The art of simplicity

One of the lesser-known features added to .NET 4.0 is the TestCategory attribute . Comparable to the Category attribute in NUnit –this allows you to group your tests in functional categories. Using test categories is now the preferred way of running groups of tests, and you no longer need to deal with tests lists (.vsmdi files), which are tedious to maintain and very difficult to merge. You can use these test categories to optimize the build experience when using Team Build 2010. In the Build Definition there is a new option that allows you to include, exclude, combine,… multiple test categories in a build. Read more about it on MSDN .

15 years ago I wrote my first program in Turbo Pascal . Nowadays if you have children and want them to learn programming check out Microsoft Small Basic , which combines a simple (but powerful!) language and a rich set of libraries together with a friendly development environment. The Small Basic language draws its inspiration for an early version of BASIC but it is actually based on the .NET Framework. Like the early variants of BASIC it is based on, Small Basic is imperative and doesn't use or expose beginners to concepts like scopes, types, object orientation, etc. Even though it is based on the .NET Framework, it really is small and consists of just 14 keywords. In fact, there really isn’t a type system. You can create string and numeric constants and assign them to variables. Operations performed on these variables will be interpreted according to the content. All variables are global and are always initialized, so they can be used before they're assigned. It’s ve...

After returning from TechEd Berlin this Friday, I downloaded and install the recent release of the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC build .  Everything seemed fine, until I tried to debug something inside Visual Studio. I couldn’t do any kind of useful debugging. I found out on Scott Guthrie’s blog that it’s a known issue caused by installing both ASP.NET MVC 3 RC and C#/VB Async CTP. At this moment it isn’t possible to have both the Async CTP and the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC installed on the same machine at the same time.  You instead need to choose one or the other right now – installing both will cause problems. To fix this, go to Add/Remove Programs and uninstall both the ASP.NET MVC 3 RC build (including the VS Tools components for it) and the Async CTP. Once you’ve uninstalled both your machine will be back to a clean state and working fine.  You can then choose to install either the Async CTP or ASP.NET MVC 3 RC and it will work fine. Async CTP Uninstall Instructions The Micros...

If you are planning to start with Windows Azure, I have some good news for you. The Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special offer (which includes the SQL Azure Free Trial ) has been extended through March 31, 2011! This promotional offer enables you to try a limited amount of the Windows Azure platform at no charge. This subscription includes each month : Windows Azure 25 hours of a small compute instance 500 MB of storage 10,000 storage transactions Windows Azure AppFabric 100,000 Access Control transactions 2 Service Bus connections SQL Azure 1GB Web Edition database (available for first 3 months only) Data Transfers (per region) 500 MB in 500 MB out You still need to provide your credit card because you are still charged when your usage exceeds these amounts.

After a really long waiting period, it’s finally there, a beta version of IBM’s .NET provider for .NET Framework 4.0 as well as Addins for Visual Studio 2010. This beta level package requires a V9.7 FP3a client install(available here: http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg24028317 ) , and has the following features: DB2 .NET provider for connectivity to DB2 LUW, IDS, DB2 for z/OS and DB2 for IBM i DB2 Connect license required for z/OS and IBM i Common IDS .NET provider for IDS Entity Framework provider Entity Framework support for database first scenarios Entity Framework canonical function support Full filtering of Add Connection properties when use with Entity Framework Designer Visual Studio 2010 Addins Full Server Explorer filtering support Windows, Web and WPF application development scenarios with full drag and drop Designer support for SQL Procedures with syntax highlighting Full end to end debugging for SQL procedures ...

A lot of stuff has been written about Entity Framework versus NHibernate. Although with the release of Entity Framework 4, the gap became a lot smaller, NHibernate 3 brings the competition to the next level (at least that is what I think). Dino Esposito did a blog series where he tries to compare Entity Framework(4) and NHibernate(2.1)  on multiple areas. I don’t agree with his conclusions on all levels, but it’s still an interesting read: Part 1 A comparison on multiple database support in the Entity Framework and NHibernate O/RMs. Part 2 Looking into some programming features such as lazy loading. Part3 Fetch plans-a recognized and common way for developers to instruct the O/RM about the structure of the SQL you desire.

At Microsoft PDC 2010 Brian Harry showed a first preview of TFS 2010 installed and hosted on the cloud.  Hosting of ALM in the cloud is a great example of software as a service.  This making it really easy to get started with Team Foundation Server. Note that this is not a final product and no details were revealed about release date and pricing. Read more at Brian Harry’s blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2010/10/28/tfs-on-windows-azure-at-the-pdc.aspx