As predicted, today’s edition is a big one following the 4 day Easter weekend. As a reminder, this week there will only be 3 editions of The Morning Brew, as this weekend is another 4 day weekend here in the UK with the Royal Wedding and May Day bank holidays providing us with another nice break.

Software

  • Windows Azure SDK 1.4 refresh – The Windows Azure Connect Team announce a Refresh release of the Windows Azure SDK 1.4 which fixes an issue with deployment on Windows Azure Roles. The update is available via the Web Platform Installer, and anyone who installed the SDK before 25th April will need to uninstall and re-install.
  • Json.NET 4.0 Release 2 – NuGet 1.2 and Dynamic – James Newton-King announces the release of Json.NET 4.0 Release 2. This release brings support for NuGet 1.2, and adds Windows Phone 7 to the list of 7 platforms upon which the library will work. Also in this release is rework of the support for dynamic types adding operations for comparing, adding, subtracting, etc.
  • Update to the F# 2.0 Free Tools Release, Corresponding to Visual Studio 2010 SP1 (April 2011 CTP) – Don Syme, blogging on the new F# Team Blog, announces the release of updated free tooling for F#, bringing their release inline with the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 release. This update brings support for F#2 development on Silverlight 4 and 5.
  • ILSpy Debugger Preview – Eusebiu highlights a new feature of ILSpy, available in a preview build, which allows you to debug through code without having the code available, utilising the decompilation features of ILSpy. This looks really useful for diagnosing problems when you don’t have (easy) access to the real source.
  • AntiXSS 4.1 Beta 1 – Barry Dorrans annoucnes the release of AntiXSS 4.1 Beta 1, available via CodePlex in source form only. This release to the library, which provides a variety of methods for encoding content to avoid cross site scripting attacks, brings improved .NET 4 support and fixes to the encoders , resolving a potential race condition.
  • SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CTP Available for download – SQLDenis highlights the availability of SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CTP. This preview release of the forthcoming Service Pack addresses a variety of customer reported issues with SQL Server 2008 R2 and rolls up all current hotfix fixes.
  • "The Ultimate List of Freely Available .NET Libraries" – Greg Duncan highlights an impressive list of Freely available libraries for .NET from the team over at Qink. This list, broken down into a variety of sub categories, lists free to use libraries which solve a variety of problems in the .NET space. Be sure to check out the comments for further library suggestions.

