The Morning Brew

Information

• Creating Windows Services - Sergio Pereira outlines a re-usable multi-task windows service.
• Custom Aggregations In LINQ - K. Scott Allen shows how you can implement your own custom aggregations and use them in LINQ
• Towards Bug-Free Code - Patrick Smacchia looks at 7 things that you can do to help reach a bug free state
• If you are using a loop, you’re doing it wrong - Chuck Jazdzewski shows LINQ alternatives for a number of places where most of us would be tempted to loop
• Dependency Injection With A Framework - Joel Ross does dependency injection using the castle Windsor framework
• LINQ Range Variable Oddness - Ian Griffiths compares range variables and iteration variables in a foreach loop
• Why Can’t I Access A Protected Member From A Derived Class, Part Two: Why Can I? - Eric Lippert tells of an interesting compiler bug in the C# 2 compiler
• CHAPTER 1: Problems and causes with the way we develop software - The first part of Dan Bunea’s Agile Mini Book series
• Locking Rule #71 - Paul Stovell takes a look at locking strategies.

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I had a very enjoyable evening at the Manchester ‘Heros Happen Here’ Community Launch event last night - my thanks to all those involved in setting up and running it.

Software

• Argotic Syndication Framework - Release - The 2008.0.0.0 release of this Syndication framework has been released - new features include support for Attention Profiling Markup Language (APML) 0.6, Web Log Markup Language 2.0 (BlogML) and Microsoft Feed Sync 1.0
• Zeta Resource Editor - This string resource editor gets an update - now including projects and a nice installer.
• jQuery for ASP.NET MVC preview 2 - Chris van de Steeg has released an updated release of his jQueryMvc project to support the latest preview release - also includes a switch to using the Unity IOC framework

Information

• Stop creating custom delegate types - Jimmy Bogard puts out a plea for developers to stop creating their own delegate types all the time and embrace the Action and Func delegates.
• PostSharp and iterator blocks - a beautiful combination - Jon Skeet takes a look at AOP using PostSharp
• Using jQuery to Consume ASP.NET JSON Web Services - An interesting article that shows how you can make jQuery satisfy the ASP.Net security requirements for calling JSON serialised web services
• ASP.NET MVC Action Filter - Caching and Compression - Kazi Manzur Rashid takes a look at compression and caching in ASP.NEt MVC applications, showing the effects of these settings on the data transferred between you app and the client.
• Expression Trees: Why LINQ to SQL is Better than NHibernate - Lee Richardson takes a look at Expression Trees in Linq - I’m not so sure about the comparison to NHibernate though
• Real Ultimate Power : Dependency Injection with Ninject - Ryan Lanciaux takes a brief look at one of the less well known dependency injection frameworks - Ninject.
• Discovering Windows PowerShell - Alex Mueller takes a first look at PowerShell with some examples
• WPF 3D : Part 1 of n - Sacha Barber starts a new WPF series, this time looking at 3D WPF
• IoC and Unity - Configuration Changes for the Better - Matthew Podwysocki continues his series by looking at the configuration changes in the latest Unity Drop release

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I spent yesterday afternoon being quite impressed by the internationalisation support in ASP.NET 2 - Hopefully I’ll get round to writing a bit about it at a later date.

Software

• Timeline .NET - Rob Chartier’s latest project is a.NET wrapper for the MIT Simile Timeline API - a nice way of including a graphical representation of time based data in your web apps.
• Announcing MultiFunctionMachineMachine - Jacob Lewallen announces the release of his helper libraries - containing support code for Windsor, a custom IOC implementation, AOP, Migrations in .NET it looks well worth a look.
• Community Server 2008, Beta 2 now available! - Telligent announce the availability of the latest beta of Community Server 2008
• Prism Drop 2 - Glenn Block announces the release of the latest drop of Prism the Patterns and Practices tool for Composite WPF Applications

