Windows Azure, Healthcare, MVVM, WPF, ADO.NET Data Services

Windows Azure, Healthcare, MVVM, WPF, ADO.NET Data Services - some of the hottest topics today.  If you are interested in any or all of these technologies, then you'll be excited to hear about what we are doing to help you learn technologies in a real-world reference implementation.   About 6 months ago, I was in Redmond with Sara Faatz, our Director of Partners and Alliances, and we were talking to the Microsoft folks about some exciting opportunities around rich client user experiences.  The outcome of that meeting was a project to create a complete, end to end reference implementation (read:  totally awesome learning tool) that demonstrates a real world scenario using the technologies previously mentioned. 

So was born the Microsoft Healthcare CRM Application.  Here is what we are working:

• Complete end to end reference implementation of a WPF application built using the MVVM pattern, ADO.NET Data Services, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server Data Services, LiveID and Windows Azure Blob Storage.
• 3 hands on labs that demonstrate how to implement various aspects of the technologies being used
• 6 videos that explain various pieces of the application, from the conceptual phases to the implementation phases
• Lots of blogs on various topics that will help you understand this whole process

 

Our goal is to help you understand these technolgies so you can use them yourselves.  I have always like the idea of reference applications, since they have alot of code that I can learn from that actually works in a complete scenario.  Hands on Labs are great because they can take a big idea and make it a consumable learning experience.  There is nothing like getting a lab done and actually having something work! 

So we'll be releasing all of this goodness over the next 6 weeks.  We have a CodePlex site where most of the artifacts will reside (http://healthcare.codeplex.com), and we'll be blogging and showing videos on the Infragistics Community Site.

To give you an idea of what the application will look like, we are doing a TilePanel User Interface, which gives the user the ability to maximize, minimize and re-position panels on the screen.

I'll be posting a video later today with the interactions, so check back later or keep an eye on http://healthcare.codeplex.com.

Check out the video here:

http://community.infragistics.com/ux/media/p/94705.aspx