RIA Services is a new Microsoft framework for developing n-tier Line of Business (LoB) applications. RIA Services make it easier to build Silverlight applications that communicate with a server, which is the focus of this article. As a developer, RIA Services provides automatic code generation for common scenarios where you need to perform CRUD operations on data and have a consistent model to validate data across tiers. The following sections explain how to get started with RIA Services, specify a data source and a UI, and automatically generate code for CRUD operations. Let me show you the big picture of RIA Services from an architectural perspective first
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Understanding RIA Services Architecture
RIA Services solves problems in n-tier application design for Silverlight applications by making it easier to serialize and stream objects across a network, sharing common validation among tiers, and automating asynchronous communication. To compare current development practices to what RIA Services offers, consider a common architecture, shown in Figure 1, using Web services to allow a Silverlight application to communicate with the server
Figure 1. N-Tier architecture with Web services
To the left of Figure 1 is a Silverlight control in a browser, which is the presentation tier. Following the network connection to the right, the Web service resides on the server, which is a separate tier where Business Logic Layer (BLL) and Data Access Layer (DAL) code reside; the sidebar, Layers and Tiers, explains the difference between layers and tiers.
LoB application development is very much about managing data properly. In the Web services scenario in Figure 1, you can see how data management must be handled in each tier. Perhaps you have a framework that makes it easier to stream data across the wire, but you still have manual work to do in each tier to manage CRUD operations
Observe in Figure 1 the separate validation code in each tier of the application, because in many cases you can’t make the assumption that presentation tier validation is sufficient. Especially in a Web services scenario, any client can send bad data
A common problem with network communications is timeouts and managing perceived performance in the presentation tier in the face of latency. A common way to handle this is via asynchronous calls where your thread returns to the UI immediately and the application later handles the return thread from the Web service and marshals the call back onto the UI thread to update the screen. There are patterns and framework support for managing this, but you must write the code yourself. The solid line between tiers demonstrates the fact that communication is synchronous by default
“Up to now, developers have been fortunate to have the tools to build sophisticated n-tier architectures easier than earlier generations of software technology. However, this scenario becomes even easier with RIA Services.”
Up to now, developers have been fortunate to have the tools to build sophisticated n-tier architectures easier than earlier generations of software technology. However, this scenario becomes even easier with RIA Services. Figure 2 shows how RIA Services simplifies data management, validation, and communications
Figure 2: RIA Services architecture.
The single Data Objects block in Figure 2 demonstrates that the UI and BLL/DAL tiers use the same objects. RIA Services supports LINQ to SQL, ADO.NET Entity Framework, and POCO out of the box, reducing the amount of work that you must do to move data across the network. Similarly, Validation has a single block, showing that the same validation rules defined in the BLL will be used in the UI. RIA Services build a proxy for the UI layer to encapsulate asynchronous communication, represented by the dashed line between UI and middle tier, freeing you from the extra coding
The rest of this article shows you how RIA Services can help reduce the amount of code you write for n-tier LoB applications, starting with an explanation of how to start a Silverlight project that uses RIA Services
Starting RIA Services in a Silverlight 3 Project
The easiest way to use RIA Services is via the Silverlight Application wizard in Visual Studio 2008. The following steps will walk you through the process of creating a Silverlight application that uses RIA Services. For this article I’ll use a C# project, but you can do the same with a Visual Basic project:
1. Start a new Silverlight application by selecting File | New | and Project. You’ll see the New Project window in Figure 3
2. Select Visual C#, select Silverlight in Project types, and select Silverlight Application in Templates
3. Set Name to RIAServicesDemo, specify the Location where you want the project to reside, and click OK. You’ll see the New Silverlight Application window in Figure 4
Figure 3: New Project window.
Figure 4: New Silverlight Application window.
If you’ve built Silverlight applications before, the New Silverlight Application window in Figure 4 will be familiar. The Host the Silverlight application in a new Web site check box creates a new ASP.NET Web site with sample pages containing the new Silverlight control. You can change the project name to anything you like, but this demo will use the default. This demo will also use the default of ASP.NET Web Application Project as the project type; the alternative being an ASP.NET Web Site project. What’s new, for Silverlight 3, in the New Silverlight Application window is the Link options section. To use RIA Services, you must check the box for Link to ASP.NET server project, which establishes the proper assembly references and any other settings required for using RIA Services. If you forget to check the Link to ASP.NET server project box and change your mind later, you can open the Properties window for the Silverlight project and there is an option called ASP.NET server project link on the Silverlight tab that you can change
4. Click OK to create a new solution with a Silverlight application project and an ASP.NET project, shown in Figure 5
Figure 5: New RIA Services application solution.
A couple items in Figure 5 are worthy of mention: assembly references and Toolbox controls. Notice that the Silverlight project, RIAServicesDemo, includes a reference to System.Windows.Ria; the assembly containing RIA Services types. In addition, you can see several new controls in the Toolbox such as DataForm, DataPager, and DatePicker that are new in Silverlight 3
RIA Services supports multiple types of DAL in your architecture, including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, or custom.”
Visual C# version 4.0 offers new features that make it easier for you to work in dynamic programming scenarios. Besides dynamic programming, you have support for optional and named parameters, better COM interop support, and contra-variance and covariance. This article will show you how each of these features work and provide suggestions of how they can be applied to help you be more productive.
To help you follow the path of C#, this article looks at the history of C#, today’s use of C#, and helps you understand the future of C# and what the language intends to provide for you. After you understand the theme of C# 4.0, you’ll learn about the new features of C# 4.0. Finally, this article will show you how to create a dynamic object of your own with late-bound calls to dynamic methods based on conventions.
C#: Then and Now
The previous major versions of C# were 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0. There was a minor version 1.1 in April of 2003, but it didn’t significantly change the theme of the 1.0 release.