Information

  • C#/.NET Little Wonders: Any() and All() – James Michael Hare continues his excellent series on little known wonders of the C# language and .NET framework. In this part, James explores the use of the Any() and All() LINQ extension methods, showing them in use and explaining their purpose.
  • Working with SSL at Development Time is easier with IISExpress – Scott Hanselman – Scott Hanselman takes a look at how IISExpress (part of the ‘MS Web Stack of Love’) makes development of SSL Secured applications easier by providing easier means of working with SSL at development time, exploring the setup of SSL on IIS Express, and looks at how you can also get IIS Express running on the standard web and SSL ports (80 & 443).
  • Conditional Filters in ASP.NET MVC 3 – Phil Haack takes a look at the application of filters in ASP.NET MVC 3, showing how you can create filters which are conditionally applied to controller actions using the new Filter Provider functionality.
  • Maybe there’s something wrong with the universe, but probably not – Eric Lippert discusses what you can do if you think you may have found a problem with the C# compiler, suggesting that while it is possible, in normal day to day code it is often that your code is actually incorrect, and highlights a variety of places which you can bring possible issues to light.
  • Task Parallel Library: 5 of n – Sacha Barber continues his series on the Task Parallel Library with part 5, exploring the concurrent collections added in .NET 4, which while not strictly part of the TPL really come into their own when combined with TPL functionality.
  • Principles 5: End-to-End Development Process (for Large Projects) – Ivo Manolov continues his principles series with a look at an end-to-end process for the development of large projects, discussing how large projects require more process ‘tax’ to be effective, and discusses some of the techniques which can be used with large projects to help ensure success.
  • Release Early, Release Often – Phil Haack discusses the principle of ‘Release Early, Release often’, discussing the benefits of this approach, the extremes of it, some of the limitations,, how often is right for you, and what to consider if your releases are not of sufficient quality.
  • Windows 7 Milestone! 350 million licenses sold! – ‘Surf4Fun’ highlights an impressive milestone in the Windows 7 release, the 350 Million licenses sold point. In addition to this, the post has a nice list of Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts, many of which will make you more productive in a Windows 7 environment.
  • When to avoid CQRS – Udi Dahan discusses when you should not use CQRS type architectures, and how even when using CQRS correctly, it should not be your overall architecture.
  • What’s new in Windsor 3: Service Locator usage detection & Container debugger diagnostics improvements – Krzysztof Kozmic shares a look at some of the new features coming in Castle Windsor’s 3.0 release, exploring how the Windsor Container will help to detect misuses of itself, and showing some of the improved diagnostic support making it easier to see what is going on inside the container, both in debug and also at runtime via code.
  • Integration: Scenario, Shared Database & ETL – Paul Stovell starts a new series looking at application integration, outlining a simple scenario and looking at how a Shared Database, or an Extract Transform Load approach can be used to solve this integration problem, discussing the pros and cons of each.
  • Musing on Simpler Migrations – Rob Conery kicks off discussion of database migrations in .NET, discussion the current landscape of database migrations, and sharing an early look at his simple ‘all in one page’ database migrations project, soon to be available.
  • Best of FREE Frameworks, Tools and Controls for Windows Phone 7 – Michael Crump takes an overview look at the various toolkit, control libraries and frameworks available to help you kickstart your Windows Phone 7 development.
  • WCF Web API is Pure Simplicity with NuGet – Steve Michelotti takes a look at the WCF Web API library released at MIX11, showing how it can be easily obtained via NuGet, and looking at a simple use of the library.
  • Making use of Cloud Services .NET My Services (Hailstorm) – Christian Nagel takes a look back to the 2001 PDC event, and the .NET My Services (Hailstorm) a suite of services covering a variety of areas which never made it into production as HailStorm, asking readers to suggest if modern equivalent services actually exist now.
  • "Revisiting C#" – Free C# post collection ebook – Greg Duncan highlights the release of a free EBook from Anoop Madhusudanan, who has edited together a number of his articles from his blog into a 33 page EBook looking at some of the interesting features of the C# language, including fluent interfaces, Type inference, Generics, Dynamic language features, and much more.

Community

  • Europe Virtual ALT.NET: Hadi Hariri on CouchDB for .NET Developers on 03 May 2011 – The European Virtual Alt.Net Usergroup welcome Hadi Hariri for a session on the CouchDB NoSql databse, building on previous presentations to this group from J.Chris Anderson. The event starts at 7pm GMT on Tuesday 3rd May.
  • Continuous Integration with TeamCity Workshop – Storm Id are hosting an all day session with Paul Stack on Continuous Integration with TeamCity on Saturday 10th September. In this session Paul will walk through the theory of Continuous Integration, along with the process of configuring and working with Team City to automate your build and associated processes.
  • dev4good – developing for a better world – dev4good are organising an all weekend event over the weekend of 2nd and 3rd July where developers will come together to create software for worthwhile causes. The event is looking for sponsors, and developer registration is now open.
  • NxtGenUG – Natural Laws of Software Perf – Kendall Miller, visiting from the US, joins the Warrington / Manchester NextGenUG for a session on software performance on the evening of Wednesday 11th May
  • NxtGenUG – Return of the Entity Framework – The Brimingham NxtGenUG welcomes Geff Lombardi for a session on Entity Framework 4, Ian Russell takes a look at Dynamic Data on Tuesday 17th May.
  • Join us for Two Days of Windows Phone at Tech.Days in May – Mike Ormond highlights the availability of places for the UK Tech.Days events about Windows Phone Development taking place on Tuesday 24th & Wednesday 25th in London.

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