The Region: News and Views of Microsoft Regional Directors

Inside the Validation Infrastructure of RIA Services

Brian Noyes — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:18:56 GMT

Brian Noyes writes "...I show how to use the built-in validation attributes of the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace on both the client and server side, how to use custom validation via attributes, how to invoke validation logic on.." Read post »

A Look at VS Add-in for Windows 7 Taskbar Extras

Kate Gregory — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:02:21 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | Visual Studio

Kate Gregory writes "...If your build results in errors or warnings, you'll also get a taskbar icon overlay when it's done letting you know about them.) And here we have handy thumbnail buttons - for build, debug, and start without debugging:..." Read post »

Code Sample Will Auto-Update Silverlight Out-of-Browser App

Markus Egger — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:25:52 GMT

Markus Egger's blog | Silverlight

Markus Egger writes "...I was surprised to learn that an app taken out of the browser does not automatically update itself when a newer version is available on the server...it turns out you can simply add a few lines of code to the app’s constructor to enable updating. Add the following code to your App class’ constructor..." Read post »

Insight About Useful Code Comments

Kate Gregory — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:23:17 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | TechTalk

Kate Gregory writes "...Recently, I was shown this quote. The person who showed it...is a smart person I respect, so I'm going to leave that person un-named. The authors of the quote, Kernighan and Plauger, are legends of the field. In 1979...they wrote:..." Read post »

Run this Sample Code to Switch Templates Dynamically in Silverlight

Paul Sheriff — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:06:38 GMT

Paul Sheriff's blog | Editors Picks

Paul Sheriff writes "...Silverlight has the flexibility to modify the look of your controls dynamically at runtime with just a few lines of code. Take a look at Figures 1 and 2 and you will see two different views of the same list box and data. To accomplish this, you simply need to setup two different resources of XAML code..." Read post »

Demystifying clientsettings.ini

Alexander Wechsler — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:27:11 GMT

Alexander Wechsler's blog | Windows Embedded

Alexander Wechsler writes "...Managing Windows CE based embedded devices via System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM, formerly known as SMS Server) is not as straightforward as managing WES 2009 or WES 7 devices...The differences start with the setup...A special configuration file called clientsettings.ini needs to be configured correctly...A typical ini file for a native mode installation looks like this:..." Read post »

Bug Solution to System.Core in VS2010 Projects

Steven Smith — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:22:16 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | Visual Studio

Steven Smith writes "...I just ran into an odd issue with a VS2010 project. In my case it was an MVC 2 application I was upgrading from VS2008. One of the built-in controllers (ProfileController) was failing to compile because it could not resolve the Linq extension method symbols Single() and Matches(). These are located in the System.Core assembly. I checked my project references in Solution Explorer, and..." Read post »

EyeOpener! Expression Web 4 is a Gem

Markus Egger — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:22:10 GMT

Markus Egger's blog | Editors Picks

Markus Egger writes "...The basic idea is that you open a URL in SuperPreview and pick the browsers you would like to see...There are side-by-side comparisons of various renderings. You can even overlay 2 renderings to see the exact differences between the different browsers...I find it much easier to verify my sites work with multiple browsers and versions using SuperPreview than going to each browser manually. Many I simply..." Read post »

LightSwitch Needs to Succeed and so do the People who Need it

Andrew Brust — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:33:15 GMT

Andrew Brust's blog | Visual Studio

Andrew Brust writes "...I think developers should be productive quickly and then have the opportunity to learn more and do even better. In other words, the skill levels should be Good and Better, rather than Bad and Good. LightSwitch makes that possible...Version 1 won’t be perfect. Version 1 is never perfect. If things go well, Version 1 proves a point, and..." Read post »

Winning Recipe When it Comes to Application Architecture

Rockford Lhotka — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:29:42 GMT

Rockford Lhotka's blog | TechTalk

Rockford Lhotka writes "...application architecture, in my view, includes “horizontal” and “vertical” concepts. Horizontal concepts apply to any and all applications and are largely orthogonal to any specific application design. These concepts include guidelines around authentication, authorization, integration with operational monitoring systems...Vertical concepts cover the actual shape of applications, including..." Read post »

SCCE is in the Cloud

Alexander Wechsler — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:27:07 GMT

Alexander Wechsler's blog | Azure

Alexander Wechsler writes "...Devices are able to connect to SQL Azure instances in the cloud......Sync Framework is only supported on desktop and WES systems. No support for Windows CE or Windows Mobile/WP7. Why is this so? The Sync Framework team should..." Read post »

Where to Find the Hidden Toolbox Search in VS 2010

Brian Noyes — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:22:58 GMT

Brian Noyes's blog | Visual Studio

Brian Noyes writes "...frustrated wading through the dozens of Silverlight controls in my toolbox trying to spot one I needed, and it occurred to me that there “ought to be an add-in to search the toolbox...You can read about it here..." Read post »

Read and Recommended - Employees First Customers Second

Venkatarangan Tnc — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:12:25 GMT

