ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview: Walkthroughs, Tutorials and Code Samples

Long time, no posts!!!

With the release of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview a couple of weeks back, I have been busy in experimenting with the new features and controls added in this very first preview of ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions.

The new additions like Dynamic Data Websites, Dynamic Data Controls, LINQ to SQL, ADO.NET Data Services and their invocation using AJAX, LINQ enhancements, ASP.NET AJAX enhancements definitely added sufficient enough data points to the proponents of ‘Using ASP.NET for RAD’.

Having said all that, the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview also includes the first public preview
of the much awaited built-in ASP.NET MVC Framework as well, the final release of which is expected in first half of this year. The addition of this built-in ASP.NET MVC Framework added a sound Architectural Pattern to the ASP.NET Web Development portfolio and it not only enforces the separation of concerns but also facilitates TDD that’s the need of the hour.

Earlier this week I have been presenting the said new additions in ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions to my office colleagues in successive training / tutorial sessions titled “What’s new in ASP.NET 3.5” on each of the newly added features and they went great and, from now I will be posting the scripts / walkthroughs with code samples of all those sessions over here by this weekend, for my office colleagues in particular and rest of you in general.

I used the well know “Northwind” database in all the tutorials so that I every one has the general idea of the DB Schema. For your convenience I will be including the Database files in the sample codes of each of the tutorial as well, in order to provide you a single code sample package for each of the tutorial.

In the mean time I would recommend all of you to prepare the Development Environment for those tutorials and walkthroughs accompanying the code samples which I will be posting by this weekend. All you need to have on your system is the Visual Studio 2008 and the newly released ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview. If you don’t have Visual Studio 2008 then for the time being you can go with the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition as well instead of Visual Studio 2008. You can download Visual Web Developer from here and the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview from here.

Keep your fingers crossed for Walkthroughs + Code Samples on Dynamic Data Websites, ADO.NET Data Services, LINQ and last but not the least the ASP.NET MVC Framework.