Excel: Integrate Far-Flung Data into Your Spreadsheets with the Help of Web Services

.NET RIA Services relies heavily on metadata annotations for expressing intent beyond what can be inferrd via convention. For example, validation rules on entities and members can be declared as annotations, which then enable a variety of consumption scenarios. We also have metadata for describing model aspects in DAL-agnostic fashion, and hints for automatic UI-generation. What we have today is just a first step.

VPL, part of Robotics Developer Studio is intended for novice programmers, but is also useful for testing and prototyping. We write a simple serial port service that allows you to send and receive data.Trevor TaylorMSDN Magazine February 2010

To better understand how SOA patterns can be applied to Windows Azure deployments, we walk you through a scenario in which a bank moves its services to the cloud.Thomas Erl, Arman Kurtagic, Herbjörn WilhelmsenMSDN Magazine January 2010

Many early adopters cloud platforms have questions about security. We review some of the cryptography services and providers in Windows Azure along with some security implications for applications in the cloud.Jonathan WiggsMSDN Magazine January 2010

Charles Petzold continues his investigation into robust XAML coding made possible by Windows Presentation Foundation, this time tackling the complicated process of creating line charts.Charles PetzoldMSDN Magazine January 2010

Building an NHibernate-based desktop application isn't any harder than building a web application, and in many cases NHibernate simplifies elements of session handling and concurrency.Oren EiniMSDN Magazine December 2009

Kirk Evans shows how to take advantage of SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to develop solutions with deep integration of external data and services. BCS builds upon its BDC predecessor in the key areas of presentation, connectivity, tooling and lifecycle management.Kirk EvansMSDN Magazine December 2009

Dino Esposito discusses various forms of client-side data binding as they are coming out in ASP.NET AJAX 4.0, focusing on some advanced features of data binding and observable objects.Dino EspositoMSDN Magazine December 2009

Multicore processors are now ubiquitous on mainstream desktop computers, but applications that use their full potential are still difficult to write. Version 4 of the .NET Framework will deliver several tools that programmers can employ to make this task easier. This article explores the use of one of those tools: Parallel LINQ (PLINQ).Igor OstrovskyMSDN Magazine December 2009

This article explains how you can use Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0 to claims-enable Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services and browser-based applications. The focus is on the token issuance functionality in AD FS 2.0. You'll find out how to use AD FS 2.0 as an identity provider; set up an AD FS 2.0 security token service (STS) to interact with WCF; federate AD FS 2.0 with your custom STS or another AD FS 2.0; enable Web single sign-on and federation with WS-Federation and SAML 2.0 protocols; and externalize authentication logic through Visual Studio. You'll come away appreciating how AD FS 2.0 and Windows Identity Foundation make programming identity solutions in Windows less of a chore.Zulfiqar AhmedMSDN Magazine November 2009