.NET Framework related developing tools updates
Visual Studio 2010 SP1
This is probably the most important update of the month, if you don’t have it yet, use this link to download and install SP1 for all versions of Visual Studio (including express). The best way to apply Sp1 for me is by using the Web Platform Installer 3.0, use this link to install Sp1 Bundle update.
Beside bug fixes and performance improvements, SP1 brings a new improved local help support, IntelliTrace support for 64-bit applications and SharePoint, built-in Silverlight 4 Tooling support in the box, unit testing support when targeting .NET 3.5, a new performance wizard for Silverlight 4, IIS 7 Express and SQL CE 4.0 Tooling support for web projects, HTML5 Intellisense for ASP.NET and VB runtime compiler switch.
Entity Framework 4.1 Release Candidate
Since it’s first release, Entity Framework was my ORM of choice for .NET environment. Some will say I really to much on Microsoft products, EF 3.5 was slow and buggy compared to NHibernate, but EF 4 brought the much needed bug fixes and speed improvements.
Now the Entity Framework team is at the last phase to release a new and improved ORM, EF 4.1 brings two features that will make things easier: DbContext API (a simplified abstraction over ObjectContext optimized for common tasks and coding patterns) and Code First (a new development pattern that will let you map self coded classes to an existing database).
You can download ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1 RC by using the stand alone installer or, if you use NuGet, add the ‘EntityFramework’ NuGet package to your project.
SQL Server Compact Toolbox 2.1
Since SQL Server Compact incremented to version 4 it was a pain to work with it in Visual Studio, even after the SP1 release mentioned above I was unable to fully integrate a SQL CE 4 database into a WinForms or WPF project.
Erik Ejlskov Jensen made this great tool that lets you add scripting, import, export, migrate, rename, run script, manage replication and more to your SQL Server Compact Data Connections in VS Server Explorer. This month, a great feature was add to the toolbox, with version 2.1 you can generate EDMX files. A visual guide of new features can be found here.