Microsoft first announced C# on June 16th 2000. It was the first high-level programming language that was built specifically to target the .NET Common Language Runtime. C# 1.0 grew its heritage from C++, but borrowed features from languages such as Delphi, Java, and others. In C# 1.0, Microsoft planned to provide an object-oriented, component-based language that was very simple to use. When Microsoft released C# 1.0 to manufacturing on February 13th 2002, it was an immediate hit and steadily grew in popularity
When C# 2.0 rolled around, Microsoft finally added all of the features that should have been in C# 1.0. For example, generics was huge and is an important part of .NET development today. C# 2.0 also introduced anonymous methods, iterators, and nullable types. An interesting addition to C# 2.0, nullable types was a pre-cursor feature for what was coming in the next version, focusing on data
Most developers work with data, which was the primary theme of C# 3.0. The largest C# 3.0 language addition was Language Integrated Query (LINQ). Most other language features added in C# 3.0 were primarily to support LINQ, but the new features; including implicitly typed local variables, anonymous types, object and collection initializers, lambdas, and extension methods, can have value on their own in development that doesn’t involve LINQ
The next version of C# will be 4.0, which is the focus of this article. C# 4.0 will primarily focus on dynamic programming. The following sections of this article explain the dynamic programming features of C# 4.0 as well as other new features such as optional/named parameters and covariance/contravariance
Why Dynamic Programming?
The dynamic programming story in C# can fall into fulfilling categories of need in the way of multiple-language integration, simpler reflection, access to HTML DOM in Web scenarios, and easier COM interop. Some of these categories of need might not apply to your particular situation, and that’s okay because there isn’t anything that says that you have to use a language feature just because it’s there.
Most C# developers use multiple tools in a single application to accomplish complex tasks. If you’re writing WPF desktop applications, you’re using C# and XAML. It is quite possible that you might find some open source code that solves a problem, but it might be written in another language such as VB or F#. One of the benefits of .NET since its inception is the ability to have cross-language interoperability and the runtime is even called the “Common Language” Runtime (CLR). In recent years, Microsoft has created dynamic languages, such as IronRuby and IronPython, but developers don’t have an easy way to perform interop with dynamic languages. If you have this need, then you’ll welcome the ease with which C# dynamic programming makes interop between C# and dynamic languages possible
When performing reflection to run a method on an object, there are several hoops to jump through, including obtaining a reference to an object type, getting a reference to a member info object, determining the type of bindings to use, and then invoking the member. While reflection has an undeniable coolness factor, it still feels like a hack and that’s where C# 4.0 dynamic methods can help
If you write Silverlight applications, you might have the need today or in the future to access the HTML DOM containing your Silverlight control. C# dynamic programming makes this task easier
Performing COM interop with C# has always been cumbersome; partly because of the need to write extra syntax for conversions, optional parameters, and more. This has left some C# developers with a touch of VB envy because VB has easier COM interop support. One of the purposes of dynamic programming in C# is to help the C# programmer write cleaner syntax in COM interop scenarios
Where do you go for Visual C# 4.0 Hosting?
Basically, you need to look for a host that supports ASP.NET 4.0 Hosting. ASPHostCentral.com is the premier ASP.NET 4 Hosting provider and you can always start from as low as $4.99/month to host your first Visual C# 4.0 project.
URL routing was a capability we first introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, and which is already used within ASP.NET MVC applications to expose clean, SEO-friendly “web 2.0” URLs. URL routing lets you configure an application to accept request URLs that do not map to physical files. Instead, you can use routing to define URLs that are semantically meaningful to users and that can help with search-engine optimization (SEO).
For example, the URL for a traditional page that displays product categories might look like below
http://www.mysite.com/products.aspx?category=software
Using the URL routing engine in ASP.NET 4 you can now configure the application to accept the following URL instead to render the same information:
http://www.mysite.com/products/software
With ASP.NET 4.0, URLs like above can now be mapped to both ASP.NET MVC Controller classes, as well as ASP.NET Web Forms based pages. You can even have a single application that contains both Web Forms and MVC Controllers, and use a single set of routing rules to map URLs between them.
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Response.RedirectPermanent() Method
It is pretty common within web applications to move pages and other content around over time, which can lead to an accumulation of stale links in search engines
In ASP.NET, developers have often handled requests to old URLs by using the Response.Redirect() method to programmatically forward a request to the new URL. However, what many developers don’t realize is that the Response.Redirect() method issues an HTTP 302 Found (temporary redirect) response, which results in an extra HTTP round trip when users attempt to access the old URLs. Search engines typically will not follow across multiple redirection hops – which means using a temporary redirect can negatively impact your page ranking. You can use the SEO Toolkit to identify places within a site where you might have this issue
ASP.NET 4 introduces a new Response.RedirectPermanent(string url) helper method that can be used to perform a redirect using an HTTP 301 (moved permanently) response. This will cause search engines and other user agents that recognize permanent redirects to store and use the new URL that is associated with the content. This will enable your content to be indexed and your search engine page ranking to improve
ASP.NET 4 also introduces new Response.RedirectToRoute(string routeName) and Response.RedirectToRoutePermanent(string routeName) helper methods that can be used to redirect users using either a temporary or permanent redirect using the URL routing engine. The code snippets below demonstrate how to issue temporary and permanent redirects to named routes (that take a category parameter) registered with the URL routing system.
You can use the above routes and methods for both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based URLs
Summary
ASP.NET 4 includes a bunch of feature improvements that make it easier to build public facing sites that have great SEO. When combined with the SEO Toolkit, you should be able to use these features to increase user traffic to your site – and hopefully increase the direct or indirect revenue you make from them
ASP.NET MVC 2 RC provides a new Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework on top of the existing ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 runtime.
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Overview
ASP.NET MVC 2 is a framework for developing highly testable and maintainable Web applications by leveraging the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. The framework encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application – the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model.
ASP.NET MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development (TDD).
The installation package includes templates and tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP 1 to increase productivity when writing ASP.NET MVC applications. For example, the Add View dialog box takes advantage of customizable code generation (T4) templates to generate a view based on a model object.
The default project template allows the developer to automatically hook up a unit-test project that is associated with the ASP.NET MVC application.
Because the ASP.NET MVC framework is built on ASP.NET 3.5 SP 1, developers can take advantage of existing ASP.NET features like authentication and authorization, profile settings, localization, and so on.
