Please forward to application developers, Webmasters, etc... Based on your replies to my recent query, there is interest in an overview of .NET, and many of you preferred a date before classes start. We've arranged to have the presentation on July 26 from 2:00 p.m until 4:00 in 147 Communication Arts Building. The presenter is Richard Hale Shaw, a nationally known author who heads a group that gives training in application development technologies. I've known Richard for a number of years in his role as a founder of the Ann Arbor Computer Society. He also has been a contributing editor to PC Magazine and other publications. As I indicated before, this talk will be a technical and illustrative overview of .NET, not a sales pitch. Comm Arts has a convenient parking ramp. Room 147 is air conditioned. Please contact me if you have questions (by e-mail or at 353-4955.) Following is an overview of the talk and more biographical information. /rich ________________________________________________________________________ Microsoft .NET -- An Overview Presentation by Richard Hale Shaw A 4-page ad in the New York Times touts Microsoft .NET's ability to place only "1 degree of separation" between your business processes and data, and those of your vendors and customers. The same ad says that ".NET is Microsoft's platform for XML Web Services." The implication? Previous Microsoft technologies have failed to provide the level of integration (or none at all) offered by .NET, and XML Web Services have everything to do with .NET's uniqueness in this respect. Forget the hype. Microsoft's .NET is a replacement and repackaging of every major technology that Microsoft has shipped since the appearance of the Windows API in the mid-1980's. It provides a component techology to replace the Component Object Model (COM), desktop UI objects to replace traditional Windows programming, a Web UI layer to replace Active Server Pages (ASP), database components to replace OLE-DB and ADO, as well as a complete encapsulation of Web Services and SOAP (v.1.0 and 1.1). .NET lets developers create new applications and components that can be platform-independent (albeit .NET-dependent), and written in any number of development languages (C++, VB, Java, COBOL and a new language based on C++ and Java: C#), such that components written in different development languages can connect and communicate with each other directly. The .NET Framework provides a rich set of core classes (over 3000) for day-to-day programming support, that make .NET development simpler, easier -- even sexier -- than was possible with previous Microsoft technologies. In this 2-hr session, Richard Hale Shaw will blow past the .NET hype to focus on what .NET really is, using a combination of pithy descriptions and live demonstrations (not to mention live coding examples). Come to hear what .NET is really about, and what the future of Windows development will be for the next several years. ______________________________________________________________ Richard Hale Shaw is the CEO and founder of the Richard Hale Shaw Group, an internationally-respected training and consulting firm located in Ann Arbor, MI. The Group addresses .NET, XML, UML and other burgeoning issues for software developers, and produces the 5-day BootCamp of intense hands-on developer training. You can learn more about him at: www.RichardHaleShawGroup.com. __________________________________________________________________