Sam Gentile

New and Notable 388

samgentile — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:58:32 GMT

Entity Framework

ADO.Net Entity Framework Community Technology Preview Released! - The updated CTP includes many requested improvements and added features particuarly in the area of Enhancements to Code Only and Self-Tracking Entities
Model First with the Entrity Framework 4 - This post continues an earlier post on the designer’s “out of the box” database schema generation experience. In this post, they show how some new designer features in VS2010 Beta 2 integrate with this capability, then they pop the hood and show how easy it is to replace or extend parts of the generation system.
Foreign Key Relationships in the Entity Framework - This article offers a walkthrough of foreign key relationships in the EF and how they’re useful in VS2010 Beta2.

WCF/WIF

WCF4 Beta 2 demos from TechEd Europe session - Christian has the SCF B2 sanples from TechEd Europe
Thinktecture.IdentityModel updated for WIF RC - The title says it all

CLR/BizTalk/RIA

Query Editor: Writing Queries, Part 1 - My friend Jason, changes the focus to be just on creating queries to solve a problem, such as finding interface implementations or searching the IL for certain things like box instructions.
Essential BizTalk Debgging Skills - My very good friend Tomas reflects on a few skills I believe BizTalk developers should develop to solve problems on their solutions effectively
http://silverlight.net/riaservices/ is Live! Brad announces the new community site

New and Notable 389

samgentile — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:21:14 GMT

Oslo

From "Oslo" to SQL Server Modeling - It seems like Oslo has evolved their direction again. Doug Purdy announces the change from "Oslo" to SQL Server Modeling and a SQL Server Modeling CTP which will consist of:
- “M” is a highly productive, developer friendly, textual language for defining schemas, queries, values, functions and DSLs for SQL Server databases
- “Quadrant” is a customizable tool for interacting with large datasets stored in SQL Server databases
- “Repository” is a SQL Server role for the the secure sharing of models between applications and systems

ALT.NET

Dependency Injection 101 - Billy McCafferty provides a nice introductory article. He also points to a similar article Dependency Injection For Dummies by Kevin Pang which gives another angle on the subject.

Software Tools

Paint.NET 3.5 Released - The final release of Piant.NET 3.5 has been released with some new UI changes that take advantage of Aero in Windows 7 (and Vista).

Windows Workflow

Expression editing mechanics - Cathy continues her posts on the Expression Editor by going over the mechanics of when you edit an expression in Visual Studio

From "Oslo" to SQL Server Modeling

samgentile — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:57:38 GMT

From "Oslo" to SQL Server Modeling - It seems like Oslo has evolved their direction again. Doug Purdy announces the change from "Oslo" to SQL Server Modeling and a SQL Server Modeling CTP which will consist of:

“M” is a highly productive, developer friendly, textual language for defining schemas, queries, values, functions and DSLs for SQL Server databases
“Quadrant” is a customizable tool for interacting with large datasets stored in SQL Server databases
“Repository” is a SQL Server role for the the secure sharing of models between applications and systems

November 2009 Release of the Windows Azure Tools and SDK

samgentile — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:49:59 GMT

It's here! The version that works with VS 2010 Beta 2.

Lots of changes and new features in the November 2009 release:

Service Model UI: A redesigned and significantly more complete interface for manipulating Role configuration information. To access, double-click on a role node in the Solution Explorer.
Additional role templates: Support for ASP.NET MVC 2 (2010 only), F# worker roles (2010 only), and WCF Service Application web roles.
Support for dynamically creating tables: The Create Tables functionality is now performed automatically; there is no longer a need to right-click and select Create Tables… on the project after your table definitions have changed.
Full support for and installation of the November Windows Azure SDK release:
- The sample storage client has been replaced by a new production quality library.
- New Diagnostics library enables logging using .NET APIs and enables the collection of diagnostic information from the service.
- Service Runtime library updated to support inter-role communication and notification of configuration changes .
- Support for input endpoints on Worker Roles.
- Higher fidelity simulation of Development Storage: supports all current cloud storage features, including dynamically creating tables.
- Ability to choose the size of the VM for a role instance.
- Ability to persist data in local storage even after the role is recycled.
- Ability to manage certificates to install to the role VMs.

Updated and additional samples are available at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsazuresamples

New and Notable 390

samgentile — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:03:22 GMT

Software Development Tools

Linq to Sql Profiler is now in public beta - Ayende announces the public betaof a tool in the fashion of NHibernate Profiler
Typemock Isolator 5.4.4 - The newest version of this mocking tool is out, which is mostly a maintanance release, sporting major improvements in Intellitest performance, and imporant bug fixes
Using Telerik OpenAccess with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 - Steven Forte shows a quick demo with Visual Studio 2010, SQL Azure, and OpenAccess.
An Introduction to MEF - James writes an introduction to MEF, differentiating it from other IOC containers

ALT.NET

Code Coverage: What Is It Good For - David contends while code coverage isn't proof that our testing efforts will yield higher maintainability, it does tell us a teams commitment to a test practice.

