Articles filed in category '.NET 3.0'

In the third installment of his WPF series, Paul shows you how to get feedback using an Entity Framework entity class. He also shows you how to start expanding user activities, like adding, editing, or deleting screens.

In part 1 of this article, you learned how to create a Windows 8 look and feel for your WPF applications. You were shown a high-level overview of the various components that made up the shell for navigating. In part 2 of this article you will learn to create a WPF Button user control, a Message Box you can style, and a simple Message Broker System. All of these components are used to create the “Windows 8 Style” WPF shell you learned about in part 1.

Markus Egger discusses tools used to create WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation, formerly "Avalon") interfaces, in particular, WinFX Extensions for Visual Studio as well as the Microsoft Expression product line.

July August 2008 .Finalize(): column by Ken Getz.

If you’re lucky enough to be involved in building a new enterprise system, you’ll want to check this out. Rachel takes a look at how the company where she works made some interesting—and forward-looking—decisions, and she shows us the benefits of microservices while she’s at it.

With the advancement in the Silverlight technology starting with the 1.0 release to 2.0, 3.0, and lately 4.0, Silverlight is loudly saying WOW “Watch Out World.” Can you guess which world I am talking about here? It is the RIAs world! Really WOW!

Those helpful buttons for minimize, maximize, and close functions need to be added to your WPF pages if you don’t want to crowd your user’s screen. Paul shows you how.

Microsoft’s Azure platform has finally been released into production. This new entry into the cloud computing market provides .NET developers with a scalable, robust platform for developing applications.After over a year in CTP, Azure is finally ready for prime time. At PDC 2009, Microsoft announced the release of new components, such as the management API, that make Azure worth considering for use in production environments. In this article, I’ll demonstrate how to use ...the different components of Azure Services to build a self-scaling application.See More

The key to understanding lambda expressions is understanding delegates. Delegates play a tremendously important role in developing applications for the .NET Framework, especially when using C# or Visual Basic. Events, a special application of delegates, are used all over the framework. And the application and possibilities of delegates has only grown over time. C# 2.0 introduced the concept of anonymous methods and C# 3.0 and VB 9 take anonymous methods to the next level... with lambda expressions. This article reviews the evolution of delegates and examines possibilities and syntax of delegates and lambdas in .NET 3.5.See More

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a secure, reliable, and scalable messaging platform for the .NET Framework 3.0.With WCF, SOAP messages can be transmitted over a variety of supported protocols including IPC (named pipes), TCP, HTTP and MSMQ. Like any distributed messaging platform, you must establish security policies for protecting messages and for authenticating and authorizing calls. This article will discuss how WCF accomplishes this.

You might have heard some things about NoSQL; how Google and Facebook are using non-relational databases to handle their load. And in most cases, this is where it stopped. NoSQL came about because scaling relational databases is somewhere between extremely hard to impossible.

Visual Studio LightSwitch applications consist of three tiers: presentation, logic and data. This article discusses the logic tier and its save pipeline. The save pipeline is where developers write business logic that runs as changes are processed on the logic tier and saved to the data storage tier. The save pipeline is automatically generated with every LightSwitch application. Understanding the processing done in the save pipeline is not required to successfully build... and deploy applications with LightSwitch, but adding save pipeline business logic provides additional flexibility and control when data is saved. See More

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services can be hosted with Internet Information Services (IIS); with the new Windows Activation Service (WAS) installed with IIS 7.0; or with any managed application process including console, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), or managed Windows service applications.Selecting the right hosting environment for your services is a choice driven largely by deployment requirements related to transport protocol and operating platform.

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch uses a model-centric architecture for defining, building, and executing a 3-tier LightSwitch application.

Tablet PC and Mobile PC development is very popular today, and it will get more popular and important in the future.For Mobile PC developers, there are significant changes coming in the near future, some in the Windows XP timeframe, others in Windows Vista. This article provides an overview over what’s on the drawing board or already available in technology preview builds.

The Microsoft® Sync Framework is the new framework and runtime for adding synchronization, roaming, and offline capabilities to applications. It supports peer-to-peer scenarios, works with devices and services, and is agnostic of data types, stores, and protocols. In this article, I’ll cover the high-level vision for the platform as well as the enabled scenarios made possible by the framework for developers, ISVs, and OEMs.

The Razor syntax is much more than just a clean way to write ASP.NET MVC Views and WebMatrix web pages. In fact, with a working knowledge of the Razor API, you can leverage Razor templates in any application. The Razor API exposes a powerful library for parsing, compiling, and executing templates created using the Razor syntax.