Information

• SQLCAT.com - The "Level 500" SQL Server Resource - Greg Duncan highlights a new SQL Server resource from the SQL Customer Advisory Team containing advanced SQL Server content
• IoC and Unity - The Basics and Interception - Matthew Podwysocki continues his series on Inversion of Control and Unity
• Want to Write Great Business Software? Create a Great Domain Model! - Chris Falter looks into the reasons for creating a good domain model, and isolating your business logic there.
• A Detailed Data Binding Tutorial - A nice indepth look at WinForms databinding - I think this will be a reference I come back to regularly as I seem to use WinForms infrequently enough that I forget stuff in-between times
• Extending DataPager: Creating a google analytics data pager - Luis Ramirez shows how you can extend the built in Data pager to offer a richer user experience in this CodeProject article
• Kigg - Upgraded to MIX08 ASP.NET MVC Release - Kazi Manzur Rashid posts about the latest update to the ASP.NET MVC sample project Kigg - a Digg clone developed using ASP.NET MVC, LINQ to SQL and ASP.NET Ajax
• Wrapping up nHibernate - Peter van Ooijen shows his take on a wrapper around NHibernate
• And Equality for All … Anonymous Types - K. Scott Allen unearths some interesting functionality within Linq and anonymous types to do with returning distinct items

Community

• Sussex Geek Dinner - Mike Hadlow (featured in the Morning Brew a few times) will be speaking at the next Sussex Geek Dinner (Organised by another ‘Friend Of The Brew’ Simon Harriyott). The previous version of Mike’s talk was one of the highlights of DDD6 for me.

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Normal service has been resumed today - I hope everyone has recovered from yesterdays link overload.

Software

• VisualSVN Server 1.1 Released - VisualSVN Server is a commercial windows based SVN server - 30 day trial is available, and licenses are $49 per user, with free licenses for active members of open source projects
• NullObject.For - Paul Stovell has created a tool for unit testing which creates empty implementations of Interfaces to be used when unit testing in the situation where you don’t care about the interactions with that type - i.e Logging

Information

• yield is elegant - Chris Brandsma talks about a real world use of the yield keyword
• The Parable of the Bathroom - A nice set of analogies for different styles of lock - good reading if you are new to this kind of thing
• Developing a Robust Data Driven UI Using WPF - The DataModel - Eran Kampf looks into building a data model especially suited to use with WPF applications
• Handling, throwing - exceptions and Clean up on error - Thottam R. Sriram looks at the different ways of throwing exceptions and how you can clean up after them
• Linq and AutoIncrement on TinyInt - Derik Whittaker highlights a limitation he encountered using LINQ
• A MSN Messenger Library for Construction of Communication Based Applications. - Derek Bartram works through building a MSN Messenger client application in some depth. This looks really good, however be aware of the modified license - you can’t use this code commercially or in commercial not for profit apps without prior approval - shame really
• 10 Tips to Boost Your Productivity with C# and Visual Studio 2008 - John W Powell outlines 10 tips for productivity - although the title says 2008, most of this stuff applies equally in 2005

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Lots and lots of links from over the long weekend - so many in fact that I’ve had to introduce some extra headings to help organise them all.

Software

• Gallio - Automation Platform for .NET - Gallio Alpha 2 has been released, supporting a number of unit testing frameworks and tool integrations
• Windows Installer 4.5 Beta 2 Now Available! - The Windows Installer team announce the latest beta via Microsoft Connect
• Did you know Red Gate gives SQL Log Rescue for free? - A post highlighting the availability of this RedGate tool for free - the only limitation is that it only supports SQL 2000
• YUI 2.5.1 Released: Improved AIR support, JSON security patch, YUI Configurator, and bug fixes - The title says it all really - updated YUI
• dbverse - A Database Change Management framework which allows developers to maintain and update their database structure in C# Code.
• IIS Admin Pack Technical Preview 1 Released - A collection of extensions for the IIS Manager application, adding functionality like UI for Request Filtering, Configuration Editor, Managing Databases, and much more

