[Book Review] Visual Studio 2013 Cookbook

The team at Packt have given me another opportunity to review one of their just released titles, Visual Studio 2013 Cookbook. As I usually do, I'm not going to give you a chapter-by-chapter review or rundown. Instead I'm going to give you my overall feelings and impressions about the book, what I liked and didn't and why you might want to check it out yourself.

Visual Studio 2013 Cookbook

• Provides you with coverage of all the new Visual Studio 2013 features regardless of your programming language preference
• Recipes describe how to apply Visual Studio to all areas of development: writing, debugging, and application lifecycle maintenance
• Straightforward examples of building apps for Windows 8.1

Preface
Chapter 1: Discovering Visual Studio 2013
Chapter 2: Getting Started with Windows Store Applications
Chapter 3: Web Development – ASP.NET, HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript
Chapter 4: .NET Framework 4.5.1 Development
Chapter 5: Debugging Your .NET Application
Chapter 6: Asynchrony in .NET
Chapter 7: Unwrapping C++ Development
Chapter 8: Working with Team Foundation Server 2013
Chapter 9: Languages
Appendix: Visual Studio Medley

Let's start with the bad...

I usually don't write "bad" reviews ("If you can say something nice..." and all that) and I'm not this time either. BUT you have to understand the intent of the book before you get it. Based on the title and chapter headers, I got something different than I expected and that colored my initial feelings.

Frist off, I think the book is good and has a great information, but the description and information on its page might led to confusion about its actual content.

I thought I was going to be reading a book about Visual Studio 2013, the IDE. Recipes on using it, tips and tricks for getting the most out of VS itself.

It's not that.

It's more a book about learning to cook with the new technologies available in VS 2013 than about VS 2013 itself. Does that make sense? It's more about what you can make with a stove, not really about the stove itself.

For example, here's a snip from the book's description page;

What you will learn from this book

• Customize the editor’s new abilities to fit your development style
• Create apps for Windows 8.1
• Use Visual Studio to debug parallel and concurrent programs
• Integrate .NET Framework 4.5.1 effectively
• Learn about both the Express and premium editions of Visual Studio
• Maximize Visual Studio's C++ tools to make development easier
• Put TypeScript to work in your web applications
• Protect and manage your source code with Team Foundation Server
• Learn about Visual Studio Online

This might lead you to believe that the book is indeed about VS itself. I know I thought so. But then see the lines, "Create apps for Windows 8.1 " and "Put TypeScript to work in your web applications." THAT is what I talking about as being what you can make with VS 2013, not being about VS 2013 itself. And a many of the chapters are like this. Using VS 2013 to build WinStore App's from a template, creating a WCF Service, Adding a Ribbon to a WPF App, etc, etc.

Don't get me wrong, there are many parts that help you learn to use VS 2013, but my impression is it's 50/50, VS verses Cooking with VS...

My suggestion to you is too really read the FULL chapter descriptions and check out the preview before purchase, so you understand what you are jumping into. DON'T be like me and stop at the chapter headers, but continue on down the page and look at the chapter contents.

Enough whining, now the Good...

If taken as a "What can I Cook with VS 2013," this book provides a great survey of many of the new capabilities and features now available. The cookbook format is used well and provides nice bite sized chunks of digestible information.

The book is also very current and up to date. For example, the name change of SkyDrive to OneDrive is noted in the book. Also VS 2013 Update 2 Beta is  mentioned (not VS 2013 Update RC of course, as that was just announced last week)

The breadth of covered technology is also nice. WPF, WCF, WinStore, TFS, etc is all covered. It's a great survey of what you can do with VS 2013.

Should you get it?

If you have VS 2012 and are wondering what you can do once you VS 2013, looking for reasons why to upgrade, this looks like a great book. Again, make sure you look at the chapter details, but if you are using VS 2012 and are trying to convince someone, yourself, co-workers, boss, etc on why you might want to upgrade, what you'll be able to build and do once you get it, yeah, you should look a long close look at picking this book up.

