July 2011
Monthly Archive
The Morning Brew #905
Posted by Chris Alcock on 29 Jul 2011 | Tagged as: .NET, Development, Morning Brew, Uncategorized
Software
- Code First Migrations: August 2011 CTP Released – The ADO.NET Entity Framework Team announce the release of the August 2011 CTP (first CTP) of Entity Framework Code First Migrations. This library adds support for migrating the database schema from one model setup to a later version of the same model. This early CTP requires the Entity Framework 4.1 Update 1, As is usual with CTP release, the team are very interested in your feedback.
- Announcing the Windows Azure AppFabric July release – The Windows Azure AppFabric Team announced the release of their July update and enhancements to the Windows Azure AppFabric Management Portal and the Access Control service, including improved localisation for the Management Portal, support for Access Control rules with 2 input claims, UTF-8 support for O-Auth and the removal of ACS quotas on configuration data.
Information
- Entity Framework Code First Migrations: Alpha – NuGet Package of the Week #10 – Scott Hanselman explores the newly released Entity Framework Code First Migrations CTP release as a part of his NuGet Package of the Week series, sharing some information about the package and looking at it in use.
- Code First Migrations: Walkthrough of August 2011 CTP – Reco of the ADO.NET team also gives a walkthrough of the functionality provided by the Code First Migrations CTP discussing the different types of migration it supports and how it scripts these changes.
- C#/.NET Little Pitfalls: Default Parameters are Compile-Time Substitutions – James Michael Hare continues his C#/.NET Little Pitfalls series with a look at the use of Default Parameters in C# 4 and how they are implemented using a compiler trick which bakes the default values at compile time
- Simple way of null parameter validation – Ishtiyaq Sheikh shares a simple helper extension method to make writing some of the common parameter validation code that appears in lots of methods shorter and simpler.
- Preprocessor? .NET don’t need no stinkin’ preprocessor! – David Anson also is looking at parameter and other variable validation using Debug.Assert, showing its default use, discussing how the message often duplicates the expression being asserted upon and shares an custom extension of the Debug.Assert which takes away this duplication using expression trees.
- Entity Framework v4.1 update 1, the Kill-The-Tool-Eco-system version & Entity Framework June 2011 CTP (v4.2) is now supported in Entity Framework Profiler – Frans Bouma and the Hibernating Rhinos team discuss a breaking change in Entity Framework 4.1 Update 1 which breaks the integration of their respective data access profilers in this version of Entity Framework, discussing how their integtration works, and what in this update caused them problems, and both look at work around solutions.
- MEF Features – with Examples – Mahadesh Mahalingappa digs into a number of the key features of the Managed Extensibility Framework, looking at the background to the feature and illustrating with examples of each.
- My eBook and articles series on OData for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 is complete. – Michael Crump has updated his OData for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 article series, and has also compiled it into e-book format, available for $2.99 via SilverlightShow.Net, All the article content is also available free of charge on the SilverlightShow site.
- Windows Phone Mango Feature Videos – Mike Ormond highlights a series of videos from the Windows Phone team where the people responsible for each of the new features discusses their feature and its use.
Community
- NxtGenUG – Event: .Net Minimalist Web Dev – The Manchester / Warrington chapter of the NxtGenUG welcome Mark Rendle on Wednesday 17th August for a session looking at two lightweight alternative frameworks on the .NET platform, Simple.Data for data access and Nancy for a Sinatra like web framework
- Coding for PowerShell – DevEvening – The DevEvening User Group in Woking welcome Jimmy Skowronski for a session exploring PowerShell development, from the basics upwards on Wednesday 31st August
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The Morning Brew #904
Posted by Chris Alcock on 28 Jul 2011 | Tagged as: .NET, Development, Morning Brew
Software
- Another Helping of Mango for Devs – Hot on the heels of the Windows Phone Mango RTM release, the Windows Phone Developer Team announce a refresh of the developer tools entitled ‘Windows Phone SDK 7.1 “Beta 2 Refresh”’, along with the news that any devices which devs have already upgraded to Mango will be able to be updated to build 7712, the final pre-release build of Mango
Information
- Request for Comments: Issues with .NET and Microsoft Product Versioning – Scott Hanselman discusses the complex world of version numbering in Microsoft products, discussing some of the more confusing decisions that have been made, and asking for developer feedback for how to version things in the future.
- The Top 5 .NET Memory Management Misconceptions – Clive Tong takes a detailed look at 5 of the most common .NET Memory Management myths, exploring what the garbage collector does, memory leaks, how different types of objects are treated, and the use of performance counters to monitor the GC
- HTML5 Drag and Drop in IE10 PPB2 – Sharon Newman of the Internet Explorer Team discusses the support for HTML5 Drag and Drop in Internet Explorer 10 preview 2, discussing its implementation in a magnetic poetry IE Test Drive sample.