Windows Azure/Azure Cloud Services

Windows Azure and Cloud Computing Posts for 11/16/2009+
Video: Azure Services in Visual Studio Beta 2, Part I - This is the first of three videos showing how Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 provides support for the development and deployment of Azure Services applications.
Video: Azure Services in Visual Studio Beta 2, Part II
Video: Azure Services in Visual Studio Beta 2, Part III
On DSLs and a few other things and On "M" - Doug Purdy provides clarifications and pushback on some of the feedback from the From “Oslo” to SQL Server Modeling, which seems to be mostly negative

Entity Framework

LINQ and Entity Framework Posts for 10/26/2009+
Updated Feature CTP Walthrough: Code Only for Entity Framework - This post covers Code Only improvements in the CTP2 release for VS 2010 Beta2. This walkthrough shows how you can change the default model like specifying property facets and navigation property inverses as well change the default mapping by changing the default inheritance strategy and table and column names.
Updated Feature CTP Walkthrough: Self Tracking Entities for the Entity Framework

Dublin Becomes Windows AppFabric!

samgentile — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:28:02 GMT

My Dublin category has been totally empty since August 2008, when Dublin was announced at the SOA Conference. Well, today it finally became public in the form of Windows AppFabric. As my good friend,Brian Loesgen writes, "Today at PDC Bob Muglia, President Server and Tools Business, introduced the world to Windows AppFabric. AppFabric is a new set of capabilities, bringing together the functionality of Dublin, as well as Velocity (a high-performance, distributed, highly-scalable in-memory cache), plus the Service Bus and Access Control Services that were formerly part of the .NET Services brand."

This makes total sense. By bringing in the capabilities formerly in code-name Dublin, AppFabric provides host capabilities for .NET 4.0 Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation services, with extended management through the IIS manager, plus the ability to do service monitoring. This is much needed functionality as V1 (V3.0) and V2 (3.5) of both WCF and WF didn't ship with much tooling - you had to roll out your own for hosting, monitoring, management and so forth. This caused hardship in adoption of these CSD technologies and left a big gaping hole, for Java platforms have had Application Servers for years that served as host for EJBs and such.

I have been playing quite a bit with Dublin (and the virtual labs) and happy to see it public so I can blog more about it. For now, as Brian says, "Beta 1 of AppFabric is available now. I’d encourage you all to go off and explore some of the exciting capabilities. Get it right now at http://msdn.microsoft.com/AppFabric."

New and Notable 391

samgentile — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:52:23 GMT

PDC

PDC09 - A Call to a Dream - Nikhil Kothari finds Roy Ozzie's keynote inspiring. I find this statement spot on, "For a developer, what Microsoft brings is a consistent experience developing for this broad platform with Azure on the back-end, Windows, Internet Explorer and Silverlight on the front-end, .NET, Visual Studio and Expression as the framework and tooling."
PDC 2009 Day 1: Keynote, Ray Ozzie - Coverage from Sasha
PDC 2009 Day 1: Keynote, Bob Muglia - Coverage from Sasha
PDC 2009 Day 1: Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic - Coverage from Sasha
Pluralsight On-Demand v2.0 released today - My friend Aaron announces next major release of Pluralsight On-Demand!, their.NET Training Library for Microsoft developers --> http://www.pluralsight.com.
Data + XML + "Oslo" = "It's All Data" - As previously announced, the newly redesigned and expanded Data Developer Center on MSDN!

ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC Beta Released - This team either kicks major ass or drinks a ton of coffee-). They have done it again! Phil Haacked says, "Today at PDC09 (the keynote was streaming live), Bob Muglia announced the release of ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta."
30 "Quick Hit" Videos for folks that couldn't join us at PDC - Also on that kick-ass team, Joe Stagner, prepared 30 “Quick Hit” videos on stuff that’s new in the latest wave for ASP.NET Develoeprs. Cool!

I'm Reading...

samgentile — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:20:48 GMT

I'm not at PDC, but I ordered Roger Jennings' (king of the Azure links) Windows Azure book which was delivered today. Looks good!

Announcing the SQL Server Modeling (née “Oslo”) CTP for November 2009

samgentile — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:56:47 GMT

Kraig B. announces the SQL Server Modeling CTP, as predicted.

New and Notable 392

samgentile — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:59:58 GMT

PDC

PDC 2009 Day 2: Keynote, Steven Sinofsky - Sasha covers the keynote which talked about the development process of Windows 7 and what it means to develop for Windows 7. Internet Explorer was also announced.
PDC 2009 Day 2: Keynote, Scott Guthrie - Coverage by Sasha. Scott announced Silverlight 4 with three foci: Media, Business Applications, and Out-of-Browser Experiences.There are some data binding improvements, UDP multicast support, REST (with ADO.NET Data Services) and WCF enhancements and improvements, and finally WCF RIA Services.There are also enhancements in Visual Studio 2010 support for Silverlight, with a WYSIWYG design surface, XAML intellisense improvements, data binding, layout, styles and other features. Scott Hanselman demos these improvements in VS10.
Silverlight 4 Beta Announced at PDC09: Great Learning Material Too! - In addition to the announcement, John Papa has a great list of links for learning materials
Silverlight 4 Beta Announced! - Shawn W has his take on the announcement
New Web Features in Silverlight 4 Beta - Cliff Simpkins, from CSD, announces the relationship of WCF to Silverlight, "On the high level, we are announcing an exciting alignment between the different web services stacks in Silverlight. ADO.NET Data Services and .NET RIA Services are being rebranded as WCF Data Services and WCF RIA Services to reflect the fact that both technologies are being built out as programming models on top of WCF.....Specifically within the core WCF model, Silverlight 4 Beta has support for a brand new binding: NetTcp. This binding lets Silverlight talk to WCF services using a high-performance TCP pipe, using a duplex message pattern. In Silverlight, the binding is built on top of the sockets support that’s already there since Silverlight 2, so we inherit the security requirements of the Silverlight sockets API. "
Welcome to the WCF RIA Services Beta! - Speaking of that, Brad Abrams, says the words I want to hear, " branding change is a direct result of some significant work we are releasing in this beta and it hopefully makes it very clear that we have one technology base for doing services on the .NET platform and that is WCF. "
Microsoft Office 2010 public beta is live - Been using this for a few days and am impressed
SQL Service Modeling Services - The “Repository” now has an official name: SQL Service Modeling Services.
Silverlight 4 Beta is Now Available - The annoucement from the Silverlight team blog