Visual Basic Blog
A group blog from members of the VB team
Latest posts
Channel 9 Interview: ADO.NET Data Services in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (Beth Massi)
In this interview Saaid Kahn, a Program Manager on the Visual Studio Pro Tools team (and former member of the VB Team), shows us how to create an n-tier application against a database using ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) and an Entity Data Model, both now available in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.ADO.NET Data Services use WCF REST-ful services and provides all the plumbing so you can focus on the program logic by programming against a service proxy. ADO.NET Data Services allow you to easily create data services exposed on the web using URIs to point to pieces of data and simple, well-known formats to repres...
Community Interview with Me! (Beth Massi)
Here's another community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with yours truly. ;-) I decided to release this one today since it's my birthday. Don't forget to check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well. My picture up there is from a couple years ago when the Oakland A's went to the playoffs... ahh.. memories....Anyway, here's my interview with Alessandro:1. Nice to meet you Beth Massi! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?I was ...
A VS plugin to background-run your code and see the output (Lucian Wischik)
Say you're demonstrating some code at a conference. What's the best way to do it? If you show only the code window, then you're counting on the audience's imagination about how the code will work (and their trust that it does!). But if you hit F5 to run it then this breaks the flow. And I find it hard to keep both the code and the output in my mind at the same time. I think this is one of those problems that can be solved by technology! So here's a small plugin for Visual Studio[http://blogs.msdn.com/lucian/archive/2008/10/16/liverun-a-vs-plugin-to-see-the-output-of-our-program-immediatel...
Community Interview with Matt Gertz (Beth Massi)
Here's another community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with Matt Gertz. Matt still posts frequently on the VB Team blog even though he's changed roles (look at how big his name still is in our tag cloud on the right ;-)). Matt is a great technical leader here at Microsoft and he really loves the Visual Basic community so we welcome him here on the Visual Basic "virtual" team!You can also check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.Here's the interview ...
Community Interview with Jared Parsons (Beth Massi)
Here's another community interview from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time with Jared Parsons, a Developer on the VB Team. Jared is a great developer and loves the community. You can check out his personal blog here.You can also check out the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well.Here's the interview with Jared: 1. Nice to meet you Jared Parsons! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?Born in Kentucky, raised in Tennessee, lived in Alabama for awhile, t...
Community Interview with Patrick Dengler (Beth Massi)
Continuing the community interviews from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time we interview Patrick Dengler. You can take a look at the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well. Here's the interview with Patrick: 1. Nice to meet you Patrick Dengler! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?I was born in New York, grew up in California, then moved to Redmond, WA2. We all know that you’re a Visual Basic Team member, but could we know something more about yo...
Reflection on COM objects (Lucian Wischik)
Reflection on .Net objects is done through System.Type and is very easy. For instance, "Dim type = GetType(System.String)" and now you can look at all the members and inheritance hierarchy of the System.String class.Reflection on COM types is also easy if they have an interop assembly. For instance, add a project reference to the COM Microsoft Speech Library and again do "GetType(SpeechLib.SpVoice)". This lets you reflect on the .Net "Runtime Callable Wrapper" that's in the interop assembly, that was generated from the COM type's type library, and that contains all information that the type library...
VB Video Tutorials on ASP.Net Dynamic Data (Lisa Feigenbaum)
Bill Burrows, VB MVP, has released some great videos on the ASP.Net Dynamic Data features that were added in VS2008 SP1. What is Dynamic Data?"ASP.Net Dynamic Data provides a framework that enables you to quickly build a functional data-driven application, based on a LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework data model. It also adds great flexibility and functionality to the DetailsView, FormView, GridView, and ListView controls in the form of smart validaton and the ability to easily change the display of these controls using templates."Bill's videos demonstrate the variety of tasks and customizations that you can do usin...
Community Interview with Jonathan Aneja (Beth Massi)
Continuing the community interviews from our Italian Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole, this time we interview Jonathan Aneja, VB Compiler Program Manager.Remember that you can take a look at the Visual Basic Team page for pictures and bios and visit the home page of the Visual Basic Developer Center for a link to all these interviews as well. Here's the interview with Jonathan: 1. Nice to meet you Jonathan Aneja! Let’s begin by asking a simple question: where are you from?Toronto, Ontario – one of the few places in Canada that’s actually *south* of Seattle :-)2. We all know that you’re...