The Morning Brew

A longer than average post today due to SQL 2008 finally being RTM’d, although it seems that Visual Studio folks should hold off untill the 11th August when the RTM of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 will be made available.

Software

• SQL Server 2008 on MSDN Subscriber Downloads – SQL Server 2008 has arrived, and teh RTM release is available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads now!
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Release Notes – Get the low down on the SQL Server 2008 release, as there are a number of considerations when installing.
• Microsoft Sync Framework – Microsoft Sync Framework V1 is released, providing easy ways of adding sync support to applications. This release also includes Sync Services for ADO.NET allowing offline working against ADO data sources.
• SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Released – Steve Lasker announces the release of the SQL Server Compact edition V3.5 SP1, which now supports the entity framework and 64bit support. This will also be included in Visual Studio SP1
• SQL Server 2008 RTM samples are up on CodePlex now. – A new SQL Server, and we also get some new Community samples on Codeplex
• SQL Server 2008….Finally – Some key dates for the other parts of the SQL 2008 release coming in the next month.
• Pex 0.6 Released – Nikolai Tillmann announces the release of Pex 0.6, which now supports installation on 64 bit Windows. along with UI improvements and some other new features.
• IronPython – Release: 2.0 Beta 4 – The IronPython team announce the release of Beta 4 of Iron Python 2, now featuring an MSI Installer, static compilation, some performance improvements over Beta 3, and a host of other features.
• Yahoo! UI Library: YUI Compressor for .Net – A .NET port of the YUI Compressor Java Project, allowing compression of CSS and Javascript

Information

• Unused code is the worst of the 7 Wastes of Software – Derik Whittaker talks about why unused / not needed code is bad
• What Have We Been Up to? – The Visual Studio Extensibility Team share what they have been working on – looks like there are some good things just around the corner.
• Write your own NUnit constraint (in VB) – Part 2 – Andrew Stopford continues looking at NUnit Constraints, in the part looks at creating some nice ‘Syntax sugar’ to allow his code to say This.Is.EqualTo’
• On Documentation for (and by) Developers – Peter Bromberg reminds everyone of the importance of XML documentation on your code, and explains how to get that documentation when your code is referenced in another application.
• Documenting Coding Standards – Less is More – Andrew Tokeley offers some best practices for writing coding standards documents.
• Visual Studio .NET Platform Target Explained – Darren Stokes talks about the Platform Target choices available in Visual Studio, explaining what they actually do.
• A Practical Review of ASP.NET MVC – Joshua Charles talks about his experiences using ASP.NET MVC from the point of view of a Ruby on Rails user – interesting to see what people from the other side think.
• Log4PostSharp – AOP and logging – Michal Dabrowski shows how AOP can improve your logging with this article on the implementation of logging using PostSharp
• Rating of Open Source AOP Frameworks in .Net. – V. Gnanasekaran looks at how different Aspect Oriented Programming frameworks can be compared – useful if you find yourself needing to pick one.
• Always use Nullables for Dates: C# and VB.NET – Rob Reynolds looks at Nullable dates and show how and why you should be using them.
• The best feature in SQL Server 2008 – sqlps.exe? – Eric Nelson takes a look at the Powershell functionality included in SQL Server 2008 – looks good
• Static Compilation of IronPython scripts – Srivatsn talks about static compilation of IronPython scripts, a feature from the 1.0 version that has now been re-introduced into the V2 edition.

Community

• Bad News, Good News – stackoverflow – Stackoverflow, the new community from Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky has entered beta, and there is a form you can fill in to get onto the beta linked from this post.

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Software

• New (and Free) Beta Releases from Quest Software – Kevin Kline highlights some beta software being offered by Quest Software for freee, including Toad for SQL Server 4.0 beta
• User Interface controls for Windows.Forms – Free copies of Suite – Component Factory are giving away free copies of their UI Control Suite to Microsoft MVP’s and Bloggers. Bloggers will need 500 subscribers and must post yearly on the control library to qualify.

Information

• Adding Async Operations to Asynchronous Computation Expressions in F# – Matthew Podwysocki continues looking at Asynchronous Computation Expressions in F#, looking at adding async methods to web request and consuming web services asynchronously.
• 30 Seconds to a Fluent Interface – A nice concise definition of a fluent interface with a simple code example
• Need a simple grid for ASP.NET Ajax? – Bertrand Le Roy points to a nice Ajax grid view control from the DotNetSlackers’ Ajax Data Controls Library.
• Write your own NUnit constraint (in VB) – Part 1 – Andrew Stopford shows how you can write your own constriants for NUnit using Visual Basic
• JQuery VS2008 IntelliSense Update – James Hart has updated his intellisense header file for JQuery – if you are developing javascript with JQuery this is a real helper.
• SQL SERVER – 2005 – Difference Between INTERSECT and INNER JOIN – Pinal Dave explores the differences and similarities between the INTERSECT keyword and INNER JOIN.
• Writing GIS and Mapping Software for .NET. – An interesting article by Jon Person, and A. Philip Smith on geographic projections and displaying geographic data illustrated with some .NET code.
• Speedy C#, Part 1: Optimizing Long if-else or switch Branches – Robert Paveza starts a series on writing efficient optimised C# – in this first part he looks at large switch/case statements and some alternatives.

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Information

• P&P Improving Web Services Security eBook – Guy Barrette highlights the availability of the Patterns and Practices team’s guide to Improving Web Services Secutiry
• Four Rules for Simple Codelines – Brad Appleton takes Kent Beck’s Four Rules of Simple Code, and applies the same though to code lines, creating a new set of rules and discussing them in detail.
• Disorderly Views – Nathan talks about two issues with SQL 2005 where order by is ignored if top(100) percent is specified, along with two possible (although not ideal) work arounds.
• Manage SQL Databases – Gabriel Schenker look at a way to automate the setup of the database during the build. While this is on an NHibernate themed blog, the techniques here are generic enough to apply to all types of data access.
• 100+ PDC Sessions Posted – Brad Abrams highlights a number of sessions at the upcoming PDC that appeal to him. There look to be a lot of good stuff there, hopefully some of them will be web cast when the time comes.
• Back to Basics: LinkedLists – Karl Seguin takes a trip down memory lane, looking at how linked lists work, talking about how the data is structured and what the effect in memory is.
• Acceptance Testing Guide Community Preview 2 Available! – The second community preview of a number of P&P guidance documents on Acceptance Testing have been released.
• Generic collections and inheritance – Derek Fowler talks about some frustrations with generic collections of objects which are part of an inheritance structure, and the problem of converting the collection type – thankfully there is a nice solution
• How to Send Trackback and Pingback Requests in ASP.NET – Keyvan Nayyeri rounds off his mini-series on Trackback and ping back with a look at sending the requests using ASP.NET
• JSON Serializers in .NET – not there yet – Rick Strahl looks at JSON Serialization, talking about why he wrote his own serializer, and looks at the pros and cons of the .NET framework provided options.
• The Onion Architecture : part 3 – Jeffrey Palermo continues his series looking at the Onion Architecture, and in this part compares to traditional layered architecture.
• What Integrated Circuits Say About Testing Your Code – Phil Haack talks about why you should want to abstract data access to improve testability, along with the need for integration testing.

Community

• LMSDev : Lincolnshire Microsoft Developers – Lincolnshire Microsoft Developers (LMSDev) is a newly founded .NET community based in Lincolnshire, UK – if you are in the area get involved with your local developer community

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