The SharePoint Connections Conference has been renamed to SharePoint Pro Summit 2010 and will be held this spring in Las Vegas at the Bellagio hotel for those of you who can stand a third trip to Vegas in under a year. This promises to be a big SharePoint community event. The list of speakers is truly impressive. I have three sessions at the event:

 

Best Practices for Accessing SharePoint 2010 List Data
Level: 300
In this session, attendees will learn the best ways to access and manipulate list data in SharePoint 2010. This session will begin with a discussion of server-side access using LINQ including the use of SPMetal for entity generation, writing LINQ queries against lists, and joining lists. Next, the session will present client-side access using ADO.NET Data Services through the ListData.svc service. Coverage will include using a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client and a Silverlight 3.0 client. Attendees will exit the session with a strong understanding of how to utilize list data in their applications.

 

Using Business Connectivity Services to Access External Systems with SharePoint 2010
Level: 300
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) can be thought of as the next evolution of the Business Data Catalog (BDC) that provides a read-write capability to external data. In this session, we will cover the fundamental concepts and tools necessary to use BCS in SharePoint solutions. The session will begin by presenting the concept of an external content type (ECT) and showing how to create them in the SharePoint Designer. The ECTs will then be used to create external lists that act as a front end for a data source. Finally, attendees will learn to create a .NET Assembly Connector, which allows the creation of custom solutions for accessing external data within the BCS framework. Attendees will exit the session with a strong understanding of the BCS architecture, tools, and development practices.

 

Creating Search-Based Solutions with SharePoint 2010
Level: 300
Search-based solutions are applications that use a search page as the primary interface. Solutions such as image searching or travel searching in Bing are good examples of search-based solutions. SharePoint 2010 offers developers new ways to extend search and create search-based solutions. In this session, attendees will learn to create search-based solutions by using custom relevance models, extending SharePoint 2010 search parts, and utilizing .NET Assembly Connectors to access external systems. The techniques presented will prepare attendees to create search-based solutions on their own.