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

Related Past Post XRef:
[Book Review Preview] Visual Studio 2013 Cookbook

Roslyn gets Mono

http://tirania.org/blog/ - Mono and Roslyn

Last week, Microsoft open sourced Roslyn, the .NET Compiler Platform for C# and VB.

Roslyn is an effort to create a new generation of compilers written in managed code. In addition to the standard batch compiler, it contains a compiler API that can be used by all kinds of tools that want to understand and manipulate C# source code.

...

Roslyn on Mono

At BUILD, we showed Roslyn running on Mono. If you want to run your own copy of Roslyn today, you need to use both a fresh version of Mono, and apply a handful of patches to Roslyn [2].

...

Adopting Roslyn: Mono SDK

Our goal is to keep track of Roslyn as it is being developed, and when it is officially released, to bundle Roslyn's compilers with Mono [6].

But in addition, this will provide an up-to-date and compliant Visual Basic.NET compiler to Unix platforms.

Our plans currently are to keep both compilers around, and we will implement the various C# 6.0 features into Mono's C# compiler.

...

Mono Project and Roslyn

Our goal is to contribute fixes to the Roslyn team to make sure that Roslyn works great on Unix systems, and hopefully to provide bug reports and bug fixes as time goes by.

We are very excited about the release of Roslyn, it is an amazing piece of technology and one of the most sophisticated compiler designs available. A great place to learn great C# idioms and best practices [5], and a great foundation for great tooling for C# and VB.

Thanks to everyone at Microsoft that made this possible, and thanks to everyone on the Roslyn team for starting, contributing and delivering such an ambitious project.

VB.Net on Linux? Awesome. Xamarin really is exciting to watch. I love those guys (and it's not just the free booze from their Build talking either... well.. much... ;)

First Moon meal was? [Drum roll...] Bacon!

Gizmodo - Bacon Was the First Thing Ever Eaten on the Moon

Setting foot on the moon for the first time was perhaps one of the biggest technological, scientific and political achievements of our age. So what better way to celebrate, after exploring that new lunar landscape, than with bacon?

...

Image by Orin under Creative Commons license

Popular Science - When Bacon Flew to the Moon; or, #spacebacon

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The first manned Apollo mission, Apollo 7, had the least variety in its meals. But bacon was a key food in three out of four breakfasts. The astronauts’ first meal on days 1, 5, and 9 of the flight consisted of peaches, eight bacon squares, cinnamon toasted bread cubes, and breakfast drink. Breakfast on days 4 and 8 were with Canadian Bacon and applesauce, strawberry cereal cubes, cinnamon toasted bread cubes, and more breakfast drink. Only days 3, 7, and 11 were bacon free.

And, it seems, the crew liked the bacon squares. Towards the end of the eleven-day mission, Walt Cunningham commented to Capcom Bill Pogue during breakfast that “Happiness is a package of bacon squares on day 10.” Bacon squares may have been a hit, but on the whole the crew came home feeling like they’d brought too much food that was too sweet.

...

The bacon squares that were a staple on Apollo missions actually predate the lunar program; they debuted during Gemini mission where they were a breakfast staple. And bacon squares lived on after Apollo. In the 1990s, NASA astronauts also had bacon squares as part of their meal options. A meal plan from 2002, however, had a distinct lack of bacon. Today on the ISS, the closest thing astronauts have is a freeze-dried sausage pattie they rehydrate with hot water.

Sources: NASA; All Apollo mission press kits (Apollos 7-17); All Apollo spacecraft and air-to-ground transcripts (Apollos 7-17). Thanks to William Jeffs for the update on sausage patties in space. And for those interested, here's a list of common foods eaten on Apollo missions.

Bacon, the astronaut approved meal... ummm.... bacon...

