Visual Studio Magazine - 05- 2009

8/10/2019 Visual Studio Magazine - 05- 2009

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Headwinds

MAY20

09

Volume19,

No.

5

VisualStudioMagazine.com

PLUS

Create Data-Driven Appswith Silverlight 3

Generate Code UsingT4 Templates

Why Redmond Needs toReturn to Its Roots

How are Microsoft, tool vendorsand development shops dealingwith the downturn? Our TechEdpreview offers a .NET forecast.
http://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/http://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/http://www.1105media.com/


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harePoint is a trademark or a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. DataParts is a registered trademark of Software FX, Inc. Other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

BeTheMasterOnAnyPlatform

VTC Virtual TrainingCenter for SharePoint
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DepressingDevelopmentsThe economic downturn doesnt offer

many places to hide. Gartner predicts thatglobal IT spending this year will decline 3.8

percent from 2008. How is this slowdown

affecting the .NET developer community?

We checked in with developers and ISVs to

get a sense of how theyre adapting as

TechEd North America 2009 approaches.

The results, which are the basis of this

months cover story, were enlightening.

It turns out that different sectors are

experiencing different levels of dislocation.

One survey respondent in the building

industry says all new development is on

hold, we are working on maintenenance

only. But few are taking it harder thanthe auto industry.

A developer at a supplier of steering

columns and shifters for auto and

trucking manufacturers from Michigan

says, Our departmental budgets are

virtually non-existent.

Similar tales of layoffs, cutbacks and

bare maintenance-only budgets abound in

the travel, finance, energy utility and other

sectors. Heck, even collection agencies are

hurting. Yes, we have a lot of incoming

business. But while placements are up,

collections numbers are down, and we

cant spend money for new projects, says

the information services director of a

Houston-based collection agency.

Not everyone is cutting back.

Government, military, security and areas of

health care remain active. Respondents

working in the U.S. Army and Air Force say

dev activity is strong, and one government

developer writes, Were moving forward

with all current initiatives as planned.

Funding, while potentially reduced, will just

extend the time toward project completion.

How is your dev organization weather-

ing the downturn? And how is the slow-

down impacting your ability to adopt major

new Microsoft technologies? E-mail me [email protected].

VisualStudioMagazine.com May 2009 VISUAL STUDIO MAGAZINE 3

COVE

RI

LLUSTRATION

BY

RYAN

ETTER

FEATURES

14 HeadwindsDespite a troubled economy and falling IT budgets, Microsoft and its partners arebusy rolling out new tools and platforms. We preview some of the goings on atMicrosoft TechEd North America 2009, and talk to developers and ISVs about howtheyre managing in a sluggish software market. BY MICHAEL DESMOND

26 Silverlight 3 Enables Data-Driven App DevThe latest version of Silverlight boasts a new DataForm control and enhancedsupport for data-driven applications, enabling developers to deliver line-of-businessapplications to any user with a Silverlight-enabled Web browser. We walk throughthe new capabilities in the latest beta of Silverlight 3. BY PETER VOGEL

DEPARTMENTS

6 Letters to the Editor

8 DevDisastersGatekeepers of Bad Software BY ALEX PAPADIMOULIS (TheDailyWTF.com)

10 DevInsights DEVELOPER NEWS, REVIEWS, PRODUCT BRIEFSNews:TechEd Preview PAGE 10Product Review:Sybase PowerDesigner Data Modeling PAGE 11Product Briefs:Test Center Standard Edition and Connect ODBC 6.0 PAGE 12

36 LANGUAGE LAB

C# Corner PAGE 36

Covariance and contravariance are precise terms that describe which conversions aresafe on parameters and return types. Learn about new constructs to be supportedin C# 4.0, and how to live with the current limitations until Visual Studio 2010 isadopted by your organization. BY BILL WAGNER

Ask Kathleen PAGE 42Learn how to create and debug templates using Microsofts Text TransformationTemplating Toolkit (T4) language, which is included with Visual Studio 2008.BY KATHLEEN DOLLARD

COLUMNS

3 Frameworks BY MICHAEL DESMOND

48 Redmond Review BY ANDREW BRUST

47 Index of Advertisers

{ F R A M E W O R K S }

Contents

May 2009 // Volume19 // No. 5

14

Michael Desmond, Editor in Chief,

Visual Studio Magazine
mailto:[email protected]://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/http://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/mailto:[email protected]


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8/52VISUAL STUDIO MAGAZINE May2009 VisualStudioMagazine.com

Each month, Andrew Brust writes the Redmond Review column for the back

page of Visual Studio Magazine. His first column since arriving from the pages ofRedmond Developer Newsfocused on the late change of heart Microsoft had

regarding its SQL Data Services cloud-based data storage scheme. Longtime

VSM contributor Roger Jennings responds to Brusts column in a blog posting.

Andrew Brusts Whats Old Is New Again column for Visual Studio

Magazines April 2009 issue recounts the history of Visual Basic 3.0s adoption

of the Jet (Access) 1.1 relational database and the parallel with the SDS teams

course reversal from the Entity-Attribute-Value data model to a full-featured

relational database. Andrew concludes:

So Redmond listened to its customers, and the bizarre obsession with

copying Amazons SimpleDB Web service is over. Microsoft has given us a truly

simple offering: the SQL Server technology that most Microsoft developers have

been using for a decade and some have been using since even before my firstcolumn was published.