It’s probably one of the most interesting moments to do a post mortem for a Silverlight project. The entire Microsoft ecosystem is boiling around the Silverlight OR HTML 5 debate fueled by the recent PDC and some statements from Microsoft officials. The interesting part about it is that it is a false debate, and like most false debates it will probably lead to nowhere. The simple truth is that Microsoft’s commitment to Silverlight has not changed a bit, and Silverlight i...s more healthy and strong than ever. And the fact that the same Microsoft places an important bet on HTML 5 too can only make me happy as an architect and a developer. Mostly because it assures me I’ll have my fair share of choices in the future without having to leave the development platform I like. The reality is that neither Silverlight/RIA nor HTML 5 will turn out to be the magic to fly us to the land of perfect web apps and, at least for the foreseeable future, there will always be a need for alternatives. That’s why I think the debate on Silverlight or HTML 5 is nonsense in the Microsoft ecosystem. But I digress… Let me tell you about the latest software project I participated in.See More

At PDC 2005, Microsoft introduced brand new technology known as LINQ, which stands for “Language Integrated Query.”The feature-set hiding behind this acronym is truly mind-boggling and worthy of a lot of attention. In short, LINQ introduces a query language similar to SQL Server’s T-SQL, in C# and VB.NET. Imagine that you could issue something like a “select * from customers” statement within C# or VB.NET. This sounds somewhat intriguing, but it doesn’t begin to communicate the power of LINQ.

Microsoft demonstrated a new technology at PDC called LINQ (Language Integrated Query). The following note from Alan Griver, a member of the LINQ team at Microsoft, offers some details related to the LINQ project. In future issues of CoDe Magazine we will have more details on LINQ.Microsoft demonstrated a new technology at PDC called LINQ (Language Integrated Query). The following note from Alan Griver, a member of the LINQ team at Microsoft, offers some details related ...to the LINQ project. In future issues of CoDe Magazine we will have more details on LINQ.See More

I have a client that has a few Windows Services and some EXEs that run on a computer to perform various business functions. Every once in a while, the processes fail and need to be restarted. I helped the client write a Windows Service to monitor their running processes and ensure that they are up and running and to notify them and to attempt to restart those processes. As part of this process, I had to write a class to get a list of all of the processes running on the c...urrent computer or on another computer on their network.See More

Users already have many usernames and passwords for different popular online services, and with OpenID and OAuth, you can leverage those. Why burden users with yet another set of credentials for your site if they can use their Google or Facebook account, or any other OpenID or OAuth account? In this article, I will show you how to do this with ASP.NET 4.5, but more importantly help you understand what’s going on behind the scenes.

Lambda expressions have been around for a while, but they seem poorly understood and generally underused. You can juice up your code with these dynamic types from .NET, according to John. Find out how!

If you want to re-use some of the concepts John introduced in the last two issues, you’ll want to learn all about Dynamic Lambda Expressions work in .NET.

If you are a .NET software developer, you have heard of F#. You may have read an article, seen a talk at a user group, or otherwise heard the buzz. However, if those means of reaching you have failed, at the very least, you have noticed it conspicuously appear in the list of languages you can base a solution on in Visual Studio 2010. If you write code on the .NET Framework, you would have to be living under a rock to have not heard of F#.

Recent polls show that nearly fifty percent of applications with reporting functionality use Crystal Reports, and about twenty percent use SQL Server Reporting Services. This article will cover some of the major reporting tasks that developers face, and how the two reporting tools (Crystal and SQL Server Reporting Services) handle the tasks. Finally, I’ll provide a sneak preview at the next scheduled releases of both products (the next version of Crystal Reports and SQL ...Server Reporting Services 2008).See More

rewarding experience of writing and speaking is taking a seemingly complex topic and making it more understandable and accessible. In this article, I’ll show how to create and use OLAP databases and cubes using SQL Server Analysis Services 2008 (SSAS 2008). The benefits of OLAP are significant, even monumental - but like most technologies, reaping the benefits means considerable research and effort into leveraging the tools. In the case of OLAP databases, developers nee...d to learn the differences between OLAP databases and relational databases, and how to use the tools that SSAS provides. In this article, I’ll walk through how to create an OLAP database and how to use the tools in Analysis Services to enhance the OLAP database. By the end, you’ll see why businesses and other organizations see the value of OLAP databases. I’ll also briefly cover some of the plans Microsoft has announced for the next generation of OLAP tools. See More

