No matter what type of long-running processes are involved—whether getting large results from a database, making asynchronous Web service calls, or any number of other potentially intensive operations—making your application more responsive is guaranteed...

The October 2007 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/10/default.aspx . In this issue you'll find coverage of some advanced concurrency topics. We have articles on employing the new thread pool...

The new Task Scheduler 2.0 in Windows Vista is no longer just a simple tool for end users. It now provides a powerful platform for designing and managing complex background operations, and in some cases can replace the need for Windows services. In the...

Multi-core processors are here. Responding to the increased availability of multi-processor platforms, Parallel Language Integrated Query (PLINQ) is a query execution engine that accepts any LINQ-to-Objects or LINQ-to-XML query and automatically utilizes...

Workflows are meant to coordinate systems and people, and that means communicating beyond the boundaries of the workflow instance itself. Communication is a key component of most workflows. In the September issue of MSDN Magazine, Matt Milner takes you...

COM client objects can instantiate server objects and then make calls to those objects, but the server object can't call back to the client. COM connection points enable two-way communication between the server and client. The clients for a COM connection...

Common Table Expressions (CTEs) can help improve the readability (and thus the maintainability) of SQL statements without compromising performance. They also make writing recursive code in T-SQL significantly easier than it was in previous versions of...

Continuing his development of a mouse and mouse environment simulation called EEK!, in the October issue of MSDN Magazine, Stan Lippman explains how he's creating the XML document describing the environment . Stan also describes another way of incorporating...

Every month in MSDN Magazine , our Toolbox column , written by Scott Mitchell , highlights handy utilities that simplify development tasks and extend the reach of your applications. In the October installment of Toolbox , Scott shows you a tool for accessing...

And now that I've got your attention, I want to pick your brain about a couple things.  I'm in the process (hopefully close to the end of the process) of getting the 2008 column plan solidified for MSDN Magazine.  First, a little context. ...

For the past month or so we've been blogging about each of the articles in the current issue. I was hoping this would give each one a bit more special attention than it gets in the table of contents. Plus, it gives us a chance to highlight related information...