I couldnt agree more.

P.S. Andrew and I started writing for Visual Studio Magazines predecessor

about 15 years ago when it had just been re-named from BASIC Pro to Visual

Basic Programmers Journal.

Roger Jennings

Principal, OakLeaf Systems

Oakland, Calif.

On the New Redesign

VSM redesigned its cover and pages with the April 2009 issue. A reader shares

his thoughts.

I want you to know that I 'm totally offended by Aprils front cover.Having both the female sexual computer model and the evolution icon is

the last straw. Your magazine has bleak content anyway. I threw it in the trash.

Evolution is nothing but a false faith in garbage science. I want to terminate my

subscription immediately.

Dennis Parks

Beaverton, Ore.

LettersVisualStudioMagazine.com

May 2009 Volume 19 No. 5

Editorial Staff

Vice President, Doug BarneyEditorial Director

Editor in Chief Michael DesmondExecutive Editor Kathleen Richards

News Editor Jeffrey Schwartz

Managing Editor Wendy Gonchar

Associate Managing Editor Katrina Carrasco

Contributing Editors

Andrew J. Brust, Kathleen Dollard, Ken Cox, John Cronan,

Dan Fergus, John Gavilan, Roger Jennings,

Don Kiely, Martin Kulov, Jeff Levinson, Bill McCarthy,

John Charles Olamendy Turruellas,

Keith Pleas, Bill Wagner

Art Staff

Creative Director Scott Shultz

Graphic Designer Erin Horlacher

Online/Digital MediaEditor, VisualStudio Becky Nagel

Magazine.com

Executive Editor, New Media Michael Domingo

Online News Editor Kurt Mackie

Associate Editor, Web Gladys Rama

Web Producer Shane Lee

Director, Web Development Rita Zurcher

President Henry Allain

Vice President, Publishing Matt N. Morollo

Director of Marketing Michele Imgrund

Online Marketing Director Tracy S. Cook

President & Neal VitaleChief Executive Officer

Senior Vice President Richard Vitale& Chief Financial Officer

Executive Vice President Michael J. Valenti

Vice President, Finance Christopher M. Coates& Administration

Vice President, Digital Media, Abraham M. LangerAudience Development

Vice President, Information Erik A. LindgrenTechnology &Web Operations

Vice President, Digital Media, Doug MashkuriAdvertising

Vice President, Carmel McDonaghAttendee Marketing

Chairman of the Board Jeffrey S. Klein

REACHING THE EDITORS

Editors can be reached via e-mail, fax, telephone or mail.A list of editors and contact information is available atVisualStudioMagazine.com.

E-mail: E-mail isrouted to individuals desktops. Please use thefollowing form: [email protected] not include a middle name or middle initials.

Telephone: The switchboard is open weekdays 8:30 a.m.to 5:30 p.m. Pacific Time. After 5:30 p.m. you will be directedto individual extensions.

San Francisco Office 415-814-0950; Fax 415-814-0961

Irvine Office 949-265-1520; Fax 949-265-1528

Corporate Office 818-734-1520; Fax 818-734-1528

Visual Studio Magazine

The opinions expressed within the articles and other contentsherein do not necessarily express those of the publisher.

Visual Studio Magazine wants to hear from you! Send us your thoughtsabout recent stories, technology updates or whatevers on your mind.E-mail us at [email protected] and be sure to includeyour first and last name, city and state. Please note that letters may beedited for form, fit and style. They express the views of the individualauthors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the VSM editors or1105 Media Inc.

Whats Old IsNew Again
http://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


9/52
http://www.nsoftware.com/


10/52VISUAL STUDIO MAGAZINE May 2009 VisualStudioMagazine.com

The HR department at a financial services

firm wanted to hire GlobalComp to build a

Web portal.

Getting approval was straight-

forward: the purchaser set up a meet-

ing between GlobalComp and an inte-

gration services developer on the ITteam, and then waited a few days.

After a brief spiel from the

GlobalComp sales rep, Steve

opened with a softball question:

Is it secure?

Of course its secure, the

rep said. At GlobalComp we take

security very seriously. In fact, our

pages are delivered over Secure

Socket Lay

Wait a sec, Steve cut him off, as

he played around with the Web portal. I

think I just broke into your admin console.The GlobalComp rep stumbled through

an apology. It was clear that the developers

had never anticipated someone typing ' OR

''=' in the password field. Steve thought

itd be a good idea to do a code review to see

what else they had missed.

A Code TourBefore Steve was permitted to even talk to a

developer at GlobalComp, they had him sign a

an NDA. As an added security measure, Steve

could only review the code while the immacu-

lately dressed Dave, GlobalComps lead devel-oper, watched him. Youd be surprised, Dave

said in a serious tone, there are a lot of peo-

ple who would steal our software ideas.

Steves first port of call was login.asp.