19 Tips and Thoughts Toward Developer Productivity

Jon Gallant - My Thoughts on Developer Productivity

The best developers optimize every aspect of their lives. Optimization is built into their DNA. We are always looking for ways to not repeat ourselves and strive to make everything we do faster. Everything from doing the dishes to serialization. If it’s not as fast as it possibly could be, then we spend countless hours making it so. Now as a manager I get to code a bit, but a big part of what I’m responsible for is optimizing developer productivity. I have a long way to go, but I have definitely improved as a manager over the last 10 years, so I thought I would share what I have learned. Hopefully this will help the newbie and seasoned managers alike.

Hours

The first thing you want to do is set the expectation that your developers will be working very long hours. They should be working from the moment they wake up to the moment they fall asleep. If not coding that whole time, they should at least be thinking about code. I find it best to set mandatory in-office core hours from 8am to 8pm. That way they get in a solid 12 hours a day in the office and then they can make up the remaining 4 hours of their 16 hour day on their own time. It’s fine if they chose to come in earlier or stay later, but everyone must be in their office for core hours. Try roaming the halls at the start and end of each day and take notes on who is and isn’t in their office. That way you know who the really productive people are. You could also go the punch card route or you could require them to install a service that monitors their activity and alerts you when they aren’t meeting their numbers.

Meetings

....

Do not do “No meeting Fridays” or “No meeting afternoons” and put a 30-60 minute gap in between meetings so they can get a good 20 minutes of coding time in between them. At the end of the day they should spend 80% of their time in meetings and 20% of their time developing.

WFH

Working from home?….it should be…..“Xboxing from home” because you know that’s what they are doing all day. It’s a trick. Don’t fall for it. You can let them have every other Sunday to themselves if they are hitting their “lines of code” count and code coverage percentage for the month. But, never on a regular basis.

When someone says they need to work from home immediately schedule an early morning meeting and require them to be there in person.

Software

Cloud

DevOps

Hardware

Process

Quality

TIP (Testing In Production) is cool, but TIP-WAU (Testing In Production With Actual Users) is even cooler. If you want to know where the bugs are in your software then just ship it. Users will report any bugs. That way you don’t need to distract developers from what they do best...creating new features. Those new features may break other features, but as long as the new feature somewhat works it’s all good.

Rewards

Fun

Furniture

Food

Personal

Reviews

Training

Credit

Vision

Visions are overrated. You want to keep them guessing about what you are thinking. ...

Attrition?

...

The above was fun to write, but it is obviously very bad advice. Keep reading to see my honest take on developer productivity.

Hours

On my team the expectation is that you’ll work roughly 8 hours a day, but it is very self-managed. Some days you’ll work 10, some days you’ll work 6. I never track developer hours. The code you produce speaks for itself. I work an hour or so in the morning, get in around 9:30, leave at 4:30, then I’m back at it for a bit before I go to sleep. That allows me to eat breakfast and dinner with my family on a regular basis.

...

The funny part, in a sad way, is I'm not sure which is more valid in the real world, the first set or the last... :/

Providing your users some DBaaS (that's Database as a Service)

Microsoft Downloads - Database as a Service Reference Architecture Guide: SQL Server 2014

Explains how to build an infrastructure for hosting Microsoft SQL Server Database as a Service by using the features of SQL Server 2014 and Hyper-V virtual machines with Microsoft System Center 2012.

Version: April 2014

Date Published: 4/7/2014

Database Hosting Reference Architecture Guide_SQL_2014.docx, 302 KB

This guide explains how to build an infrastructure for hosting Microsoft SQL Server Database as a Service (DBaaS). By using the features of SQL Server 2014 and Hyper-V virtual machines with Microsoft System Center 2012, a hosting service provider can start with very small tenant databases and scale to meet the needs of the largest and busiest SQL Server applications. This reference architecture includes information about hardware, software, system design, and component configuration.

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1 Overview

This guide to building the infrastructure for hosting Microsoft® SQL Server® Database as a Service (DBaaS) is not limited to a particular type of hardware. By using the features of SQL Server 2014 and Hyper-V® virtual machines with Microsoft System Center 2012, a hosting service provider can start with very small tenant databases and scale out or scale up to meet the needs of the largest and busiest SQL Server applications. This reference architecture includes hardware, software, system design, and component configuration.

