The Morning Brew #562

Updated: A rogue typo crept into today’s DDD South west announcement – Session Proposals are most certainly open and the entry is now corrected.

Software

• The Reactive Extensions for JavaScript Released – Matthew Podwysocki highlights the release of the Reactive Extensions for JavaScript as a Microsoft DevLabs project, and takes a look at another sample application using the extensions to bring two APIs together into one JavaScript powered application.
• Free URL Rewriter
  – Microsoft release the IIS URL Rewrite 2.0 Module in both x86 and x64 forms providing a rules based pattern matching engine for remapping URLs at the web server level, including content inspection and re-writing, full HTTP header access, and sample rules for reverse proxy configurations.
• MockingBird meets WCF in v2.0 RC – Santosh Benjamin announces the release candidate release of MockingBird 2, with the inclusion of a WCF Message Interceptor which adds support for mocking WCF responses using the same simulation support. RTM release is expected to be in late April.
• The Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework Released at Mix – Michael S. Scherotter shares the news of the release of the Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework, announced this week at MIX10. This collection of Silverlight controls allows interaction with a number of the most common web analytics frameworks allowing you to track your users around your Silverlight application.
• Bundler Now Supports Css And .less – Justin Etheredge announces a updated release of Bundler (previously known as JavaScriptBundler) which now supports combining of JavaScript along with CSS and .less files
• Announcing the OData Explorer – Phani Raj highlights the new OData Explorer application which is a Silverlight application (both in browser and out of browser) which allows you to explore OData data direct from the source.

Information

• Take Control Of Web Control ClientID Values in ASP.NET 4.0 – Scott Mitchell takes a look at how .NET 4 allows you to take better control of the client side id generated for ASP.NET Web Forms Controls
• ASP.NET 4.0 Part 13, A New Output Caching Provider Model – Dan Maharry continues his series looking at the range of new features in ASP.NET 4 with a look at the new output caching provider model which allows you to hook up custom caching solutions allowing you to break the cache out of the main worker process.
• Application Events: Modeling Selection vs De-Selection as Separate Events? – Derick Bailey discusses the use of and additional de-selection event in addition to the standard selection when working in an event aggregation style to provide a better way of working than saying that the value null was selected.
• More Standards Documentation Available – The Internet Explorer Team share a raft of preliminary conformance documents outlining how Internet Explorer 7 and 8 conform to a number of standards ranging from JPEG compression to PICS rating services.
• Should a professional developer always use TDD? – ‘Cellfish’ highlights notes from a fishbowl session chaired by Emily Bache discussing the question ‘Should a professional developer always use Test driven Development?’, and follows up on the topic with some of his thoughts on the subject
• Using .NET 4.0 Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) along with application ETW – Naveen talks about using .NET 4 Event Tracing for Windows, and combining the captured data with other application traces to build up a picture of what is going on inside you application in terms of Garbage Collection and object allocations as our code progresses.
• Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview) – Microsoft Press highlights the availability of a free draft preview e-book edition of Charles Petzold forthcoming book on Windows 7 Phone programming. The preview consists of 6 chapters and 153 pages of introductory content on the platform, Silverlight and XNA support.
• Defragging Your Indexes – Anu Chawla shares an explanation of how SQL Server indexes get fragmented, and talks about the process of de-fragmenting them to gain application performance.

Community

• SQLBits – The 6th Sets – 16 Apr 2010 – London – Registration for the free community run SQLBits 6 event is now open. The SQLBits event is to be run on Friday 16th April in London, the day after the SQL 2008 R2 launch event which is a part of the UK Techdays event series. All the SQLBits events I have attended have been very worth while, so I encourage you to register and attend if you can.
• DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper South West 2.0 – Proposed Sessions – Session Proposal for the DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper South West event to be held on 5th June 2010 are (not typo corrected) now open. If you are interested in speaking at the event you have until 22nd March to submit your session proposal on the site, with voting on sessions to begin on 29th March.