But it wasnt the security snafus or the

FrontPage meta-tags that caught his eye.

Not only were they using Access, but they

had come up with a rather interesting way of

caching huge amounts (400K+) of user-spe-

cific info. They used the ASP Session object:

I cant help but notice

that this is in ASP, Steve said to

Dave. Im curious: why not .NET?

Do you have a lot of ASP libraries that

youre reusing?

Its 2006, Dave snapped back, not

2015. Everyone knows that .NET hasnt

really taken off yet. Its slow, difficult to

code and very buggy. Maybe in a few years

well consider it, but until then, ASP is farquicker and more powerful.

For optimization, Steve commented,

wouldnt it have made sense to go with

SQL Server? This portal is meant to be used

by thousands of users across the country.

Do you think Access is up to the job?

Whats wrong with Access? Dave

defensively questioned. When I was at

Accenture, we used it all the time.

Steve had seen enough. In light of the

numerous performance, security and data-

integrity issues, his review read, we do not

approve GlobalComps Web portal softwarefor use in our production environments.

It was the first time anyone in the

department had ever given a non-approval

for vendor software. They felt relieved to

have successfully acted as the gatekeeper

of bad software. VSM

{ S O F T W A R E D E V E L O P M E N T G O N E W R O N G }

SERVED UP BY ALEX PAPADIMOULIS

Gatekeepers of Bad Software

Each issue Alex Papadimoulis, publisher of the popular Web site The Daily WTF (thedailywtf.com),recounts first-person tales of software development gone terribly wrong. Have youexperienced the darker side of development? We want to publish your story. E-mail your tale

to Executive Editor Kathleen Richards at [email protected] and put DevDisastersas the subject line.

Tell Us Your Tale
http://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/mailto:[email protected]://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/mailto:[email protected]


11/52

Develop your application with the same robust imaging technologies used by Microsoft, HP, Sony,Canon, Kodak, GE, Siemens, theUS Air Force and Veterans Affairs Hospitals.

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12/52VISUAL STUDIO MAGAZINE May 2009 VisualStudioMagazine.com0

Tech-Ed

Microsofts TechEd North America 2009 confab this month is

expected to center around Windows 7, Windows Server 2008

R2, Exchange 14 and the numerous technologies that the com-

pany has rolled out during the last 12 to 18 months.

Registered attendees will receive the latest versions of

Windows 7likely the first release candidate (RC)and Windows

Server 2008 R2. As part of an included TechNet Plus annual sub-

scription, conference goers will also receive licensed copies of the

technologies when they first become available later this year.

For developers, the annual conference will offer more than

a sneak peek at Visual Studio 2010, which is close to beta 1;

the last preview bits were offered in October at MicrosoftPDC2008 and expired in January. According to multiple sources,

Microsoft is targeting TechEd for the beta 1 release.

SQL Server Kilamanjaro, the upcoming business intelli-

gence (BI) release that enables users to create reports using

SharePoint and Excel, will be highlighted during the keynote for

the database platforms and BI tracks, which are targeted at both

developers and IT professionals.

Usually TechEd is not hugely filled with beta technology

sessions, so the fact that some of these things that are a little

prerelease are kind of coming out shows that theyre either closer

to market or more important, says Stephen Forte, chief strategy

officer at Telerik Inc. Forte is leading several TechEd sessions,

including a drill-down on SQL Server 2008 with Richard Campbell,co-host of .NET Rocks.

REALITY BYTES

Despite the anticipated releases, TechEd is facing the same hur-

dles that conferences in every industry have encountered during

the recession: attendance issues. The conference will take place

at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the same venue as last

years PDC. After a two week TechEd in Orlando, Fla., in June

2008 that separated the developer and IT tracks, Microsoft is

back to a combined, one-week model. Last years event, which

marked chairman Bill Gates last official keynote, attracted

around 5,000 developers and 10,000 IT professionals, accordingto Microsoft.

The current climate has meant some unwelcome

changes: In April, registrants were notified of the cancellation

of on-site exams for Microsoft certifications, the traditional

Thursday night attendee party and the popular Jam

Sessions that occurred nightly at past TechEd events.

The Server and Tools News Bytes blog on Microsoft

TechNet recommended the press attend the show virtually

this year, noting that there would be limited access to

Microsoft executives and on-site facilities.

The cutbacks are not a reflection on Microsoft or

TechEds robust technical content. Generally, Im hearing

conferences are just not being as well attended for obviousreasons this year, says Rob Sanfilippo, research vice president

of developer platforms at Directions on Microsoft. Looking

across at MIX, TechEd and PDC, I definitely would rank PDC as

the first conference to attend from a developer standpoint for

someone thats interested in planning technology that will be

used two or three years out for their organization.

PDC2009, which is expected to focus on the release of

Microsofts cloud-computing platform, Windows Azure, is

scheduled for Nov. 17-20 in Los Angeles.

LOTS TO LEARN

Despite the troublesome economy, Microsoft received a record

number of more than 1,600 submissions for technical sessionsfrom inside and outside of the company, according to a post by

Brian Marble, worldwide TechEd lead. That has been whittled

down to 20 tracks, with about 440 breakout sessions and 200

or so hands-on labs. The theme this year is Potential Lives

Here, and the focusas in years pastis on technical education,

community and product evaluation.