2 Hosted Services

Database as a Service, for the purposes of this reference architecture, is a multitenant offering with isolation at the SQL Server database level. Many tenants can share an instance of SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition, each tenant with its own database. SQL Servers are hosted on Hyper-V virtual machines running Windows Server® 2012 R2 or using Windows® Core services. Hyper-V virtual machines are managed and monitored by System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager and Operations Manager.

A hosted service provider (HSP), the intended audience for this guide, may offer a single server or many hundreds or thousands of servers. Servers may be in the same data center or distributed across data centers for load balancing and disaster recovery.

As an HSP, you make individual SQL Server databases available to the tenant with an agreed-upon maximum size and an agreed-upon amount of resources available. You are responsible for maintaining the SQL Server instance, the virtual host, and the physical host compute, network, and storage infrastructure.

You can secure a single instance of SQL Server easily. When you use the Partially Contained Database and Contained Users features of SQL Server 2014, a database can be made into a secure environment. Users cannot access other databases or the metadata about tenant databases.

You can also use the SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Resource Governor to prevent a single user or a single tenant from using too much of the available resources, and resource usage can be balanced among tenants.

In a SQL Server 2014 DBaaS environment, each tenant is responsible for the data in his SQL Server database. Tenants create the database architecture consisting of objects that store data and application code to maintain and search data and return results to clients. Within the database, a tenant database administrator (DBA) can set permissions enabling subsets of tenant users and groups to carry out these tasks.

The architecture of the database and how well the tenant optimizes code that performs searches will have a direct impact on performance and resource usage. You may wish to offer services to help tenants to optimize design and code to improve response times and minimize resource usage.

As the HSP, you are responsible for Windows and SQL Server maintenance and your standard agreement to provide hosted SQL Server services should define your maintenance windows. You may patch SQL Server and Windows on the virtual and physical hosts, migrate the database to a new virtual machine host when resource requirements require it, and migrate the virtual machine to a new physical host during routine maintenance.

You may also perform certain database-level services on behalf of the tenant, such as running scheduled jobs and backups. Scheduled jobs can run common maintenance tasks like Update Statistics or large scale data modification and aggregation, such as month-end processing. You may also make tools, such as an API or a self-service control panel, available to the tenant to manage such jobs while restricting the tenant’s access to only the data she needs.

You can automate provisioning services by using management APIs and offer features like self-service provisioning to your customers. Such services reduce operational expenses for both you and your tenants.

You can monitor usage at a very detailed level with tools like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and the SQL Server Management Pack. Tenants can be billed according to very broad guidelines or for only what they use.

Customers will see lower capital expenditures and total cost of ownership when they consolidate database servers, reduce the proliferation of on-premises applications, and share the cost of administrative expertise with other tenants. Tenants can take advantage of advanced solutions without having to buy and administer an entire enterprise solution.

By leasing SQL Server DBaaS, the tenant can pay for only those resources required for an application with the option to scale up in the future. There is no need to over-provision for what might or might not happen in the future, because when more capacity is needed, the hardware will be available.

...

While targeted at hosted service provider, I still think this has value for large organizations or those dealing with SQL Server Sprawl... SQL Server Enterprise isn't cheap, so ensuring that you're using it to its maximum is important for everyone. IT groups like to say they are "service providers." Doing something like this makes that a real statement, without them giving away the keys to the store...

Here comes the Sun? The Cloud is becoming less scary for businesses, according to this survey at least...

eDiscovery Daily Blog - Cloud Security Fears Diminish With Experience - eDiscovery Trends

One of the more common trends identified by thought leaders in our recently concluded thought leader series was the continued emergence of the cloud as a viable solution to manage corporate big data.  One reason for that appears to be greater acceptance of cloud security.  Now, there’s a survey that seems to confirm that trend.

...

Forbes - Cloud Security Fears Diminish With Experience, Survey Shows

Security is always the leading fear among companies just starting to dip their toes into the cloud computing realm. However, as time passes and they gain experience, their security worries vanish.