System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista
.NET 3.5 SP1. Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 are required to use certain parts of this feature.
Reasons to trust your ASP.NET MVC website to us
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in ASP.NET MVC Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it.
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute
Overview
ASP.NET MVC 2 is a framework for developing highly testable and maintainable Web applications by leveraging the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. The framework encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application – the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model.
ASP.NET MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development (TDD).
The installation package includes templates and tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP 1 to increase productivity when writing ASP.NET MVC applications. For example, the Add View dialog box takes advantage of customizable code generation (T4) templates to generate a view based on a model object.
The default project template allows the developer to automatically hook up a unit-test project that is associated with the ASP.NET MVC application.
Because the ASP.NET MVC framework is built on ASP.NET 3.5 SP 1, developers can take advantage of existing ASP.NET features like authentication and authorization, profile settings, localization, and so on.
System Requirements
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista
.NET 3.5 SP1. Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 are required to use certain parts of this feature.
Reasons to trust your ASP.NET MVC website to us
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in ASP.NET MVC Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it.
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute
Last summer Microsoft released the first version of the ADO.NET Entity Framework as part of .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1. It builds on the concept of Dr. Peter Chen’s Entity Relationship Model by introducing a conceptual model, called the Entity Data Model (EDM), which sits on top of the database schema to represent the data in a way that is closer to how objects are modeled in the real world. This higher level of abstraction can help reduce the impedance mismatch that exists between the worlds of relational data and object oriented programming. However, the Entity Framework is much more than another Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) tool. In fact, you can query the EDM using a database-agnostic dialect of SQL called Entity SQL and use old-style data readers to fetch results without materializing them as objects. ASPHostCentral.com proudly announces that we are the first host to offer ASP.NET 4 Hosting with support of Entity Framework 4 to all our new and existing customers and you can start using this newest server from just as low as $4.99/month.
The first ORM released by Microsoft was LINQ to SQL, which shipped with .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. It’s a single-purpose ORM that only works against SQL Server (2000 or later), so Microsoft has decided to throw most of its weight behind the Entity Framework, because it is built on the ADO.NET provider model and can connect to any database for which an Entity-Framework-enabled provider exists (including Oracle, Sybase, and other major DBMS’s).
While the first version of the Entity Framework provided a richer mapping experience, including different ways to model inheritance, it lacked many features required by real-world applications, especially those built on the tenets of service-orientation. For example, classes generated by the entity model designer were tightly coupled to the Entity Framework, which made them difficult to use in n-tier applications where entities should be completely unaware of how they will be persisted.
Coming of Age
With version 4.0 of the .NET Platform, Microsoft will release its second version of the Entity Framework, which will include a raft of new features, making it a viable option for use in real-world applications. (As of this writing, the first Community Technology Preview is available for Entity Framework 4.0, which runs on .NET 4.0 Beta 1 with Visual Studio 2010.)
1. Persistence Ignorance: You can define your own POCO’s (Plain Old CLR Objects) that are decoupled from any specific persistence technology. This allows you to swap out one data access stack for another should the need arise
2. T4 Code Generation: EF 4 will ship with a number of T4 code-generation templates which you can customize or replace with your own. (T4 is a code-generation technology built into Visual Studio 2008 or later.)
3. Lazy Loading: In addition to eager and explicit loading, related entities can be loaded automatically on demand. For example, with an Order class that has an OrderDetails property, marking this property as virtual will cause order details to be loaded from the database automatically when the OrderDetails property is enumerated
4. POCO Change-Tracking: EF4 will support two models for tracking changes on POCO’s. By default EF will take a snapshot of the original state of your objects and then compare it to the current version when saving changes. Alternatively, you can define properties as virtual so that their state is continually tracked and kept in sync with the object state manager
5. Better N-Tier Support with Self-Tracking Entities: The first CTP for EF4 includes a T4 template for generating entities that track their own changes on the client, which are then serialized when sent across service boundaries and saved to the database
6. Model-First Development: Create a model for your entities, then have Visual Studio 2010 generate DDL to create a database with matching tables and relations
7. Code-Only Development: Write classes and have EF infer a conceptual model (no edmx file!). You can even generate DDL from the dynamic model to create the database and tables
In addition to these features, EF 4 will include a number of other improvements, such as singularization and pluralization of entity names (for example, when creating a model for the Northwind sample database), an enhanced entity model designer, complex type support, inclusion of foreign keys in the entity model, additional functions and operators for LINQ queries, testability improvements with IObjectSet<T>, and better readability / performance for generated SQL
Better N-Tier Support
One of the most common reasons for using POCO’s is to conceal details of object persistence behind a data access layer. Similarly, POCO’s are often passed across tiers as Data Transfer Objects (DTO’s) in a service-oriented application. One problem that has vexed distributed application developers is how to pass changes from one tier to another so they can be persisted in a disconnected manner. At first, the Entity Framework team decided to provide a low-level API for applying changes to detached objects, requiring you to roll your own change-tracking mechanism, but much of the feedback they received included requests for a built-in change-tracking mechanism and an end-to-end architecture for building n-tier apps that use the Entity Framework. In response to this feedback, the team delivered a T4 template for Self-Tracking Entities, which allows each entity to keep track of its own change state, so that you can pass it to a remote service where the entire object graph is persisted
Each generated class implements the IObjectWithChangeTracker interface, which has a ChangeTracker property, as well as methods to mark the entity as Unchanged, Modified, Added or Deleted. ObjectChangeTracker not only records the object state but also maintains original values of reference properties as well as objects that have been added to or deleted from collection properties. This means that the client can make changes to an Order by adding or removing OrderDetails, and the state of the Order and OrderDetails can be sent to the service for persistence. Change state is serialized because each entity is marked with a [DataContract] attribute and the ChangeTracker is marked with a [DataMember] attribute
Self-Tracking Entities allow the client to track change state on entities without needing to reference the Entity Framework assembly, System.Data.Entity. The change-tracking code is auto-generated by the T4 template, which produces the ObjectChangeTracker class and a generic FixupChangeTrackingCollection class that does relationship fix-up and implements ICollection to keep track of additions and deletions. Deleted items are cached so they can be removed later when changes are persisted on the service side
Your service would typically expose a method for retrieving an object graph such as Order and OrderDetails, and a method for updating the object graph. In the update method, you would call ApplyChanges<T> on the appropriate entity set. ApplyChanges is an extension method residing in the Microsoft.Data.Entity.CTP assembly, which you bring into scope by adding a using directive for the Microsoft.Data.Entity namespace. This method accepts an object graph as well as a pointer to a method that returns an IEntityChangeTracker, which is responsible for informing the object state manager of these changes. The Self-Tracking Entities T4 template also generates a EntityChangeTrackerAdapter class that implements IEntityChangeTracker by translating the persistence-neutral ObjectState enum (Added, Deleted, Modified, Unchanged) to the equivalent EF-specific EntityState enum values. The code in your service-side update method could look something like this
public Order UpdateOrder(Order order)
{
using (NorthwindEntities ctx = new NorthwindEntities())
{
ctx.Orders.ApplyChanges(order,
EntityChangeTrackerAdapter.GetSelfTrackingEntityInfo);
ctx.SaveChanges(); return order;
}
}
Conclusion
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The first ORM released by Microsoft was LINQ to SQL, which shipped with .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. It’s a single-purpose ORM that only works against SQL Server (2000 or later), so Microsoft has decided to throw most of its weight behind the Entity Framework, because it is built on the ADO.NET provider model and can connect to any database for which an Entity-Framework-enabled provider exists (including Oracle, Sybase, and other major DBMS’s).
