WinFS beta 1 released

Looks like the WinFS beta 1(the next generation relational file system) is released and is available for MSDN subscribers. It runs on Windows XP with SP 2 and requires the .NET 2.0 framework version 2.0.50215.322

Google Talk

Google has entered the world of IM as well with their Google Talk software. Check it out at
http://www.google.com/talk/
And on a related note MSN messenger 7.5 is also released and you can download it from
http://g.msn.co.uk/7MEEN_GB/EN/INSTALL_MSN_MESSENGER_DL.EXE

C# and VB.NET Language Specs

I keep on forgetting the URLs to download the language specs. So hence I am posting them here
C# 2.0 language specs
VB.NET 8.0 language specs

Blogging using MS Word

I am posting this entry from the Blogger addin for MS Word. Once this addin is installed you can use MS Word to write your blog entries and post them directly. You can download the addin from http://buzz.blogger.com/bloggerforword.html

VS.NET 2005 Beta 2 extensions for WinFX Beta 1

Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX Beta 1 is released for download. This enables you to build WinFX applications using VS.NET 2005. You can download it at this URL

Open Source Software Conference in Srilanka

Asia’s premiere free and open source software conference is to be held in Srilanka from the 7th to the 10th of September. There are some big names and leaders from the open source software community attending it. You can find more details at http://www.fosssl.org/index.htm

101 Code samples in VB.NET 8.0 and C# 2.0

Download 101 code samples for Visual Studio.NET 2005 in VB.NET and C# at the following URL http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/downloads/101samples/default.aspx

 

August .NET User group meeting

We had the August .NET User group meeting yesterday. The audience was relatively small compared to the other days. I did a session on “The art of refactoring” and here are a few resources on refactoring:
http://www.refactoring.com/
Refactoring:Improving the design of existing code (Book)
http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/download/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/2005/tools/refactor/
And on a related note here are some tools to do unit testing:
http://www.nunit.org/
http://nunitasp.sourceforge.net/
http://nunitforms.sourceforge.net/

Article on getting schema information using ADO.NET 2.0

My article on getting schema and metadata using ADO.NET is published in the simple-talk journal at the following URL
http://www.simple-talk.com/2005/08/02/using-adonet/ 
This article looks into getting schema and metadata information using ADO.NET 2.0 with examples using SQL Server 2000 and Microsoft Excel. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.