Inside Microsoft patterns & practices: Building WPF and Silverlight Applications with a Single Code

Microsoft ADO.Net team released (this month June 2009) a set of features that build on top of Entity Framework 4.0 Beta 1
The features included in this CTP are :

1.Templates for Self-Tracking Entities (N-Tier support)
2.Templates for POCO (Plain Old CLR Objects) Entities
3.Code-Only Programming Model that allows you to write Entity Data Model based applications without requiring external artifacts

I'll explain in this article why memory leaks exist in .NET and how to avoid them. Don't worry, I won't focus here on the inner workings of the garbage collector and other advanced characteristics of memory and resources management in .NET.

It's important to understand leaks and how to avoid them, especially since they are not the kind of things that is easy to detect automatically. Unit tests won't help here. And when your application crashes in production, you'll be in a rush looking for solutions. So, relax and take the time to learn more about this subject before it's too late.

Glenn Block explains how the Managed Extensibility Framework, a new library coming in .NET Framework 4.0, tackles the longstanding issue of building applications and components that can be reused and extended by others. Learn how to build apps that can use new functionality introduced by developers, framework authors and third-party extenders.Glenn BlockMSDN Magazine February 2010

Silverlight provides support for dynamic languages such as IronRuby and IronPython. We'll walk you through the creation of a custom Silverlight control using Bing Maps and IronRuby.Ashish GhodaMSDN Magazine February 2010

Learn about enhanced TimeSpan formatting and parsing features coming in the .NET Framework 4, and some helpful tips for working with TimeSpan values.Ron PetrushaMSDN Magazine February 2010

A good case could be made that computers should not make noise except in response to a specific user command. We're going to ignore that and show you how to play custom sounds in a WPF application.Charles PetzoldMSDN 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

Now that you've identified technical debt in your code base, let's turn our attention to some specific tactics that will help you pay back that debt.David LaribeeMSDN Magazine January 2010

Jeremy Miller explains how internal Domain Specific Languages can help you craft code that is easier to read and write. His bag of tricks to improve your programming includes extension methods, fluent interfaces, object extensions and use of the semantic model.Jeremy MillerMSDN Magazine January 2010

Creating and maintaining a unit test suite for legacy code can be a challenge. Pex automatically produces a small test suite with high code and assertion coverage.Nikhil SachdevaMSDN Magazine December 2009