Microsoft released Entity Framework Beta 3 on Dec. 6 and officially announced the third-party database vendors and ADO.NET 2.0 data providers that have agreed to support the framework.

The ADO.NET Entity Framework is the latest Microsoft technology to support the RTM versions of .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.

Entity Framework Beta 3 provides the data access APIs for .NET 3.5. It follows Entity Framework Beta 2, released in August, which is built on .NET 3.5 Beta 2.

In addition to support for the final versions of .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, Beta 3 provides new features, bug fixes and major performance enhancements. "We've got faster view generation, some simpler generated SQL, we've taken a lot of feedback from customers in some of these areas," said Elisa Flasko, program manager for the Data Programmability team at Microsoft. Beta 3 also offers more similarities to SQL, for example, partial methods in code-generation for certain property changed events.

"The changes have mostly been around the mapping and in the Entity Data Model of the Entity Framework itself," Flasko said. "As far the LINQ implementation [LINQ to Entities], it has mostly been fit and finish." Users can, however, now do compiled LINQ query for better performance.

Roger Jennings, principal consultant at Oakleaf Systems, who is using Beta 3, called it a major update. "With Beta 3, it is coming into shape," he said. "There are substantial performance improvements--that was one of the problems. Almost everything involved with queries is faster now."

Developers who have been using Beta 2 should note that there are breaking changes in Beta 3. "Most of them are not huge code changes," asserted Flasko.

New Tools CTP

Beta 3 requires the Entity Framework Tools December 2007 CTP, which was also posted Dec. 6 and is available for download on MSDN. This is the second CTP; the first preview was released in August.

In the latest tooling preview, the Entity Data Model Designer adds the ability to used stored procedures as an alternative to dynamic SQL for populating entities. "We've had the ability for a while in the runtime to use stored procedures in SQL Server behind the Entity Framework rather than dynamic SQL," explained Flasko. "Now the tooling experience will allow you to use the tooling rather than having to code by hand to hook those two things up."

The Entity Framework is built on ADO.NET, a connection technology that allows .NET users to access third-party databases. The framework provides a conceptual model for database schema that makes it easier for developers to program against business logic, according to Microsoft.

Provider Writers

ADO.NET 2.0 data providers that have committed to support the ADO.NET Entity Framework include Core Lab, DataDirect Technologies, IBM, MySQL, and Sybase, among others. These companies are planning to extend their data providers to support the framework -- three months after it RTMs, or by year end.

Oracle is not on that list. "We have been working with them, but at this point what we have are the providers that are included in the press release," Flasko said.

Microsoft is planning to release the ADO.NET Entity Framework and the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions, which will include the REST-based data services model (codenamed Astoria), in the same time frame. All of these technologies are expected in the first half of 2008, but the actual productization has not been finalized. "We haven't locked down the ship vehicle for ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions," Flasko explained.

The upcoming CTP of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions, expected this month, offers the first public preview of the model-view-controller (MVC) option, support for REST, additional AJAX functionality, and Dynamic Data Controls. The data controls, which include a scaffolding framework, will be provided by an open source .NET toolset, Castle Project's SubSonic.
 

From Redmond Developer

In a surprise move, Microsoft said today it is releasing the reference source code for the .NET Framework libraries, a key step toward opening up the proprietary development platform.

Developers will be able to review and debug .NET source code with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. Released under the Microsoft Reference License, developers are able to view, but not modify or distribute, the reference source code.

The goal is to give .NET developers an opportunity to better understand "the inner workings of the framework's source code," Scott Guthrie, general manager of Microsoft's developer division, said in a blog posting.

"Having source code access and debugger integration of the .NET Framework libraries is going to be really valuable for .NET developers," Guthrie wrote. "Being able to step through and review the source should provide much better insight into how the .NET Framework libraries are implemented, and in turn enable developers to build better applications and make even better use of them."

While Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond said that Microsoft has resisted opening the .NET Framework, it's not the first time the software giant has taken such a step, noting a similar move with the Windows source code several years back.

Developers are likely to welcome the move but see it as an incremental step, given the fact that they will not be able to modify or distribute the code. "I would view it as a testing the waters move, the next step would be going to the source submitter process that would allow other folks to innovate with the .NET Framework," Hammond said.

"It would be interesting to see Microsoft adopt a process by which they can tap into the innovation of the community at large, that's one of the things they are really struggling with right now," he added.

Hammond pointed out that Microsoft needed to make such an initial move, given what developers are becoming accustomed to in the open source world with tools such as Eclipse and Apache, among others.

"One of the things that makes Eclipse so powerful is there are so many external committers that a tremendous amount of defects get fixed in a very rapid time frame," Hammond said.

Still developers are ultimately going to want to be able to modify the .NET code and Hammond believes .NET developers are going to expect that over time. Yet the move  should at least ease the bug fixing process, he said.