While the first version of the Entity Framework provided a richer mapping experience, including different ways to model inheritance, it lacked many features required by real-world applications, especially those built on the tenets of service-orientation. For example, classes generated by the entity model designer were tightly coupled to the Entity Framework, which made them difficult to use in n-tier applications where entities should be completely unaware of how they will be persisted.
Coming of Age
With version 4.0 of the .NET Platform, Microsoft will release its second version of the Entity Framework, which will include a raft of new features, making it a viable option for use in real-world applications. (As of this writing, the first Community Technology Preview is available for Entity Framework 4.0, which runs on .NET 4.0 Beta 1 with Visual Studio 2010.)
1. Persistence Ignorance: You can define your own POCO’s (Plain Old CLR Objects) that are decoupled from any specific persistence technology. This allows you to swap out one data access stack for another should the need arise
2. T4 Code Generation: EF 4 will ship with a number of T4 code-generation templates which you can customize or replace with your own. (T4 is a code-generation technology built into Visual Studio 2008 or later.)
3. Lazy Loading: In addition to eager and explicit loading, related entities can be loaded automatically on demand. For example, with an Order class that has an OrderDetails property, marking this property as virtual will cause order details to be loaded from the database automatically when the OrderDetails property is enumerated
4. POCO Change-Tracking: EF4 will support two models for tracking changes on POCO’s. By default EF will take a snapshot of the original state of your objects and then compare it to the current version when saving changes. Alternatively, you can define properties as virtual so that their state is continually tracked and kept in sync with the object state manager
5. Better N-Tier Support with Self-Tracking Entities: The first CTP for EF4 includes a T4 template for generating entities that track their own changes on the client, which are then serialized when sent across service boundaries and saved to the database
6. Model-First Development: Create a model for your entities, then have Visual Studio 2010 generate DDL to create a database with matching tables and relations
7. Code-Only Development: Write classes and have EF infer a conceptual model (no edmx file!). You can even generate DDL from the dynamic model to create the database and tables
In addition to these features, EF 4 will include a number of other improvements, such as singularization and pluralization of entity names (for example, when creating a model for the Northwind sample database), an enhanced entity model designer, complex type support, inclusion of foreign keys in the entity model, additional functions and operators for LINQ queries, testability improvements with IObjectSet<T>, and better readability / performance for generated SQL
Better N-Tier Support
One of the most common reasons for using POCO’s is to conceal details of object persistence behind a data access layer. Similarly, POCO’s are often passed across tiers as Data Transfer Objects (DTO’s) in a service-oriented application. One problem that has vexed distributed application developers is how to pass changes from one tier to another so they can be persisted in a disconnected manner. At first, the Entity Framework team decided to provide a low-level API for applying changes to detached objects, requiring you to roll your own change-tracking mechanism, but much of the feedback they received included requests for a built-in change-tracking mechanism and an end-to-end architecture for building n-tier apps that use the Entity Framework. In response to this feedback, the team delivered a T4 template for Self-Tracking Entities, which allows each entity to keep track of its own change state, so that you can pass it to a remote service where the entire object graph is persisted
Each generated class implements the IObjectWithChangeTracker interface, which has a ChangeTracker property, as well as methods to mark the entity as Unchanged, Modified, Added or Deleted. ObjectChangeTracker not only records the object state but also maintains original values of reference properties as well as objects that have been added to or deleted from collection properties. This means that the client can make changes to an Order by adding or removing OrderDetails, and the state of the Order and OrderDetails can be sent to the service for persistence. Change state is serialized because each entity is marked with a [DataContract] attribute and the ChangeTracker is marked with a [DataMember] attribute
Self-Tracking Entities allow the client to track change state on entities without needing to reference the Entity Framework assembly, System.Data.Entity. The change-tracking code is auto-generated by the T4 template, which produces the ObjectChangeTracker class and a generic FixupChangeTrackingCollection class that does relationship fix-up and implements ICollection to keep track of additions and deletions. Deleted items are cached so they can be removed later when changes are persisted on the service side
Your service would typically expose a method for retrieving an object graph such as Order and OrderDetails, and a method for updating the object graph. In the update method, you would call ApplyChanges<T> on the appropriate entity set. ApplyChanges is an extension method residing in the Microsoft.Data.Entity.CTP assembly, which you bring into scope by adding a using directive for the Microsoft.Data.Entity namespace. This method accepts an object graph as well as a pointer to a method that returns an IEntityChangeTracker, which is responsible for informing the object state manager of these changes. The Self-Tracking Entities T4 template also generates a EntityChangeTrackerAdapter class that implements IEntityChangeTracker by translating the persistence-neutral ObjectState enum (Added, Deleted, Modified, Unchanged) to the equivalent EF-specific EntityState enum values. The code in your service-side update method could look something like this
public Order UpdateOrder(Order order)
{
using (NorthwindEntities ctx = new NorthwindEntities())
{
ctx.Orders.ApplyChanges(order,
EntityChangeTrackerAdapter.GetSelfTrackingEntityInfo);
ctx.SaveChanges(); return order;
}
}
Conclusion
The nice part about POCO and N-Tier support is the use of T4 templates for code generation, which you can customize or replace altogether. This greatly reduces the amount of code you would otherwise have to write. In addition to these and other features, there are numerous bug fixes and improvements that provide a richer and more rewarding development experience, making the Entity Framework 4.0 an attractive candidate when selecting an ORM tool for building distributed line of business applications
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services can be hosted with Internet Information Services (IIS); with the new Windows Activation Service (WAS) installed with IIS 7.0; or with any managed application process including console, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), or managed Windows service applications. Selecting the right hosting environment for your services is a choice driven largely by deployment requirements related to transport protocol and operating platform.
