CTP1 of Microsoft Project Code-Named "Houston" now available – The SQL Azure team announce the first CTP release of Project "Houston", a silverlight based tool for managing your SQL Azure databases. As with any CTP software the may be bugs, and the release notes include a number of know issues (many with workarounds), and if you find any other bugs be sure to let the team know.
SMSToolkit – .NET SMS server – Microsoft Research India release a software library which will turn any PC + Windows Mobile 5 phone into a full SMS Server. The library includes documentation and samples showing how it can be consumed easily form a variety of languages and programs.
Information
The MVVM Pattern Is Highly Overrated – Davy Brion discusses what he sees as some bad aspects of the MVVM pattern, focusing on how it doesn’t correspond to many of the principles usually held in high regard in software development. Lots of interesting discussion in the comments on this one.
The Big Boy MVC Series – Part 25, Going Postal: ActionFilters, Moq, ModelState, Oh My! – Evan Nagle has hit part 25 of his comprehensive series on ASP.NET MVC. This post gathers together a number of themes from previous posts exploring the use of Moq, ModelState and TempData to implement the Post-Redirect-Get pattern fully, along the way providing links to further details on these topics.
WPF 4 Series: Getting Started – Ted Hu begins a series of post on the WPF Team blog looking at the new features of WPF4. This part links out to a number of great introductory posts on the subject from people like Scott Guthrie and Pete Brown, and the series will continue with some deeper dives into the specific features
Clean Coding, The Cheat Sheet. Starts SOLID and gets better from there… – Greg Duncan highlights a cheat sheet for Clean Code, based on the book by (Uncle) Bob Martin. The Cheat Sheet fits all the key concepts (and brief descriptions) onto a single page, and looks like a useful quick reference for the book.
Most IDEs offer poor support for many common development tasks – ‘stevencl’ discusses the poor job that current Integrated Development Environments do for may of a Developers most common tasks, such as Debugging and discovering the implications of a change, discussing and linking to some of the research which backs this up.
New Hands On Lab – Introduction to WF4 – Ron Jacobs announces the release of an updated Hands On Lab for Windows Workflow 4, packaged up using the newly released FeatureBuilder into a VSIX package and distributed via the Visual Studio Gallery.
Community
mvcConf – the Virtual ASP.Net MVC Conference – A reminder to anyone who is planning on attending mvcConf that today is the day. The event kicks off at 8am CDT (which by my calculations is 2pm BST), so if you registered don’t forget to turn up, and lets make this a great virtual conference.
A new conference in town – DevCon London 27th to 29th September – Eric Nelson highlights a new Developer Conference to be held in London, UK on the 27th to 29th September. DevCon draws on the experiences in running BASTA, one of the leading European .NET conferences, bringing a number of great speakers and topics to the UK. Prices range from £399 for one day to £699 for all three days, and there is a £50 early bird reduction if you book before the 13th August