Windows 7 is the clear headliner at TechEd. The

Windows Azure Services Platform will also get some play with

26 sessions, although the licensing and pricing structure

information that could definitely spur serious interest among

decision makersis expected to remain under wraps until later

this year.

TechEd will also be the first conference stateside to offerplenty of information for developers interested in Windows

D E V E L O P E R N E W S / / / R E V I E W S / / / P R O D U C T S

D E V E L O P E R N E W S

ISTOCKPHOTO.C

OM

TechEd PreviewIs the Visual Studio 2010 beta finally here?

BY KATHLEEN RICHARDS
http://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/http://www.visualstudiomagazine.com/


13/52



DatabaseTools

Test Center Standard Editionand Connect ODBC 6.0

LOWER COST APM

Two months after releasing an application performance manage-

ment (APM) suite that ranges in price from $30,000 to $60,000,

Linz, Austria-based dynaTrace Software is now offering a scaled-

down version. dynaTrace Test Center Standard Edition has a

good portion of the application testing features found in the

core dynaTrace 3 suite, the company says. But it costs about

20 percent of the suites price.

That full-scale suite is designed to let developers trace

transactions across geographically distributed systems with large,scalable virtualized server clusters for business-critical applica-

tions that require 24x7 uptime (for more on that release, see

http://tinyurl.com/csvyn2).

Like the larger version, the Standard Edition comes with Visual

Studio, Visual Studio Team System Test Edition and Eclipse plug-ins.

It diagnoses and isolates typical Web application issues, notably

database performance problems and chattiness. The software also

documents issues for developers including SQL statements and bind

values, and various other transaction characteristics. The software

takes every transaction and displays the slowest running ones or

those that are broken. When the developer clicks on a transaction,

he can view the whole path with all the context. If a developer

sees hundreds of extra calls to a database, he can click on it andautomatically open up the source code in Visual Studio.

Although not as well known as some of its rivals, dynaTrace

says it has made inroads in the U.S. market over the past year with

customers such as Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, LinkedIn

and Macys. It has 100 customers but has seen rapid growth in recent

quarters, the company says. But dynaTrace, which is backed by Bain

Capital and Bay Partners, is a much smaller player than market leader

CA, whose Wily Technology is used by more than 1,000 customers.

Test Center Standard Edition

dynaTrace Software

Price: $6,000 per developer license

www.dynaTrace.com

781-674-4000

DRIVING ODBC HARDER

Looking to give a boost to applications that rely on Microsofts

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) standard, DataDirectTechnologies has updated its drivers.

The new DataDirect Connect for ODBC version 6.0 increases

the speed at which data is loaded into an application or into a

database, says Rob Steward, the companys vice president of R&D.

It allows for exporting of data from one database into another and

performs bulk transfers without having to use Microsofts batch

processing utility.

Existing batch processes will run faster without requiring

changes to application code, he adds. Version 6.0 adds application

failover: The features will allow developers to better tune their

applications, he explains.

In addition to Microsofts SQL Server, DataDirects ODBC drivers

provide connectivity to databases from Oracle Corp., IBM Corp. (DB2and Informix) and Sybase Inc., among others. With the new release,

the company has added connectivity to PostgresSQL and Greenblum.

DataDirect, a Bedford, Mass.-based subsidiary of Progress

Software Corp., is among a handful of companies that provide

ODBC drivers. Most leading database vendors offer their own

ODBC drivers and there are a number of less-expensive, open

source alternatives as well. DataDirect says its drivers are aimed

at ISVs and large enterprises. DI

Connect for ODBC 6.0

DataDirect Technologies

Price: $4,000 per single core

www.datadirect.com

800-876-3101

PRODUCTS

standard Microsoft tools (SQL Server and

Access), PowerDesigner also supports

Oracle, DB2 and MySQL (again, among

other database engines).Given its pricing and functionality,

PowerDesigner is not for the faint

heartedand its also not for those

with limited goals. If all you need is a

database design tool for your organiza-

tions RDBMS, PowerDesigner is far more

tool than you need. But if you want to

create a repository for analyzing your

organizations data usage, PowerDesigner

will do the job. DI

Peter Vogel ([email protected]) is a principal

in PH&V Information Services, specializing in

ASP.NET development with expertise in SOA,

XML, database and User Interface design. Hes

written several books on application develop-

ment using Microsoft technologies and presents

at conferences around the world.

SYBASE POWERDESIGNER 15

Sybase Inc.www.sybase.com800-792-2735

Price: $2,995 to $7,495 per developerseat

Quick Facts: One-stop shopping fordata modeling and analysis using avariety of notations.

Pros: High functionality withsupport for all the tools that Microsoftdevelopers use.

Cons: Expensive; PowerDesigner is abig tool to handle big problemsnot atool for developers just needing a data-base modeling tool.

