In the March 2008 installment of our Extreme ASP.NET column, Fritz Onion introduced to the ASP.NET 3.5 ListView control, which provides more control over generated markup, support for paging, and full integration with the data source-based binding model.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Dino Esposito moves beyond the basics of ListView templates and data binding to implement nested ListView controls to create hierarchical views of data and extend the eventing model of the ListView by deriving a custom ListView class.
For more about ASP.NET AJAX development, check out the previous installments of Cutting Edge and Extreme ASP.NET, as well as other articles in the MSDN Magazine archives.
The need to test a program that accesses and manipulates a back-end SQL Server database is very common. In many such cases, the application interacts with the back-end data through the use of SQL stored procedures.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, James McCaffrey shows you how to simplify SQL stored procedures test automation using LINQ—specifically, using the LINQ to SQL provider.
Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.
For more articles on testing, be sure to check out our MSDN Magazine archives.
The Microsoft Office platform allows you to maintain both standard and custom properties for documents. Document Information Panels, however, let you implement additional functionality such as metadata-based search and automation of information-driven business processes is Office documents and SharePoint apps.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Ashish Ghoda demonstrates how you can build Document Information Panels in the Microsoft 2007 Office system to capture and manipulate metadata in Office documents.
Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.
Be sure to check out our MSDN Magazine archives for more articles about Office and SharePoint development.
Going Places is a new MSDN Magazine column devoted to mobile device development. The main focus will be on Windows Mobile phones and Tablet PCs, although any topic related to mobility is fair game.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Mike Calligaro talks about programmatically configuring -- or "provisioning" -- Windows Mobile devices.
If you're an IT manager or support technician, and are manually configuring Windows Mobile devices for your users, stop. This article is for you. If you're a mobile app developer and wish you had an easy way to add your Web page to the browser's favorites, this will help you too.
Silverlight is a new cross-browser plug-in from Microsoft that brings the power of the .NET Framework to bear on an area that was previously reserved for Flash or Java Applets. Silverlight also supports a range of .NET-compliant languages, including Visual Basic and C#, so you don't have to learn a new language to build rich media applications.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Declan Brennan shows you how he built a Silverlight-based Web application that folds 3D polyhedron shapes from a flat template.
Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.
Performance problems can creep into your ASP.NET app as it scales up, and when they do, you need to determine what the actual problem is and find the best strategies to address it.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Richard Campbell and Kent Alstad present three strategies that you can employ to improve scaling: specialization, optimization, and distribution. How you apply them will vary, but the actual strategies are straightforward and consistent.
Check out our MSDN Magazine archives for more about ASP.NET and coding for performance.
One of our editorial counterparts over in MSDN, Mitch Irsfeld, the Managing Editor of the U.S. MSDN Flash and TechNet Flash newsletters, visited Imagine 2008 and reported back on what the computer industry is doing to promote the principles of environmental sustainability. Check it out.
Our sister publication, TechNet Magazine, now runs a cool new column called Sustainable Computing. Clearly, Green is the new black. This got us thinking last night over at the magazine: What does environmentally friendly computing mean to you if you’re a software developer? Is it any different from the performance tweaking you’re always doing?
If you have any ideas on what it does mean to be a lean, green programmer, let us know here.
Nancy
With the My Extensibility feature, new in Visual Basic 2008, My namespace extensions can be activated or deactivated through the Project Properties Designer, or when an associated reference is added or removed from a project. This capability makes extending the Visual Basic development environment simple through deploying APIs for common coding tasks.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Matthew DeVore focuses on how to integrate your extension with the My Extensibility feature.
Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.
If you find yourself wanting more information on how to write the actual code extensions to the My namespace, see Simplify Common Tasks by Customizing the My Namespace in the July 2005 issue of MSDN Magazine.
Many applications are written with almost no thought given to performance. But when the need for high performance does present itself, do you have the knowledge, skills, and tools to do a good job?
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Vance Morrison discusses what you need to write high-performance applications with the .NET Framework. Vance will show you how to quantify the expense of various .NET features so you know when it's appropriate to use them.
Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.
Check out our MSDN Magazine archives for more about coding for performance.
Recently, our Editor in Chief Howard Dierking had the pleasure of talking to Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, about a host of topics, from his thoughts on languages to general industry trends to his own personal reading list. We feature the interview in the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine.
