.Net 3.5 gems

 So often when a new release of the .Net framework is upon us we hear about the new "shiny" pieces, which while important, doesn't convey the fact that other parts of the framework are receiving attention as well.

  A case in point is the OpenFileDialog, I noticed some new properties for SafeFileName and SafeFileNames which weren't there in 2.0. I'm sure there are a bunch of other enhancements and additions, some like these are probably there to support Vista.

 At any rate my hats off to the guys/gals who add the non "shiny" parts that make our jobs easier on a daily basis.  

Visual Studio 2008

 I've had a chance now to spend a fair amount of time with Visual Studio 2008 and so far has been solid. Right now I'm spending a lot of time getting familiar with all the new C# 3.0 features. It's always a lot of work staying ahead of the changes. So far my favorite IDE enhancement has to be the WPF editor, it's come a long way since it's preview days. My favorite language feature has to be Linq or Language integrated query. This is a great addition and it has made one of those often tedious tasks easy.

 More than once I've had to compare the contents of two lists to determine what exists in one that isn't in the other. I'm currently working on an app that imports a file, this file is always appended to, so I just need to add the new items to my collection, linq makes it a snap, here's the code.

IEnumerable<string> entryQuery =
          (from s1 in entries
           select s1).Except
            (from s2 in currentEntries
             select s2);

           //update the current entries to reflect the additions
           foreach (string s entryQuery)
           {
               currentEntries.Add(s);
           }

I've seen and implemented Equals on the collection, but most of the time you end up with the same record multiple times, with linq on one copy of any item is added.

Orcas Beta 2

Microsoft has released beta 2 of Orcas You can download it from here. This release is really coming along in terms of functionality and usability especially the WPF editor.

Visual Studio "Orcas" and .Net 3.5 Beta 1 released

Microsoft has released  You can download it from the Microsoft download site. It can be downloaded as a VPC image of the Team Suite or if you're an MSDN subscriber the Pro version has already been posted.

SQL 2005 SP2 Re-release and post fixes

Bob Ward has posted an article that explains the re-release of SQL 2005 SP2 and the various hotfixes posted later. If your using, deploying or developing solutions for SQL 2005, you'll want to check the article out. You can check it out here.

Workflow starter kit released

Microsoft has released the first starter for Windows Workflow foundation. The starter kit is a web based task oriented workflow example. The starter kit demonstrates predefined roles for creation, approval and monitoring.

Expression Blend and Web are finally added to MSDN

 Microsoft has been sending conflicting and ambiguous messages regarding these products for some time.

 At one point they attempted to make the distinction between designers and developers, but let's face it, I have yet to see a small to mid-sized organization that had that separation. In reality we often wear both hats. So to me it just makes sense to be able to have the right toolset available to accomplish the task at hand.

You can catch all the details at Somasegar's WebLog.