Information

• Variations on a Func-y theme - Jimmy Bogard looks at anonymous methods and lambda expressions
• ASP.NET Basics: Foundation of ASP.NET - A quick reference card type overview of ASP.NET
• Performance Effect of Common Table Expressions in SQL Server 2005 - Keyvan Nayyeri shows that Common Table Expressions are not a silver bullet with respect to performance.
• Word 2007: Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification, version 1.9.1 - Microsoft release the latest version of the RFT specification which includes the RTF used in Word 2007
• Distant Shores - A Visual Studio Color Scheme - Another nice colour scheme for Visual Studio
• Adventures in F# - F# 101 Part 6 (Lazy Evaluation) - Matthew Podwysocki continues his series on F#, turning his mind to Lazy Evaluation
• .NET Event Techniques - Rob Eisenberg discovers a neat trick for avoiding problems with unsubscribed events - this is really neat - I’ll have to make use of this trick
• PTOM: The Open Closed Principle - A run through of how the Open Closed principle can be applied to a real(ish) world situation,
• Fun With Physics - The final part in Sacha Barber’s WPF series, with some physics code from Fredrik Bornander - this part pulls together the techniques from the other parts of the series in the production of a demo application.
• Silverlight apps not working/downloading on IIS 6.0? Try your mime types… - A quick tip about getting Silverlight (or any other new type of file) to work correctly over the web

ASP.NET MVC

• ASP.NET MVC Source - The source code release of the ASP.NET MVC Framework Preview 2 release
• ASP.NET MVC Source Code Now Available - ScottGu talks about building the MVC framework from source
• The Weekly Source Code 21 - ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 Source Code - Scott Hanselman digs into the ASP.NET MVC source
• A Few Notes About The MVC CodePlex Source Code Release - Phil Haack answers some questions about the ASP.NET MVC Source code release
• ASP.NET MVC - Part 1 - First part of a series which gives a quick tour of the features and ideas behind the ASP.NET MVC framework
• Simplified Asp.net MVC Controller Testing with Moq - Justin Etheredge pulls together a number of techniques for unit testing ASP.NET MVC controllers

.NET 3.5, Visual Studio 2008, WCF, LINQ, etc.

• Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit - Alex Mueller highlights the availability of a training kit for VS 2008 and .NET 3.5
• Visual Basic 2008 Hotfix to fix slow IDE performance/response time after building a Project with lots of XML Comments (either user or designer generated) - Greg Duncan highlights a hot fix to help VB developers using VS 2008
• How to Build a REST app in .NET (with WCF) - Sample code to create REST based services using .NET 3.5 and WCF
• Where is ASP.NET 3.5 on IIS ? - I’ve heard this question a few times recently, and this post gives a nice overview of why there is no 3.5 option in IIS
• LINQ to SQL and SqlConnection ( "when you’re wrong, you’re wrong" ) - Mike Taulty looks under the hood of LINQ to SQL to see how the the data context manages the underling SQLConnection

NHibernate

• New NHibernate users mailing list setup, join now! Operators are standing by. - Bil Simser announces an NHibernate Google Group - looks well worth a subscription for anyone working with NHibernate
• Table-per-concrete-class in NHibernate? - Kyle Baley calls out for some help with an NHibernate Dilemma - good discussions ensue in the comments.
• NHibernate Proxy Generator - Some resources for getting NHibernate to play nicely in partial trust environments.

Testing

• NetDug Unit Testing - Chris Brandsma summarises a discussion about unit testing held at a User Group Meeting - some interesting thoughts.
• TDD : Introduction to Rhino Mocks - Stephen Walther runs through the features of Rhino Mocks from the absolute basics of unit testing and mocking through to more advanced situations.
• Comparing Moq to Rhino Mocks - Phil Haack compares two mocking frameworks for state based testing

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I had a good day yesterday, attending the UK ‘Heroes Happen {Here}’ launch event - although I’m now rather tired after a very long day.

Today’s Morning Brew is the last for the week - Friday and Monday are public holidays in the UK, and I plan to skip posts on public holidays. The Morning Brew will return on Tuesday with what I expect will be a bumper edition covering the content from the long weekend.