Developers can examine code to trace transaction bottlenecksthrough the dynaTrace Visual Studio plug-in.
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15/52
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TECH-ED 2009 FEATURE

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. At least,

thats the hope of most conference organizers in the software

development sector. With IT and dev budgets slashed andmost organizations hunkering down for a long downturn, its

no surprise that attendance at many industry events

is off sharply from two or three years ago. Still, Microsoft is

hoping to draw a crowd to TechEd North America 2009 in Los

Angeles this month.

Despite tough times, developers, ISVs

and Microsoft are keeping plenty busy.

BY MICHAEL DESMOND

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TECH-ED 2009FEATURE

Attendees certainly wont be staying away for lack of things

to explore at the four-day conference, which combines IT and

development tracks focused on Microsoft platforms, servicesand products.On the dev side, TechEd arrives as a host of strate-

gic Microsoft development technologies emerge. From Azure

cloud computing to Silverlight 3 Web development to the antici-

pated beta of Visual Studio 2010,TechEd offers a chance to catch

up on the latest Microsoft-driven dev technologies.

No surprise, independent tool companies are busy as well,

as they rush to fill gaps in Microsofts expanded dev platforms

and tap powerful, new features in the latest versions of .NET

Framework,Silverlight,Visual Studio and ASP.NET.

Nowhere to Hide:Developers Test Strategies in a Terrible Market

A market report by research firm Gartner Inc. provided grimcontext just six weeks ahead of the May TechEd confab.

According to the March 31 report, worldwide spending on infor-

mation technology was expected to fall 3.8 percent in 2009, to

$3.2 trillion from $3.4 trillion. That decline, Gartner Research

Vice President Richard Gordon notes, would be worse than the

2.1 percent reduction the industry weathered in 2001 during the

dot-com bubble burst.

Ask Julian Bucknall how his company, .NET componentmaker Developer Express Inc. plans to get through the dour

economy, and he is refreshingly candid.

The economy being what it is, weve concentrated a lot on

making our current customers happy, says Bucknall,the compa-

nys chief technology officer, who notes the importance of

Developer Express subscription model.The only way we could

encourage people to stick with us is to concentrate an awful lot

on stability,reliability, discoverabilitymaking things easier and

more stable to use, and then adding more functionality when we

feel its necessary.

Like many rank-and-file dev shops, Bucknall says

Developer Express has decided to pick its spots carefully, invest-

ing in select areas and emphasizing maintenance and refinementover lavish new initiatives or product launches. Its an approach

being repeated all over the development sector.

2009 is seriously quite a tough year, but I suspect for most

people it will be just carrying on doing what theyre doing, says

Bola Rotibi, principal analyst at research firm Macehiter

Ward-Dutton (MWD).Outside of the core areas of keeping the

business going, I think [new initiatives] are going to be few and

far between.

Our survey of more than 350 .NET developers ahead of

TechEd bears out the cautious, go-slow approach.Asked about the

biggest challenge facing their organizations, the largest percentage

of respondents singled out the economy (32 percent). The

second most-cited response was the challenge of managing all thedeveloper technologies coming from Microsoft (23 percent).No

other response drew more than 8 percent of the vote.

Many dev shops report falling back into maintenance

mode. Im in pharmaceuticals, writes one senior analyst.

There are mergers, but with each merger come wholesale

layoffs. My IT department is down to doing maintenance only,

with a budget freeze in place.

An application solutions architect with a major insurance

carrier says his group is trying to do more with less. In the

health-care insurance sector, were still actively trying to handle

new projects from the business, but with smaller dev staff, or at

least fewer subject-matter experts.

While 32 percent of survey respondents report limiting workto maintenance, a surprising percentage (31 percent) say they

continue to move forward with new platforms and technologies.

My opinion is that we should be focusing on migrating our large

number of VB 6.0 and legacy ASP applications to help ramp some

of the newer or more junior staff up with the latest Microsoft dev

technologies, the solutions architect says.

A lot of developers are concerned about their ability to

adopt and master all the new technologies Microsoft has been

rolling out. Survey respondents indicate excitement about

inbound tooling like Visual Studio, .NET Framework 4.0 and

Windows 7, yet nearly seven in 10 respondents expressed

fatigue with the pace of Microsoft technology rollouts over

the past year. Nearly one-quarter of all respondents (24 percent)categorized the fatigue as significant.

We polled 369 developers for theirthoughts on the .NET dev arena.Heres what they said:

WHATS YOUR READ ON THE DEVELOPMENT MARKETFOR THE SECOND HALF OF 2009?

Difficult 39%

Hopeful 29%

Neutral 23%

Terrible 4%

Terrific 4%

HOW IS YOUR ORGANIZATION APPROACHINGAPPLICATION DEVELOPMENT?

Working on existing projects and app

maintenance only 32%

Moving forward to adopt new platforms andtechnologies 31%

Embracing Agile development methodologies 13%

Adopting more open source platforms and

development tools 9%

Investigating cloud computing options 8%

Outsourcing 7%

DO YOU SENSE DEVELOPER FATIGUE DUE TO THE PACEOF MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY INTRODUCTIONS?