Venkatarangan Tnc's blog | Suggested Reading

Venkatarangan Tnc writes "...The book talks about the concept of a value zone, the importance of empowering the people in the value zone, how the layers of management in an organization though needed adds little to the end value that goes to a custome...Of all the concepts in the book, the idea of “Value Zone” did capture..." Read post »

BindingNavigator for WPF - Code Sample RibbonGroups

Christian Nagel — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:10:56 GMT

Christian Nagel's blog | Editors Picks

Christian Nagel writes "...I’ve created a user interface that looks akin to the Windows Forms BindingNavigator by using the ribbon control. Of course the ribbon control allows for a much more enhanced UI, but this is another topic. The new look is shown in this screenshot..." Read post »

Code Analysis Techniques

Steven Smith — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:11:23 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | TechTalk

Steven Smith writes "...The perspective of an outside authority can often uncover design decisions that represent “low hanging fruit” and can quickly and easily be adjusted to produce a much better solution. Sometimes the hard part really is just knowing where the problem is – after that fixing it is easy. That reminds me of a story I heard somewhere a long time ago, that I’ll wrap up with:..." Read post »

Creating BindingNavigator for WPF

Christian Nagel — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:11:21 GMT

Christian Nagel's blog | Editors Picks

Christian Nagel writes "...To get a BindingNavigator to WPF that already exists for a long time just a simple class is needed that adapts the CollectionViewSource and defines commands that navigates through the records by using the CollectionViewSource. Now all what’s needed is to define a UI that fires the commands. This is shown..." Read post »

Helping Fellow Developers Through Project Phoenix

Scott Seely — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:47:34 GMT

Scott Seely's blog | TechTalk

Scott Seely writes "...every MVP gets 3 MSDN Universal Subscriptions- 1 to use and 2 to give to worthy recipients. To pick a worthy recipient, an unemployed or underemployed developer needs to propose a software project for a non-profit agency, school, or church to be assisted by Project Phoenix...is not a ‘free lunch.’ It supports the developers’ efforts so that they can gain from the work they do. I do recommend that you visit..." Read post »

Learn About Metadata Classes and Shared Code in WCF RIA Services

Brian Noyes — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:49:28 GMT

Brian Noyes's blog | Windows Communication Foundation

Brian Noyes writes "...I explain the role and use of metadata classes to add attributes and functionality to existing entity classes that you cannot easily modify directly, such as the properties on an Entity Framework entity...I show how you can define chunks of shared code on the server side and how they become available client side through the RIA Services code generation..." Read post »

Example Using Code Contracts in VS2010

Steven Smith — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 18:49:26 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | Visual Studio

Steven Smith writes "...With the Code Contracts installed, you can start to use them in your code in place of things like guard clauses to ensure that a parameter is not null. The benefit of this approach is that you get a richer experience at design/development time and you can also ensure, via compilation errors, that certain things simply cannot occur in your application. Code Contracts uses..." Read post »

Women in Tech

Kimberly L Tripp — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:16:30 GMT

Kimberly L Tripp's blog | TechTalk

Kimberly L Tripp writes "...I do love the SQL community for so many reasons and this is DEFINITELY one of them. To be honest, I've never really felt singled out as a "WOMAN" in tech. I've always felt like just another person struggling to do the tech and to do it well. I've found that you must do things well to get ahead but I (luckily) haven't been in a situation where nothing but my gender stopped me from getting ahead or getting something done. To take that even further..." Read post »

How to Simplify Text Resources in Silverlight

Sondre Bjellas — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:14:37 GMT

Sondre Bjellas's blog | Silverlight

Sondre Bjellas writes "...simplify the way you work with resources in Silverlight 4. The normal procedure to bind against resources is writing an binding statement in the .Content or .Text property of your elements. I will explain how you can use a dependency property to extend your Silverlight controls with an Resource.Key (ResourceKey) property and one for Resource.Tooltip..." Read post »

Windows Phone 7 Link Resources

Kate Gregory — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:13:22 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | TechTalk

Kate Gregory writes "...I'm collecting link on Windows Phone 7 topics...pictures and links to dev tools...Windows Phone 7 paper prototype to supplement your emulator experience..." Read post »

New Microsoft Tools are they Harmony or Cacophony

Andrew Brust — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:10:57 GMT

Andrew Brust's blog | TechTalk

Andrew Brust writes "Microsoft’s got a lot of good answers to a great number of important software development questions. Now it just needs to make those answers coordinated and consistent. If it can really integrate these tools, then..." Read post »

Adding App Page Ribbon - Dialogs on SharePoint 2010

Vinod Unny — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:10:51 GMT

Vinod Unny's blog | Office System

Vinod Unny writes "...Now it’s easy to get a “global” Ribbon by simply omitting the RegistrationId and RegistrationType attributes in the Elements.xml file...What is not so obvious...add a Ribbon to a particular Application Page when the page does not host any Web part or user control...I’ll also take a look at interacting with a modal dialog using the new framework in SharePoint from this ribbon. First, open up VS2010..." Read post »

SQL Benchmarking Introducing SSDs Random Inserts with Wait Stats Details

Paul Randal — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:55:23 GMT

Paul Randal's blog | SQL Server

Paul Randal writes "...You can see my benchmarking hardware setup here, with the addition of the Fusion-io ioDrive Duo 640GB drives that Fusion-io were nice enough to lend me...In this set of tests I wanted to see how the SSDs behaved for random reads and writes. To do this my test harness does the following:..." Read post »

VS 2010 Patch Released for Growing Find and Replace Window

Gill Cleeren — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:53:31 GMT

Gill Cleeren's blog | Visual Studio

Gill Cleeren writes "...we’ve just hit the most reported bug on Connect. The Find and Replace window grows 16 pixels every time you use it. Take a look below at what happens when doing CTRL-SHIFT-F several times in a row!" Read post »

What is Inside the Microsoft.Data Namespace?