That’s one of the takeaways from a recent survey of 1,068 companies conducted by RightScale, Inc. The survey’s authors report that while the benefits of the cloud increase with experience, the challenges of cloud show a sharp decrease as organizations gain expertise with cloud. Close to one-third of executives and professionals who have not yet implemented cloud say security is their top concern, a number that diminishes to 13 percent of seasoned, heavy users of cloud services (and is only the fifth-ranked concern on their list).

One-fourth of respondents did not have clouds in place, while another 22 percent were seasoned cloud veterans, the survey finds. The reduced concern about security reflects a comfort level that increases as the time spent with cloud engagements increases. That doesn’t mean slacking off on security, of course — ultimately, security is the responsibility of the end-user company.

...

Rightscale - 2014 State of the Cloud Report: See the Latest Trends on Cloud Adoption

The RightScale 2014 State of the Cloud Report includes data and analysis on cloud adoption by enterprises and SMEs in a dozen industries.

Download the report to find out:

• How you compare in cloud adoption relative to other companies
• What progress enterprises are making in the journey to hybrid cloud.
• Key challenges in enterprise cloud strategy and governance.
• How DevOps and Self-Service IT align with cloud initiatives.
• Why competition among cloud providers is heating up and how you can benefit.

Executive Summary

In February 2014, RightScale surveyed 1068 technical professionals across a broad cross-section of organizations about their adoption of cloud computing.

The 2014 State of the Cloud Survey identified several key findings:

Cloud adoption reaches ubiquity.
• 94 percent of organizations surveyed are running applications or experimenting with infrastructure-as-a-service.
• 87 percent of organizations are using public cloud.

Hybrid cloud is the approach of choice.
• 74 percent of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy and more than half of those are already using both public and private cloud.

Enterprise cloud governance lags adoption.
• Less than a third of organizations have defined such critical aspects of governance as which clouds can be used, disaster recovery approaches, and cost management.

The challenge of cloud security is abating.
• The number of respondents who regard cloud security as a significant challenge has decreased among both cloud beginners and cloud pros.

Next-generation IT shapes up as Cloud + DevOps + Self-Service IT.
• Cloud-focused companies embrace DevOps (71 percent) and Self-Service IT (68 percent).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to dominate public cloud adoption, while other vendors battle for second place. Key findings include:
• AWS adoption is 54 percent – 4x the nearest competitor.
• Rackspace Public Cloud is second within the SMB segment.
• IaaS offerings from Google and Microsoft are gaining the interest of cloud users, with Azure leading among enterprises and Google Cloud Platform among small and midsize organizations.

The battle among private cloud technologies is shaping up as a clash of cultures between the open-source OpenStack and proprietary solutions from VMware. Findings include:
• Thirty-one percent of enterprise respondents view their VMware vSphere/vCenter environments as a private cloud.
• OpenStack is well positioned to unseat vSphere in private cloud – coming in first in interest and second in current usage.
• Microsoft System Center is waiting in the wings with a strong third position among enterprise users.

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Key for this post, "The challenge of cloud security is abating." Interesting thing is that I got the same feeling in talking with my co- attendees at Build, that there's a growth in acceptance, usage and interest. interest was VERY high at the individual level, with many talking about how they are going to use their MSDN Azure allowance to at least play with it...

Heartbleed in eight minutes, what it is, it's impact and more, Khan Academy style

TechCrunch - What Is Heartbleed? The Video

You’ve probably heard about Heartbleed. You’ve probably been told that, as far as security vulnerabilities go on the Internet, it’s pretty damned scary.

But what is Heartbleed? How does it work? Why is it something that you should care about? This Khan Academy-style* video tries to break it all down.

Made by Zulfikar Ramzan, MIT Ph.D. and CTO of cloud security firm Elastica, this video does a great job of explaining the bug at a pretty high level. Its still got a whole lot of acronyms and jargon thrown into the mix (so don’t expect an Explain-Like-I’m-Five explanation here), but it does a good job of explaining the bug’s ins and outs in a way that more people should be able to grasp. [GD: Post leached in full]

Don't know if you've been following this, that the OpenSSL/Heartbeat/Heartbleed apocalypse is upon us, or not, but if you're like me and want a short brief about what the heck is going on, what it is and why it actually is pretty darn scary, this video is a must watch.

