Trigger started services are services in Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 that can register to be started or stopped when a trigger event occurs. This eliminates the need for services to start when the system starts, or for services to poll or actively wait for an event; a service can start when it is needed, instead of starting automatically whether or not there is work to do. Examples of predefined trigger events include arrival of a device of a specified device interface class or availability of a particular firewall port. A service can also register for a custom trigger event generated by an Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) provider.

In this screencast, Kate Gregory (@gregcons) provides an overview of trigger started services on Windows 7 via the Windows API Code Pack, a source code library that can be used to access some features of Windows 7 and Windows Vista from managed code.

                              

Application Recovery and Restart (ARR) technologies enable developers to customize an application's behavior when Windows Error Reporting (WER) terminates the application due to an unrecoverable error. For example, it enables an application to perform data recovery and cleanup operations such as capturing application state and releasing resources before termination. It also allows developers to specify that WER should automatically restart an application that it has terminated.

In this screencast, Kate Gregory (@gregcons) provides an overview of ARR on Windows 7 via the Windows API Code Pack, a source code library that can be used to access some features of Windows 7 and Windows Vista from managed code. Kate also demonstrates just how easy it is to integrate ARR into your managed applications through a few lines of C#.

                         


Previously on Visual Studio Toolbox, we started looking at the Productivity Power Tools. In this episode, we explore additional features of this excellent extension. We will see enhancements to the Document Tab Well that make it easier to work with code files, and we'll take a look at both the Quick Find and Quick Access features. Quick Find makes searching in code a better experience and Quick Access means you don't have to remember where things are in the menu. Enhancements to the scroll bar and a new Add Reference dialog box are also covered.

Robert Green

                               

Welcome to the debut episode of the Visual Studio Toolbox, a show that will focus on tooling both in and outside of Visual Studio. The goal is to help you become a more productive developer. In this episode, we will start to explore the Productivity Power Tools, a freely downloadable extension. We'll look at the Solution Navigator and see how it helps us navigate and understand solutions.

Robert Green

We are excited to announce that Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1 Release Candidate (EF 4.1 RC) is now available. This is a fully supported, go-live release. In approximately one month we plan to release the final Release to Web (RTW). We are not planning any changes to the API surface or behavior between RC and RTW, the release is purely to allow any new bugs found in the RC build to be evaluated and potentially fixed.

 

What’s in EF 4.1 RC?

ADO.NET Entity Framework 4.1 RC introduces two new features:

• The DbContext API is a simplified abstraction over ObjectContext and a number of other types that were included in previous releases of the ADO.NET Entity Framework. The DbContext API surface is optimized for common tasks and coding patterns. DbContext can be used with Database First, Model First and Code First development.
• Code First is a new development pattern for the ADO.NET Entity Framework and provides an alternative to the existing Database First and Model First patterns. Code First is focused around defining your model using C#/VB.NET classes, these classes can then be mapped to an existing database or be used to generate a database schema. Additional configuration can be supplied using Data Annotations or via a fluent API.