 "When you have a bug and that bug gets traced to commercial software product, you can report the bug to the vendor but then you are pretty much out of luck until the vendor comes back with a solution," he said. "With this you can debug into that source, you can figure out why your having a problem, and a) maybe you work around it yourself, or b) be very specific when you give Microsoft feedback in terms of a defect that's impacting your ability to work."

 

ON THE SCENE - During an invitation-only demonstration at TechEd, small device developer EmbeddedFusion demonstrated a prototype programmable small device - actually a circuit board with a 2x3 color LCD display - that is capable of being programmed using Microsoft's .NET Micro Framework.

It's a managed code system with which developers can rapidly build programs for embedded devices, and embedded device drivers.

Within the first 20 minutes of programming the card using C# in Visual Studio 2005 (after re-installing the EmbeddedFusion SDK), we were able to construct a simple application that...[drum roll]...blinked an LED on and off.

From a technical perspective, this is more difficult than it seems under the hood. As we learned, embedded devices employ signals on pinouts that are time-specific, while .NET functions are asynchronously sequential.

In other words, they tend to run one after the other, the way things typically do on a PC. So there's already a bit of incompatibility: An event scheme has to be worked up when you connect the programmable device to the PC via a USB cable, in which you have to force the PC to run on a clock.

The skeleton code for doing this is part of the EmbeddedFusion SDK for .NET Micro Framework. We then embellished that skeleton code with test code that samples the inputs every second (or, by our count, every 1000 microseconds), and that pushes a pin - in the digital sense - every second to flip on and off the LED.

A much more complex sample involves the built-in two-axis accelerometer, and was demonstrated for us. There, a test .NET Micro application was pushed via USB cable into the embedded prototype card, which triggers it to run a ball-in-a-maze game.

On the surface, it looks like a fairly low-order game...that is, until you pick up the card itself and move it around. The active accelerometers scoot the ball around, just like a real steel ball inside one of those cheap plastic mazes you get in a happy meal.
 

This Thursday, Tom Hollander and I will be presenting a web cast on building your own application block using Enterprise Library January 2006. The talk will discuss how to take a piece of functionality that you have built and plug it into the configuration system, so that it can be constructed using the provider-based factories.

The topics will include:

1. Building the simplest Application Block possible
   
2. Attaching configuration to the block
   
3. Allowing for variability through custom providers
   
4. Creating your own configuration objects for your providers

Register Here

 

Microsoft Corp. has completed its acquisition of the software and intellectual property assets of UMT, a project and portfolio management and consulting firm.
Microsoft first announced the deal with UMT in December, when it said it planned to combine the technology and expertise of UMT with its existing Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management Solution, currently code-named Microsoft Office Project "12" and which is based on Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2003.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will use his keynote address at the annual Microsoft Office Project Conference in Seattle Thursday to make this announcement, as well as to confirm to the 1,500 business managers, technology professionals and developers in attendance that Microsoft Office Project 12 will draw on those newly acquired technologies.

Ballmer will also announce that key members of the UMT executive team and a number of UMT product development employees will join the Microsoft Office Project team, a Microsoft spokeswoman told eWEEK.

"The consulting arm of UMT will become the UMT Consulting Group and will help provide successful implementations of the Microsoft portfolio management software platform," the spokeswoman said.

In a prepared statement released to eWEEK ahead of the keynote, Ballmer said Microsoft is "excited because acquiring UMT will help us meet customers' needs for deep portfolio management capabilities. By combining our software and expertise, we'll also create a new range of solution development opportunities for customers and partners."

For his part, Gil Makleff, UMT's North American CEO, said the company is looking forward to joining forces with Microsoft and working together toward a shared vision that combines project and portfolio management capabilities.

"Customers will reap the benefits of being able to put tighter reins on their spending, make smarter and more consistent investments, and accurately and efficiently track how projects and initiatives are performing," he said.

Project 12, expected to be released in the second half of this year along with the other software products in Office 12, will deliver new innovations and benefits in the areas of visibility and insight, organizational adoption, enterprise readiness and extensibility, the spokeswoman said.

In a statement, Microsoft said that Project 12 will give project managers the ability to easily track project changes by having changes visually displayed instantaneously as projects are updated. It will also improve performance such as "local cache," which enables working offline, and then automatically resyncing when back online, all of which are transparent to the user.

It has been built completely on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and many functions will use the .Net platform 2.0, the statement said.

Microsoft Office Visio "12", the next version of the company's business and technical diagramming program, will make it easier for business and IT professionals to visualize, analyze and communicate complex information, processes and systems and is complementary to the advancements made in Project 12 advancements, the statement said.

Visio 12 will deliver new diagramming and graphics capabilities that make it easier to document, design and redesign processes and systems. The new Data Selector wizard allows easy connection between Visio diagrams and one or more data sources such as Microsoft Office Excel, Office Access, Office SharePoint Portal Server or Microsoft SQL Server.

