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February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

The February CTP (aka as the March CTP) is now available for download as a regular install and as a virtual PC. Here is a video that serves as an introduction to the CTP.

This CTP is a pre-release version of Visual Studio Orcas. This release features support for LINQ to SQL, which means you can use LINQ to query relational databases.

There were a few issues with this CTP when running on Vista, and when running side by side with Visual Studio 2005. As a result, if you have VS 2005 installed, or if you are running on Vista, then I would suggest using the VPC version of this download. When downloading the VPC version of Orcas, don't forget to get the base image.

Here is a link to various LINQ related articles and posts, and be sure also to see this post which details many of the changes since the May CTP. Here is a link to videos and articles that I have written on LINQ.

Here are some Anders videos from Tech Ed Barcelona:

  1. LINQ Overview
  2. C# 3.0

Here are few other LINQ related videos to help you get started:

  1. Anders on LINQ and Functional Programming
  2. Anders on Ask the Experts, Jan 17, 2007
  3. Anders on LINQ from 2005
  4. Anders on LINQ from the LANG.NET Conference
  5. Anders Chatting about LINQ and ADO.NET
  6. Anders, Herb Sutter, Erik Meijer, Brian Beckman on Software Composability
  7. Anders with Chris McConnell
  8. Eric Lippert on Type Inference
  9. Peter Hallam on Automatic Properties
  10. Performance Issues in Visual Studio (Anson Horton, C# PM, only tangentially related to LINQ)
  11. Luca Bolognese (Lead PM, C# Team) on "What's New in the May LINQ Preview"
  12. C# PM's Karen Liu and DJ Park on the C# IDE, LAF, and support for LINQ.
  13. An Interview with Wes Dyer (Download)
  14. Raj Pai, C# GPM, on the C# Team

Here are some specs to review:

  1. Formatting Code in Orcas
  2. DLINQ Data Types and Functions
  3. Mapping Draft Specification
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Published Thursday, March 01, 2007 12:44 AM by Charlie Calvert

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# Visual Studio Feb/March CTP now available.

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 7:54 PM by DotNetKicks.com

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

I love the idea of a video to accompany the CTP!

Wednesday, February 28, 2007 11:52 PM by Tom Kirby-Green

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Thanks for the video! I'm really glad that you joined the C# team :-)!

Tomas, C# MVP

Thursday, March 01, 2007 7:00 AM by Tomas Petricek

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Pingback: http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2007/02/orcas-march-ctp-available-from-msdn.html

Thursday, March 01, 2007 6:44 PM by rogerj

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Pingback: http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/windows-vista-not-supported-on-orcas.html

Thursday, March 01, 2007 6:44 PM by rogerj

# Community Convergence XXII

Welcome to the twenty-second Community Convergence, the March CTP issue. I'm Charlie Calvert, the C#

Friday, March 02, 2007 3:23 AM by Charlie Calvert's Community Blog

# Community Convergence XXII

Welcome to the twenty-second Community Convergence, the March CTP issue. I'm Charlie Calvert, the

Friday, March 02, 2007 3:36 AM by RSS It All

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Please please give us more BUT Stop messing about so much

It is quite difficult understand what is being said

HAVE A MIKE EACH

Finally

Can you get Bill to buty you abetter way of demonstating the code it really is very dificult to se what you a re trying to explain when its written on aboard

KEEP UP THE GOD WORK

LONQ MUST BE AVAILABLE ON SQL CE

REGards

Richard simmons UK

Saturday, March 03, 2007 8:07 AM by Richard Simmons

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

A good news. Much interested in this topic and got a chance to tryout the earlier version. Expecting  more stable one now with more features.

Saturday, March 03, 2007 1:44 PM by shijo

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Just watched the CTP video.

Karen is HOT!!

Now to my question.

Stop hoarding your language and IDE to just SQL Server.

We(my company) will never use SQLServer (SS), but most of your database features only work WELL with SS.

We are now starting to look at Borland (CodeGear) again, after we just left them, because they don't design their IDE to be specific to any particular database. And if a driver doesn't exist, you build one yourself.

Sunday, March 04, 2007 9:15 AM by Reggie

# Samples Update

Here are a set of updated samples for the Visual Studio Orcas March CTP . These samples replace all the

Monday, March 05, 2007 1:26 AM by Charlie Calvert's Community Blog

# March CTP Samples Overview Video

Here is a short 7 minute video to serve as an introduction to the Samples that are included with the

Monday, March 05, 2007 4:15 AM by Charlie Calvert's Community Blog

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Richard Simmons UK,

 Your compiler won't tolerate such sh!tty grammar and spelling, so why should we?

