If your app is encrypting and compressing quite a bit of data, and you have multiple processors available to do the work, is there any way I can get this encryption and compression process to use both processors? These are computationally intensive operations...

Microsoft Expression Encoder helps you encode and publish Silverlight experiences for the web. In addition, Expression Encoder includes an extensible plug-in architecture -- you can easily write plug-ins that enhance the encoding and publishing process...

Have you been frustrated by so-called "engineering experts" who extol the virtues of unit testing, yet can offer little more than hand waving when asked for tool recommendations for native code? In the February issue of MSDN Magazine , Maria Blees introduces...

Since we started blogging about the MSDN Magazine articles and columns six-or-so months ago, one column hasn't gotten the attention it really deserves. The { End Bracket } column closes out each issue and, as our editor Joan Levinson noted, "We needed...

Compiler hackers are celebrities in the world of computer science. There's a certain intellectual mystique about individuals who dedicate their time to learning and understanding the ins and outs of lambda expressions, type systems, and assembly languages...

LINQ-enabled languages like Visual Basic give you a rich set of query operators that can be applied to various data sources, such as in-memory collections, databases, datasets, and XML. That alone is pretty cool, but Visual Basic 9.0 actually goes beyond...

Dynamic languages are traditionally associated with an interactive environment, giving you a run-evaluate-print loop (REPL), and allowing for an explorative trial-and-error approach to programming. The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) is a dynamic language...

The January 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/08/02/ . The February issue explores the theme of "extensions" -- extending language support, extending tools, extending applications with new...

Directory services are an important though rarely mastered component of enterprise application development. There has always been some support for directories in the .NET Framework, but the .NET Framework 3.5 provides a new AccountManagement namespace...

Hidden away inside the PreviewDragDrop.js file supplied by the ASP.NET AJAX Futures Community Technology Preview (CTP) lies support for rich, browser-based drag-and-drop user interfaces. The model it uses is patterned after the old OLE drag-drop model...

Many application performance problems can be traced to poorly performing database queries; however, there are many ways you can improve database performance. SQL Server 2005 gathers a lot of information that you can use to identify the causes of such...

Combining Web-centric communication with SOAP and WS-* standards into one service stack and object model is one of the features that makes WCF in the .NET Framework 3.5 so compelling. In the January issue of MSDN Magazine , Justin Smith explains some...

For programmers who enjoy turning common controls into uncommon visual objects, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) offers an exciting feature known as the template. By creating a new template—most often in XAML without a lick of code—you can completely...

Input controls are essential in any application, but Web controls are often little more than wrappers around HTML <INPUT> tags. Clearly, better input controls are needed, especially for anyone who is writing ASP.NET AJAX applications. In the January...