CodeGuru Staff

The first mention of Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch was at the VSLive! event in August of 2010. It’s gone through two beta releases with an announced availability for version 1.0 to MSDN subscribers on July 26. LightSwitch is an intriguing product focused on building lightweight applications that access a data source and present results through […]

After public scrutiny of Microsoft’s Wifi Location Database service, Microsoft this week announced that it would be reworking the service, and will cease the publication of device locations. A CNET article which highlighted privacy issues with the service was enough to cause Microsoft to reconsider its use. The geolocation service was used to publish the […]

Microsoft’s Dynamics AX software is used for enterprise resource planning, but like other ERP software, it is actually a development platform of its own. With over 209 pages of changes listed for the AX 2012 release, developers definitely have some new opportunities awaiting them. Dynamics AX 2012 will support non-XML formats using a .NET binary […]

Introduction Application logic, particularly business rules, can be messy and time consuming to maintain in code. If all your application logic is hard-coded, it can eventually lead to massive if-then-else or select-case code segments that could grow into huge nightmares. Developers have more important problems to solve and things to do than to maintain a […]

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Mango update faces serious competition from Apple’s iPhone 5 and Google Android Icecream Sandwich when they are released. Its feature set must include factors that are either not present in other smartphone and tablet OS’s, or make the features in those OS’s pale by comparison. Enhanced native support for IE9 could […]

RemObjects Software’s announcement this week made a lot of database admins and developers happy. Its Relativity Server is used to securely create and publish data services, and now it’s not only a standalone product–it’s free. Previously, Relativity Server was only available as a part of RemObjects Software’s Data Abstract, which itself is a cross-platform db […]

Last week Microsoft released its Windows Phone 7 “Mango” mobile OS to manufacturers, and this week they followed up by releasing an updated version of its Mango software development kit (SDK) to developers. The Windows Phone SDK 7.1 “Beta 2 Refresh,” as Microsoft is calling it, can now be downloaded from the Mango Connect website. […]

Most Microsoft SQL Server developers are familiar with the features of IntelliSense, but may not be aware of Red Gate’s SQL Prompt 5.1. SQL Prompt takes the functionality of IntelliSense and makes it better, and even provides support for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 databases. As a frequent IntelliSense user put it, SQL […]

There are a lot of free tools available for Visual Studio, so you may not be aware of Telerik’s Razor Convertor. Razor Convertor is a command-line interface that enables developers to convert .asp files to cshtml file, and rewrites Views to the Razor syntax. The tool does the work when a developer upgrades to ASP.NET […]

This week Microsoft made its App Publishing Kit and Data Publishing Kit for the Windows Azure Marketplace available for developers. The kits are billed as tools to make it easier for developers to publish both applications and data to the Azure Marketplace. Microsoft discussed the announcement, which obviously occurred in an effort to temp more […]

Introduction One of the first things a user comes to notice when he/she uses an application is the startup screen. It is usually called the splash screen and the term comes from the world of desktop computing. While mobile phones are a different form factor, it is still important for developers to remember that they […]

This week Microsoft released its Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011, an integrated development environment (IDE) for the development of .NET apps for desktop, web or Azure cloud platforms. The release was targeted at entry level programmers and those with very little programming experience using the .NET environment. MSDN subscribers can download the released immediately, with general […]