This article will present a crash-course in the basics of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). WCF is one of the exciting new capabilities in the .NET 3.0 Framework. It provides a unified and uniform programming model for building distributed applications. Those who previously built multiple code bases to deal with Web services and .NET remoting will surely come to appreciate the power standardization that WCF offers. WCF, like any other new technology, requires resea...rch and experimentation to become productive. This article will assume no prior experience with WCF, and will walk you through some basic exercises and steps to show WCF’s capabilities.See More

How many software tasks DON’T involve reading through data? Answer: very few. Developers work all the time with database data, XML data, DataSets, collections, lists, and arrays-all with different syntax and functionality for each one. Developers who write T-SQL code often covet set-based language statements when they work against other types of data. Additionally, developers who have coded against strongly-typed custom collections wish they could write SQL database quer...ies with IntelliSense. Language Integrated Query (LINQ), a set of extensions to the .NET Framework for the next version of Visual Studio codename “Orcas”, brings the promise of integrated and uniform query capabilities to increase developer productivity when working with different types of data. While LINQ is a large topic worthy of books, this edition of The Baker’s Dozen will provide a crash course to learn what’s under the LINQ hood.See More

In this article you will learn how to isolate yourself from change by taking advantage of the Provider Model.Designing your applications using the Provider Model will allow you to swap components out at runtime, thus allowing you to upgrade them easily.

The new view engine for ASP.NET MVC and WebMatrix combines simplicity and functionality to facilitate clean view development. In this article, I’ll dive into the Razor View Engine, the new default view engine for the ASP.NET MVC framework and WebMatrix products. Razor’s main goal is to simplify view development and to improve developer productivity while providing a clean view infrastructure.

Markus Egger discusses the current State of WPF and Silverlight and the overall importance and acceptance of these technologies.

Writing software is hard, particularly when the tools you use force you to think at too low a level; it’s time to start thinking about changing the way you write code… by making it easier to write code.Taking on new ways to program doesn’t always mean tossing away your favorite programming language or environment. Sometimes it just means taking a new look at how you’re using your language and trying out a few new ideas. It’s time to take a hard look at your favorite lang...uage and see if it’s possible to “fall in love all over again”.See More

The integration of the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) inside SQL Server 2005 (SQL CLR 1.0) enabled database programmers to write business logic in the form of functions, stored procedures, triggers, data types, and aggregates using modern .NET programming languages.This article presents the advances to the CLR integration introduced in SQL Server 2008, which significantly enhances the kinds of applications supported by SQL Server.

Sometimes your .NET applications need to interact with Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to authenticate users, get a list of users, retrieve groups, or determine which users are within which AD groups. There are a few different approaches you can use to retrieve information from your AD database within your domain.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides a run-time environment for your services, enabling you to expose CLR types as services and to consume services as CLR types.Although in theory you can build services without it, in practice, WCF significantly simplifies this task. WCF is Microsoft’s implementation of a set of industry standards defining service interactions, type conversion, marshaling, and various protocols’ management. Because of that, WCF provides intero...perability between services, and it promotes productivity, including the essential off-the-shelf plumbing required by almost any application. This article describes the essential concepts and building blocks of WCF and its architecture, enabling you to build simple services. Future articles in this series will address specific aspects, such as transaction management and security.See More

Visual Studio 2008 as well as the .NET 3.0 extensions for Visual Studio 2005 add several new templates that allow you to quickly create .NET 3.0 items such as WPF forms, Workflows, and WCF services. We’ve used templates such as these since the beginning of time to create traditional application elements such as Windows Forms, Web Forms, and User Controls, so you would think that these are equally great; or would you? Unfortunately, creating WCF projects or project items ...come with more baggage than you can imagine. They also don’t exactly promote the best practices I feel should be considered when designing WCF services. So if you don’t use the built-in templates to create your services, what do you use? Well keep reading and I’ll show you how to create everything you need manually with ease while maintaining good design and coding practices.See More

If you’d like a neat summary of the many interesting and useful changes in CODE Magazine’s free development framework, you’ve come to the right place. Markus talks about themes, input validation, security, and binding, Web API service hosting, calling REST services, and interacting with the community and GitHub.

It can be tough keeping up with all the new technologies released by Microsoft, but Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is a technology you do not want to miss.This article demonstrates the benefits of Windows Workflow and invites you to roll up your sleeves and get started creating your first basic workflows.

In Part 1 of this article you learned how to work with orientation changes on the Windows Phone and how to create horizontally scrolling pages using Panorama and Pivot pages. In Part 2 you’ll see how to interact with some of the built-in applications on the phone through the use of the Launcher and Chooser applications.