Boxstarter is an open-source application that enables you to do the unattended install of everything required to turn bare metal, Azure VM or Hyper-V VM into a working Windows Server. It is built on top of Chocolatey, Nuget, and PowerShell to make the repeated installation of windows-based machines into an automated error-free process. Matt Wrock, Boxstarter's creator, explains how to use it.… Read more
OWIN and Katana are designed to provide a different way of meeting those objectives that currently require the use of NodeJS. With them, you can run extremely thin and super-optimized web server applications by cutting out what you don't need and swapping out those parts that you wish to behave differently. Dino Esposito explains how to get started.… Read more
LINQ expressions can be made much easier to comprehend and modify by using extension methods to create pipes and filters. Ed takes a working LINQ expression and makes stepwise improvements to it to make it clearer.… Read more
Despite the many benefits of automatic memory management in .NET, there are still a few perils which we must avoid. One of the most common, and frustrating to deal with, is fragmentation of the large object heap. In this article Chris Morter explains what LOH fragmentation is, why it's a problem, and what you can do to avoid it.… Read more
WinRT, the Windows Runtime, was launched by Microsoft to some puzzlement. How does it relate to COM? Is it a replacement for .NET or SilverLight? is it the same as Windows RT? Why is it important? Michael answers these questions and more.… Read more
In LINQ, the 'fluent' method syntax flows logically and intuitively, and allows them to be combined simply, because each method returns the appropriate type of object for the next. Can this fluent technique be extended as an API style to make it easier to develop C# team-based applications for enterprises? … Read more
The support for asynchronous operations in .NET 4.5 has made it much easier to create easily-intelligible asynchronous methods that avoid blocking. However, async/wait isn't cost-free in terms of CPU overhead. How best to judge when to use it? Chris Hurley explains.… Read more
Entity Framework provides three different approaches to deal with the model, and each one has its own pros and cons. Ambily Kavumkal Kamalasanan discusses the advantages of the Model, Database, and Code First approaches to modeling in Entity Framework 5.0. Entity Framework still has its share of issues and is not widely accepted yet - but through contributing to its ongoing development the community can make it more stable and increase its adoption.… Read more
The NuGet package manager is a great way for developers to install and update third-party tools. It solves a lot of the problems of dependency management and integration. Is it ready for the exacting requirements of development in the enterprise?… Read more
It is only recently that the tools have existed to make source-control easy for database developers. Although entire build-scripts for databases could be stored in Subversion, tools like Source Control for Oracle (SoCO) now allow for a more effective source-control at object-level. … Read more
The move from client-server version ontrol systems (VCS) to distributed version control systems can be bewildering. Tom uses his experience of moving to Mercurial to explain those aspects of the move that are liable to cause confusion to anyone steeped in the culture of the traditional VCS. Rebase, Push, Pull and Merge explained!… Read more
The creation of a public API for data presents something of a dilemma for the developer. Web API, with its content negotiation, seems somehow cleverer than classic ASP.NET MVC, but there are complications, such as the XML schema, that suggest that there are merits in using MVC controllers for all public HTTP APIs… Read more
It's possible to build up dynamic LINQ queries or queries with several conditional criteria. In fact there are several options for doing this, including the use of expression trees.… Read more
Subversion provides a good way of source-controlling a database, but many operations are best done from within your database-development environmant. Fortunately, several products provide this integration … Read more
In the ninth installment of his popular series on using Subversion, Michael describes how to set up a simple Subversion server for a multi-user project and describes some of the reports, charts and tables you can get about the activity in your project … Read more
Windows Store Apps use contracts to declare the interactions that they support with other apps and with the 'Charm Bar'. They bind your app to other 'Metro' style apps and to the system user-interface: They provide a great deal of functionality for little programming effort.… Read more
The ASP.NET MVC controller is a good friend of web developers. There are a host of features in it that can be used to reduce the amount of coding you have to do, and to make the logic simpler. … Read more
Almost certainly, any HTML-based application is going to need to create markup on the client-side, using JavaScript. The language isn't particularly geared for the task, but with JQuery and now JSrender, it is no longer something that the web programmer needs to dread… Read more
Enums in .NET are strongly-typed constants that allow you to share a multi-valued property across applications. When used in a XAML application with view-models it can provide a design choice that greatly simplifies the handling of related boolean attributes. … Read more
Unit Testing has come to dominate the many types of test that are used in developing applications. This has inevitably been at the expense of other types, such as integration test. Does a successful unit test regime ensure quality, or should we see unit testing as just one of a range of tests that can together give us confidence in an application?… Read more