Sondre Bjellas — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:39:24 GMT

Sondre Bjellas's blog | TechTalk

Sondre Bjellas writes "...Here is my analysis of the recently “released” (embedded) Microsoft.Data.dll assembly, the namespace and the types it includes. It’s been the topic of a lot of heated debate recently, with viewpoints I’m unable to relate to and understand just from reading, so I needed to understand. The debate is stemming from..." Read post »

My July 2010 SQL Q&A column is Live

Paul Randal — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 02:46:11 GMT

Paul Randal's blog | Suggested Reading

Paul Randal writes "...The July edition of TechNet Magazine is available on the web now and has the latest installment of my regular SQL Q&A column (and I forgot to blog about it a couple of weeks back). This month's topics are..." Read post »

F# the ACM and the SEC

Edgar Sanchez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:38:17 GMT

Edgar Sanchez's blog | TechTalk

Edgar Sanchez writes "...I have nothing against Python, on the contrary I like most of (the little I know of) it, and I’m fully aware of the myriads of working solutions written in Python, so more power to the Python people! It’s only that I think that, looking forward -particularly in the financial industry, we are better served by functional languages like F#..." Read post »

A Quick and Dirty Implementation of Excel NORMINV in F#

Edgar Sanchez — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:37:59 GMT

Edgar Sanchez's blog | NET Framework

Edgar Sanchez writes "...A couple of weeks ago I posted an example implementation of Excel NORMINV function in C#, in there I mentioned that what I actually needed was an F# version, but I used C# as an stepping stone moving from the C++ version I originally found. Well, here you have my attempt at implementing NORMINV in F#:..." Read post »

Is VS LightSwitch Another Level of Abstraction?

Christian Nagel — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:37:53 GMT

Christian Nagel's blog | Visual Studio

Christian Nagel writes "...Visual Studio LightSwitch allows doing fancy UIs calling services across the network, using complex databases… without a single line of code. Probably in reality several lines of code are still required as there’s a C# and a Visual Basic template for LightSwitch inside Visual Studio...Visual Studio LightSwitch is not the first tool to offer such functionality. Several others failed doing so. What’s different now? Reason other tools failed..." Read post »

Azure Security Guidance Published

Rockford Lhotka — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:37:47 GMT

Rockford Lhotka's blog | Editors Picks

Rockford Lhotka writes "...important reading if you are using Windows Azure..." Read post »

RIA Services in an MVVM World Sample

Brian Noyes — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:42:53 GMT

Brian Noyes's blog | TechTalk

Brian Noyes writes "...using RIA Services in an MVVM world. That includes not using the DomainDataSource anymore and encapsulating the domain context in your view model and making the calls through it from there...I point to a recommended solution from the RIA Services team – specifically to mock out the DomainClient that sits on the other side of the domain context and makes the actual service calls. That is not super easy, but..." Read post »

Data-Centric Silverlight Applications with VS LightSwitch

Christian Nagel — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:42:52 GMT

Christian Nagel's blog | Silverlight

Christian Nagel writes "...Can’t wait to try this out and find out about customizations and...This could be a new way to write fast applications for Windows Azure! Hosting the application in Windows Azure, using the SQL Azure database..." Read post »

Data-Centric WPF Apps with VS 2010 - Code Sample

Christian Nagel — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:42:50 GMT

Christian Nagel's blog | TechTalk

Christian Nagel writes "...Data Sources from Visual Studio 2010 allows for easily creating user interfaces for WPF applications to read/write data. Previously, with Visual Studio 2008 this was only available for Windows Forms applications, and used the DataSet behind the scenes. Now WPF is supported as well, and an Entity Framework can be used....After creating a WPF application, a data source can be created..." Read post »

Avoid Traps When Installing a SCCM Client on CE 6.0

Alexander Wechsler — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:42:43 GMT

Alexander Wechsler's blog | Editors Picks

Alexander Wechsler writes "...Installing a SCCM Agent onto an Embedded device is not as straightforward as one might think. There are several traps to fall into and I am going to shed some light on quite a few of them in this and my upcoming blog posts. Let us start with some fundamental facts:.." Read post »

