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15
May

ADO.NET Data Services AJAX client library

4 Comments Categories: .NET 3.5 SP1 and ADO.NET Data Services

When the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions preview was released back in December, it included the ADO.NET Data Services AJAX client library embedded into the System.Web.Extensions assembly, making it possible to reference by name from a ScriptManager (as shown here). This made it pretty simple to get up and running in order to consume a data service from within your ASP.NET applications.

With the release of .NET 3.5 SP1 beta 1, the ADO.NET Data Services AJAX client library has been pulled out of the System.Web.Extensions assembly and is no longer available out of the box. Luckily, the same JavaScript files that were baked into the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions release are available on Codeplex and can be downloaded (here) and included in your projects.

Do you feel like consuming a data service from ASP.NET AJAX is a common enough scenario that you’d like to see the ADO.NET Data Service AJAX client library brought back into the framework? Or is having it on Codeplex suitable for those few situations when you might need it?

15
May

Sergio Bonachela is the man!

2 Comments Categories: Miscelaneous

I just wanted to give some quick props to Sergio Bonachela for taking this absolutely beautiful sunset skyline picture of downtown Seattle, and even better, for letting me use it for my header image. He has an entire collection of amazing photographs that are definitely worth checking out.

You can find his Flickr page here.

In addition, I’d like to give myself props for taking this awesome picture of a confused yet jovial looking bear (look at the bottom of my right-side bar). If anyone can tell me where that bear can be found in the world I will send them some type of prize.

13
May

.NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit May Preview

11 Comments Categories: .NET 3.5 SP1

The Visual Studio & .NET Framework evangelism team has released a revision of the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit, updated to work with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 & .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta 1! The May Preview release includes updated hands-on-labs as well as new presentations.

The following features had their labs updated in this iteration:

  • ASP.NET AJAX History
  • ASP.NET MVC
  • ASP.NET Dynamic Data
  • ADO.NET Data Services
  • ADO.NET Entity Framework

Due to the incompatibility between Visual Studio 2008 SP1 beta 1 and the Silverlight 2 SDK beta 1 release, the ASP.NET Silverlight controls lab that was available in the initial release of the kit, won’t be available in the May preview.

The following features have supporting presentations included in this iteration:

  • ASP.NET MVC
  • ASP.NET Dynamic Data
  • ADO.NET Data Services

New presentations will continue to be developed for inclusion in future iterations. In addition, demo scripts for each presentation will be created and added to the kit.

You can download the training kit here.

We hope to continue receiving feedback from the community in order to improve the quality of the kit’s contents. If you have any questions or comments about the training kit, or its contents, please feel free to email me.

12
May

Visual Studio 2008/.NET 3.5 SP 1 Beta 1

0 Comments Categories: .NET 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Today marks the release of some exciting new updates for .NET developers:

  1. Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta 1
  2. .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Beta 1
  3. Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition SP1 Beta 1
  4. Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server SP1 Beta 1

Before going into what these releases encompass, let’s take a step back and make sure any feature ambiguity is cleared up. Back in December, a release was made under the name “ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview”. This release included the following features:

  • ADO.NET Data Services
  • ADO.NET Entity Framework
  • ASP.NET AJAX History
  • ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining
  • ASP.NET Dynamic Data
  • ASP.NET MVC
  • ASP.NET Silverlight controls

Since then, ASP.NET MVC was pulled out-of-band and is being released on Codeplex at regular iterations. The ASP.NET Silverlight controls were removed and added to the Silverlight 2 SDK. The ASP.NET Routing engine was decoupled from ASP.NET MVC and made into a stand-alone feature. So where does that leave us today? .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta 1 includes the following new features:

  • ADO.NET Data Services
  • ADO.NET Entity Framework
  • ASP.NET AJAX History
  • ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining
  • ASP.NET Dynamic Data
  • ASP.NET Routing

As you can see, .NET 3.5 SP1 makes up the majority of what used to be called the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions, with the exception of the few features mentioned above, which aren’t part of this release.

In addition to those awesome new features, .NET 3.5 SP1 also includes of slew on enhancements as well, including:

  • WPF performance increases (application coldstarts, list controls)
  • New WinForms controls

What enhancements has Visual Studio 2008 received in SP1?

  • Integrated Entity Data Model designer
  • SQL Server 2008 Support
  • Improved JavaScript Formatting/Intellisense/Debugging
  • ASP Intellisense/Debugging
  • .NET Framework Client Profile

Prior to Visual Studio 2008 SP1, you had to download the Entity Framework Tools release to get the Entity Data Model designer, but it is now baked into the IDE. Also, support for connecting to SQL Server 2008 databases is included in Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

As for this “.NET Framework Client Profile” thing, what is that? Well, as much as I’d love to go into it, I’ll defer the explanation of this cool new feature to The Gu.

As a side note, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta 1 isn’t compatible with Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio Beta 1. If you have the Silverlight Tools Beta 1 installed, you’ll have to uninstall it in order to install Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta 1. Since the ASP.NET Silverlight controls aren’t a part of Visual Studio 2008 SP1, but rather the Silverlight 2 SDK, you’ll have to wait until the Beta 2 release of the Silverlight 2 SDK in order to use them in conjunction with Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

Hopefully this makes it clear what exactly SP1 contains, so you can determine whether you want to download this beta release. If you have any questions or feedback about SP1 Beta 1 please feel free to email me.

I will be diving into a lot of the individual features/enhancements mentioned above in coming weeks, so stay tuned.

05
May

Which Data Service client environment is most compelling to you?

6 Comments Categories: ADO.NET Data Services

One of the great things about ADO.NET Data Services is the flexibility around consuming it. Being able to create a single service that can in turn be leveraged by different applications in different environments makes it a very powerful feature. Currently there are three client-libraries available:

  1. Standard .NET (for the lack of a better term)
  2. Silverlight
  3. ASP.NET AJAX

I’m curious which client environment people feel will prove to be the most useful. If you were to adopt ADO.NET Data Services and begin implementing it in your applications, which scenario would you see a data service fitting into best?

Would the ease of data service creation and consumption enable you to begin creating more AJAX-enabled web applications? Does the Silverlight data service client library motivate you to begin looking into developing data-centric Silverlight applications?

I’m interested to hear your thoughts…

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