ASPHostCentral.com proudly announces that we are the first host to offer Windows WCF Hosting Service to all our new and existing customers and you can start using this newest server from just as low as $4.99/month
WCF is part of the .NET Framework 3.0 stack and thus is supported on the following operating platforms: Windows XP/SP2, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows “Longhorn” Server. Regardless of platform, you can access WCF services over many protocols including HTTP, TCP, IPC and MSMQ. Unfortunately, not all hosting environments are available to each platform, nor does every host support the entire suite of protocols-limiting your options at times
Beyond operating platform and choice of protocol, other features available to the hosting environment also influence deployment decisions and choice of host. In this article, I’ll describe the desired features of a hosting environment; provide you with an overview of WCF hosting options and their availability; and explain how to implement scenarios applicable to each environment
Why choosing ASPHostCentral.com to host your WCF Service website?
Hosting environments make it possible to expose your services to client applications. They facilitate request processing to service operations, but they can also play a critical role in the availability and scalability of your services. ASPHostCentral.com hosting environment provides these features:
- Executable Process/Application Domain: You can use any managed process to host WCF services, which implies the existence of an application domain (“app domain”).
- Configuration: A mechanism for external configuration should be available to support deployment and manageability. For managed hosts this is supplied by the application configuration file (app.config or web.config).
- Activation: Ultimately the service model instantiates the appropriate service type to handle incoming requests, but the host process must initialize the channel stack that receives incoming messages. You can do this activation at host startup but it is preferably done through message-based activation
- Idle-Time Management: To conserve server resources during idle time, hosts can release unused resources. Hosts that support this feature usually provide a configurable timeout. Idle-time management relies on the activation capabilities of the host to instantiate resources as needed
- Health Monitoring: To ensure availability a host process must always be running to service requests. Some hosting environments can proactively monitor their processes to ensure a new host process is started when existing processes are unable to service requests.
- Process Recycling: To avoid problems associated with memory leaks or faulty code, some hosting environments support configurable process recycling to “freshen up” running host processes
- Management Tools: Sophisticated hosting environments also provide tools for configuring hosting features for greater control and manageability. This toolset sometimes contains tools for monitoring the health and status of running host processes
What’s New in Silverlight 4 Beta?
Silverlight 4 delivers a full suite of powerful capabilities to business application developers, bringing the best-of-breed .NET platform to browser-based experiences. Silverlight provides an ideal platform for developing and deploying modern business applications for both customer facing and staff-facing applications.
ASPHostCentral.com proudly announces that we are the first host to offer Windows Server 2008 R2 Edition to all our new and existing customers and you can start using this newest server from just as low as $4.99/month
Business Application Development
Silverlight 4 consolidates its position as the natural choice for building business applications on the Web:
New Features for Application Developers
- Comprehensive printing support enabling hardcopy reports and documents as well as a virtual print view, independent of screen content
- A full set of forms controls with over 60 customizable, styleable components. New controls include RichTextbox with hyperlinks, images and editing and Masked textbox for complex field validation. Enhanced controls include DataGrid with sortable/resizeable columns and copy/paste rows
- WCF RIA Services introduces enterprise class networking and data access for building n-tier applications including transactions, paging of data, WCF and HTTP enhancements
- Localization enhancements with Bi-Directional text, Right-to-Left support and complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai and 30 new languages
- The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change
- Enhanced databinding support increases flexibility and productivity through data grouping/editing and string formatting within bindings
- Managed Extensibility Framework supports building large composite applications
- Exclusive tooling support for Silverlight, new in Visual Studio 2010. Including a full editable design surface, drag & drop data-binding, automatically bound controls, datasource selection, integration with Expression Blend styling resources, Silverlight project support and full IntelliSense
Developer tools
- Fully editable design surface for drawing out controls and layouts
- Rich property grid and new editors for values
- Drag and drop support for databinding and automatically creating bound controls such as listbox, datagrid. New datasources window and picker
- Easy to pick styles and resources to make a good looking application based on designer resources built in Expression Blend
- Built in project support for Silverlight applications
- Editor with full intellisense for XAML and C# and VB languages
Empowering richer, more interactive experiences
Silverlight is already in use as a comprehensive platform for building rich experiences both for application and pure media scenarios including HD quality, interactive video through Smooth Streaming. Silverlight 4 introduces additional capabilities to enable creation of ever more rich, appealing high-performance interactive experiences and innovative media experiences:
- Fluid interface enhancements advance application usability through animation effects
- Webcam and microphone to allow sharing of video and audio for instance for chat or customer service applications
- Audio and video local recording capabilities capture RAW video without requiring server interaction, enabling a wide range of end-user interaction and communication scenarios for example video conferencing
- Bring data in to your application with features such as copy and paste or drag and drop
- Long lists can now be scrolled effortlessly with the mouse wheel
- Support conventional desktop interaction models through new features such as right-click context menu
- Support for Google’s Chrome browser
- Performance optimizations mean Silverlight 4 applications start quicker and run 200% faster than the equivalent Silverlight 3 application
