InfoQ Homepage .NET Content on InfoQ
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HealthVault Update Continues Microsoft Investment in Electronic Medical Records
Microsoft HealthVault, the web-based solution launched in 2007 for electronic medical records, recently released new capabilities for end users and platform developers. This release introduced incremental changes to a maturing offering in this emerging area of healthcare IT.
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Using Windows Server 8 to Build an IaaS Cloud
Small and large enterprises will be able to create their own clouds with Windows Server 8. A Microsoft whitepaper presents the details of building such an IaaS platform with the upcoming server OS from Redmond.
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The Cost of Async and Await
Asynchronous techniques can offer significant improvements in an application’s overall throughput, but it isn’t free. An asynchronous function is often slower than its synchronous alternative. Stephen Toub of MSDN Magazine has recently covered this topic in an article titled “Async Performance: Understanding the Costs of Async and Await”.
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Managed Extensibility Framework: What It is and Where It is Going
As the name implies, Managed Extensibility Framework is a framework for extending .NET applications. In a recent Channel 9 interview Oleg Lvovitch and Kevin Ransom talked about the history of MEF and what’s planed for version 2.
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Spatial Data Introduced to Entity Framework
One of the new additions in the Entity Framework June CTP is official support for Spatial data types, which allow developers to represent data using a system of coordinates, such as shapes, lines, or points on a map.
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New Extension Introduces Microsoft Office to LightSwitch
The Office Integration Pack enables Visual Studio LightSwitch developers to work with data in Microsoft Office 2010. With this extension, users are able to create documents, spreadsheets, and PDFs; send Outlook appointments and emails; and move data to and from Excel.
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Breaking Changes Planned for .NET 4.5
The actual version number for .NET 4.5 assemblies is 4.0.30319. If that looks familiar it is because that is also the version number for .NET 4.0 assemblies. Much to the chagrin of developers, Microsoft will be updating core assemblies “in-place” despite the fact that it includes breaking changes.
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There Will Be No Metro UI for Mono
Miguel de Icaza said that Xamarin won’t port Metro to other platforms, one of the reasons being Linux’ failure on the desktop. .NET developers interested in writing cross platform apps will be able to do so using Mono for the business code and rewriting the UI code for each platform.
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ASP.NET MVC Pipeline And Extensibility
ASP.NET MVC is designed with extensibility in mind and almost every part of processing pipeline is extensible using your own providers to replace the standard implementation. Simone Chiaretta, in his blog post “An Introduction to ASP.NET MVC Extensibility” gives an introduction to various stages in the ASP.NET MVC Pipeline, and a brief explanation of how extensibility comes into picture.
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Windows Share, a New Data Exchange Mechanism in Windows 8
Microsoft has created a new mechanism for sharing information between applications in Windows 8 called Windows Share. Apps can share text, bitmaps, HTML, URI, files, and other type of data, and the usage scenarios are numerous. For example, the app receiving the information can post it to Tweeter or Facebook make it easy to post information to a social network without actually visiting it.
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Design Details of the Windows Runtime
The Windows Runtime (WinRT) was created to provide a fluid and secure application experience on Windows. WinRT was influenced by both .NET, C++ and JavaScript. WinRT does not replace the CLR or Win32, but rather provides unified support for applications written in different languages to run on Windows using the new Metro UI.
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F# 3.0 – LINQ + Type Providers = Information Rich Programming
Microsoft recently announced a developer preview release of F# 3.0 – new features include LINQ-support through Query expressions and a Type Provider System along with a set of built-in providers that allow succinct programming against a variety of data sources.
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C#, VB.NET To Get Windows Runtime Support, Asynchronous Methods
C# and VB.NET will soon be getting new features like Windows Runtime Support, Asynchronous Methods, Caller Info attributes and more. Also, compiler will get APIs which will expose what the compiler knows about the code to the IDE and the developers.
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Designing Loosely Coupled Metro Applications with URIs
Protocols allow applications to launch other applications using URIs much as you would launch a website. This allows you to build a collection of small work-flow centric applications that work together seamlessly.
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Application Lifecycle Management in Team Foundation Server 11
Team Foundation Server 11 has added many features in the area of Application Lifecycle Management. Some of the highlights include support for code reviews, iterations/sprints, resource allocation, third part testing frameworks, and a much more capable dependency graph.