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Another nice article from MSDN Magazine: using latest .NET technologies such as LINQ, WPF and WCF in Microsoft Office applications.
The sample application uses WCF to communicate with a service, and then LINQ expressions are used to read data. The sample application can be downloaded, as is most often the case with MSDN Magazine articles.
I noticed that on MSDN blogs there's a nice post about troubleshoooting Visual Studio 2008 installations.
However, one thing that appears to be missing is the error message about missing file, even though the file exists. If you get this "cannot find file" type of error message, the remedy number one is to simply retry the whole installation. Another one is to copy the installation DVD files onto your hard disk, and then install from there.
I just noticed that Microsoft has published a free training kit about new features in Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. Somehow, I've missed this kit, since it has already been available since the ned of November. Darn.
In any case, the kit can be downloaded here. It's a self-extracting .RAR file, and is about 130 MB in size.
If you are interested in technologies such as LINQ, C# 3.0, WCF, WF, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, VSTO, CardSpace, SilverLight and Team System/ALM, this training kit is for you.
W3C, or the World Wide Web Consortium which is behind many important Internet standards such as HTML, PNG, XML and web services, has announced that a new version of HTML is in the works. This new version is called HTML 5, and I'd love to see the next version of Visual Studio/ASP.NET to support it.
W3C has even compiled a short list of "What's New" in HTML 5. For example, better forms support and many new tag features are on the list.
My newest article has appeared on Developer.com. It is titled "Nesting Transactions with a Single SQL Server Database" and it talks about .NET's System.Transaction namespace, and nesting of TransactionScope objects.
Enjoy!
I noticed from eWeek late yesterday that Microsoft has announced that all Windows Vista editions (SKUs) can now be virtualized. The new end-user license agreement (EULA) now states:
"...instead of using the software directly on the licensed device, you may install and use the software within only one virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device."
Of course, you still need to have a valid/legal license to be able to virtualize in the first place. For software developers, it would be great if some of the high-end Vista OEM versions (that comes with a PC) could be virtualized in a single additional virtual machine for testing purposes.
PowerShell 1.0 has been here for a while already, and thus it's no surprise that PowerShell version 2.0 is in the making. You can download a CTP version, and give it a try.
Some new features in 2.0 are remoting support, background jobs, debugging support, and a graphical shell (!). Sounds interesting to me!
I was very happy to read from Scott Guthrie's blog this morning that the source code for the basic .NET libraries is now available.
Currently, the base class library, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, XML and ADO.NET library code is available. Sounds like a lot of source lines to me! To enable source code browsing in Visual Studio, follow these instructions.
It was my pleasure to speak yesterday at the Kajaani University of Applied Sciences about Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 to a full seminar room of more than 100 people. During our day, we talked about hot new things such as LINQ, Expression Blend and Silverlight. Jyväskylä will be next.
If you are living in Finland, then there are two important, fortcoming dates that you should put into your calendar. That is, Microsoft Finland is arranging both the Visual Studio 2008 launch on 6th of March at the Finland Hall, and the biggest developer event DevDays 2008 will be held on 13th of March.
Don't miss these two dates!
If you are writing code for the healthcare industry and hospitals in particular, you might be interested in the standards organization called Health Level Seven (HL7). For example in Finland, they are working with local hospitals to help with data transfer and messaging.
I noticed that Microsoft is also involved in the process, and they even have a guide to help BizTalk developers to handle HL7 v2 compatible messages.
Microsoft has it's own site dedicated to professional photography, but the site isn't marketed well. In fact, you could say its one of those little secrets. For example, I today learned about an Outlook add-in for pohotographers, called the "Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot". It helps you to arrange your shoots in your Outlook calendar. There's also an article about the add-in.
Secondly, I learned about a product called "ProShow Producer 3" which sounds to me like Windows Movie Maker on steroids. If I have time in the future, I need to check it out.
Microsoft has started a new web site about the forth-coming Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.
The site contains sections for software developers as well as IT professionals. For example on the Visual Studio section -- this time titled "Break Through Software Development Challenges" -- you can find more information about the product (useful marketing material even if you happen to already use the product) and a link to a test version in case you aren't an MSDN subscriber.
Last week, I purchased a long-anticipated set of Elinchrom studio flash set, namely the FX400 To-Go-Set ("FX 400"). I also had the chance to briefly test it last weekend, wow! It sure makes a big difference to portraits when you have good light sources. I'm looking forward to getting more time to play with the flashes.
News are starting to flow about the forthcoming beta version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser version 8. As eWeek reports, a beta version could be expected around mid-2008, meaning the end of Microsoft's fiscal year.
And speaking of web and web application development, it's interesting to see the buzz that Silverlight is creating. We already knew that Silverlight is cool for .NET people, but the fact that also serious Flash users are interested in it, is something. I hope to see Silverlight 2.0 out soon.
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