Presenting at DevTeach/SQLTeach Toronto 2008
DevTech team has released the name of final speakers and their topics here and it seems that I also made the cut to speak at this event. DevTeach / SQLTeach Toronto 2008 will be the biggest developer, DBA and ITPro conference in Canada. It’s jam-packed with advanced sessions (level 300 and 400) all on the latest versions of Microsoft products and technologies. I am presenting two topics in the SharePoint track:
1) Accessing External Data Sources Through SharePoint:
Imagine that your SharePoint sites must contain structured data in a high volume and you need to perform complex queries and actions against it. Obviously, there are pros and cons of storing such information in SharePoint lists or in a custom SQL database. Realistically speaking, neither of these approaches alone nor Business Data Catalog (a.k.a BDC) is the answer to all of your data integration woes. You like the versioning, approval, bulk editing , rich UI and other good features that SharePoint lists offer but you are also concerned about the performance of your complex cross-list queries, CAML limitations (like ‘join’ , ‘Select distinct’) and optimized searching. You need to provide a common metadata repository and a hybrid framework for accessing external data sources through SharePoint utilizing all your options including BDC, Data View Web Part and custom code to keep both data structures in sync. In this session I will show you how you can surface information from your backend databases into your SharePoint sites, when to keep structured data in SharePoint lists and when not and eventually how in real world implementation you will end up combining all your options to come up with a robust solution with much better performance!
2) Forms based authentication in SharePoint with the SQL Server membership provide :
In ASP.NET 2.0 , there is an important concept called provider model which is used for many new feature such as Membership/Role Management, Profiles, etc. SharePoint is built on the top of ASP.NET 2.0 which means it can utilize everything that ASP.NET 2.0 offers including SQL Membership provider. In this session learn how to set this up, get yourself familiar with issues/workarounds, managing your custom profiles and finally how to leverage this solution for exposing your SharePoint sites to external users. This is an advanced session, targeting both IT Pros and Developers and attendees will receive fully commented source code with step-by-step walkthroughs for the exercises shown during demo.