.NET/Visual Studio 2008

• How to Download all of Visual Studio 2008 SP1
• The Release of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 will Install over SP1 Beta
• XLinq’n in the New World - Speed Comparison with Xml/XPath (Derik Whittaker)  [via Alvin]
• Did you know… You can hide or show hidden members and types in the Object Browser? - #215

P2P

• P2P and WCF: The PeerName Tool 

TDD/Unit Testing

• TypeMock continues to grow - MbUnit "Gallo" announces built in support for Typemock Isolator
• Here's a nice post on Mocking Web Services with it
• And another Typemock post - Automated Unit tests in my life - beginning
• Typemock Isolator 4.2.4 is out

Windows Workflow

• Workflow Persistence Service using SQL Server Compact

Identity Management

• Federated Identity with BizTalk Services

David continues his series, "In my previous post I discussed the importance of topics in Neuron and how each topic is implemented as an individual publish-subscribe network, called a topic network. Topic networks are based on a modular channel model and can be powered by technologies ranging from WCF peer networking to BizTalk Server. Today we’ll look at the channel model in more detail."

David continues his series, "Today I’d like to talk about how Neuron ESB implements publish-subscribe over topics. Topics are important in Neuron both logically and architecturally. Logically, topics model business conversations and are an important tool for organizing information. Architecturally, topics are independent networks that give the bus its distributed nature and scalability."

We are set for our biggest code camp ever. Here are some factoids:

·         590+ registered, expect close to 450 attending

·         8 rooms like last time

·         Park on the west or north side, north (back of building) is closest to the common and session rooms

·         Attendees and speakers must register, all get a badge, speakers get a shirt (please wear it!)

·         Several of the partners will have a table for the day, stop by and say hello

·         There will be empty attendee bags and a few tables full of goodies

·         Volunteers (see below) should start showing up at 7:30 to set up

·         We have three high school kids for the day to handle food, trash, and heavy lifting

·         The first session is at 8:30

·         Lunch is earlier this time – 11:30, Primo Hoagies

·         Afternoon snack are hot soft pretzels

·         Closing and raffle happen at 4:50 in the common room

·         Volunteers are always welcome to help clean up

·         The speaker party immediately follows (5:30-7:30) at the Bent Elbow

·         Evaluations will happen online this time using SharePoint, results will be posted in less than a week

·         Attendees can win one of three Zunes by completing evaluations

ScottGu makes it official today. There is a whole lot of stuff here, and I think its safe to say that this is "stretching" the concept of a Service Pack. Scott's post has a lot of detail. The big ticket items are the Entity Framework and Astoria, but there is a lot of additive stuff. See Brad's post overall. Tim covers V3 of WPF. Steve covers my fave area of WCF.
You can download and install the beta here.

Oh, take it from hours of experience. If you have Vista, please make sure you read ScottGu's post and learn you MUST install Vista SP1 before doing this install!!

Today's new and notable comes from a hotel in Northern NJ, where I am a wedding weekend and sneaking away on the computer :)

ALT.NET/Design Patterns

• Great collection of Ayende's talks. Download the decks, they are great stuff.

SOA/ESB/Security

• Very cool and extremely useful: patterns & practices WCF Security Practices at a Glance Now Available
• Weekly SOA crumbs #16: Links on Service orientation, cloud computing and ESB’s

Software Development

• The Weekly Source Code 26 - LINQ to Regular Expressions and Processing in Javascript
• TypeConverters: There's not enough TypeDescripter.GetConverter in the world
• I have been using this tool a bit. EntitySpaces 2008 Alpha Released. This Alpha release supports only C# class generation from within CodeSmith, and only supports Microsoft SqlServer. A subsequent beta release will support CodeSmith, MyGeneration, C#/VB.NET classes, and all of our providers. The Alpha release comes with both .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.5 runtimes.

Trying to get in a habit of doing these when I get up and before getting into work.

Design Patterns/DI/IOC

• Command-Query Separation and Immutable Builders
• Castle demo app: ActiveRecord basics and unit testing
• Prism Vs. Framework XXXX

General

• Christian notes that we will have 12-Core Processors in 2010

ASP.NET MVC

• MVC Storefront, Part 9: The Shopping Cart

Silverlight

• Great Silverlight 2 Demo: Healthcare Demonstrator

SQL Server

• Using SQLCmd to output results

WCF/DI/BizTalk

• Nice pair of posts: Dependency Injection in WCF Services  and Dependency Injection in WCF Services Part 2
• Article Series on BizTalk and WCF: Part VIII, BizTalk Adapter Pack Service Model Patterns

ASP.NET/OR/M/ASP.NET MVC

• EntitySpaces and Silverlight Demo (Part 1)
• MVC Storefront, Part 8: Testing Controllers, Iteration 1

Dave continues his series, "Today I’d like to talk about how you can store your WCF configuration information centrally with Neuron ESB . While it’s great that WCF allows you to move details such as endpoint, binding, and other information out of code and into config file settings, it can still be inconvenient to work with many individual config files. If you are dealing with large numbers of services, you may desire a way to centralize your configuration information. Neuron ESB provides a service repository for this purpose, plus a neat factory for creating WCF clients. Together, they free you from needing local WCF configuration settings."

This is a big part of why this is so.

Identity Management/OpenID/Security/P2P/WCF

• Scott Hanselman has a great post on OpenId
• P2P and WCF: Some Resources - part of a great series. We use Peer Channel in Neuron by default. It's fast!
• Pablo: GetReady for OpenID
• Using IdentityModel: Converting ADFS Security Properties to Claims

Software Development Tools

• Patrick: Diff Tools to See Source File Changes

Smart Client/CAB/SCSF/CAB

• Two nice talks from Brian Noyes at VSLive! San Fran:

• Exploit WPF Graphics without Wounding the Eyes   Slides    Demos

• Build Composite UI Applications with CAB and SCSF    Slides    Demos

David continues, "Today I’d like to talk about the Neuron ESB management experience. Neuron takes management seriously and a lot of effort has gone into providing a one-stop administrative experience for configuration, deployment, activity reporting, operations monitoring, change management, and problem response "

CLR/DLR/Popfly

• IronPython 2.0 Beta 2
• Popfly Game Creator
• Windows PowerShell V2 CTP2

SOA/WCF

• Weekly SOA crumbs #15: Have you seen the latest “mesh”up from Microsoft?
• Service Oriented Architecture, Service Factories and Modeling
• Federation Over TCP With WCF
• 6 New patterns & practices WCF Security How Tos
• Messaging Additions in Orcas, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4

ASP.NET

• April 28th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 

ALT.NET/TDD

• The Past, Present, and Future of .NET Unit Testing

I am going to have to name this series something else but can't think of it right now. Anyhow, we're off into Claim-Based Security and I am writing a post, but until then some links:

• Dominick's posts on IdentityModel
• Dominck's LeastPrivilege.IdentityModel library
• Kim Cameron's The Laws of Identity
• Michele's Building a Claims-Based Security Model in WCF Part 1
• Part 2
• Microsoft SAB
• sharpSTS is a C# library for developing Information Card Security Token Servers.
• Dominick's ASP.NET control for Information Cards.
• Whole bunch of resources here