Microsoft LightSwitch Defends Productivity

Andrew Brust — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:26:28 GMT

Andrew Brust's blog | Visual Studio

Andrew Brust writes "...We need productivity programmers to be accommodated on the Microsoft stack. if they are not, they will go to other stacks. In fact, they already have. We have to try and get them back. They create opportunities for enterprise devs, and they create opportunities for their customers. I hope LightSwitch appeals to them. I hope it brings them back to the Microsoft ecosystem. I don’t know if it will. But..." Read post »

VS LightSwitch Deploys on the Cloud or Desktop

Joe Homnick — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:26:26 GMT

Joe Homnick's blog | Visual Studio

Joe Homnick writes "...You can deploy this on the Cloud or the Desktop and start a polished application almost right out of the File->New box. LightSwitch delivers that RAD environment that VB 6.0 developers are used to, while incorporating the latest/greatest technologies and unlimited extensibility. You can get more information at..." Read post »

Sample Code Filters CollectionView Data in Silverlight 4

Paul Sheriff — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:26:22 GMT

Paul Sheriff's blog | Silverlight

Paul Sheriff writes "...For this example, I will be using a simple Product class with two properties, and a list of Product objects using the Generic List class. Try this out by creating a Product class as shown in the following code...A simple way to allow your users to filter data from a collection with just a few lines of code! NOTE: You can download the complete sample..." Read post »

Read and Recommended: The Jazz Process

Bill Wagner — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:26:20 GMT

Bill Wagner's blog | Suggested Reading

Bill Wagner writes "...You may not agree with everything, but it will make you think. Adrian Cho uses a jazz combo as a metaphor...Throughout the book, he suggests themes from his experience as a jazz bassist...The Jazz Process will open your eyes to a different way of thinking about teams, business, and software development. It’s a huge payback for the time invested in reading it." Read post »

Microsoft LightSwitch: Like Access on Steroids

Marcel de Vries — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:26:13 GMT

Marcel de Vries's blog | Visual Studio

Marcel de Vries writes "...It kind of looks like Microsoft access on steroids and produces not only web based applications, but does so in a scalable and customizable way. You can select a Desktop, browser or cloud based deployment model. It also creates applications that have integration options with..." Read post »

Getting CSLA 4 Silverlight Codebase to Build in WP7 Beta SDK

Rockford Lhotka — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:59:20 GMT

Rockford Lhotka's blog | TechTalk

Rockford Lhotka writes "...recording the various things I had to do to get the CSLA 4 Silverlight codebase to build in the WP7 (Windows Phone 7) beta SDK. This has nothing to do with getting anything actually running – this is just the stuff I had to change to get the code to compile..." Read post »

Code Sample and Walk Through: Cancellation with .NET 4

Christian Nagel — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:55:42 GMT

Christian Nagel's blog | NET Framework

Christian Nagel writes "...The first example demonstrates cancelling a parallel for loop. Parallel.For is new with .NET 4 for doing iterations in parallel. In the sample the loop is cancelled from a separate task after 500 ms...No matter what asynchronous operations are available, they should be cancelable with the help of a CancellationToken. That’s one of the great new features of .NET 4...." Read post »

Quick and Dirty Implementation of Excel NORMINV Function in C#

Edgar Sanchez — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:55:40 GMT

Edgar Sanchez's blog | Editors Picks

Edgar Sanchez writes "...I found out that some formulas used the NORMINV function which doesn't exist in the .NET libraries. I started to look for F#, and then C#, implementations without luck...The closest thing I found was a C++ implementation...I decided to do the translation in two steps: first from C++ to C#, then on to F#. The C# translation seems to be working now, and you can download it..." Read post »

Scrum vs. CMMI Level 3

Edgar Sanchez — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:19:42 GMT

Edgar Sanchez's blog | TechTalk

Edgar Sanchez writes "...Of late, I have been helping start a Microsoft SDL implementation effort and, as part of it, it comes the decision of what flavor of MSF we should use: Agile (Scrum nowadays) or CMMI...this is a corporate customer, expecting to have budgets and schedules defined in order to green light any sizeable project, so we naturally lean to CMMI but..." Read post »

How to Get jQuery 1.4.2 IntelliSense Working in Visual Studio 2008

Michael Palermo — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:19:41 GMT

Michael Palermo's blog | Visual Studio

Michael Palermo writes "...For those still using Visual Studio 2008 and developing using jQuery, you will no doubt desire the use of IntelliSense in your text editor to browse the jQuery objects. To make sure you get this benefit, you must have SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 applied and run a patch...[Steps]" Read post »

Code Showing Cancellation with .NET

Christian Nagel — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:19:39 GMT

Christian Nagel's blog | Editors Picks

Christian Nagel writes "...Before .NET 4 no standard mechanism has been available to cancel asynchronous method calls. That’s new with .NET 4.0...the BackgroundWorker implements cooperative cancellation by invoking the CancelAsync method, the long-running method needs to verify if..." Read post »

Controlling Chaos in Software Development

Joe Homnick — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:57:40 GMT

Joe Homnick's blog | TechTalk

Joe Homnick writes "...how do you control this chaos in software development? We have been doing a lot of work with the Scrum approach to software development implemented with Visual Studio Team System the last few years and I feel this is the best approach to controlling this creative chaotic process in software development. Scrum...has its roots of meaning in the process during a Rugby match where..." Read post »

