Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1 is available for download. Though quite similar to the March CTP in terms of LINQ and C# language functionality, this download is more stable and has been more thoroughly tested. Other teams have had a chance to add more functionality, including a Team Foundation edition.

To accompany this release, we have a series of live chats planned. The first is the CSharp IDE Team Chat, which will occur on Monday, April 23 between 11 am and 12 pm Pacific time. If you live in another time zone, you can go here to sort out the time difference, and here to add a link to your calendar. This is your opportunity to ask the team questions about the C# IDE, and particularly about the features in Orcas Beta 1. When the chat begins, you can click this link to enter the chat room.

Other upcoming C# team chats include the following:

• A C# Compiler and Language Chat on May 7, between 11 and noon Pacific time will focus on LINQ. Time zones details are here, a link for your calendar is here and when the chat begins, you can enter the chat room here.
• A C# LINQ to SQL Chat on May 21 between 11 and noon Pacific time. LINQ to SQL provides  Time zones details are here, a link for your calendar is here, and you can enter the chat room here.

LINQ provides extensions to the .NET framework that make querying data a first class citizen of the C# language. In particular, LINQ to SQL is a component of LINQ which allows access to data stored in relational databases. You can also use LINQ to query XML or to query the collections in your code. More generally, LINQ provides a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. Since LINQ is part of the C# language, you will have full support for IntelliSense and compile time type checking.

Figure 1: In the downloads section, you can find links to Mitsu's post on WPF flip page development.

What's Hot from the C# Team

• Sreekar Choudhary, a developer on the C# team and a LINQ guru, has entered the blogging world. His first foray is a great post on LINQ and the Immutability of Anonymous types.
• On the frequent occasions when Eric Lippert finds time to blog, it is always worthwhile reading what he has to say. In the last few days he has been on tear:
  • Chained User Defined Conversions in C#: Part 1
  • Chained User Defined Conversions in C#: Part 2
  • Chained User Defined Conversions in C#: Part 3
  • Practice Thinking Like a Compiler Tester
• This is not a C# related post, but our talented Senor Program Manager Luca Bolognese has written an extraordinary essay on his thoughts about financial investments. You'll have to judge for yourself, but I've noticed that Luca always seems to have a few dollars in his pocket, so you might want to read this one carefully.

Downloads

• The obvious top entry in this category is Orcas Beta 1.
• Our extraordinary French compatriot, Mitsu Furuta, has written an intriguing post on WPF flip page controls. Mitsu points us to a downloadable version of this work.
• Aaron Erickson has made i40 available on CodePlex. He has also written a post introducing i40, which is short for Indexes for Objects. This technology enables indexes for LINQ to Objects in order to speed up searches.
• FileHelpers, a tool for importing and exporting fixed length or delimited records, has been updated.