- Stephen Toub says, "I’ve got your Samples for Parallel Programming with the .NET… right here…" – Greg Duncan highlights a great collection of parallel programming samples from Stephen Toub which make use of Parallel LINQ, and the Task Parallel Library
- WCF Web API with Web Activator package – Thang Chung discusses the use of the Web Activator NuGet package with the WCF Web API library to provide the startup hooks needed to ensure that your integrations with IOC are hooked up correctly.
- Speech Recognition (Page 1 of 2) – The folks over at BlackWasp take a look at the Speech Recognition support provided in XP SP3 and later windows releases which can easily be consumed by .NET 3.0 and later allowing you to use speech recognition in your own applications.
- Windows Phone (Mango) DB Engines Performance Testing – Max Paulousky takes a look at the features and performance characteristics of two of the popular choices for database on the Windows Phone 7 platform, putting Sql CE and Sterling DB through their paces.
Community
- DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper Belfast – 1 Oct 2011 – The DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper team announce the opening of the call for speakers for the DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper event to be held in Belfast at the University of Ulster on Saturday 1st October. If you are interested in delivering a talk at this event get your proposal in now.
- LDNUG AUG10: Modelling and Waiting – The London DotNet User Group welcome Liam Westley for a session on the Async CTP and C#5, along with Ian Cooper for a session entitled ‘Introduction to DDD Part 1 – Modeling’ exploring Domain Driven Design techniques for modeling a business domain. The event is to be held on Wednesday 10th August at EMC Consulting in London.
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The Morning Brew #903
Posted by Chris Alcock on 27 Jul 2011 | Tagged as: .NET, Development, Morning Brew
Software
- Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 is Available Today – Jason Zander announces the availability of Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011, the first release of this new developer product. Currently the release is available to MSDN subscribers, with General Availability coming on Thursday, when a 90 day trial will be made available
- Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 RTM is Here – We made it! – Beth Massi shares the announcement of Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 and also highlights some of the learning resources already available including starter kits, instructional videos, tutorials and code samples.
- LightSwitch 2011 is Here! No More Excuses! – Steven Lange also highlights the release, sharing a video which introduces the LightSwitch product and also highlights in detail some of the starter kits and other resources.
- Windows Phone "Mango" Released to Manufacturing – The Windows Phone Blog announces the Release To Manufacturing of the Windows Phone Mango Operating System update, meaning that device manufacturers are now busy working on the integration with their phones and networks.
- EF 4.1 Update 1 Released – The ADO.NET Entity Framework Team announce an update release to Entity Framework 4.1 (Code First) which brings some bug fixes and further support for design time tools. The update can be obtained either as a standalone download installer, or via NuGet.
Information
- Handlers – A useful FubuMVC Convention – Josh Arnold continues his look at conventions in FubuMVC with a look at the handler conventions and policy for route generation.
- This is my Favorite… VS 2010 Favorites Menu Extension – Greg Duncan highlights a new Visual Studio Extension which allows you to favourite particular files in your solution in a browser bookmark type way, providing a quick access menu to those files within the IDE
- Using the Features of ASP.NET MVC 3 Futures – Imran Baloch takes a look at some of the features included in the ASP.NET MVC Futures library, a library which builds upon the ASP.NET MVC 3 release and includes things which may become a part of the ASP.NET MVC project in the future.
- Exploring CoffeeScript Part 4 – Objects and Classes – Jan Van Ryswyck continues his series exploring the CoffeeScript language, exploring the class and object features of the language, and how they get represented in the JavaScript output.
- Dynamic Decorator, Unity and Castle DynamicProxy Comparison – Gary H Guo takes a look at the Dynamic Decorator, Unity and Castle DynamicProxy libraries for dynamically extending objects in C#, comparing the implementations of object extension in each of them.
- JSON.NET Custom Converters – A Quick Tour – David Hoerster takes a look at implementing a custom convertor for the JSON.NET library, allowing you to more finely control the serialisation and deserialisation of types to and from JSON.
Community
- DDD North – Saturday 8th October 2011 – Session Submission Open! – Andrew Westgarth announces the opening of session submissions for the first DDD event in the North of England. The event, to be held on Saturday 8th October at the University of Sunderland, follows the usual UK Community DeveleloperDeveloperDeveloper format the agenda being chosen by the community for the community. If you are interested in speaking at the event get your submission in now.
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