Johnny Halife’s Blog

Fellows, I’m more than pleased to announce that our first open source project has been published on Google Code: http://code.google.com/p/sdctasks/. This project is a set of comprehensive MSBuild tasks that we built along with the maturity of our build process.

These are that tasks the conforms our internal build process. The SDC tasks are a collection of MSBuild tasks that we designed to make our development team life easy. You can use these tasks in your own MSBuild projects, use them standalone or use them as further reference to write your own tasks.

There are 8 tasks included in this library and the number continuously grow , in the v1 there are tasks for: Add copyright headers to your files, run MSTests, generate code coverage reports from your MSTests , run Source Analysis, update your assemblies information, remove duplicated files from a file collection, generate SFX packages, and enable web application code coverage for MSTests.

The deliverable is released on Source Code form, we’re looking forward to provide an installer soon!

thanks,
~johnny

Folks, I know I promised to start posting about other things after my last post of Tech Ed but something showed up on my inbox yesterday’s morning and I didn’t want to miss the chance of sharing this with you.

After the whole keynote revolution, we had time to take one-and-only-one picture with the big boss. The guy that was announcing his retirement that day, William Henry Gates III a.k.a Bill Gates.

This was one of those childhood dreams that become true at some point of my life and I’m still amazed of thinking that he was there and even better I was there.

No more comments, ladies and gentlemen… the picture

thanks,
~johnny

Today Lito came from Tech Ed 08′ that was held on Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. The stuff shown there was amazing and I had the chance to attend many chat talks and conversations about technology that is something that I personally love.

I haven’t been posting since Wednesday because things went busy on Tech Ed, here is a brief summary of what happened since then till I got home.

Thursday, preparing the demo. I got up early in the morning and head out to OCCC to help Liam and Moe to setup the demo for their breakout session. They showed the Microsoft Sync Toy vNext that we help to build at Southworks. Then after relaxing a little bit and meet some folks around I had a Ask the experts session with Moe where we discussed things like Sync with Services and Devices (including non-windows based). The talk was great and after that we went to have a nap since Thursday night was the Attendee Party at Universal Studios.

Sync Toy in action live from Liam’s and Moe’s  (MSFT Sync Framework) presentation.

Friday, the day to say good bye. We went to OCCC in the morning, where people were saying good bye to Tech Ed. I caught up with everybody I saw at Tech Ed to say good bye. After that everything was about shopping, taking Tim and Anthony to the airport and prepare our stuff.

Last picture at the boot. Lito, Tim and me.

Saturday, it never ends until it ends. We were ready to leave to the airport but since we where in Orlando, FL. where the dreams come true,  Lito and I went to have a quick trip around the Disney Hollywood Studios theme park and then yes we went to the airport to come back home.

That’s how a shopping session ends, more if Lito is on his spree

Summary

Tech Ed 08′ - North America was a great experience from my personal perspective and I guess with Southworks as a whole we had chance to put out some demos we help to built (syncToy, SQL Data Platform Keynote, and so on). As you can see Lito, Tim and I were the visible faces of a whole team working towards a single objective become better every time and be ready to take the opportunities as they show up.

I’d like to thank too much people, the list is endless but here are the one that I can recall of:

• Ale Jack and Matias, for trusting me and let me be part of this experience and Southworks.
• Eze B and Seba D, whose extremely hard efforts made the Sync Toy an amazing and attractive piece of software to be displayed, I sure we wouldn’t make it for Tech Ed without you help and involvement. You really hit a homer
• Juan Pablo Garcia and Ezequiel Morito (Engineering Excellence), for demonstrating that excellence is easy, and that you can keep it up no matter what. I’m really prod of the work done while I was out and for the most because beside my team you’re my friends :).
• Maxi Déboli, Edgard, Paulo and Leandro, for keeping the quality, for doing the great Keynote demo and staying up late, working hard in behalf of everybody who make Southworks.
• Tim, the one that makes all these things to happens.
• BillG Keynote Demo Team, the list of names would be endless, so to simplify everybody who makes SQL because of the trust and the great moments we had together down in Florida.

And one big special thanks to my travel mate, my friend Lito.

Lito and me at Downtown Disney.

That’s it, I’ll be posting more and more from now on about what are we doing as Southworks Engineering Excellence and my technology affairs.

thanks,
~johnny

Fellows, we’re here live from Tech Ed North America - 2008, things have been busy and seems that they will still this way. Let’s do a quick pass over what happened during these two days.

Tuesday.We left our Holiday Inn Room at 5:00 am., since we helped on development of Data Platform Demo (SQL) for BillG’s last keynote we had to be there early. After a bunch of sanity checks of the application we were ready to go.

Demo back-stage Crew. Lito, Zack and me ensuring that everything is in place for the keynote.

Personally, I missed the keynote since Lito and I were behind the scene with Zack controlling the demo and doing all the checks that needed to be done. The demo actually went great, even Bill’s feedback was the demo was he was thankful for doing a demo the highest quality.

 
BillG Keynote SQL Demo Team. Right after the keynote ended.Top: Anthony Carrabino, Dave Campbell (SQL - Tech Fellow), Moe Khosravy and Tim. Bottom: me , Lito and  Zack Owens.

Once the demo was completed and the keynote closed we went to hang around Tech Ed, I had chance to take a couple of pictures with the products mascots.

Johnny & the Microsoft Mascots.

After lunch, I took my booth duties [Did I mentioned that I'm at the Sync Framework booth on the Green DAT area?] I had time to answer some questions and setup the demos on the booth. Finally after the booth duties we went to have a nap and then hang out around Orlando.

During booth duties. It’s me giving a presentation about Microsoft Sync Framework over the SQL Server & Sync Framework booth.

After keynote dinner. Moe, Lito and me after the keynote dinner.

If you missed the keynote, you can see it online from http://www.microsoft.com/techedonline/. BTW, Zack has a great post explaining the architectural side from the Trey Research Demo we did for the keynote.

Wednesday. Today was all about the booth during the work hours, I was around Tech Ed a little bit too, but mostly all my time was at booth duties demonstrating the Microsoft Sync Framework - Sync Toy, that was actually fun. After duties I went to BOF (Birds of the Feather) sessions were I attend to DLR and Dynamic Languages and later an interesting discussion about Code Quality and Standards. It was really fun, and some interesting conversations show up during the BOF Talks (Also there were some beers to make a relaxed discussion).

Booth duties day 2. Lito and me during showing the Sync Toy.

Tomorrow (Thursday). Tomorrow I’ll be around Tech Ed, during the morning and at 5:00 pm. I’ll be helping Moe Khosravy on the Ask The Expert session for Microsoft Sync Framework. I hope, you can make it, come and clarify all your doubts. Also Liam will be holding a session at 1:00 pm introducing Microsoft Sync Framework.

My profile. This is what shows up on the DAT Area introducing the Microsoft SQL Server speakers. I was really shocked when I first saw it.

That’s all the news live from Tech Ed North America - 2008 , Orlando, Florida.

thanks,
~johnny

Hi Fellows, Lito and I in conjunction with the Moe, Zack and Anthony have been working hard towards tomorrow Tech Ed kick off. Now it’s all set, but during the journey we have met some fellows around Tech Ed and below you will find the pictures

 
From Left to Right : Lito, Tim, S. Somasegar (Sr. VP DevDiv), and me.

From Left to Right: me, Dave Campbell (Technical Fellow - SQL) and Lito.

So we will be waiting for you tomorrow 8:30 am. at the Hall A1 where the last Bill Gates keynote will be held.

thanks,
~johnny

UPDATED June 05, 2008: I’ve just updated the pictures links since they were broken.