Visual Studio

During PDC10 Anders Hejlsberg announced Visual Studio Async CTP when speaking about new stuff in C# and VB.NET next versions. In this posting I will introduce the background of Visual Studio Async and I will provide you with links to different resources so you can get started immediately.

I am using Visual Studio database project and data generation plan to populate my database with random data. In my database there are some tables for table per class inheritance mapping and there are some additional steps required to get these tables filled with data correctly. In this posting I will describe the process of generating data for table per class inheritance tables and give you some hints how to make this data valid for O/R-mappers. (more…)

I am auditing one big legacy application. I use Visual Studio 2010 modeling projects to visualize the design of this legacy application. When I wanted to get my UML diagrams to image files so I can insert them to documents I found no option for it. As it turned out we have to write extension for modeling projects and deploy it as Visual Studio 2010 extension. Here is the installer and source package of my UML.SaveAsImage extension.

One of nice features of ASP.NET MVC 3 is support for multiple view engines. There will be two out-of-box view engines: one for classic ASPX-based views and one for Razor-based views. In this posting I will show you this new feature and demonstrate how to use different view engine in same project.

Using Visual Studio symbols and source files makes debugging much easier. I am specially happy about ASP.NET MVC 2 source files because I develop on ASP.NET MVC 2 almost every day. You may also find other useful symbols and source files. In this posting I will show you how to get ASP.NET MVC source to your computer and how to use it. (more…)

One nice feature that code contracts offer is updating of code documentation. If you are using source code documenting features of Visual Studio then code contracts may automate some tasks you otherwise have to implement manually. In this posting I will show you some XML documentation files with documented contracts. I will also explain how this feature works.

Starting from Visual Studio 2010 F# is full member of .NET Framework languages family. It is functional language with syntax specific to functional languages but I think it is time for us also notice and study functional languages. In this posting I will show you some examples about cool things other people have done using F#.

Code contracts and unit tests are not replacements for each other. They both have different purpose and different nature. It does not matter if you are using code contracts or not – you still have to write tests for your code. In this posting I will show you how to unit test code with contracts.

In my last posting about code contracts I introduced how to check input parameters of randomizer using static contracts checking. But you can also compile code contracts to your assemblies and use them also in runtime. In this posting I will show you simple example about runtime checking of code contracts.

VS2010 RC is out now and available for MSDN users since now. Other guys have to wait until tomorrow when VS2010 RC is made publically available. Reading first news I discovered that most important thing is improved performance of VS2010 RC IDE. All your feedback is welcome to VS2010 RC Connect site.