MSDN Magazine

I’m sitting here in my hotel room at MIX 2009, where a ton of really huge announcements were made today.  In a much more scaled down attempt at continuing that tradition, I want to announce that starting in May, we are launching a 9 week series focused on introducing ASP.NET Web application developers to creating rich internet applications – and introduce a few other patterns along the way to help create better Web software.

The approach will take an existing Web application that has been written in classic ASP.NET and refactor parts of it based on the goals of each installment.  Some of the specific details are still being worked out, but I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce you to James Kovacs, the guy who’s going to be working them out, hopefully with some help from you.  I’ll let James post separately on his thoughts and initial items that he would like feedback on, but wanted to at least be the first one to tell you all how excited I am about this upcoming series!

In a layered Web app, the presentation layer is just as important as navigation logic, business logic, and data access.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Dino Esposito examines some design patterns for building an ASP.NET presentation layer, starting with the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern—the root of all patterns specifically targeted to the UI.

Without Connection Manager, for all but the simplest network environments, the only way an application could choose a connection would be by presenting the user with a list and asking him to select one.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Marcus Perryman explains why the correct use of Connection Manager is vital when a Windows Mobile application requires network data and shines a light on some of Connection Manager's inner workings.

For many years, Visual C++ has included a set of pseudo variables and format specifiers for use in debugging.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Kenny Kerr shares some of the pseudo variables and format specifiers that he’s found most useful for debugging C++ applications in the x86 and x64 processor architectures.

Check the magazine archives for previous installments of the Windows With C++ column.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Dr. James McCaffrey introduced you to software configuration testing with Microsoft Virtual Server.

In the December 2008 installment of the Test Run column, he walks you through the process of automating software configuration testing using Virtual Server and Windows PowerShell.

For more articles on testing, be sure to check out our MSDN Magazine archives.

The "Geneva" Framework, formerly called "Zermatt," is the code name for the new framework for building claims-based applications and services, and for implementing federated security scenarios.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Michele Leroux Bustamante describes how to approach claims-based WCF services using the Geneva Framework, and compares to WCF claims-based security without the Geneva Framework.

Text is more than just its literal meaning. By treating text characters as graphical objects, the programmer can make text dance and fly on the screen.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Charles Petzold shows you how to position text characters along a curved line with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and animate the individual points defining the path to watch the characters bounce around in response.

You can browse the sample code online.

Testability is both as an important quality of your designs and another tool you can use to create and think through designs.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Jeremy Miller examines the design issues, patterns, and principles that can enhance testability in your apps.

For more articles on testing, be sure to check out our MSDN Magazine archives.

With the releases of LINQ to SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework, developers now have two products from Microsoft designed to tie together relational data and object-oriented programming.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Anthony Sneed provides a roadmap to these technologies and demonstrates how you can create an abstracted data access layer appropriate for service-oriented architectures.

You can browse the sample code online, and check out the MSDN Magazine archives for more about ADO.NET.

C# developers can use the Visual Studio Tools for the Office System (VSTO) Power Tools Office interop API extensions to streamline Office application development. The extensions provide a thin, strongly typed layer over the loosely typed Office object models.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Andrew Whitechapel, Phillip Hoff, and Vladimir Morozov walk you through developing an app that uses the Power Tools to automate Office applications.

Be sure to check out our MSDN Magazine archives for more articles about Office development.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) adds functionality to the Microsoft .NET Framework so that you actually can reliably keep bound controls synchronized with their data sources.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Ken Getz demonstrates how to use the ObservableCollection class provided by WPF to keep bound controls in sync with underlying data sources.

Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.

A team project is simply a bucket that stores and partitions all of the artifacts you track and use within a Team Foundation Server (TFS) project.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Brian A. Randell explains how you can use and customize the MSF Agile and MFS CMMI process templates to get the most out of them for your team and your overall development progress.

For more coverage of Visual Studio, including installments of the Team System columns, see the MSDN Magazine archives.

Earlier this year MSDN Magazine embarked on a collaborative project with Behind the Code, an interview program airing on MSDN Channel 9. In this program, Robert Hess interviews prominent developers at Microsoft, and those developers also write a column for { End Bracket } in MSDN Magazine. In the newest interview, Richard Ward talks about working on the core infrastructure components of future versions of Windows, as well as the importance of the creative impulse in one’s work.

In the companion { End Bracket } column, Richard discusses the importance of good written communication for software developers and engineers. As proponents of the written word, we heartily endorse Richard’s viewpoint. Take a look at his column in the November issue.

Joan Levinson

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) imposes some restrictions on the developer authoring programs that target it. But in return WF offers a powerful, flexible, and extensible set of runtime services such as support for long-running code.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Josh Lane provides some best practices to consider when using WF to realize software solutions in the real world.

See the MSDN Magazine archives to learn more about Windows Communication Foundation.

Every month, the CLR team gives us insight into the core of managed code, .NET programming best practices, technologies underlying the CLR and .NET Framework, and other tips and suggestions.

In the December 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Erika Fuentes and Eric Eilebrecht cover some common issues developers encounter when tuning multithreaded managed code, particularly in multiprocessor hardware. They also describe how future changes in the ThreadPool should deal with some of these issues.

Catching up with previous issues, in the November 2008 issue, Melitta Andersen discussed building world-ready applications for Silverlight and Windows.

And in the October 2008 issue, Andrew Dai explained how the code access security (CAS) Transparency model works in Silverlight, and what you can expect to see from it in the future.

For more installments of CLR Inside Out, see our MSDN Magazine archives.