Windows 8.1 Update for your business users, four videos and a hand-out

Microsoft Downloads - Windows 8.1 Update how-to videos for business users

A series of short videos designed for business users to learn about basic Windows 8.1 features and capabilities via guided, step-by-step instruction. These videos can be used as self-learning tools for users and facilitate Windows 8.1 adoption.

Date Published: 4/2/2014

Windows 8.1 Update_How-to Videos for Business Users.zip, 256.9 MB

Windows 8.1 brings together devices, apps and services so that they work intelligently and are a beautiful fit for the way your live and work. Put what matters most right on your Start screen, and get instant access to your favorite apps, sites, and more, so you can spend less time searching and more time doing. Whether you’re collaborating on a large project, preparing for an upcoming conference, or traveling for work, you can use touch, mouse, and keyboard together–seamlessly–to do what you want, the way you want. This quick guide will show you how to get around, navigate, manage apps, work on desktop, and personalize your Windows 8.1.

Rob notes that the zip contains these four videos;

1. Welcome To Windows
2. The Charms
3. The Familiar Desktop
4. Customizing your Windows

(via The blog of Rob Margel - Windows Help - Download 4 Windows 8.1 Update how-to videos for business users)

Microsoft Downloads - Windows 8.1 Update Power User Guide for Business

This 20 pages brochure-type guide is designed for end-users who want to learn more about the advanced features of Windows 8.1, such as Taskbar customization, Task Manager, Internet Explorer 11, Mobility Center, Windows To Go, Miracast, OneDrive for Business, and File Explorer. Power users will enjoy learning about how they can get the most out of their Windows 8.1 devices

Date Published: 4/2/2014

Windows_8_1_Power User Guide.pdf, 876 KB

With the new Windows, you have everything you need to work efficiently. Your familiar desktop is better than ever with advanced functionalities, like the new Task Manager and streamlined file management. Internet Explorer 11 gives you instant and fluid access to the world. And best of all, you can do it all feeling confident that your important data is secure. With the advanced features of Windows 8.1, you can get the most out of your device.

Now that Windows 8.1 Update is rolling out everywhere and people see how it makes Windows 8.1 that much more mouse/keyboard friendly, there's going to be somewhat less friction in getting it into the enterprise. These videos and guide will help you easy your training burden.

These are also pretty great for friends and family too... :)

(via The blog of Rob Margel - Windows Help - Download the Windows 8.1 Update Power User Guide)

"Visual Studio 2013 Succinctly" free [reg-ware] now available from... you guessed it, Syncfusion

Syncfusion eBooks - Visual Studio 2013 Succinctly

Visual Studio 2013 brings many new improvements to the popular integrated development environment, including the long-awaited synchronized settings and notifications. With author Alessandro Del Sole as your guide, you will learn how to harness these features for increased productivity and efficiency. For novices and returning experts alike, Visual Studio 2013 Succinctly offers a point of entry into one of Microsoft’s most powerful tools.

Table of Contents

1. Synchronized Settings and Notifications
2. The Start Page Revisited
3. Code Editor Improvements
4. IntelliSense Improvements
5. Visual Studio 2013 for the Web and Windows Azure
6. New and Enhanced Tools for Debugging
7. Visual Studio 2013 for Windows 8.1

125 pages of succinctly Visual Studio 2013 information.

BTW, if you like this, make sure you check out this Build 2014 session,  Tips and Tricks in Visual Studio 2013. Like this eBook, this session is pretty "dense," fast paced and filled with a ton of great tips...

(via Tatworth - Free book from Syncfusion on Visual Studio 2013 Succinctly)

Mads Must Have Web Dev Visual Studio Extensions List

Mads Kristensen - Visual Studio extensions for web developers

This year at the //build/ conference I gave a session on Visual Studio Web Tools and Web Essentials. It’s now online on Channel 9 in case you want to watch it.