How to Get the Event-Causing Control ID in ASP.NET Web Forms

Michael Palermo — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:57:38 GMT

Michael Palermo's blog | ASPNET

Michael Palermo writes "...Very early in the life of a web form in ASP.NET, you may need to know what control fired the event that caused the post-back to occur. Perhaps you need to know what button was clicked before the click event handler is executed...If you include the following extension method in your code, you can get the ID of the event causing control from the HttpRequest instance:..." Read post »

Enabling SCCM for Windows CE 6.0 Based Devices

Alexander Wechsler — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:57:36 GMT

Alexander Wechsler's blog | Editors Picks

Alexander Wechsler writes "...there was a little gap regarding Windows CE 6.0 based devices that Microsoft has now closed with an adapted SCCM client agent. Due to the fact that...more and more OEMs are moving onto the most recent OS platform it is great to have this support in the field. Go and look for the new client at..." Read post »

Survey Results on Use of Solid State Disks - Drives (SSDs)

Paul Randal — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:31:21 GMT

Paul Randal's blog | SQL Server

Paul Randal writes "...The results reflect what I've been hearing when teaching classes and talking to customers/conference attendees over the last six months. People are becoming more interested in SSDs but there's still a lot of wariness about them and of course the whole money issue of being able to buy them. I'm also not surprised...by the number of people who've analyzed their IOPS requirements and concluded that..." Read post »

Releasing the Potential of Prism

Brian Noyes — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:31:19 GMT

Brian Noyes's blog | Editors Picks

Brian Noyes writes "...motivations for adopting Prism: Managing large projects; Distributed teams; Packaging functionality for different deployments per customer; Separation of concerns for maintainability...also discuss a little of what the team is working on in Prism 4 – specifically the MVVM pattern and using MEF for modularity. Check it out..." Read post »

Resources on Scrum and VS2010

Richard Hundhausen — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:13:01 GMT

Richard Hundhausen's blog | TechTalk

Richard Hundhausen writes "...copy of the presentation...[and] link to the download of the Microsoft VM with 2010 all loaded and the excellent labs" Read post »

Code for Resource Management in Interop Scenarios

Christian Nagel — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:12:59 GMT

Christian Nagel's blog | TechTalk

Christian Nagel writes "...a scenario for interop between MFC/C++ and WPF...requirements to release the resources. This information is added here. With the sample code a UserControl1 and a HwndSource object are instantiated..." Read post »

Sort Data Using Code with the Silverlight CollectionViewSource

Paul Sheriff — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:12:56 GMT

Paul Sheriff's blog | Editors Picks

Paul Sheriff writes "...You can take advantage of the CollectionViewSource from your XAML, but dynamically change the sort order of your lists with just a few lines of code...will be using a simple Product class with three properties, and a collection of Product objects using the Generic List class. Try this out by creating a Product class as shown in the following code:..." Read post »

Learn How to Extend Visual Studio 2010

Kate Gregory — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:34:45 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | Visual Studio

Kate Gregory writes "...This one is on Customizing and Extending Visual Studio. About half of it is live already...You can get your work done a lot faster if you tweak Visual Studio to meet your needs. It doesn't have to cost you money and it doesn't have to cost you much time. Take a look..." Read post »

Windows Phone 7 and the Court of Pundit Opinion

Andrew Brust — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 19:34:40 GMT

Andrew Brust's blog | Editors Picks

Andrew Brust writes "...I will...present some of the consensus findings, and how I think those findings bode for the success of the WP7 platform. Here goes...To win this one, Microsoft needs to needs to..." Read post »

Learn How to Extend Visual Studio 2010

Kate Gregory — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:57:30 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | Visual Studio

Read and Recommended: SolidQ Journal

Greg Low — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:22:24 GMT

Greg Low's blog | Suggested Reading

Greg Low writes "...Now the SQL Server community has a new high quality online publication...Some of that goodness has now been rolled up into a monthly publication called SolidQ Journal. You'll find the website here:..." Read post »

On the Use and Misuse of Patterns

Rockford Lhotka — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:03:59 GMT

Rockford Lhotka's blog | TechTalk

Rockford Lhotka writes "...only use a pattern if you have the problem it solves, and the positive consequences outweigh the negative consequences...if you use a pattern, make sure your entire team understand the pattern and your implementation of the pattern...The pattern movement has been going on for at least 15 years in our industry. And over that time I think it has been far more beneficial than destructive. But that doesn’t mean..." Read post »

Viewed and Recommended: Windows Summit Sessions

Kate Gregory — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:01:05 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | Editors Picks

Kate Gregory writes "...I recommend this as a way to learn the concepts that are important to anyone writing for Windows 7, and to learn the advantages that Windows 7 can offer to you as a developer and to your users. I saw three different approaches to code in the sessions I watched...learn about power management, or background services, using sensors, or writing location aware applications? It's really worth taking..." Read post »

Resources on WCF RIA Services

Brian Noyes — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:37:59 GMT

Brian Noyes's blog | Windows Communication Foundation

Brian Noyes writes "...about WCF RIA Services and focused on the internals of what is going on with deferred execution queries, metadata for entities, and the services under the covers, as well as exposing OData, SOAP, and JSON endpoints and consuming them. Here are the slides and demos." Read post »

Bug in iOS 4 Device Affecting Exchange

Guy Barrette — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:36:17 GMT

Guy Barrette's blog | Editors Picks

Guy Barrette writes "...If you’re experiencing problems with your iOS 4 device and your Exchange server, be advised that there’s a bug in iOS4. the email I received from my hosted Exchange provider:..." Read post »

PDC - Scott Untangles a Twisted Pair to go or not?