Monday, March 05, 2007 1:21 PM by Grouchy

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

What-is .NET web site code too difficult to trace back to C# in the express version. I never seem to open any part of my original web site without some ostensible inter sub program.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007 2:43 AM by Mark Shaver

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Thanks for doing this!!  I know we get release notes with every drop, but in some ways this is a lot more effective at communicating what's new, what's changed, etc.  For example, knowing that 700,000 QA tests were done with Linq to SQL since the May bits, or that intellisense has been gutted and rebuilt.

I do wish they had talked a bit on ADO.NET Entity Framework though.  Specifically, how it relates/compares/competes to/with Linq to SQL, and what the story looks like for using either of these technologies in a tiered environment where I'm not just hitting up SQL Server directly from my WinForms app...

Tuesday, March 06, 2007 5:11 PM by Joe

# Arte digital con C# 3.0 y LINQ

De entre la avalancha de vídeos, documentos y enlaces que con los que nos abrumó Charlie Calvert simultáneamente

Tuesday, March 06, 2007 6:55 PM by Sobre C#, LINQ y algo más...

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Hi,

thanks for the information.

But, how can I create a DVD out of this?

After extracting, the files have over 4.8GB size!

Thanks.

Thursday, March 08, 2007 9:43 AM by Joerg Schaum

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

We are real excited about Linq as this is a large T-SQL shop stuck in SQL Hell and this stuff looks like our future. However we have run into an issue with UDFs as no matter how simple they are an exception "object reference not set to an instance of an object" is thrown. The problem seems to lie in the return type as in code :

object test = db.getRate(serviceid)

gerrate is a UDF with a return type of decimal not object (have no idea why this would throw as object is the base type in CLR). However in the designer.cs the return type is object thus the above line .When we change object to decimal in the designer.cs file then things work as expected. of course this is not a great solution as the generated code must be updated each time a change is made in the designer.

Friday, March 16, 2007 9:54 AM by John McFetridge

# HOMESALESLENDING

 Cash conversion cycle The length of time between a firm's purchase of inventory and the receipt of cash  Cash cow A company that pays out all earnings per share to stockholders as dividends

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 11:21 AM by HOMESALESLENDING

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Regarding this quote...

"Stop hoarding your language and IDE to just SQL Server."

I attended a seminar on DLinq with Scott Guthrie, and I fielded this exact question to him.

They actually aren't supporting SQL Server exclusively.  However, that particular provider is the only one they (M$) are developing and distributing with the DLinq framework.  

The provider model is basically a published API that any database server software publisher can utilize to make plug-ins to the DLinq framework.

So.. the ability is there.  The competitors just haven't taken it up yet.  If they don't, I imagine at some point, an ISV will do it.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007 5:33 PM by Dan K

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Very Good.

in my weblog there are C# Videos .

Monday, March 26, 2007 6:49 AM by sadegh

# Links for my SPA2007 Session

I delivered a session on Architecting the Next Generation of .NET Applications at http://www.spaconference.org/spa2007

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:13 AM by Eric Nelson - Development for .NET Framework 3.0 for ISVs

# URLs to LINQ related Videos

Charlie,

Is it possible to have a complete list of all the LINQ related videos/interviews till date so that there is one place to download all of them from instead of going video hunting all over the place.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 10:37 PM by abhidotnet

# Tech Days 2007

This year I've been @ TechDays2007 presenting 2 sessions: DEV011 - C# 3.0 Future Language Directions

Tuesday, March 27, 2007 11:12 PM by Luís Falcão

# Follow up on LINQ and ADO.NET Entity Framework Talk

On Saturday on March 31, 2007 I did a couple of talks at the Toronto Code Camp. The first an overview

Monday, April 02, 2007 9:26 AM by Barry Gervin's Software Architecture Perspectives

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

Is there a way to download the first 2 videos

  1.  LINQ Overview

  2.  C# 3.0

The links take me to the MSDN showtime website but there doesn't seem to be any way to download the videos

Friday, April 06, 2007 1:12 PM by abhidotnet

# Anothr feed track -MSDN: Visual C#

One new subscriber from Anothr Alerts

Saturday, April 14, 2007 4:30 PM by anothr user

# re: February/March Orcas CTP Now Available

the username Administrator and the Password P2ssw0rd not run for me, somebody has another way to loging...

Thanks...

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 2:36 PM by GeoAvila

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