- Multi-touch support enables a range of gestures and touch interactions to be integrated into user experiences
- Multicast networking, enabling Enterprises to lower the cost of streaming broadcast events such as company meetings and training, interoperating seamlessly with existing Windows Media Server streaming infrastructure
- Content protection for H.264 media through Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady
- Output protection for audio/video streams allowing content owners or distributors to ensure protected content is only viewed through a secure video connection
Move beyond the browser
Silverlight 3 pioneered the delivery of a new class of Rich Internet Applications to work on the desktop without additional code or runtimes. Silverlight 4 extends this capability:
For Sandboxed applications
- Place HTML within your application enabling much tighter integration with content from web servers such as email, help and reports
- Provide support for ‘toast’ notification windows, allowing applications to communicate status or change information while the user is working on another application through a popup window on the taskbar
- Offline DRM, extending the existing Silverlight DRM powered by PlayReady technology to work offline. Protected content can be delivered with a persistent license so that users can go offline immediately and start enjoying their content
- Control over aspects of UI include window settings such as start position, size and chrome
For Trusted applications
- Read and write files to the user’s MyDocuments, MyMusic, MyPictures and MyVideos folder (or equivalent for non-windows platforms) for example storage of media files and taking local copies of reports
- Run other desktop programs such as Office, for example requesting Outlook to send an email, send a report to Word or data to Excel
- COM automation enables access to devices and other system capabilities by calling into application components; for instance to access a USB security card reader
- A new user interface for requesting application privileges access outside the standard Silverlight sandbox
- Group policy objects allow organizations to tailor which applications may have elevated trust
- Full keyboard support in fullscreen mode richer kiosk and media applications
- Enhancements to networking allow cross-domain access without a security policy file
Windows Server 2008 R2 is the most advanced Windows Server operating system yet, designed to power the next generation of networks, applications, and Web services. Use the links below to learn more about Windows Server 2008 R2. ASPHostCentral.com proudly announces that we are the first host to offer Windows Server 2008 R2 Edition to all our new and existing customers and you can start using this newest server from just as low as $4.99/month.
Windows Server 2008 R2 builds on the award-winning foundation of Windows Server 2008, expanding existing technology and adding new features to enable IT professionals to increase the reliability and flexibility of their server infrastructures. New virtualization tools, Web resources, management enhancements, and exciting Windows 7 integration help save time, reduce costs, and provide a platform for a dynamic and efficiently managed data center. Powerful tools such as Internet Information Services (IIS) version 7.5, updated Server Manager and Hyper-V platforms and Windows PowerShell version 2.0 combine to give customers greater control, increased efficiency and the ability to react to front-line business needs faster than ever before
Improving the Web Application Platform
Windows Server 2008 R2 includes many enhancements that make this release the most robust Windows Server Web application platform yet. It offers an updated Web server role, Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5, and greater support for .NET on Server Core. Design goals for IIS 7.5 concentrated on improvements that enable Web administrators to more easily deploy and manage Web applications that increase both reliability and scalability. Additionally, IIS 7.5 has streamlined management capabilities and provides more ways to customize your Web serving environment. The following improvements to IIS and the Windows Web platform are included in Windows Server 2008 R2:
- Reduced Effort to Administer and Support Web-Based Applications
- Reduced Support and Troubleshooting Effort
- Improved File-Transfer Services
- Ability to Extend Functionality and Features
- Improved .NET Support
- Improved Application Pool Security
- IIS.NET Community Portal
Enabling Server and Desktop Virtualization
Virtualization is a major part of today’s data centers. The operating efficiencies offered by virtualization allow organizations to dramatically reduce operational effort and power consumption. Windows Server 2008 R2 provides the following virtualization types: Client and Server virtualization provided by Hyper-V and Presentation virtualization with Remote Desktop Services
- Hyper-V - Windows Server 2008 R2 introduces a new version of Hyper-V. Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 includes a number of core areas of improvement for creating dynamic virtual data centers including increased availability and performance, improved management, simplified methods for deployment and new features including live migration
- Remote Desktop Services (formerly known as Terminal Services) - Remote Desktop Services provides users and administrators with both the features and the flexibility necessary to build the most robust access experience in any deployment scenario. To expand the Remote Desktop Services feature set, Microsoft has been investing in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, also known as VDI. VDI is a centralized desktop delivery architecture, which enables Windows and other desktop environments to run and be managed in virtual machines on a centralized server
ASPHostCentral.com is one of the first ASP.NET Hosting providers to offer IIS7.5 Hosting on our most advanced Windows 2008 R2 hosting platform
IIS Application Warm-Up for IIS 7.5 enables IT Professionals to improve the responsiveness of their Web sites by loading the Web applications before the first requests arrive. By proactively loading and initializing all the dependencies such as database connections, compilation of ASP.NET code, and loading of modules, IT Professionals can ensure their Web sites are responsive at all times even if their Web sites use a custom request pipeline or if the Application Pool is recycled
ASPHostCentral.com takes advantage of features in Windows 2008 R2 64-bits Edition and IIS 7.5 and we configure our server platform for increased security and reliability
ASPHostCentral.com is one of Windows Web Hosting providers to support IIS7.5 Manager. We also support some of the new IIS7.5 UI Extensions released by Microsoft.