I was using a few extensions that are great for any web developer using Visual Studio 2013. I’ve compiled the list of extensions here and added a few additional ones that are really useful as well.

• Web Essentials
• SideWaffle
• File Nesting
• WebJobsVS
• SlowCheetah – XML transforms
• GruntLauncher
• Mexedge Stylesheet Extension
• PHP Tools for Visual Studio
• Cobisi Routing Assistant
• CssCop – FxCop for Stylesheets
• Node.js Tools for Visual Studio

[Click through for the descriptions and download links]

Must review list of Visual Studio extensions for those who Web Dev (or who want too). If there's anyone who's a good curator for these kinds of extensions, it's Mads, so check them out... you still here?

Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 lets you build your own Scaffolder

.NET Web Development and Tools Blog - Creating a Custom Scaffolder for Visual Studio

With the release of Visual Studio 2013 last October, we introduced the concept of Scaffolding to Web Application projects. Scaffolding is the framework on which code generation for MVC and WebAPI is built. For more information on Scaffolding or the MVC Scaffolders check the following blog post: http://www.asp.net/visual-studio/overview/2013/aspnet-scaffolding-overview.

However, the true potential for the scaffolding framework comes from the new extensibility surface released in Update 2. With this new functionality, any VSIX can code against the Scaffolding API surface and have their scaffolds added to the Add New Scaffold Dialog. This blog post will walk through the creation of a custom scaffolder.

To get started make sure you have the following installed on your machine:

• Visual Studio 2013 Pro+

• Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC (or later)

• The Visual Studio 2013 SDK

• The latest Sidewaffle VSIX

Creating a New Scaffolder Project Using Sidewaffle

1. Go to create a new project.
2. Click on the C#->Extensibility->Sidewaffle Node.
3. Select new “Basic Scaffolder”.
4. Input the desired name of your Scaffolder.
5. Create the Project.

...

Next Steps

Now that you have the basics of creating a scaffolder down, here are some additional resources for what to do next:

• Deploying your Scaffolder to the VSIX gallery - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff363239.aspx (make sure to have the category type as Tools->Scaffolding, as that will allow it to be more discoverable to end-users)

• Look at a sample scaffolder – Web Forms Scaffolder Source Code

Additionally you can look to create more complex scaffolders using the following services:

• ICategoryRegistrationService – to add new Categories in the Add Scaffold Dialog

• IServiceRegistrar – to add new ActionServices that you can invoke during scaffolding

• IRollbackService – to make the services registered above be able to use the Scaffolding rollback feature

• The Scaffolding.EntityFramework dll – to help with the processing of EF models (this is used by the MVC and WebAPI Entity Framework Scaffolders to create the controllers and for MVC the views)

ASP.NET Scaffolding in Visual Studio 2013

Overview

ASP.NET Scaffolding is a code generation framework for ASP.NET Web applications. Visual Studio 2013 includes pre-installed code generators for MVC and Web API projects. You add scaffolding to your project when you want to quickly add code that interacts with data models. Using scaffolding can reduce the amount of time to develop standard data operations in your project.

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Tutorials

To customize the generated files, see How to customize the generated files from the New Scaffolded Item dialog.

For an example of using scaffolding with Database First development, see EF Database First with ASP.NET MVC.

For an example of using scaffolding in an MVC project, see Getting Started with ASP.NET MVC 5.

For an example of using scaffolding in a Web API project, see Create a REST API with Attribute Routing in Web API 2.

This was pretty lost in the Build news stream, but I think this is going to spawn some very interesting Extensions in the near future.

