The Morning Brew #1217

Software

• Windows Identity Foundation Tools for Visual Studio 2012 RTM – Vittorio Bertocci announces the RTM release of the Identity and Access Tools for Visual Studio 2012, along with a refresh of all the Windows Identity Foundation samples. In the post Vittorio walks through the release notes, and sows some of the tooling in action.
• Idera pluses PowerShell by freeing PowerShell Plus v4.6 – Gren Duncan highlights the news that Idera -have made PowerShell Plus v4.6, their interactive console, script editor, debugger and learning centre, available for free
• Introducing Icenium – an Integrated Cloud Environment for Hybrid Mobile App Development – The taem over at Telerik announce the general availability of Icenium, their tooling to help you build mobile applications to run acorss multiple platforms, utilising the cloud to make the product lightweight, and remove the need to install all the various SDKs locally – certainly looks interesting.
• The Truth about NuGet and its Future – Phil Haack discusses the future of the NuGet package manager, sheds light on the ownership of the project, Microsoft’s involvement, and clarifies the difference between the open source version and the version that is integrated in Visual Studio.

Information

• Cryptographic Improvements in ASP.NET 4.5, pt. 1 & pt. 2 – Levi Broderick discusses the various improvements to the cryptographic related features in ASP.NET 4.5 in the first 2 parts of a three part series, discussing the use of the various generated keys, pipeline improvements, viewstate MAC, plugability of encryption, and backwards compatibility with previous versions.
• Design patterns in the test of time & Design patterns in the test of time: Abstract Factory – Ayende kicks off a new series of posts looking back at the design patterns included in the original work on design patterns, looking at the uses and abuses of the patterns we have seen over the past 18 years
• Access to an ASP.NET website via multiple authentications – MonkeyTennis takes a look at the use of Windows Identity Foundation in ASP.NET appplications, exploring the ability to customise and extend the authentication adding additional steps if required.
• Feature branches and toggles – Jimmy Bogard discusses feature branches, the potential problems as outlined by Martin Fowler, and shares his experiences of working with feature branches
• Clean up your Web API controllers with model validation and null check filters | StrathWeb – Filip W. takes a look at the use of Filters in WebAPI to take away the need for some of the common boiler plate code that many service APIs have like the checking for null or required arguments.
• Isolating database data in integration tests – Jimmy Bogard takes a look at some techniques for ensuring that your integration tests data is correctly isolated from each other allowing the same database to be used for multiple tests