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As part of a new “Back to basics” series which extends on my original XNA Futures article some months ago, I’m going to cover all the options I explained back then in more detail plus probably a few others which have come to light recently. All of this is to show developers who have workedRead More…

In the last 12 months, Windows Azure has undergone a dramatic transformation. It’s gone from “What is it?” to “We need it!” in very short order. Much, if not all of this, can be attributed to the stellar leadership of Scott Guthrie and his team. It should come as no surprise the ASP.Net team, which includes all the goodies from ASP.Net MVC, Web API and SignalR to name a few, were and continue to be under ScottGu’s leadership. It’s another reminder of what the power of people (really smart people to boot), working together in furtherance of a common vision can accomplish. Today, Windows Azure is a manifestation of that accomplishment. Windows Azure is actually many things. It can host TFS, Windows (obviously), SQL Server as well as other non-Windows technologies like PHP, Ubuntu, Java, Node.js to name a few. Windows Azure also has the capacity to host “Big Data” and to be a full-fledged media server. One of the biggest catch phrases today is “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS). Though its virtual machine features, Windows Azure delivers this capability as well. For the full details on what Windows Azure can deliver, navigate to windowsazure.com.

To take advantage of enum support and other features added to Entity Framework in the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5, you need the compatible version of EntityFramework.dll, EF 5. Julie Lerman helps to ease the migration.

Welcome to a series on three concepts decision makers must understand for their own mobile application development. Many companies are creating mobile applications for internal and external use. Some of these mobile apps are systems that exist in some other form, such as a traditional web application. Or, perhaps a company wants to speed up an old Microsoft Access database entry form and increase its accessibility. Some are pioneering new ways to utilize the mobile connectivity with applications that change the way we interact with our world around us. No matter what kind of mobile application development you are considering, there are several critical decisions you need to make based on your unique product and opportunity in order to create a successful mobile app and spur adoption and entanglement.

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When people think of having to store data for their applications, a database such as SQL Server immediately comes to mind. However, XML files are very handy for storing data without the overhead of a database. Using XML files to cache often-used, but seldom changed data such as US state codes, employee types and other validation tables can avoid network roundtrips and speed up your application. In addition, XML files are great for off-line applications where a user needs to add, edit and delete data when they can’t connect to a database.

Take a fresh look at Web Forms with this new navigation framework that eliminates tight coupling and codebehind while providing for unit-tested data-bound code and many other advantages—enough to make an ASP.NET MVC application green with envy, according to creator Graham Mendick.

Much hoopla has been generated across the community about dynamic languages; much of it is spoken in the same glowing terms normally reserved for unicorns and rainbows. Some of it is deserved, some of it isn’t. All of it seems to surround two languages—JavaScript and Ruby—but in fact, several other languages, three of which I’ll present here, offer some distinctly interesting and useful features.

A lot of new things are going on at CODE Magazine, both online and offl ine, and both directly associated with the magazine as well as efforts even more directly related to your development efforts. You may have already seen some of the things we do with CODE Consulting (www.codemag.com/consulting) and CODE Training (www.codemag.com/training), but today I would like to draw your attention to other things.

Automate deployment of Windows Services, ClickOnce, and other .NET applications.

CODE Magazine, Issue 2012 Mar/Apr is now available!

In the last couple of years data has experienced a new Renaissance. We are no longer limited to the staid world of SQL, rows and columns. We now have document databases, columnar data stores, key value pair systems and many other new flavors of data. This issue provides some insight into two document databases (MongoDB and RavenDB) as well as new features in SQL Server 2012.