The event started with Phil Trelford talking about SI system units of measure and how they fit into F# programming – apparently from the next release this language will have static compile-time checking that you’re using metres, grams and units such as that correctly without requiring you to implement a special class only for that. Phil well earned the appluause from the crowd when he launched a lunar lander game developed entirely in F# based on units of measure, the first practical application in F# that I’ve seen.

Dylan Beattie again did a very interesting presentation, this time on web deployment with MSDeploy and Web Platform Installer, two new Microsoft’s tools for web deployment. He started by going through a list of problems that people typically experience when they want to try out an opensource .NET web tool: setting up the correct version of ASP.NET web platform, SQL server, dependencies, configuring web.config, machine settings and IIS. Dylan then showed the Web Plaform Installer Gallery, a very interesting solution that automates installation of popular applications – comparing it to the Apple iPhone AppStore. Web Plaform Installer Gallery has installation scripts for lots of popular web projects so you can just install them with a few clicks. Dylan then explained how MSDeploy and Web Platform Installer work together to provide this functinality and how teams can use them to automate in-house web site deployment and synchronising development, test and production servers deployments.

David Ross presented MPI.NET, a library that helps organise computing clusters for Fork/Join parallel calculations. MPI (Message Passing Interface) is a standard for message interchange and collaboration for distributed processing, and MPI.NET is a wrapper around the original C API that makes it easier to use and exposes a .NET interface. David talked about Fork/Join and Map reduce patterns and demonstrated how MPI.NET helps write those with very little code.

Alan Dean then talked about Openspace coding days, a community project that started in January as a spin-off of the Alt.NET UK conference intended to be more practical. Openspace coding days are organised without a pre-determined plan, where attendees vote for topics of interest and then participate in workshops on those topics. These workshops range from well established technologies and practices to collaborative learning of a completely new technology or tool.

Scott Cowan demonstrated Spark, a view engine that has the advantages of intellisense support, being able to generate HTML using a command line tool and being more readable than ASP.NET tags. Spark uses special HTML elements and attributes and should look much more familiar to people who know HTML than ASP.NET or NVelocity. One of the more interesting things in the demonstration for me was how loops and conditional logic can be attached to normal HTML elements, such as DIV, avoiding the introduction of custom tags.

I presented how Concordion.NET helps us implement acceptance tests in plain English. Concordion.NET is a port of Concordion acceptance testing framework, originally developed by David Peterson and converted to .NET by Jeffrey Cameron. It works on HTML files and uses special HTML attributes to mark inputs and expected outputs of acceptance tests, allowing us to write and manage tests in free-form HTML text. Concordion.NET integrates with Gallio and links HTML documents to domain code using MBUnit-like fixtures. You can download the slides from resources.

The event ended in what is almost becoming a tradition, Sebastien Lambla presenting his Openrasta web framework (and working on the code to present until 10 minutes before his talk). Openrasta started as a REST framework which Sebastien presented at the first exchange, then became a MVC framework (implemented probably during the second exchange) and yesterday Sebastien demonstrated using embedded pre-compilers for ASP.NET and a standalone service, along with a new view engine based on C# with full intellisense support, so I guess OpenRasta is becoming a web server now.

In retrospect, I really enjoyed catching up with lots of people and I look forward to the next exchange. Next time I should really remember to start drinking after my talk, not before, or arrange to go earlier in the schedule.

This mini-conference is free, but up-front registration is required. Last event attracted more than 200 people, so I suggest registering quickly if you plan to attend. Register on http://skillsmatter.com/event/open-source-dot-net/open-source-dot-net-exchange-iii

The line-up so far looks like this:

Ian Cooper: A First Look at Boo

Boo is a ‘wrist-friendly language’ for the CLR that reduces the ‘noise’ of other CLR languages. It’s also a favorite for writing Internal DSLs In this session Ian Cooper will talk about the Boo language from his recent ‘first look’ at the language. As well as covering the basics of why Boo is different Ian will look at the best way for you to get started learning Boo.

Dylan Beattie: Managing Websites with Web Platform Installer and msdeploy

In this talk, Dylan Beattie will show you how to kickstart your web projects using Microsoft’s new Web Platform Installer, and how you can deploy your websites and manage your servers using msdeploy.exe.

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer is a free tool that gives you everything you need to build and host web applications on Windows. It’ll configure your web server and database, install developer tools like Visual Studio and the .NET framework, and supports many popular Web application frameworks including ASP.NET MVC, PHP, Drupal, SubText, WordPress and DotNetNuke.

Scott Cowan: Spark View Engine

Spark is a view engine for the ASP.Net Mvc and MonoRail frameworks. It allows the html to dominate the view in a way your front end developer will love.

David Ross: Introduction to MPI.NET

MPI.NET is a .NET wrapper around the Message Passing Interface which is a used by the majority of super computers and compute clusters for supporting sharing data between compute nodes.

Gojko Adzic: Acceptance testing in English with Concordion .NET

Concordion is an acceptance testing tool that enables developers, testers and business analysts to build executable specifications in free-form HTML. In this talk, Gojko Adzic introduces Concordion.NET, the .NET port of Concordion, and demonstrates it with examples.

Sebastien Lambla: What OpenRasta does other frameworks can’t

Sebastien Lambla will showcase a few strange usages of OpenRasta.

Phil Trelford: F# Units of Measure

The F# programming language has full support for static checking and inference of units-of-measure. In the process Phil show its use with a sample of retro game Lunar Lander.

OpenSource .NET Exchange is a community meeting of .NET enthusiasts held twice a year as part of monthly Skills Matter OpenSource .NET evenings. The Exchange is aimed to be a larger event
where people from the community can network and exchange ideas. The official programme consists of 6 lightning talks (15-minutes each) focused on opensource .NET tools and progressive .NET practices, followed by lots of community time for mingling (and if we find sponsors
free beer and pizza). The previous event in January attracted more than 200 people. (see the event page and reviews
for more information on the previous event). For more information on
Skills Matter Opensource .NET evenings, see
http://skillsmatter.com/go/open-source-dot-net.

David Ross: NBehave

NBehave is a .NET tool for Behaviour-driven development (BDD), an evolution of test-driven development (TDD) and acceptance-test driven design. It shifts the vocabulary from being test-based to behaviour-based, and positions itself as a design philosophy.

Michael Delaney: Iron Ruby

IronRuby is a .NET implementation of the Ruby programming language, which heavily leverages Microsoft’s Dynamic Language Runtime and allows programmers to write Ruby scripts for .NET.

The event will take place in central London, starting at 18:30. As always, the participation is free and open to anyone, but you have to register upfront for capacity planning.
See the event page to register and for more information.

–
gojko adzic

http://gojko.net

1. As before, on a Thursday starting at 6:30 PM and ending around 10 PM
2. During the working week, but starting earlier (eg Thursday at 12 ending around 4-5PM)
3. Weekend, afternoon (starting at 12 and ending around 4-5)

Please take a moment to add a reply on
http://ukdotnet.ning.com/forum/topics/please-readreply-next-open
and give us your preference so that we can make the next event more enjoyable for you.