The new PivotDiagram template in Visio 12 helps people visualize business data in a hierarchical form that shows data groups and totals, trends, issues and exceptions. PivotDiagrams can also be inserted into any Visio diagram to provide metrics and reports that help track the ongoing progress of a process or system, Microsoft said.

 
Via eWEEK

 

Microsoft is greenlighting development and rollout of applications based on beta code contained in the WinFX programming framework and architecture.

Code for the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) - elements of WinFX - have been made available under Microsoft's Go Live Licenses, which allow developers to build and deploy applications before the Windows product concerned moves from beta.

Developers beware: you're on your own if you accept Microsoft's offer of a Go Live License. Beta code released under Go Live is not supported by the company - so forget patches or fixes, especially in favorite areas such as security.

Applications additionally run the risk of being at odds with the final WinFX, WCF and WWF architectures once they are deemed code-complete by Microsoft and released.

According to Microsoft, the Go Live licenses help "drive the feedback loop between customers and Microsoft. This helps us ensure that the product we ultimately ship meets the stability, reliability and needs of our customers."

Full terms and conditions can be viewed here.

WinFX was originally slated for release as part of Windows Vista, back in 2003, but as that operating system slipped to the second half of 2006 Microsoft instead decided to also make it available for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003.

WinFX is Microsoft's XML-based API layer that supersedes programming in Win 32. WCF is an API programming layer designed to simplify development of, and connection to, web services for developers using Windows. WWF is a set of APIs, runtime and editor for developers to build workflows that are not embedded in the software.

Microsoft has used Go Live before to stimulate demand for technologies and seed the market ahead of a product's launch or in the face of delay.

The first Go Live Licenses were introduced in June 2001 for Visual Studio.NET - eight months before shipment of the first .NET implementation of Microsoft's popular integrated development environment (IDE). Microsoft hoped to gain early traction for the fledgling .NET. Go Live Licenses were also used for the delayed Visual Studio 2005.

Via The Register

 

The announcement of the Language Integrated Query (LINQ) features of C# 3.0 has caused both excitement and apprehension. While most think that query integration in the language is a good thing, the DLINQ extension appears in many ways to be just another object relational mapper. Is Microsoft changing the way data applications are developed or just reinventing the wheel?

Read full article at theserverside.net

 

One of the main issues currently facing developers industry-wide is the difficulty of creating data-rich applications, a difficulty that arises from the tremendous differences between query languages used to access data and programming languages commonly used to write applications. A quick browse through the computer programming section of any bookstore provides evidence of this issue. Books are divided into sections that address different types of programming, such as XML, database and object programming, revealing a world of distinct domains. Developers writing applications that access data from relational (SQL) or hierarchical (XML) data sources must be adept at traversing very different language syntaxes to get the job done.

To reduce complexity for developers and help boost their productivity, Microsoft today announced a solution for the .NET Framework called the Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Project, a set of language extensions to the C# and Visual Basic programming languages that extends the Microsoft .NET Framework by providing integrated querying for objects, databases and XML data. Using LINQ, developers will be able to write queries natively in C# or Visual Basic without having to use other languages, such as Structured Query Language (SQL) or XQuery, a query language for accessing XML data. The announcement was made here at the Microsoft Professional Developers 2005 Conference, where Microsoft is making available a Tech Preview containing pre-release versions of the various components of the LINQ Project.

PressPass spoke with Microsoft's Anders Hejlsberg, technical fellow and chief architect of C#, and Paul Vick, technical lead for Visual Basic, to learn more about the LINQ Project.

Read More

 

In the space of a couple years, the architecture track has swelled from a handful of sessions and a couple of panels, to a first class citizen of the overall Tech-Ed experience. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) made its presence felt from Steve Ballmer’s keynote, to the last minute chats at the conclusion of the conference, and in almost every after-hours conversation in hotel lobby lounges during the week. While Microsoft’s branding of SOA as “Connected Systems” did tend to muddy the conceptual water at times, the message is clear… hardly anyone is talking about the same thing when talking about service-oriented architectures.

Some ideological conflict seems to be centered not on the message-based architectures and patterns – which seem to be achieving defacto acceptance as the ultimate meaning of service-oriented architecture, but on the role of applications in a service-oriented architecture. For some architects, the word “application” simply means a set of rich user interfaces that tap into an underlying, asynchronous command-processing pipeline in a service-oriented utopia. This perspective rings with Sun Microsystems’ mantra, “The Network is the Computer” – in effect suggesting the service set is the application. For others, applications are applications, services are services, and that service infrastructure may connect distributed applications and make them reusable, but applications and services are inherently different and separate while still taking their respective places as essential and successive units of decomposition of the enterprise informatic wholarchy.

Read More