Issue: 2011 - March/April

Mar/April Editorial by Rod Paddock

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

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.

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

Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new product in the Visual Studio family aimed at developers who want to quickly create data-centric business applications for the desktop and the cloud.LightSwitch is an extensible development environment and application framework that simplifies the development process because it lets you concentrate on the business logic and does a lot of the remaining work for you. LightSwitch is perfect for small business or departmental productivity ap...plications that need to get done fast. In this article I will walk you through creating a business application from beginning to end using Visual Studio LightSwitch.Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new product in the Visual Studio family aimed at developers who want to quickly create data-centric business applications for the desktop and the cloud.LightSwitch is an extensible development environment and application framework that simplifies the development process because it lets you concentrate on the business logic and does a lot of the remaining work for you. LightSwitch is perfect for small business or departmental productivity applications that need to get done fast. In this article I will walk you through creating a business application from beginning to end using Visual Studio LightSwitch.See More

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

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.

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

Mar/April 2011 Doc Detective

Mar/April 2011 Managed CODE Article