Scott Golightly — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:34:44 GMT

Scott Golightly's blog | TechTalk

Scott Golightly writes "...I am torn on whether I will be going...As I think about what I will be discussing with my boss I have come up with the following reasons to not go and also reasons to ask for permission to go..." Read post »

PDC - Guy Untangles a Twisted Pair to go or not?

Guy Barrette — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:33:07 GMT

Guy Barrette's blog | TechTalk

Guy Barrette writes "...Looks like we’ll be able to watch all the keynotes and sessions live from the comfort of our cubicles..." Read post »

PDC - Alexander Untangles a Twisted Pair to go or Not?

Alexander Wechsler — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:33:03 GMT

Alexander Wechsler's blog | TechTalk

Alexander Wechsler writes "...Arguably, there may be a better time of the year to visit Redmond than October 28th / 29th from a weather perspective, but this is about technology, right?...Makes much sense to me!" Read post »

PDC - Mauro Untangles a Twisted Pair to go or not?

Mauro SantAnna — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:33:00 GMT

Mauro SantAnna's blog | TechTalk

Mauro SantAnna writes "...So it seems it will be a bit like the MVP Summit, where some sessions take place all around Microsoft Campus and not just at the Convention Center...An advantage of this approach is that you usually can get very senior Microsoft people to speak because they don’t need spend a lot of time travelling...am not sure I will attend, after all it’s just two days to fly all the way from Brazil, but..." Read post »

WebMatrix, Razor and a Return to Simplicity

Andrew Brust — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:27:18 GMT

Andrew Brust's blog | TechTalk

Andrew Brust writes "Is this just a freebie tool that Microsoft will obsess on for a while and then let languish? Is it just a cynical attempt at converting PHP developers over to the full-blown ASP.NET stack? It’s hard to say…and Microsoft needs to make a real commitment to this WebMatrix if it wants developers to invest in it.But it’s a great start, and it’s the first thing I have seen in a while from Microsoft that..." Read post »

Windows 7 Touch or Microsoft Surface

Neil Roodyn — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:27:16 GMT

Neil Roodyn's blog | TechTalk

Neil Roodyn writes "...the objective is really to get multiple people engaged then Microsoft Surface provides a far superior solution. For a single user touch experience go for Windows 7...while the touch is getting better in Windows 7, the shell in Windows 7 is not designed to be 100% driven by touch, whereas the Microsoft Surface Shell is designed for touch from the ground up. With Windows 7..." Read post »

PDC 2010

Guy Barrette — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:27:14 GMT

Guy Barrette's blog | TechTalk

Guy Barrette writes "...date and location for it’s next PDC: October 28 and 29, 2010 in Redmond. Yep! Redmond, not L.A.! Looks like we’ll be able to..." Read post »

Unity as IoC Container for Caliburn.Micro

Sondre Bjellas — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:27:11 GMT

Sondre Bjellas's blog | TechTalk

Sondre Bjellas writes "Caliburn.Micro is smaller, more lightweight and it has a lot of good features that I think are useful when building rich applications for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7...Reducing complexity should always be one of the top priorities when building software...Go ahead and create a new WPF project or open any existing project you might have...This is how my bootstrapper ends up looking..." Read post »

Windows Azure Platform Appliance

Guy Barrette — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:26:51 GMT

Guy Barrette's blog | Editors Picks

Guy Barrette writes "...what is the Azure Platform Appliance? From what I read today, this is Microsoft’s private cloud offering for governments, large organizations and service providers. Cool! This mean that I will be able to download it and install it on a couple of servers! Not exactly. The Appliance is a complete solution that..." Read post »

Visual Studio Offers Another Approach to Restart and Recovery

Kate Gregory — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:40:29 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | Visual Studio

Kate Gregory writes "...it might help you to know how a certain MDI application near and dear to all our hearts does it ... Visual Studio. Visual Studio does a Word-like autosave every 5 minutes. When the application blows up, it doesn't do anything in particular on the way down. But when it's restarted, it takes a look at the files it has auto recover versions of and asks..." Read post »

Surprising Sample Survey Results on Log File Configurations

Paul Randal — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:32:26 GMT

Paul Randal's blog | SQL Server

Paul Randal writes "...I'm impressed. 75% of all databases in the sample have less than 100 VLFs, and 97.4% have less than 500 VLFs...was very surprised by the 50/50 split of SIMPLE/non-SIMPLE recovery model for user databases. My guess is that more of these *should* be in FULL to comply with..." Read post »