IIS7.5 Benefits
- Decrease the response time for first requests by pre-loading worker processes - IIS Application Warm-Up allows IT Professionals to configure the Web application to be pre-loaded at the start of the Web server before the first request arrives. By pre-loading the application, the worker process is able to reduce the time it takes to respond to the first Web request. The loading and initialization of the dependencies such as database connections, .NET Framework, and the just-in-time compilation for ASP.NET applications and dependencies have already been performed by the time the request arrives to the server
- Increase reliability by pre-loading worker processes when Overlapped Recycling occurs - The response times for the first requests in an Overlapped Recycling scenario are reduced by also pre-loading dependencies. The recycled worker process will only communicate its readiness and will start accepting requests after it finishes loading and initializing the resources as specified by the configuration
- Customize the pre-loading of applications - IIS Application Warm-Up can be configured to initialize Web applications by using specific Web pages and user identities. This makes it possible to create specific initialization processes that can be executed synchronously or asynchronously depending on the initialization logic. In addition, these procedures can use specific identities in order to ensure a proper initialization
Reasons to trust your IIS7.5 website to us
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your onlines business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in IIS7.5 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
ASPHostCentral.com, an ASP.NET and Windows hosting provider, today announced the supports of ASP.NET 4 Beta 2 Framework hosting on our newest Windows Server 2008 R2 environment.
This ASP.NET 4 Beta 2 Framework will be offered until January 31, 2010 and we will soon replace with the newest full release of ASP.NET4. The Microsoft .NET Framework 4 redistributable package installs the .NET Framework runtime and associated files that are required to run and develop applications to target the .NET Framework 4. This download consists of a new Web-based installer that simplifies the installation process.
This unique opportunity is provided to all our new and existing customers and the cost to host ASP.NET4 Beta 2 project on our environment is priced at $4.99/month only. For more details about this product, please visit our Crystal Report product page at http://www.asphostcentral.com or http://www.asphostcentral.com/ASP-NET4-Hosting.aspx
About ASPHostCentral.com:
ASPHostCentral is a premier web hosting company where you will find low cost and reliable web hosting services. Whether you're an enterprise level business or a small business entity or someone who just wants to host his own personal website - we have a suitable web hosting solution for you.
For more information, visit http://www.ASPHostCentral.com
There are many new exciting things that we can find on the latest .NET4 Framework and one of them is the ability to use the “Code Contracts”. ASPHostCentral.com as a premier Windows and .NET Hosting provider, proudly announces that this latest framework has been supported on our entire new servers environment. You can start hosting your .NET4 Beta 2 website from just paying as low as $4.99/month with FREE 1 domain and 1 SQL 2005/2008
Design by contract builds on top of concepts like static typing, where certain actions cannot be performed unless it can be verified at compile time. Contracts usually take the form of pre- and post-conditions such as a parameter or return value never being null or only containing a certain range of values.
Rather than force developers to learn a whole new language such as Spec#, Microsoft is working on a language-agnostic library that can be leveraged by any .NET language. In some ways contracts look like assertions, but they are very different under the covers. Contracts are supported by a combination of static code analysis, which can be both inside and outside the compiler, as well as by testing frameworks. They are also executable, meaning they behave like assertions when running a debug build. Consider this first example:
string GetDescription(int x){
Contract.Requires(x>0);
Contract.Ensures(Contract.Result<string>() != null);
Looking at just the signature, developers only get the static type information "GetDescription requires an integer and returns a string". With the contracts, both developers and tools know "GetDescription requires a positive integer and returns a string that is never null".
In addition to explicit contracts, the contract checker can also support implicit contracts. One such example is division by zero. If a class includes a division of integers where the divisor is a variable, then all code paths must ensure that the variable is never zero or a warning is issued. If the variable in question is a property on a unsealed class, this would require checking in every subclass as well. There are also implicit contracts for dereferencing nulls and array indexes.
To make this easier, there is the concept of an ObjectInvariant method. This special method, which only contains contracts, is injected into the end of each method call to ensure the object's state remains consistent. It is important to note that this applies to all methods, including those in subclasses from other assemblies.
Another time saving device is easy access to old values. In this example the Ensures contract is used in conjunction with the OldValue syntax to make certain that the collection's count property is incremented.
Public Sub Add(value as Object)
Contract.Ensure(Count = Contract.OldValue(Count) + 1)
Even though the contract is written at the top of the method, it will automatically be moved to just before the Return statement by the compiler. As there is some overhead for storing the old value of Count, this sort of check will only occur in debug builds.
In order to support library developers, release builds include a reference assembly. For example, the Widgets.dll assembly would have the bulk of its contracts extracted and placed in the assembly Widgets.Contracts.dll. This allows client developers to use the faster release-style builds while still leveraging the contracts created by the library developers.
One of the more interesting features is that contracts do not just apply to concrete functions. Even interface and abstract methods with no other implementation detail can have contracts. This is done by creating a reference implementation of the interface whose sole purpose is to hold contracts. This reference implementation is linked back to the interface by attributes.
There are no restrictions on the contents of a contract. Since the same contracts are used for both static and runtime checking, a complex constraint that cannot be evaluated by one may still be checked by the other. Contracts can also be extracted by documentation generators.
SharePoint 2010 is the business collaboration platform that enables you to connect and empower people through formal and informal business communities, within the enterprise and beyond, and to manage content throughout the information lifecycle.
Whether deployed on-premises or as hosted services, SharePoint’s integrated capabilities are enhanced by search technologies and enable you to rapidly respond to changing business needs by making data-driven decisions and by deploying customized solutions quickly and securely. The consolidation of collaboration solutions onto SharePoint 2010 makes it possible to cut costs by lowering training and maintenance expenses and increasing IT productivity, all within a governable and compliant platform.
ASPHostCentral.com as a premier Windows and .NET Hosting provider, proudly announces that this technology has been supported on all our new servers environment. You can start hosting your Sharepoint 2010 website from just paying as low as $4.99/month with FREE 1 domain and 1 SQL 2005/2008
Connect and Empower People
Making people more productive is a direct result of enabling them to access resources and knowledge regardless of where they are and what device they use, through a user experience optimized for usability and adoption.
Cut costs with a Unified Infrastructure
Driving cost efficiencies and accomplishing more with the same resources is possible through the consolidation of all the key business collaboration solutions into SharePoint 2010 and using this common platform to deploy solutions for your intranet, extranet, or for your Internet web presence.
Rapidly Respond to Business Needs
When time-to-market is key, SharePoint 2010 enables people to customize the out-of-box platform and deploy solutions that enable them to address specific business requirements quickly and in a secure manner.
