MSDN Magazine

Multicore systems are becoming increasingly prevalent, but the majority of software today will not automatically take advantage of this additional processing ability. And multithreaded programming, for anything but the most trivial of systems, is incredibly difficult and error prone today.

In the October 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Stephen Toub and Hazim Shafi explain how the next version of Visual Studio is being designed to make parallelism much easier for all developers to employ with language extensions and tools that help you code and debug multithreaded applications.

For more on multithreading, parallelism, and concurrency, check out our MSDN Magazine archives.

Concurrent programming is notoriously difficult, even for experts. You have all of the correctness and security challenges of sequential programs plus all of the difficulties of parallelism and concurrent access to shared resources.

In the October 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, David Callahan describes different ways to think about and use parallelism for those portions of your applications that are time sensitive today or that are expected to run on larger data sets tomorrow.

Be sure to check our MSDN Magazine archives for more articles about parallel programming and concurrency.

A major advantage of AJAX and Silverlight applications is that they can transparently and continuously interact with a back-end service. The problem is that they run over HTTP, which wasn't designed with security in mind.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Dino Esposito shows you how to protect these back-end services from unauthorized access.

Don’t forget to browse the sample code online, and check out our past Cutting Edge installments in the MSDN Magazine archives.

Unhandled exception processing shouldn't be a mystery. It's actually quite useful since it gives a crashing application an opportunity to perform last-minute diagnostic logging about what went wrong.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Gaurav Khanna discusses how unhandled exception processing for managed exceptions is implemented by the CLR.

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

Silverlight 2 data-binding features are simple to implement and let your apps communicate via WCF services with line-of-business applications, databases, and other services in your organization.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, John Papa demonstrate how to build a Silverlight 2 UI that communicates through WCF to interact with business entities and a database.

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

The Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) team recently released details of the SDL process at microsoft.com/sdl.

What you won't find in the publicly available SDL documentation is guidance specific to securing Web applications or online services.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Bryan Sullivan explains why it's just as important to threat model your Web Forms applications as it is your Windows Forms applications, and shares the newest Web-specific SDL requirements for the first time.

You can also check out previous Security Briefs columns and other security topics covered in MSDN Magazine in our online archives.

Routed events and routed commands form the basis for communication among the various parts of your user interface in Windows Presentation Foundation—whether individual controls on one big Window class or controls and their supporting code in separate, decoupled parts of your app.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Brian Noyes walks you through the details of implementing routed events and commands in WPF.

Don’t forget to browse the sample code online.

The System.Linq.Enumerable class plays an important role in every LINQ query you create, making it possible to use querying semantics with objects that wouldn't otherwise support querying methods.

In the July 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Ken Getz took you on a quick tour through half of the methods in the Enumerable class.

In the September 2008 installment of the Advanced Basics column, Ken completes the tour, looking at methods that handle converting, positioning, calculating, and performing set operations on sequences of objects.

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

Silverlight contains many of the tools you need in order to consume data and support Web services and XML. But to enable full data connectivity, you must map your data operations to Web service methods.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Shawn Wildermuth demonstrates how ADO.NET Data Services and LINQ simplify support for data operations in your Silverlight apps.

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

How can objects establish boundaries and priorities? The WPF answer is a feature known as dependency properties, which provides a structured way for WPF classes to respond to changes that result from data bindings, styles, inheritance, and other sources.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Charles Petzold explains how dependency properties work and how you can compensate for their lack of notification events.

You can browse the sample code online, and check out the MSDN Magazine archives for more about Windows Presentation Foundation.

Configuration testing simply means testing a software system on different combinations of hardware and software. The traditional way is to set up a lab with multiple physical machines running different combinations of operating systems and other software. This can be expensive and time consuming.

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

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

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight provide developers with a simple, declarative means of quickly and easily delivering applications with rich user experiences. But as the number of moving parts increases, keeping the project under control becomes exponentially more difficult.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Glenn Block explains what a composite application is and how the new Composite Application Guidance for WPF (formerly code-named "Prism") can help you build rich, maintainable apps.

SQL Server 2008 supports a new data type, HierarchyID, that helps solve some of the problems in modeling and querying hier­archical information.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Kent Tegels introduces you to the HierarchyID data type by presenting a bill-of-materials implementation in SQL Server 2005, then showing you how the HierarchyID data type can be used to implement the model in SQL Server 2008.

You can browse the sample code online, and check out the MSDN Magazine archives for more about SQL Server development and data access.

Many people using SharePoint technologies don't realize that there is auditing support built directly into the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 platform.

In the September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Ted Pattison walks you through a SharePoint solution that enables auditing support through the WSS object model. The AuditingDemo project was created using the STSDEV utility and incorporates many best practices in areas such as solution-package deployment, security programming, and security trimming.

Don’t forget to browse the sample code online.

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

The September 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online.

Here's what's in the issue:

Hierarchy ID: Model Your Data Hierarchies With SQL Server 2008 We explain how the new hierarchyID data type in SQL Server 2008 helps solve some of the problems in modeling and querying hierarchical information. by Kent Tegels

Prism: Patterns For Building Composite Applications With WPF We introduce you to the benefits of building composite applications with the Composite Application Guidance for WPF from Microsoft patterns & practices. by Glenn Block

Data Services: Create Data-Centric Web Applications With Silverlight 2 ADO.NET Data Services provide Web-accessible endpoints that allow you to filter, sort, shape, and page data without having to build that functionality yourself. by Shawn Wildermuth

Advanced WPF: Understanding Routed Events And Commands In WPF See how routed events and routed commands in Windows Presentation Foundation form the basis for communication between the parts of your UI. by Brian Noyes

In the columns, Gaurav Khanna explains Unhandled Exception Processing In The CLR, John Papa discusses Service-Driven Apps With Silverlight 2 And WCF, and Ken Getz continues his trip through The LINQ Enumerable Class. Dr. James McCaffrey begins a series of columns on Configuration Testing With Virtual Server and Bryan Sullivan shows you how SDL Embraces The Web.

There's much more in the issue, and I'll be blogging about these and other articles throughout the month.

As usual, the issue is available online in 11 languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Enjoy!