I'm very excited about the Data Access track at DevConnections this fall. Generally, people don't know what to do with data access sessions. Do they go into Visual Studio Connections? ASP Connections? SQL Server Connections? They belong everywhere! Whenever I'm submitting ADO.NEt talks for a conference I struggle with deciding which track to choose, because it belongs in most of them. So we built a single track with nothing but Data Access talks and it's a rock start line-up! You'll find the talks listed under the ASP Connections Sessions and the Visual Studio Connections Sessions (look for Microsoft Day Visual Studio section for the MS talks, and Data Access Track for the 3rd part speaker talks). Thanks to all of the conference chairs, conference staff, speakers and folks on the Data Programmability Team at Microsoft who have helped bring this about.

Microsoft Day:

• ADO.NET Entity Framework Designers
• Data Modeling and Application Development with the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ over Entities
• Project Astoria: Data Services for the Web
• Optimizing Online, Enabling Offline with SQL Server Compact and Sync Services for ADO.NET

Wed & Thursday

John Papa, author of the MSDN Magazine Data Points column

• Unraveling the Entity Framework
• Implementing the Entity Framework

Dino Esposito, All 'round .NET wizard

• Typed DataSets, Linq-to-SQL, Linq-to-Entities: Data Design Patterns Do Matter

Don Kiely: Data & Security Guru

• ADO.NET Performance Tips & Tricks

Kathleen Dollard: The Queen of CodeGen

• ADO.NET Metadata and Code Generation

Bill Vaughn, The Legendary Bill Vaughn

• ADO.NET Connecting

Dave Sussman, Author of many ADO.NET & ASP.NET Books

• Black Belt Data Binding (in ASP.NET)

Alex Homer, Partner in crime to the many ADO.NET & ASP.NET Books with Dave Sussman

• Five Favorite Features in ADO.NET and SQL Client

Julie Lerman (moi)

• Real World Entity Framework (looking at 3-tier patterns)
• ADO.NET 3.5 Data Access Guidance (post conference 1/2 day workshop: 9-12am, add'l fee)