Software

• DotNetOpenId 0.1.2 Released - David Christiansen highlights the availability of a new version of this .NET implementation of Open ID - now with partial trust support
• Stand alone FXCop download - Brad Abrams highlights the availability of FxCop 1.35 as a standalone application

Information

• What does Windows Vista SP1 Mean for Developers? - Tim Sneath gives an overview of what SP1 will mean to us. Since there is a lot shared with Windows 2008 I suspect the same will apply there too
• Happy Visual Studio Birthday - I hadn’t realised that yesterday was Visual Studio’s Birthday - and since I was at the UK launch event yesterday and no-one mentioned it I don’t think its particularly well known
• My Personal Lambda Crusade - Rob Conery shows his obsession with Lambda expressions
• Anonymous delegates rock - Nigel Morse gives a nice simple example of how anonymous delegates can help improve your code
• Looking at DSLs in .NET - Matthew Podwysocki takes a look at Domain Specific Languages
• Adventures in F# - F# 101 Part 5 (Pattern Matching) - Matthew Podwysocki continues his series on F# with a look at basic pattern matching support
• SQL Server 2008: Interesting Full-Text Dynamic Management Function - Greg Low unearths a useful database function for parsing strings.
• Number of Types in the .NET Framework (2) - Patrick Smacchia does a detailed analysis of the .NET framework in NDepend

Community

• Academic Alliance: Student Zone - Microsoft, in conjunction with WebFusion, are offering eligible UK students free Windows 2008 based web hosting

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A little light on content today as this post was prepared the night before - hopefully by the time you are reading this I will be half way to the UK ‘Heroes Happen {Here}’ Launch Event in Birmingham.

Software

• Windows Vista SP1 Released to Windows Update - Vista SP1 is now available on Windows Update, although my machine isn’t showing it in the list of updates yet - although this post does outline some cases where the update isn’t available.
• IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling Module Released - ScottGu unveils a bandwidth throttling library for IIS7

Information

• SQL Server 2008 and Unstructured Data - This post talks of the 2 new ways of storing binary data in the database - and also reminds us that IMAGE is likely to be removed in a future release
• Modifying LINQ Expressions with Rewrite Rules - A (long) article detailing a technique for changing queries dynamically at runtime
• A Set of Useful Extension Methods for DateTime - Fredrik Kalseth presents 11 extension methods for dates - with source provided too
• A Templated ASP.NET RSS Feed Reader Control - Stefan Sedich creates a control for reading RSS feeds using .NET 3.5

Community

• Liverpool Users of .NET - Second official meeting of the Liverpool.NET User Group is planned for 17th April 2008

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I spent far too much time last night getting bogged down in some XSLT using <msxsl:script> to write XSLT functions in C# - If I get it working nicely I’ll blog about it

Software

• RicherTextBox - A useful user control that extends the built in Rich Text control with some of the more common features that you often need to implement

Information

• ASP.NET MVC In-Depth: The Life of an ASP.NET MVC Request - Stephen Walther covers the lifecycle of an MVC request in detail - interesting reading, I always believe that you should understand how something works before using it
• Number of Types in the .NET Framework - Brad Abrams shows the size of the .NET framework over the past 5 releases. When you see some of the numbers it makes sense as to why it takes people a long time to get up to speed
• 13 Tips to Comment Your Code - Some excellent advice about commenting, translated from an original article in Spanish.
• MS Tests failing due to Security Errors - Rick Strahl encounters some slightly over zealous security getting in the way of his MS Tests
• Reduce Locks for DELETE and UPDATE Commands in SQL Server 2005 with TOP Clause - Keyvan Nayyeri shows a SQL 2005 trick to help avoid locks in tables for delete and update operations
• C# 3.0 Lambdas and Type Inference - Ian Griffiths shows a couple of tricks to work around some limitations in type inference with lambda expressions
• ASP.NET Ajax using a custom ViewManager to render paged data without updatepanels - A prototype of a way of displaying paged data using no Update panels
• Omea Pro Source (C#) Finally Available - Greg Duncan highlights the availability of the source to the Omea Pro Feed Reader - its always insightful to read the code of a professionally developed application
• PowerShell Fortune - Tomas Restrepo recreates an old favourite in Powershell

Humour

• ClassNamer - Looking for inspiration for your latest class?

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