More Details Released on the Amazing Olympics Technical Solutions

Kate Gregory — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:28:19 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | TechTalk

Kate Gregory writes "...This one focuses on the way the broadcasters were able to insert ads (to pay for all that glorious coverage) and build highlights packages. As it says in the case study:...Definitely worth a read to see how it was done and how it will no doubt continue to be done in the future...." Read post »

Sample REST Services URLs in Windows Azure with WCF4s Routing Integration Feature

Christian Weyer — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:19:11 GMT

Christian Weyer's blog | Windows Communication Foundation

Christian Weyer writes "...WCF4 has a nice feature I like really a lot. It is the integration into the System.Web.Routing engine when it comes to hosting your services. You can simply add a route to your service implementations in the global.asax file – as seen in the code below. No need for .svc files...just plain WCF4. Download a small sample solution..." Read post »

Windows Identity Framework Training Kit Available

Patrick Hynds — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:13:17 GMT

Patrick Hynds's blog | Security

Patrick Hynds writes "...now would be a good time to get up to speed if you have been waiting for the train to get some speed. Vittorio Bertocci has pulled together the training he has been delivering around the world...[get the] Identity Training Kit here..." Read post »

Kin Post Mortem - Top-10 Style

Andrew Brust — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:05:59 GMT

Andrew Brust's blog | Windows Mobile

Andrew Brust writes "...Microsoft would have to kill their Kin. But Windows Phone 7, which still looks promising, got under development quite a while back. When that team was organized, the legacy Windows Mobile team was disbanded...With WP7 on track and looking good, why on earth did Microsoft bring Kin to market? Here are my top 10 reasons, some more serious than others..." Read post »

Code Sample Determines the Current Controller or Action in an Html Helper

Steven Smith — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:05:54 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | ASPNET

Steven Smith writes "...the HtmlHelper has a ViewContext property, which allows you to access RouteData and ultimately from there determine the controller and/or action that was used for this request. Incidentally, you can also use the ViewContext to get to..." Read post »

Real-World Printing in Silverlight 4 is not so Easy

Markus Egger — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:05:39 GMT

Markus Egger's blog | Editors Picks

Markus Egger writes "...In my scenario, I had to support Letter, Legal, and A4 paper formats...all things considered, printing works reasonably well in Silverlight 4. However, you have to handle a lot of things yourself... Creating a bullet-proof pagination algorithm that can handle all kinds of content is difficult... it would be nice if Microsoft made this a bit easier in future versions of Silverlight..." Read post »

Querying WCF RIA Services and Handling Async Results

Brian Noyes — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:00:24 GMT

Brian Noyes's blog | Windows Communication Foundation

Brian Noyes writes "How can I retrieve a set of entities into my client and process them when the retrieval is complete?..the answer is that you can be notified of the completion of any async operation...that you call on a RIA Services domain context. There are really two programming models, but I’ll just show one..." Read post »

WPF Performance for Remote Desktop

Guy Barrette — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:00:22 GMT

Guy Barrette's blog | TechTalk

Guy Barrette writes "...WPF apps can run smoothly inside Remote Desktop. You need to turn off animations and “screen candy” and tweak some Remote Desktop settings..." Read post »

Budding Versus Festering Code

Steven Smith — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:00:17 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | TechTalk

Steven Smith writes "...there is a trend in the tooling to make the cost of budding less - it would be interesting to add something to the IDE that would make the cost of festering INCREASE. Imagine an add-in that would grow more and more annoying as the size of your class increased. Clippy pops up and..." Read post »

Silverlight 4 VisualStateManager Valid Issue

Rockford Lhotka — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:00:03 GMT

Rockford Lhotka's blog | Editors Picks

Rockford Lhotka writes "..This is a horrific breaking change from SL3 to SL4, primarily because it isn’t something you’d expect. To have some other code hijack your visual states just because of how they are named – that’s really unpleasant. So I’m blogging this in the hopes that anyone else using the VSM with a state name of “Valid” can avoid spending as many hours..." Read post »

How to Query Data Through WCF RIA Services

Brian Noyes — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:37:03 GMT

Brian Noyes's blog | Windows Communication Foundation

Brian Noyes writes "...defining query methods in your domain service and how to execute them programmatically on the client...check it out!..." Read post »

US Retail Store uses Silverlight to go to the Next Digital Level

Alexander Wechsler — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:37:01 GMT

Alexander Wechsler's blog | Silverlight

Alexander Wechsler writes "...US retailer that uses Silverlight to enhance their customers shopping experience...Home Shopping Network (HSN) is able to extend its reach using a rich Internet application frontend even to mobile devices...it would be nothing more than a simple reuse of the customer frontend to enable additional services on embedded devices..." Read post »

Windows Azure From the Trenches

Guy Barrette — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:35:32 GMT

Guy Barrette's blog | Suggested Reading

Guy Barrette writes "...Community written free ebook about Windows Azure. It’s a series of articles edited by Eric Nelson and written by 15 authors..." Read post »

Take a Minute: C++ Debugging Survey

Kate Gregory — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:35:29 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | NET Framework

Kate Gregory writes "...Microsoft Visual C++ debugger, the team would like to hear from you. They have a quick (6 questions!)..." Read post »

Default Encoding of Strings in ASP.NET MVC 2

Steven Smith — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:35:25 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | NET Framework

Steven Smith writes "...Encoding by default is a good thing. With ASP.NET 4 this is very easy to do if you just enforce the rules that <%= is no longer used, and is replaced everywhere with <%:. This may result in some breaking changes from existing code that is expecting to render plain strings that contain HTML in them. These can easily be fixed through..." Read post »

Where to Insert the Product Key in ICE?

