Ferracchiati's blog

.NET 3.5 SP1: LINQ speeds up its performance

2008-08-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Dinesh's blog you can read about new LINQ to Object and LINQ to SQL performances.

Strange issue during SQL Server 2008 RC0 setup

2008-06-19T01:05:00.000-07:00

I'm installing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 RC0 on a Virtual PC image and during the .NET 3.5 SP1 beta installation (it seems mandatory!) setup asked to close itself! The message was something like this: "In order to continue the setup please close the following application: .NET 3.5 Sp1 beta 1" :O. I've pressed the Ignore button and everything is going well.

Firefox 3 litigates with Silverlight 1.0

2008-06-19T00:52:00.000-07:00

Reading the Nigel Parker's blog you can see why your Silverlight apps stopped to work if used with Firefox 3. It seems that the problem is during Silverlight's version identification. As result you obtain the banner asking you to install Silverlight instead of the Silverlight application. For recent version of Silverlight such as 2.0 beta 1 and 2.0 beta 2, everything works fine.

SQL Server 2008 RC 0 is out

2008-06-11T05:52:00.000-07:00

I'm reviewing a couple of books on SQL Server 2008. Thanks to them I've been able to appreciate new features and improvements provided by the new version. If you want to try the RC0 release of SQL Server 2008 you can obtain it at this address. It is valid just for 180 days. If you want to use it with Visual Studio 2008 remember to download the SP 1 beta.

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is out

2008-06-10T05:15:00.000-07:00

So, a new Silverlight beta version is out. Watch out! It is not compatible with the previous beta version so if you update to this new version you have to update your sites as well. Find more information here and here.

[OT] My apologies...

2008-06-10T01:53:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody,
I'm here to apologize with you about the update frequency of this blog. A lot of things happened from my last post. For example, I'm just come back from my honeymoon! This means I'm married, yes. And, do you know about the time that marriage's preparation consume? This is the main reason about the scarce blog updating. Moreover, I was busy to update my book's content. At last, I've finished my work and the book is about to be printed. The Ebook version of the book can be found here.

By the way, I'm thinking to change my blog from an unique LINQ prospective to a more generic ones. I like to follow other technologies such as Silverlight, XNA, etc.

So, stay tuned, I'll try to do my best to provide you updated information on the coolest Microsoft new technologies.

LINQ for Visual C#/Visual Basic 2008

2007-11-20T04:14:00.000-08:00

Good news for me! Apress gave me its consensus to update my books to the final version of LINQ shipped with Visual Studio 2008. Pretty much work for me, but I'm happy of that! Stay tuned, I'll post my experinces during books' update.

At last, Visual Studio 2008 is here!

2007-11-20T04:08:00.001-08:00

Microsoft released the Visual Studio 2008 RTM release. Lot of news on blogs about it, I don't like to repeat it: check these links: ScottGu's, SomaSegar, and Charlie Calvert.

Changes from LINQ to SQL Beta 2 to RTM

2007-10-10T02:49:00.000-07:00

Dinesh Kulkarni published a post where are shown the news that coming in the RTM release of the LINQ to SQL framework.

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 is out!!!

2007-07-27T05:16:00.000-07:00

No more Orcas here... Visual Studio 2008 is the new name for the next release of Microsoft's development tool. You can find virtual machine images and installables here. Happy download!

In order to have a summery of LINQ changes take a look at here.

Happy holidays to all, I'll check beta 2 features from here!

Added Lambda Functions to VB.NET 9.0 in June 2007 CTP

2007-07-16T02:16:00.000-07:00

Starting from the June 2007 CTP release even Visual Basic language has its own way to manage Lambda expressions. Let's see an example:

1: Public Delegate Function Sum(ByVal a As Integer, ByVal b As Integer) As Integer
2: ...
3: Dim DoSum As Sum = Function(ByVal a, ByVal b) a + b
4: Dim ret As Integer = DoSum(4, 5)
5:
6: 'Using named arguments
7: ret = DoSum(b:=3, a:=4)

Using the Function keyword you can define the Lambda expression (see row 3). In the next beta 2 release will not be more needed to specify the ByVal keyword for the Lambda's parameters.

Thanks to Corrado Cavalli for this info.

SQLMetal and Linq to SQL designer will use the same DBML schema from Beta 2

2007-06-28T01:30:00.000-07:00

As declared by Jay Hickerson from Microsoft, starting with Beta 2 the code generated by SQLMetal tool and Linq to SQL designer will be the same since they share the same DBML schema.

Contains() method in Beta 2

2007-06-08T02:29:00.000-07:00

New info from official LINQ forum. This time is the Contains() method the main actor. It will be released a new Contains() prototype in LINQ to SQL framework that accepts an object array. This will be translated in the SELECT ... IN ... statement allowing us to select just the value included in the array.

CommandTimeout property will be added to DataContext class

2007-06-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

Reading the official forum and this thread, Matt said that the CommandTimeout property will be added in the next release of LINQ to SQL.

New events added in Beta 2

2007-06-02T03:27:00.000-07:00

LINQ's Beta 2 will add some new events support. When you use SubmitChanges() the Validate event will be raised. Catching this event you will be able to validate your data before they will be inserted into the database.

You also be able to implement:

OnLoaded() -- called after loaded by DataContext
OnCreated() -- called any time an entity is constructed

Thanks to Matt Warren for the info.