Yes, some fatigue 45%

No, little or no fatigue 26%

Yes, significant fatigue 24%

Dont know 5%

IS YOUR ORGANIZATION SPECIFICALLY TARGETINGDEVELOPMENT FOR THE WINDOWS 7 CLIENT OS?

No 60%

Yes, but it will take time 23%

Yes, but only limited development 14%

Yes, aggressively 3%



The staff is concerned about the ability to learn and apply

new technology in products that have a solid base of code,says the

vice president of engineering for a telecommunications consulting

firm. Our market problem is we need to maintain compliance

with .NET 2.0,.NET 3.5, multiple versions of SQL Server and mul-

tiple operating systems.

A Web application developer for a large construction andengineering firm says his shop is busy, but risks falling behind in

the adoption of new technologies.Our biggest challenge is not the

economy, but rather maintaining our

suite of Web applications (hundreds!) and

at the same time keep up with the pace of

technology, he says. We essentially fall

further and further behind every year.

Our most heavily used apps are classic

ASP, we have many .NET 1.1 apps, and a

sprinkling of .NET 2.0 apps. Our data-

bases have been recently upgraded to SQL

Server 2005, he says.

One major .NET component makerisnt surprised at these struggles:

Microsoft has been really aggressive

with new products and releases over the

past one to two years, and some of [our]

customers are finding it difficult to keep

pace with all the new technologies and

are sometimes confused [about] whats

best to use for their projects.

Anthony Lombardo, lead evangel-

ist for component maker Infragistics

and a Microsoft MVP, says developers

need to be smart to avoid getting over-

whelmed. Just keeping track of all ofthe different code names can be a chore.

The main thing for developers to do is

focus on the technologies that are

important to them.

Slowdown StrategiesCorporate dev shops arent the only ones

struggling to keep pace. Developer

Express Bucknall says his company has

made the decision to focus tightly on

Silverlight for its next component launch,

rather than aggressively update its suite

of ASP.NET, Windows PresentationFoundation (WPF) and new SharePoint

controls.Case in point, Developer Express

is updating its Express App Framework

(XAF) for Silverlight.

What XAF does is very quickly allow

you to write business applications just by

defining a data model, says Bucknall,not-

ing that Developer Express has added grid,

navigation, reporting and menu controls

to its Silverlight suite.XAF requires a cer-

tain number of controls before you can

generate an application. So now well be

able to write a business app for Silverlightand WPF. Those are the kind of things

were going to be concentrating on with regard to Silverlight. What

you call the business control.

A lot of firms are also looking at how they license and sell

software. Microsoft at the MIX09 conference in March demoed

the Web Platform Installer, which bundles together a complete

stack of Microsoft-based Web server products and technologies

and provides an easy-to-use installer interface.MWDs Rotibi calls the Microsoft utility a neat little solu-

tion that portends things to come. She points to the All-Access


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TECH-ED 2009FEATURE

service provided by database tools vendor Embarcadero

Technologies Inc. as an example of how vendors can provide

rich integration to reduce application cost and complexity.

Subscribers are able to quickly download, license, provision and

deploy Embarcadero products from an online console. TheInstantOn feature enables access to Embarcadero tooling with-

out installation.

Its about reducing friction and getting the integration par-

ticularly strong. Its about the different tools, Rotibi says.Being

able to download and manage a whole series of things in an

instant, thats the next stage.

At SAP AG, the company recently overhauled the licensing

around Crystal Reports, providing a simple, flat-rate license for

companies wanting to distribute Crystal Reports functionality in

software they intend to sell or distribute. The new approach

replaces a complicated scheme, whereby ISVs had to obtain a

separate license for each distributed instance of an application

containing Crystal Reports.We found that there are tens of thousands of ISVs out there

who were building their own reporting because they felt it was

too expensive to work with a company like us, says James

Thomas, vice president of product management in the Volume

Business Unit at SAP. He cites rapid application cycles, an

increasing mix of software and services, and pressure from open

source competition for the switch.

More and more companies are looking hard at licensing and

compliance practices as a way to face down budget challenges and

ease management overhead. Jon Gillespie-Brown, chief executive

officer at licensing services firm Nalpeiron,says ISVs are scrambling

to adopt subscription models as a way to ensure constant revenue

and provide a lower barrier to entry for customers.I think that the end user is clearly pushing very hard for a

more flexible way to buy, Gillespie-Brown says.

He adds that customers are attracted to the pay-as-you-go

nature of Nalpeirons hosted license management and tracking

features. But what customers are looking for, says Gillespie-

Brown, are more streamlined ways to track and secure licensed

software, and to provide feature-complete trial software without

having to support multiple code bases . I think the perpetual

[license] model is close to dead, personally.

Touring TechEdFor all the sturm und drang of the current recession, its clear

from talking to ISVs and dev tool companies that .NET toolsdevelopment remains an active endeavor. A lot of that has to do

with Microsoft, of course. Companies like Developer Express,

Infragistics and ComponentOne LLC are constantly rushing

around behind major Microsoft platform releases, filling holes,

bridging gaps and extending the reach of technologies like WPF,

Silverlight,ASP.NET and SharePoint.