Reasons to trust your Sharepoint 2010 website to us
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything–from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We’ve put the guys who develop the software and the administrators who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other
- 24/7-based Support – We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate – Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your online business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server – We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in Sharepoint 2010 Hosting – Given the scale of our environments, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service – We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it.
- Easy Site Administration – With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
DotNetNuke is the leading web content management system (CMS) and application development framework for Microsoft .NET. DotNetNuke Community Edition is provided FREE of charge and our Control Panel allows you to install the latest DotNetNuke Community Edition with just a SINGLE Click on your mouse.
DotNetNuke is a web content management system (WCM or CMS) and application development framework which enables businesses to quickly build and deploy feature-rich, interactive web sites and applications in Microsoft .NET. An intuitive, menu-driven interface allows even non-technical users to easily create new sites or extend the functionality and features of their existing web site.
DotNetNuke is the world’s most widely adopted framework for building web solutions on Microsoft Windows Server. DotNetNuke powers over 400,000 portals, intranets, extranets, and public web sites. An enthusiastic open source community with more than 700,000 registered members supports the platform
Within minutes of installing DotNetNuke, a person with no programming experience can create an original, dynamic web site. A DotNetNuke web content management (WCM or CMS) or application development framework user with little technical expertise can create new pages of content using pre-built content types (modules) like announcements, discussions, events, FAQs, feedback forms, and images. Users can create membership roles, send bulk emails, and define secure sections for registered site users only. These users can even create banner advertising, customize the site’s appearance, and submit the site to search engines
Reasons to trust your DotNetNuke website to us
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything–from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We’ve put the guys who develop the software and the administrators who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other
- 24/7-based Support – We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate – Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your online business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server – We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in DotNetNuke Hosting – Given the scale of our environments, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service – We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it.
- Easy Site Administration – With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
ASP.NET MVC 2 is a framework for developing highly testable and maintainable Web applications by leveraging the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. If you are looking to host your ASP.NET MVC 2 website, you can consider ASPHostCentral.com as we have supported this latest framework.
The framework encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application – the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model.
ASP.NET MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development (TDD).
The installation package includes templates and tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP 1 to increase productivity when writing ASP.NET MVC applications. For example, the Add View dialog box takes advantage of customizable code generation (T4) templates to generate a view based on a model object. The default project template allows the developer to automatically hook up a unit-test project that is associated with the ASP.NET MVC application.
Because the ASP.NET MVC framework is built on ASP.NET 3.5 SP 1, developers can take advantage of existing ASP.NET features like authentication and authorization, profile settings, localization, and so on.
System Requirements:
Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Vista
.NET 3.5 SP1. Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 are required to use certain parts of this feature
Reasons to trust your ASP.NET MVC 2 website to us
What we think makes ASPHostCentral.com so compelling is how deeply integrated all the pieces are. We integrate and centralize everything--from the systems to the control panel software to the process of buying a domain name. For us, that means we can innovate literally everywhere. We've put the guys who develop the software and the admins who watch over the server right next to the 24-hour Fanatical Support team, so we all learn from each other
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is operating 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmas/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Excellent Uptime Rate - Our key strength in delivering the service to you is to maintain our server uptime rate. We never ever happy to see your site goes down and we truly understand that it will hurt your online business. If your service is down, it will certainly become our pain and we will certainly look for the right pill to kill the pain ASAP
- High Performance and Reliable Server - We never ever overload our server with tons of clients. We always load balance our server to make sure we can deliver an excellent service, coupling with the high performance and reliable server
- Experts in ASP.NET MVC Hosting - Given the scale of our environments, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostCentral
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it.
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control Panel in 1 minute!
Silverlight helps you create rich web applications that run on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. If you are looking for a host that supports Silverlight + RIA Service Technology, you can always consider ASPHostCentral.com.
The following list encompasses all changes made between the Silverlight Toolkit March 2009 release and the Silverlight Toolkit July 2009 release.
1 – TimePicker / TimeUpDown
* Setting an initial value will be propagated correctly.
* Full UI Automation hierarchy implimented.
* Renamed the BalloonHint states to TimeHint.
* Various minor bug fixes.
2 – TransitioningContentControl
* Changed the template to have two ContentPresenters instead of ContentControls.
* Fixed bug where switching between content would raise exception in certain scenarios.
* Handles setting the Transition to a transition that is not yet there (if template hasn’t been loaded yet).
3 – DomainUpDown
* Space bar now moves the DomainUpDown into edit mode.
* Better handling of mouse-events in edit mode.
4 – Charting Faetures
* WPF is now an official platform for Charting!
* Breaking Change: IRequireGlobalSeriesIndex’s GlobalSeriesIndexChanged method takes a nullable int parameter.
* Improved performance of internal data structures for many common scenarios.
* Numerous bug fixes for animation inconsistencies between Silverlight and WPF.
* Fixed handling of data objects with non-unique hash codes.
5 – AutoCompleteBox
* Breaking Change: The “DropDownToggle” template part of type ToggleButton has been removed.
* Breaking Change: New template part: “Selector”, typeof(Selector).
* Breaking Change: Renamed virtual method: TryGetSelectionAdapter(object o) is now GetSelectionAdapterPart().
* Breaking Change: AutoCompleteSearchMode is now AutoCompleteFilterMode (enum).
6 – ItemsControlExtensions
Provides useful extensions to ItemsControl:
* Get various collections representing the items and their containers.
* Get an items host or ScrollViewer.
7 – ScrollViewerExtensions
Provides useful extensions to ScrollViewer to make basic scrolling tasks easier:
* Enable mouse wheel scrolling in XAML!
* Scroll by page or line.
* Scroll to top, bottom, left or right.
* Scroll items into view.
8 – TreeViewExtensions
Provides useful extensions to TreeView and TreeViewItem to greatly simplify common TreeView tasks:
* Set selected item
* Easily add connecting lines and CheckBoxes
* Expand and collapse items.
* Get items and their containers for parents, siblings and descendants.
* Get path.
With this new Silverlight Toolkit, you can now enjoy more seamless web development experience with Silverlight 3.