Software

  • Updated CTP for SQL Azure Database includes complete feature set for PDC 2009! – The SQL Azure Team announce the release of their latest CTP edition of SQL Azure. This is the feature set they will be taking to PDC, now including support for bulk inserts, firewalling, further TSQL support. This release has also been deployed on bigger hardware, and all existing users should have access to this new release.
  • PowerCommands for Reflector 1.3 and Introducing Query Editor – Jason Haley has issued another update to his Reflector PowerCommands, taking the total commands to 26, and introducing two new commands, the simple sounding Open, and the more complex Query Editor which lets you write queries in C# Linq to locate types, members etc.
  • Releasing psake v1.00 & psake v2.00 – James Kovacs announces the latest revision of his Powershell based build tool, 1.00 is the same as the 0.23 release, which targets Powershell 1, and 2.01 is PowerShell 2 targeting. This tool allows you to utilise the power of the PowerShell scripting language for automating your builds

Information

  • SQL Azure Now Feature Complete for PDC 2009 Release – Roger Jennings has a whole host of additional information about the latest SQL Azure CTP release. If Azure is something you care lots about, be sure to subscribe to Roger’s blog as his primary focus is Azure / Cloud technology.
  • TechnicalDebtQuadrant – Martin Fowler discusses the concept of Technical debt, and looks at classifying it into four regions on a grid of deliberate to inadvertent combined with reckless to prudent, and explores the further analogies based on this financial metaphor
  • The Application Architecture Guide 2.0 Is Here! – David Hill highlights the completion of the Microsoft Patterns and Practices Application Architecture 2.0 Guide. This is a significant update to the previous edition, and is available now on MSDN. Printed copies will also be available in the near future.
  • View Source Tutorial: Sticky Notes With HTML5 and CSS3 – Ajaxian starts what could be a very interesting series titled ‘View Source’ which will b looking under the covers of sample applications, websites and applications looking at how they work. This post looks under the hood of the Webkit sticky notes demo and uncovers some CSS3 and HTML5 in use.
  • My History of Visual Studio (Part 8) – Rico Mariani presses on with his personal history of Visual Studio, with this post which talks about some of the CLR changes which were introduced for the Whidbey(2005) release
  • There Can Be Only One. Or Two. Or Three, but Never Four. – Dylan Beattie shares a useful snippet of code which allows you to easily restrict the number of instances of an application you allow per machine.
  • The Gradual Development Paradigm – Ivo Manolov discusses practice of delivering little features more often rather than huge chunks of a system in one go, highlighting how this makes it much easier to tell if things will be delivered on time or not, complete with some probability maths to support.
  • LOGPARSER #0: Get started with logparser – Anders Lundström shares a 15 part series on using the LogParser library to write queries against log files to extract useful information. Anders’ posts look at IIS HTTP logs, with queries to help trouble shoot 500 errors, identify slow pages, etc.
  • WeakReferences, GCHandles, and WeakArrays. – Paulo Zemek explores the .NET Framework’s Weak References, and GCHandles support looking at what they are and what they are useful for, along with looking at the construction of a WeakArray type.
  • Performance Counters Added to MassTransit – Chris Patterson talks about the adding of performance counters to the Mass Transit Service Bus project to provide statistics about how the bus is performing to make problem identification easier
  • StructureMap with Named Instance and With Method – Steve Michelotti looks at using named instances with StructureMap to work around a dependency which conditionally needs a boolean constructor passing in different situations

Community

  • UK Imagine Cup – Calling all problem solvers! – The UK Academic Team at Microsoft announce the 2010 Imagine Cup, a competition for Students which sets a number of real world problems for them to solve with technology. This is a world wide competition with the Final this year being held in Warsaw Poland.

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