We invited dev tool providers to give us a heads up on their

plans for the May TechEd event. Heres what we learned:

Infragistics NetAdvantage for Web Clients: Silverlight

Leading component maker Infragistics is rolling out a new spin

on its NetAdvantage line of components,this one aimed at devel-

opers working with Silverlight 3, which is currently in beta. TheNetAdvantage for Web Clients Silverlight toolset offers advanced

controls designed to help developers craft line-of-business appli-

cations using Microsofts RIA platform. Included in the package

are data grid, Web tree, dialog window and other controls.

www.infragistics.com

Altova MissionKit 2009

Few companies know XML the way Altova does.As if to make the

point, Altova in February began bundling its broad suite of XML

and data manipulation tools under the MissionKit banner,creating

a one-stop shop for .NET developers. At Tech-Ed,Altova plans to

demo MissionKit Tool Suite version 2009, which now supports

Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) data in XMLSpy,

MapForce,and StyleVision.Version 2009 also lets developers work

with Health Level 7 messages in the MapForce module.

www.altova.com

Resco MobileForms Toolkit 2009

Resco MobileForms Toolkit 2009 bundles developer componentsand tools for applications developed for Microsoft .NET Compact

Framework 3.5.The latest version adds tooling for touch interfaces,

polished UI support and a trio of new app components including

tab, tooltip and toolbar controls. MobileForms Toolkit 2009 sup-

ports Visual Studio 2008,2005 and 2003.

www.resco.net

The Imaging Source TX TextControl 15.0

The TX Text Control family of word processing components for

Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 has been updated to add support for

Adobe .PDF file format export, enabling Microsoft Word and com-

patible documents to be viewed and filled out in any browser.

According to The Imaging Source, completed forms can beprocessed server-side and then printed or saved as PDF documents.

Improved support for columns and structured numbered lists has

been added. The Imaging Source is also distributing TX Text

Control RapidSpell .NET, a spell check add-on for TX Text Control

currently supporting English and German dictionaries, with addi-

tional languages and specialist dictionaries expected.

www.textcontrol.com

PureCM 2009-1

Source control management (SCM) toolmaker PureCM.com has

a new version of its eponymous product, PureCM 2009-1, that

aims to enable parallel development for cash-strapped organiza-

tions. With a newly streamlined interface and supporting agilemethodologies, PureCM is available for Windows, Linux and

Mac OS environments and integrates with the Visual Studio and

Eclipse IDEs. The new version adds real-time tracking and guid-

ance for managing merged changes. PureCM says its tooling can

scale up to thousands of end users and manage terabytes of

dataenough to handle enterprise-scale development.

www.purecm.com

REALBasic 2009 Release 1 and REAL Studio

Sure, Silverlight 3 promises to let you take your mad Visual

Basic.NET skills cross platform. But open source toolmaker

REAL Software offers another optiona cross-platform tool and

version of the Basic programming language (called,you guessedit, REALbasic) that lets developers work onand create applica-
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tions forWindows, Linux and Mac OS. REALbasic 2009

Release 1 adds ease-of-use tweaks like a Quickstart window to

help attract new users, as well as a host of improvements

designed to improve reliability.

A more robust version of the tooling released in April, calledREAL Studio, targets full-time developers and adds features like a

Profiler for optimizing performance and scripted build automation.

www.realsoftware.com

Nevron .NET Vision Q3 2008

.NET component maker Nevron

Software boasts a large collection of

chart, diagram and UI controls for

Windows Forms and ASP.NET (includ-

ing AJAX) application development.All

three component families are currently

available as part of the companys all-in-

one Nevron .NET Vision Q3 2008 com-ponent suite, which may see a major

upgrade by the time this issue reaches

your hands. The new package, reportedly

due out at the end of April, is set to intro-

duce new charts, gauge, diagram and

mapping features. .NET Vision comes in

two editions,Pro and Enterprise.

www.nevron.com

Telerik WebUI Studio

Telerik specializes in making UI controls

for a wide range of Microsoft and .NET

platforms, including ASP.NET AJAX,Silverlight, WinForms and WPF. The

company recently announced that its

RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX product

fully supports the open source Mono

runtime environment for enabling .NET

applications on Linux and Mac OS plat-

forms. Now Telerik adds WebUI Test

Studio to its RadControls for ASP.NET

AJAX. The automated testing module

uses the ArtofTest Automation Design

Canvas and WebAii Automation

Framework (reviewed in the April issue

ofVisual Studio Magazine) to let devel-opers create and run tests across Internet

Explorer and Firefox browser platforms.

Support for Safari and Google Chrome

browsers is expected soon, and Telerik

says Silverlight support will be added in

the next release. WebUI Test Studio inte-

grates with Visual Studio Professional

and Visual Studio Team System.

www.telerik.com

Nalpeiron Licensing Service

Tough times demand tough choices

when it comes to paying for software andservices. Licensing solutions firm

Nalpeiron aims to help ISVs streamline operations and better

communicate with potential customers,with its updated,hosted

suite of licensing services. New to Nalpeirons offering is the

TrialMaximizer feature for presenting e-mail campaigns and

HTML advertisements to users using a firms product under atrial license. The OverdraftTracker module promises to give ISVs

a glimpse into hidden customer demand. ISVs can flexibly con-
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For maximum efficiency, follow ourthree profiling tips outlined below.1. Profile your .NET code

A code profiler is an essential

tool to have in your development

toolkit. Although manual logging

can sometimes help, it is often

impossible to find performance

bottlenecks without a code profiler.

