VISUAL STUDIO FEEDS

A compendium of Windows Azure, SQL Azure Database, AppFabric, Windows Azure Platform Appliance and other cloud-computing articles. Note: This post is updated daily or more frequently, depending on the availability of new articles in the following sections: Azure Blob, Drive, Table and Queue Services SQL Azure Database and Reporting Marketplace DataMarket and OData Windows Azure AppFabric: Apps, Access Control, WIF and Service Bus Windows

Azure VM Role, Virtual Network, Connect, RDP and CDN Live Windows Azure Apps, APIs, Tools and Test Harnesses Visual Studio LightSwitch and Entity Framework v4+ Windows Azure Infrastructure and DevOps Windows Azure Platform Appliance (WAPA), Hyper-V and Private/Hybrid Clouds Cloud Security and Governance Cloud Computing Events Other Cloud Computing Platforms and Services To use the above links, first click the post’s title...(Read whole news on source site)

Back in April we announced the release of Entity Framework 4.1 (EF 4.1), today we are releasing Entity Framework 4.1 – Update 1. This is a refresh of the EF 4.1 release that includes a small number of bug fixes and some new types to support the upcoming migrations preview. What’s in Update 1? Update 1 includes a small set of changes including: Bug fix to remove the need to specify ‘Persist Security Info=True’ in the connection string when using SQL authentication. In the EF 4.1 release ‘Persist Security Info’ was required for Code First to be able to create a database

for a connection using SQL Authentication. The update includes a fix to remove this requirement. Note that ‘Persist Security Info’ is still required if you construct a DbContext using a DbConnection instance that has already been opened and closed. Introduction of new types to facilitate design-time tools for Code First. Update 1 introduces a set of types to make it easier for design time tools to interact with derived DbContexts: DbContextInfo can be used to instantiate and interact with a derived context as well as determine information about the origin of the connection string etc.. IDbContextFactory is used to let DbContextInfo know how...(Read whole news on source site)

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Interesting question in the Exchange development forum today: How do I get the number of unread messages in the inbox folder from a number of mailboxes? The questioner wants to send a text message to each owner of a mailbox notifying him of the number of unread mails in his inbox. The requirement was to do this with PowerShell. So, here is a quick solution for this problem: param ([string] $inputFile, [System.Management.Automation.PSCredential] $credential) $ErrorActionPreference = "Stop" if (($inputFile -eq [String]::Empty) -or (Test-Path $inputFile) -eq $false) { throw "Invalid file specified ({0})." -f $inputFile } [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom("C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\1.1\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll") $service =

New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeService -ArgumentList([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeVersion]::Exchange2010_SP1) if ($credential -ne $null) { $service.Credentials = $credential.GetNetworkCredential() } else { $service.UseDefaultCredentials = $true; } function GetUnreadInboxMails([string] $emailAddress) { $service.AutodiscoverUrl($emailAddress, {$true}); $maibox = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Mailbox($emailAddress) $folderId = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::Inbox, $mailbox) $folder = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service, $folderId); $result = New-Object PSObject -Property @{ EmailAddress = $emailAddress UnreadMailCount= $folder.UnreadCount; } return $result; } function ProcessResult($entry) { "Mailbox: {0}"...(Read whole news on source site)

Here are the events listed in Community Megaphone for the next week (or so) for the Mid-Atlantic area, as well as webcasts of interest…this list includes events imported from the UGSS event calendar: Online Camtasia Studio! Train, Teach, Sell, Blog and Beyond
Monday, July 25, 2011 7:00 PM, N/A, Online
This online event is focused toward IT support personnel and trainers/educators.
With the Camtasia screen recorder, you can create interactive training and support videos that are on-demand for instant viewing. Screencasts are quick, easy, and inexpensive to produce. They're perfect for rolling out new software, orienting new staff, showing

customers how to use your product, or establishing a "self-help" desk. This is the first in a series of in-depth webinars on Camtasia Studio and its capabilities.
[ Event Details | Add To Calendar ]
Virginia Capital Area .Net User Group - Creating custom Word and Excel Documents using Open XML Format SDK
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 6:30 PM, Vienna, VA
The 2007 Microsoft® Office system introduces a new file format that is based on XML called Open XML Formats. Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007 all use these formats as...(Read whole news on source site)

"When should I use a ViewBag vs. ViewData vs. TempData objects?" -- a frequent question in online forums, during presentations, and at events. There are enough similarities and differences between these objects that warrant a closer look to see exactly how you can use each of these objects while developing MVC applications. All three objects are available as properties of both the view and controller. As a rule of thumb, you'll use the ViewData, ViewBag, and TempData objects for the purposes of transporting small amounts of data from and to specific locations (e.g., controller to view or between views).

Both the ViewData and ViewBag objects work well in the following scenarios: Incorporating dropdown lists of lookup data into an entity Components like a shopping cart Widgets like a user profile widget Small amounts of aggregate data While the TempData object works well in one basic scenario: Passing data between the current and next HTTP requests If you need to work with larger amounts of data, reporting data, create dashboards, or work with multiple disparate sources of data, you can use the more heavy duty ViewModel object. See my detailed blog post on ViewModels...(Read whole news on source site)

Microsoft rolled out an update to its Windows Azure toolkit for iOS which adds support for identity federation across Google, Yahoo, Live ID, Facebook and ADFS.

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Last week, Microsoft’s Windows Phone Team had published few videos that introduce one of the Developers from the Windows Phone Team who provides some overview of the features in Mango. In one of my previous posts, i mentioned about Microsoft demonstrating Windows Phone 7 Mango: People Hub: Social Notifications & Filtering Here’s another video that demonstrates [...]

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A Windows Phone From Scratch Mini-Tutorial The Windows Phone Toolkit offers a number of useful controls that you can use right out of the box.  This is the first in a sub-series of mini-tutorials on the Windows Phone Toolkit. From … Continue reading → For the complete article and hyperlinks, please visit my blog at http://JesseLiberty.com

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Microsoft and SUSE announced they are extending the 2006 Microsoft-Novell Linux patent-protection agreement, and that Microsoft is buying $100 million worth of SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates for its customers.

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