexiblity of Brian's.
• The Remote Display tool for seeing a Pocket PC screen on your desktop over TCP/IP is a Microsoft PocketPC Power Toy.
• The .NET IL Disassembler is called ILDASM.EXE and if you have the .NET SDK, this is installed on your system already in the Framework's BIN directory.  It's your best friend.
• The AskDotNet Survey application is available from GotDotNet including source in C# or in VB.NET
• LSW DotNet - Reflection Browser is yummy, it's better than just ILDASM, it's an object browser and Disassembler that lets you see the disassembled source in C#!
• Ghost-It 1.04 rocks, it lets me make any window (like chat windows, or notepad) easy transparent via a tray icon.
• Lutz Roeder is my new best friend (noone's told him yet) because of Documentor, Reflector, and Resourer.
• For when every pixel counts, I use JRuler (JR Screen Ruler) to measure my Windows...
• QuickCode.NET makes demos cleaner and less error-prone...let them do the typing.
• Aaron Skonnard's .NET XML Tools aways help me out

Be sure to get Yasser Shahoud's book Real World XML Web Services

Also, take a look at DocumentLocator from Columbia Software (Free Demo Available).  It's a document management system for small or large offices, and it uses SQL Server 2000 as the back end.  It's got a snazzy namespace extension to Windows Explorer so your files look like any others.  There's also full Office integration, support for versioning, and they're working on a Web Services interface.  Very nice stuff with the potential to get even nicer.