This presentation is a demo focused walkthrough of the new features and functionality in SP1.  You will see demonstrations that will include:

• Making data access easier with the ADO.NET Entity Framework.
• Exposing your data access layer using ADO.NET Data Services
• Building “Data Entry” Web-based applications faster than ever using ASP.NET Dynamic Data.
• Making AJAX Applications faster with script combining and easier with built in support for handling browser history (i.e. back/forward buttons).
• How to achieve up to 40% faster startup performance for your WPF applications and further improve the startup experience using a splash screen.
• Reducing the time it takes to deploy your WPF applications using the New .NET Framework Client Profile.
• Build services faster using enhancements in WCF.

To learn more about US Public Sector Developer Dinner For Partners, visit:

http://tinyurl.com/uspsdevdinner

Follow up resources (links, deck, code) from the dinner are available at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/devkeydet/archive/2008/08/21/follow-up-developer-dinner-on-net-framework-3-5-sp1.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/astoriateam/archive/2008/05/20/merge-vs-replace-semantics-for-update-operations.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/astoriateam/archive/2008/04/22/optimistic-concurrency-data-services.aspx

In general, this worked out quite well, however we found it difficult to completely capture the design discussion in notes.  Hence, for Astoria vNext we are going to include short videos of folks from the team describing the design of the new features we are considering in addition to the usual design notes.

The first of these videos features Mike Flasko, Project Astoria Program Manager, describing the Friendly Feeds capabilities we are looking at for vNext.  Enjoy!

As for thoughts of any actual "migrations" you might have been entertaining, give some thought to Jim's tips in here and consider the business justification and trade-offs. Listen to Jim's points about maintainability and how you can use LINQ to enhance what you're already doing. It's compelling to think about getting some slick benefits from LINQ to SQL like cached query plans and precompiled optimizations, as well as free concurrency checking without having to rewrite your whole application.

Conceptually, you'll get a better sense of what's in LINQ versus what's in LINQ to SQL by considering things like the fact that CRUD operations are a part of LINQ to SQL, not LINQ. And that the CRUD equivalent in LINQ to XML for example is a save/load of the whole document.

Architecturally, Jim explains why passing DataContext objects across tiers is a bad idea, and what parts of your LINQ objects you should and shouldn't pass. He also touches on how ADO.NET Data Services (Project Astoria) will be able to expose anything that implements IQueryably to the outside world, and how it will be extended to allow updates as well.

Practically, Jim runs through how he updated the data access layer of the Personal Website Starter Kit (an ASP.NET 2.0 sample). You can do this yourself, and it's a great chance to learn about applying LINQ to an existing architecture. He also illustrates how (forgetting data access for a moment) LINQ can help you write better loops and finds, and gets you ready for parallelism in LINQ.

Also, for no good reason, Jim also shows a neat trick for writing a single VB statement on multiple lines by using XML literals.

About our guest: Jim Wooley

Jim is a Microsoft MVP and has been working with .Net since the initial PDC bits in 2000, releasing his first application 1 week before the .Net 1.0 go-live. He has been active evangelizing LINQ since it's announcement in 2005. Jim is actively involved in the Atlanta developer community and is a frequent speaker. He is a co-author of the recently released “LINQ in Action” http://www.manning.com/marguerie/. Jim's blog is http://www.thinqlinq.com

In the geekSpeak, Michele discusses timely topics in ASP.NET such as extending the ASP.NET profile service by appropriately using custom HttpModules to support dynamic implementation of master pages, application localization and more.  She goes on to discuss improvements to ASP.NET like the AJAX-programming paradigm with asynchronous access to data, and then the ASP.NET 3.5 extensions - new MVC, new ADO.NET data services libraries.

Michele gives her perspective on RIAs, including Flash, Silverlight, typical web applications and WPF (or rich client) - when to use which one from an architectural perspective.

She goes on to discuss SOAP vs. REST WCF services and the evolution of the programming model from raw SOAP message construction to REST-based calls which include wrappers and then onto JSON-based WCF services.  Next she shows the the ServiceHostFactory, and the WebScriptServiceHostFactory. She then presents the ASP.NET extensions ADO.NET data services (formerly Astoria). She concludes with an interesting discussion of when to use which type of service - SOAP or REST.

A database with Astoria layered on top of it isn't a web application, but it's within shouting distance of being one, and you don't even have to shout very loudly.

Pablo's presentation at MIX is chock full of demos and explanations. Our podcast refers to and complements that presentation.

I'm not even close to being an expert in the underlying data access technologies, including ADO.NET, the Entity Data Model, and LINQ, so parts of the discussion quite frankly went over my head. Nor am I yet familiar with the tooling that's required to wrap this kind of services layer around a plain data source. But I'm 100% clear that it's a good idea, and a great example of RESTful web services -- a book that Pablo Castro says is "required reading" for members of the Astoria team.