Alexander Wechsler — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:35:22 GMT

Alexander Wechsler's blog | Editors Picks

Alexander Wechsler writes "...Stamping your Windows Embedded Standard 7 image with a product key is essential...If you do not stamp the WES 7 image [it] will be an evaluation image that stops working correctly after 120 days. After this it is going to reboot every 20 minutes. To avoid this boomerang effect..." Read post »

Great Uses of Using Statement in C#

Steven Smith — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:39:47 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | NET Framework

Steven Smith writes "...Consider the scenario where you want to perform some kind of pre- and post- processing around an arbitrary block of code. The simplest scenario I know of is when you want to time some code, using the stopwatch class. If you want to perform basic stopwatch usage, you can write some code like this..." Read post »

Banned APIs Flagged for You - Code Sample

Kate Gregory — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:39:40 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | Visual Studio

Kate Gregory writes "..I've written about banned APIs before - for security reasons some C Runtime functions like strcpy should not be used, and instead you should use replacements like strcpy_s that perform some checking before trusting the strings they're handed. You might also know that I really like the extension capabilities in Visual Studio 2010..." Read post »

Do Multiple Data Files Make a Difference?

Paul Randal — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:39:29 GMT

Paul Randal's blog | SQL Server

Paul Randal writes "...Just for kicks, I put some of my test hardware to use to do some experimentation...it's pretty clear that with both test setups, having more data files definitely does produce a performance improvement, but only up to a point..." Read post »

VS2010 Add-in Shows the Running User in the Main IDE Window Title

Marcel de Vries — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:33:59 GMT

Marcel de Vries's blog | Visual Studio

Marcel de Vries writes "...after doing some Visual Studio Integration work in the past I thought this should not be too hard to build...To make that work I did following: On the Add In connect, get a reference to the Main Window. From the Main window, get the native windows handle..." Read post »

How to Move a Certificate Between Web Servers

Steven Smith — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:59:53 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | Security

Steven Smith writes "...uses SSL to secure users’ data, I had to move the certificate to the new server as part of the server move. Fortunately, this process is quite painless. First, you need to export the certificate to a .pfx file and give it a password, using these steps:.." Read post »

Are you using the Code Pack? Let me know.

Kate Gregory — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:59:41 GMT

Kate Gregory's blog | TechTalk

Kate Gregory writes "...Folks who've seen the Code Pack in action tell me they are going to use it in their Windows 7 applications immediately, and they're right to do so... If you have a real application...tell me who you are, where you work if you made the app for work, what the app does...I will be passing it along to some other people, so keep that in mind..." Read post »

View Model Loading by Convention Silverlight Source Code

Sondre Bjellas — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:59:34 GMT

Sondre Bjellas's blog | Editors Picks

Sondre Bjellas writes "...I will explain one possible way of doing view model instantiation using any Inversion of Control container and using a naming convention to do it automatically...this new one is built using Silverlight... As this concept and code is built around InTheBoks, the name of the sample and the namespace is “InTheBoks”...Here is the download..." Read post »

Scrum Rocks

Mauro SantAnna — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:34:46 GMT

Mauro SantAnna's blog | TechTalk

Mauro SantAnna writes "...some of the “agile” ideas seem too radical for me, like: [1] Having the user 100% dedicated to the developers: Not only it’s not feasible, if the user is all the time with the dev team he’s no longer a user, by definition [2] Pair programming: Although usual to solve for some hard problems, most of the case it’s simply a waste of time... OTOH, Scrum seems to address the old problems without creating new ones. Microsoft is supporting..." Read post »

About the Limit of a SQL Azure Database

Ciprian Jichici — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:10:59 GMT

Ciprian Jichici's blog | Azure

Ciprian Jichici writes "...One of the key features of SQL Azure is its capability to store 3 different copies of your database at any given point in time. While this is not used (at least not for now) for load balancing purposes, it gives you a very strong approach in terms of robustness...While I mostly agree with the arguments presented above, I still think that Microsoft needs to address the following two issues:..." Read post »

Testing Email Sending

Steven Smith — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:45:08 GMT

Steven Smith's blog | TechTalk

Steven Smith writes "...if you’re a developer and you want to easily be able to test whether or not emails are working correctly in your application without actually sending them and/or installing a real SMTP server on your machine, pay attention....The other interesting tidbit about emails that is specific to .NET is that the MailMessage class is IDisposable. I never realized that before, but I noticed..." Read post »