Succinctly eBook of the Day: "Twitter Bootstrap Succinctly" [Reg-ware]

SyncFusion Succinctly eBook Shelf - Twitter Bootstrap Succinctly

Twitter Bootstrap (TWB) is a free front-end framework built by Twitter developers to ensure visual and functional consistency across websites and applications. In Twitter Bootstrap Succinctly, Peter Shaw explains what makes up a consistent, attractive UI, and why having one is important. He then walks you through the basics of adding beautiful, user-friendly components to your projects with only a few lines of HTML and CSS. You'll learn how to add TWB to an existing project, and use it to customize attractive buttons, tabs, breadcrumbs, dropdowns, and more. There are even chapters dedicated to optional JavaScript and TWB extensions for when you're ready to take your UI's appearance a step further.

Table of Contents

1. What is Twitter Bootstrap?
2. Adding Bootstrap to Your Project
3. Twitter Bootstrap Scaffolding
4. Twitter Bootstrap Base CSS Classes
5. Forms
6. Buttons
7. Components
8. Twitter Bootstrap JavaScript
9. Extending Bootstrap

If you've been hearing about Bootstrap but weren't sure what it was or how to get started with it [insert usual "this ebook is for you" statement here]

(via expression{web.blog} - Twitter Bootstrap Succinctly)

Free eBook of the Day: "Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 - Technical Overview" [Keyword: "Overview"]

Microsoft Press - Free ebook: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2014

We’re pleased to announce our next free ebook – Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 – by Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner.

Introduction

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the next generation of Microsoft’s information platform, with new features that deliver faster performance, expand capabilities in the cloud, and provide powerful business insights. In this book, we explain how SQL Server 2014 incorporates in-memory technology to boost performance in online transactional processing (OLTP) and data-warehouse solutions. We also describe how it eases the transition from on-premises solutions to the cloud with added support for hybrid environments. SQL Server 2014 continues to include components that support analysis, although no major new features for business intelligence were included in this release. However, several advances of note have been made in related technologies such as Microsoft Excel 2013, Power BI for Office 365, HDInsight, and PolyBase, and we describe these advances in this book as well.

Who should read this book?

This book is for anyone who has an interest in SQL Server 2014 and wants to understand its capabilities. Many new improvements have been made to SQL Server 2014, but in a book of this size we cannot cover every improvement in its entirety—or cover every feature that distinguishes SQL Server from other databases or SQL Server 2014 from previous versions. Consequently, we assume that you have some familiarity with SQL Server already. You might be a database administrator (DBA), an application developer, a business intelligence solution architect, a power user, or a technical decision maker. Regardless of your role, we hope that you can use this book to discover the features in SQL Server 2014 that are most beneficial to you. [GD: Post Leached in Full]

You heard that SQL Server 2014 became available for download last week, April 1st (no fooling), right? And now that it's available, you're ready to really invest a little time and learn more about it? This free ebook is for you then...

Get it from the Microsoft Virtual Academy eBook Shelf

I'm cheating a little, but here are the direct download links...

• Download the PDF (8.08 MB)
• Download the EPUB file (8.22 MB)
• Download the Mobi for Kindle file (12.3 MB)

Here are some snaps from the PDF;

Who should read this book?
This book is for anyone who has an interest in SQL Server 2014 and wants to understand its capabilities. Many new improvements have been made to SQL Server 2014, but in a book of this size we cannot cover every improvement in its entirety—or cover every feature that distinguishes SQL Server from other databases or SQL Server 2014 from previous versions. Consequently, we assume that you have some familiarity with SQL Server already. You might be a database administrator (DBA), an application developer, a business intelligence solution architect, a power user, or a technical decision maker. Regardless of your role, we hope that you can use this book to discover the features in SQL Server 2014 that are most beneficial to you.

Assumptions
We assume that you have at least a minimal understanding of SQL Server from both a database administrator’s perspective and a business-intelligence perspective, including a general understanding of Microsoft Excel, which is often used with SQL Server. In addition, having a basic understanding of Windows Azure is helpful for getting the most from the topics associated with private, public, and hybrid-cloud solutions.

Who should not read this book
As mentioned earlier, the purpose of this book is to provide readers with a high-level preview of the capabilities and features of SQL Server 2014. This book is not intended to be a step-by-step, comprehensive guide.

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