Scott Mitchell in our Toolbox column has covered quite a few free tools you’ll love. Here are some you may have missed from Scott and some of our other authors as well. Check back again for more free tools next time.
SubSonic is an application toolset that is centered on its ability to completely generate your data access layer. Unlike some other Object Relation Mapping (ORM) frameworks, SubSonic takes the approach of generating and compiling your data access layer as opposed to performing a reflection-based mapping at run time (and for this reason, some would call it a code generation tool rather than an ORM).
Roy Osherove has created a number of free tools that make up for the lack of regular expression support in Visual Studio. The most well-known of these tools is Regulator, a standalone regular expression editor that includes color syntax highlighting, IntelliSense-like hints, a code snippets window, and search access to RegExLib.com, an online library of common regular expression patterns.
Scott Mitchell says Pixie 1.0, by Nattyware, is one of the best color pickers he has come across. And it’s free too.
Finally, check out FxCop, which lets you check a .NET assembly for compliance using a number of different rules. FxCop comes with a set number of rules created by Microsoft, but you can also write your own rules. James Avery wrote about it here, but you have to get it here.
Need an interactive voice response application for your organization's phone system? Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 Speech Server introduces a .NET Framework API for creating IVR applications, plus a visual IVR application designer based on Windows Workflow Foundation.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Michael Dunn demonstrates how to develop an IVR application with Voice Response Workflow Designer by laying out the call flow, building prompts, keywords and conversational grammars, and handling responses.
Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.
The Microsoft Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is an extensible framework for encoding, decoding, and manipulating images. WIC supports different image formats using an extensible set of imaging codecs. Each codec supports a different image format and typically provides both an encoder and decoder.
In the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine, Kenny Kerr shows you how to use WIC to encode and decode different image formats and a few things in between.
To learn more about Windows development with C++, check out the previous installments of Widnows with C++ as well as other related articles in the MSDN Magazine archives.
The April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine is now available online.
In the April issue, we take a look at some new technologies like voice apps and Silverlight animations, plus a look back at performance and scaling optimization. We also feature our first full-scale interview in a long time, with our Editor in Chief Howard Dierking discussion the evolution and future of programming languages with none other than Bjarne Stroustrup.
Here's what's in the issue:
Talk Back: Voice Response Workflows with Speech Server 2007 -- Speech Server 2007 lets you create sophisticated voice-response applications with Microsoft .NET Framework and Visual Studio tool integration. Here’s how. by Michael Dunn
Performance: Scaling Strategies for ASP.NET Applications -- Performance problems can creep into your Web app as it scales up, and when they do, you need to find the causes and the best strategies to address them. by Richard Campbell and Kent Alstad
Silverlight: Building Advanced 3D Animations with Silverlight 2.0 -- Animating with Silverlight is easier than you think. Here we create a 3D app that folds a polyhedron using XAML, C#, and by emulating the DirectX math libraries. by Declan Brennan
Interview++: Bjarne Stroustrup on the Evolution of Languages -- Howard Dierking talks to the inventor of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup, about language zealots, the evolution of programming, and what’s in the future of programming.
Office Development: Manage Metadata with Document Information Panels -- Use Document Information Panels in the Microsoft 2007 Office system to manipulate metadata from Office docs for better discovery and management. by Ashish Ghoda
In the columns we launch a new column about mobile device development: Going Places. We start out with a look at provisioning mobile devices. Among the other columns, Dr. James McCaffrey covers testing SQL stored procedures with LINQ and Michele Leroux Bustamante begins a series of columns on building a WCF-based router service.
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!
In the March 2008 installment of the Advanced Basics column in MSDN Magazine, Ken Getz shows you how to programmatically interact with the Office Open XML File Formats using Visual Studio 2008, LINQ to XML, and the Community Technology Preview (CTP) edition of the Microsoft SDK for Open XML Formats.
Don't forget to browse the sample code in our online code library.
Also in the March 2008 issue, in our Data Points column, John Papa performs practical queries and operations with LINQ, using both LINQ to Objects and LINQ to Entities. John demonstrates how LINQ's standard query operators are enhanced using lambda expressions and how they can let you parse specific information from a sequence and perform complex logic over a sequence.
Again, you can browse the sample code in our online code library.