A couple of weeks ago I ran across a very interesting tool called Feature Builder .  As I watched the videos about this tool I realized that it represented an opportunity to deliver Hands on Labs (along with other interesting things) directly inside...

Lately on http://endpoint.tv we have been doing a series called WF4 Activities Best Practices with Leon Welicki. Many of you wrote in asking for the sample code so I’ve published on MSDN Code Gallery - WF4 Activity Best Practices Sample . Be...

This morning I stumbled across something so cool… I had no idea it existed (I know some of you are saying… “What he didn’t know about this?) How many times have you wanted to debug right into the source of .NET?  The feature is there, just turn it...

Question: Suppose you want to test an activity that uses WriteLine and you want to verify the output. How do you do it? Answer: Add a StringWriter to the Extensions collection before running your test Testing this activity Use this test ...

Most of the time I write simple apps that run in the local ASP.NET development server. I noticed when I started working with IIS more because of Windows Server AppFabric that my routes were not working when the web application is deployed in IIS. For...

In this walkthrough I’ll show you how to use the AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service (C#) template for Visual Studio 2010 to enhance your WCF Data Services by providing Monitoring events and errors to the AppFabric Data Store Eliminating...

In this walkthrough I’ll show you how to use the AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service (VB) template for Visual Studio 2010 to enhance your WCF Data Services by providing Monitoring events and errors to the AppFabric Data Store Eliminating the need to use...

After working out how to do the right thing when using WCF Data Services with Windows Server AppFabric I’ve now created a template you can use directly from Visual Studio. The templates are available from Visual Studio Gallery or directly from within...

If there is one thing I hear from people over and over again it is this. Please make WCF simpler, easier to understand and use. I totally agree with this sentiment. In fact, in .NET 4 we made it much easier but we still have a long way to go. Once in...

In this episode, Dave Cliffe, Program Manager for Workflow Services, describes the architecture of the Workflow Services infrastructure. For more information, see the Workflow Foundation developer center on MSDN .

This morning I was refactoring some code and I decided to create a partial class with an overloaded constructor. When I did this, suddenly everything quit working. My tests were failing as though the workflow didn’t even run but no exceptions were...

Here are some helpful resources Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) Migration Guidance for WF 4 This Code Gallery project contains the code samples to help .NET developers better understand and evaluate Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in the Microsoft...

Morgan Skinner created a great post describing how you can associate designers with custom activities.  Check it out here .

My Tech-Ed (or is it TechEd?) sessions are now available The Total Noob’s Guide Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Don’t know a thing about Windows Workflow Foundation (WF4) in Microsoft .NET Framework 4, but want to learn? No problem. Join us for this session...

If you want to assign a value to an OutArgument in your workflow here is something you need to keep in mind. If your OutArgument is something simple like a value type or a string you can simply write to it directly If your OutArgument is something...

I’ve been creating a lot of Native Activities lately and to do it I would add a new item to my project using the Code Activity template. I kept wishing for a Native Activity template so now I’ve created one. Install the Native Activity...

Thanks to Damir Dobric You might want to pick up these patches KB980423 FIX: You experience several issues when you use Powershell cmdlets or AppFabric features in IIS 7.0 or IIS 7.5 KB983484 Some services are preloaded unexpectedly when you start a website...

Update: 6/24 – updated sample to show how unhandled exceptions and the UnhandledException delegate impact this activity Nearly a year ago I created a CancellationScope Activity sample and posted it on CodeGallery for .NET 4 Beta 1.   I went...

In .NET 3.5, we created the REST Starter Kit as a way to get you up and running with RESTful services. Now that .NET 4 is out, people are asking how to do things like API Key Verification in .NET 4. In this episode, I'll walk you through a sample based...

In this episode, Michael McKeown describes the security model used in Windows Server AppFabric, which spans Windows Security Groups and SQL Server Database Roles.

From time to time people will come to me with an interop problem.  I have to say I’m the last guy on earth you should ask about interop problems.  After all – I don’t ever need to solve them because I use .NET everywhere. Fortunately there are...

Recently somebody asked me about doing APIKey verification in .NET 4. Previously in .NET 3.5 we provided the REST Starter Kit which included a fair bit of server side code to enable a collection of RequestInterceptor objects that we showed doing API Key...

You asked for it...here it is. In this episode, Byron Tardif is back to explain how you can setup Windows Server AppFabric in a server farm environment. For more information, see the Windows Server AppFabric Developer Center on MSDN .

After my previous post about how you can monitor service calls with AppFabric, several people asked about how you can capture errors with AppFabric. Unfortunately, the default error handling behavior of WCF Data Services does not work well with AppFabric...

WCF Data Services provides a very simple model driven way to expose data using REST and the OData format. As I was preparing my talk for Tech-Ed on Implementing REST in .NET I was asking myself if there would be any value in using Windows Server AppFabric...