The Morning Brew

Yesterday was one of those days where things just worked - I wish more days were like that.

Software

• Visual Linq Query Builder (VLinq) - A Visual Studio Add-in to help build LINQ to SQL Queries (Think "Access Query Builder for Linq to SQL") - Greg Duncan highlights a useful looking Visual studio Add-in to make building LINQ to SQL queries in a visual way
• Deployer - A useful looking tool to aid deployment of a number of common .NET application types.

Information

• Heavyweight tests == lots of future pain - Derik Whittaker talks about the case when tests do too much work
• Connecting to Microsoft SQL Server 2008 from Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 - Jackie Goldstein has an article about getting SQL server 2008 working with the 2005 and 2008 Visual Studio
• Microsoft .NET Assemblies Public Key Names - A useful reminder that there are certain leaks of information even in compiled code - another to watch out for is the stack trace which can also contain path locations to your code.
• Joining to the Next Sequential Row - Paul Alcon shows a few different techniques for performing this task which SQL makes quite hard
• My Statement on Stored Procedures - Looks like the Stored Procedure vs Ad-Hoc query debate is starting again - that said, did it ever end.
• Using the Observer Pattern - Jack Altiere gives a nice detailed example of this design pattern
• Internals are Evil - Ayende shows how you can work round the problem of internal methods by using a little bit of reflection
• Things you MUST dispose - A useful overview of the importance of Disposing and what things you need to dispose.
• Unit Testing with Silverlight - ScottGu looks at the options for unit testing Silverlight applications
• The Past, Present and Future (?) of Mocking - Aaron Jensen looks at the some possible ways of improving mock frameworks interfaces using some of the latest language features