DataShape class will be renamed in beta 2

2007-06-02T03:12:00.000-07:00

As stated by Matt Warren in this thread of the official LINQ forum the DataShape class will be renamed into DataLoadOptions and its property Shape will become LoadOptions.

That's the reason: "We had too many people thinking that the 'shape' was being enforced throughout the lifetime of the DataContext when it only realy controls the initial loading of the data. I still like 'Shape' better, but c'est la vie."

LINQ for Visual Basic 2005 will be complete only in Beta 2

2007-05-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

As declared by Amanda Silver (Lead Program Manager of Visual Basic team) in a couple of threads in the official forum, LINQ will be fully supported in VB only from the Orcas beta 2. Read more here and here.

LINQ for Visual C# 2005 Beta 1 updated samples

2007-05-09T04:49:00.000-07:00

I have updated book's samples to be working with Orcas beta 1 release. You can take it here.

LINQ's VB samples for "Orcas" beta 1

2007-04-23T04:50:00.000-07:00

I wasn't still able to check them but Visual Basic team had released updated samples for LINQ contained in "Orcas" beta 1 release. You can download samples here.

Linq To XML beta 1 changes

2007-04-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

In this post you can read the LINQ to XML's changes introduced in the Visual Studio "Orcas" Beta 1 release.

Visual Studio "Orcas" beta 1 samples

2007-04-20T04:07:00.000-07:00

You can download updated samples for beta 1 here.

Visual C#/VB Express "Orcas" editions

2007-04-20T03:53:00.000-07:00

Simultaneously with Visual Studio "Orcas" beta 1 release, Microsoft has released Visual Express "Orcas" editions. You can take the C# edition here and the VB edition here.

Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1 available

2007-04-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,
at last, Visual Studio Orcas reaches beta 1: you can download here. Just after I have it I'll test the samples from my book and I'll let you know what is changed. Stay here!

May 2006 to March 2007 comparison list

2007-03-07T04:28:00.000-08:00

During the conversion I noted all the differences I found. Here follows the list:

===========================
CHAPTER 1 - Linq to Object
===========================
- System.Query namespace has been substituted with System.Linq
- System.Expressions namespace has been substituted with System.Linq.Expressions
- During the object's creation the compiler doesn't infer the data type anymore.

For example:

List roles = new List {
{ ID = 1, RoleDescription = "Manager" },
{ ID = 2, RoleDescription = "Developer" }
};

The snippet code above produces a compilation error.
You have to change to:

List roles = new List {
new Role { ID = 1, RoleDescription = "Manager" },
new Role { ID = 2, RoleDescription = "Developer" }
};

- Sequence static class has been substituted with Enumerable
- The EqualAll method has been substituted with SequenceEqual method
========================================
CHAPTER 2 - Linq to Sql/Linq to DataSet
========================================
- In order to use Linq To Sql you must add a reference to the new System.Data.Linq.dll assembly located into the C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5.20209 path
- InsertMethod, UpdateMethod and DeleteMethod attributes have been removed
- StoredProcedureResult and StoredProcedureMultipleResult classes have been removed. When your stored procedure returns a composed type the designer converts it into a new class
- ExecuteStoredProcedure<> method has been substituted with ExecuteMethodCall<>
- The T-SQL User defined functions are called using the new ExecuteMethodCall method instead of the old Expression.Call (that is still present in the framework)
- The new Linq to Sql designer generates a read-only property when it encounters a primary key column. If you wrote some code to remove a record from that table you can't call the Remove method specifying the ID anymore
- When an optimistic concurrency error occurres you receive a new exception: "System.Data.Linq.ChangeConflictException: Row not found or changed."
- The LocalTransaction property has been renamed into Transaction
- The AcceptChanges and RejectChanges methods have been removed
- The GetResults() method used in conjuction with StoredProcedureMultipleResult class to get part of the global query result has been removed (accordingly to the StoredProcedureMultipleResult deletion)
- The Including() method used to prefetch data and avoinding the continuos polling to the database to retrieve related data has been substituted with the LoadWith<> generic method provided by the new DataShape class. The new class provides a new method called AssociateWith<> useful to define a subquery against the prefetched records
- The methods to load a DataSet with a Linq to Sql query have been removed. You have to use your own methods such as suggested in this post
- The CopyToDataTable method has been added to load a DataTable from a Linq to DataSet query. It provides two versions: the former returns a new DataTable and doesn't accept parameters while the latter fills an existing DataTable provided as parameter plus a second parameter indicating the LoadOption options (i.e. overwrite records)
- The ToQueryable() method has been substituted with AsEnumerable()
- The ToBindingList() method has been removed. You can provide the Linq query to the DataSource property directly
========================
CHAPTER 3 - Linq to Xml
========================
- In order to use Linq To Xml you must add a reference to the new System.Xml.Linq.dll assembly located into the C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5.20209 path
- ElementsBeforeThis and ElementsAfterThis methods have been renamed into ElementsBeforeSelf and ElementsAfterSelf, respectively
- SetElement has been renamed into SetElementValue
- SetAttribute has been renamed into SetAttributeValue
- ReplaceContent has been renamed into ReplaceNodes (you can obtain the same result using ReplaceAll)
- RemoveContent has been renamed into RemoveNodes (you can obtain the same result using RemoveAll)

The new code for the Linq for Visual C# 2005 book

2007-03-07T04:14:00.000-08:00

I have converted the Linq for Visual C# 2005 samples to work with the Orcas March 2007 CTP release.
You can download here.