A profiling tool takes the guesswork

out of performance analysis and

drastically reduces the amount of

time taken to find problem code.

2. Quickly locate your

performance bottleneck

Run ANTS Profiler Pro to obtain

detailed quantitative data that will

help you identify inefficient resource

usage. ANTS Profiler gives you hit

count and line-level timings, so you

can quickly identify the specific

lines of code which are affecting the

performance of your application.

No time wasting. No guessing.

Use real data instead!

3. Optimize efficiently

Now that you know exactly where

to focus your performance-boosting

work, you can start optimizing your

code effectively. Optimize your code

only where it needs to be improved,

and don't try to make unnecessary

changes that will not solve your

performance problem.

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.NET applications with ANTS Profiler

Performance is crucial, so here are some tips to make sure

that your applications run efficiently.

Download your 14-day, fully functionalfree trial from www.red-gate.com

ANTS Profiler shows you line-level timings, so you can drill down to the specific lines of code responsiblefor performance inefficiencies.

Select a region on the timeline and get the performance data just for that region.

"We were able to improve

performance in parts of

the application up to 10 times,

and our customer noticed the

results. A powerful, instantly

understandable profiler.Highly recommended."

Dan Ports Lead Developer, Intrigma Inc

"ANTS Profiler took us

straight to the specific areas

of our code which were the

cause of our performanceissues."

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As announced in March at the MIX09 conference in Las

Vegas, Silverlight 3 adds a host of data-oriented features that go a

long way toward providing critical support for LOB develop-

ment. Ill show you how to build a Silverlight 3 client that access-

es a Web service to retrieve and update data. My initial version

will be a form that displays a single entity. But by leveraging the

new data binding and validation features in Silverlight 3, Ill

illustrate how I can migrate my solution to a full-featuredmaster-detail page in just a few minutes.

If you want to try out the new features in Silverlight 3 your-

self, you can download the beta from http://tinyurl.com/dcs3fj.

There are two caveats that apply. First: Dont install the beta on a

computer where you want to continue creating Silverlight 2

applicationsinstalling the beta converts Visual Studio to a

Silverlight 3 development tool. Second: This is still a beta release

and no go-livelicense is available. Any applications you develop

at this point arent supported by Microsoft.

A Sample ApplicationOK, enough warnings. For this article, I created a

simple Silverlight application that interacts witha Web service on my server. The application

pulls down a collection of objects representing

Customers entities in the Northwind Database

and displays them in a DataForm .

To create this application yourself, after

installing the Silverlight 3 beta package,select File |

New Project in Visual Studio and choose Silverlight

under the language of your choice (I chose Visual

Basic). From the available Templates, select

Silverlight Application,enter a name for the project

(I used DataDrivenSL) and click the OK button. In

the New Silverlight Application dialog that appears,

change the project type to ASP.NET Web Site beforeclicking OK.I got the solution you see in Figure 1:an

ASP.NET Web Site and a Silverlight app.

In the Web site, I added a service with two

methods: one that returns Customer objects

(GetCustomers) and one that, when passed a sin-

gle Customer object, updates the database with

the values on the object (UpdateCustomer). I

made the .ASPX page my start page. In the

Silverlight app, I knocked together a simple user

interface in the MainPage.xaml file, using a Button

and the new DataForm control inside a StackPanel:

In the code file for MainPage.XAML, to retrieve the Customer

entity objects from my Web service, I created an EndPoint object

for my services URL,a variable to hold a reference to my service

and a BasicHttpBinding object. In the Click event for the Button,

I used those objects to retrieve a collection of Customer entities

by calling the GetCustomers method on my service:

Private WithEventsnwd As_

While Silverlight 1 and 2 concentrated on helping developers deliver rich Internetapplications (RIAs), coders building line-of-business (LOB) applications had little tocheer about. The limited support for data binding and data validation complicatedbasic data management tasks in LOB applications. Thats about to change.

SILVERLIGHT HOW-TO

VisualStudioMagazine.com May 2009 VISUAL STUDIO MAGAZINE 27

FIGURE 1. The Web site in a Silverlight solution has an HTML page and an.ASPX page, both of which host the Silverlight application thats part of the

same solution.
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NorthwindData.NorthwindDataSoapClient

Dim bind As New System.ServiceModel.BasicHttpBinding

Dim ep As New System.ServiceModel.EndpointAddress( _

URL for Web Service)

Private Sub ButtonGet_Click( _

ByVal sender As System.Object, _

ByVal e As System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs)nwd = New NorthwindData.NorthwindDataSoapClient( _

bind, ep)

nwd.GetCustomersAsync()

End Sub

Binding to Local Objects

Visual Studio Magazine - 05- 2009

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