.NET community news 2007 issue 1

On a daily basis, I try to keep track of what's going on at the .NET community by reading blog entries, articles and stuff I ran into myself. I decided to compile the most important facts into a regular post here.

• Microsoft released a whitepaper on the most important features of Visual Studio 2008.
• The Wayward Weblog has published an extensive four-part walkthrough on how to write your own LINQ-compatible data provider. I wonder when Oracle will create a provider so that we can use the new Entity Framework with their database.
• You may recall that Microsoft bought the company that created the Team System Web Access Client a little while ago. Since then it was downloadable free of charge. They've now released a re-branded version of it which includes quite a list of fixes and improvements.
• It was already announced a while ago, but GAX/GAT July 2007 (1.3) has been released with support for Visual Studio 2005, 2008 Beta 1 and 2008 Beta 2. It should work with your own custom guidance packages, but will not help you running the Patterns & Practices software factories. I've already posted these questions on the corresponding CodePlex forums.
• As you know, Team Foundation Server v1 uses Windows Sharepoint Services 2.0. Many have requested support for the new WSS 3.0 so that the team sites gain the extra features so common to Sharepoint 2007 users. Microsoft has released proper instructions (including a hotfix) for supporting this scenario.
• The next version of the AJAX Control Toolkit will be released around August 24th and be labelled 10824.
• If you've been developing Domain Specific Languages with the Visual Studio SDK, you may be happy to know that a CTP version has been made available for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.
• One of the new C# 3.0 features that did not get much attention is called partial methods. Huh, I hear you asking? Check out this short explanation.
• Some Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 posts that may help you while switching to Visual Studio 2005.
  • TFS 2008 Build agent configuration options
  • Using VS 2008 to target ASP.NET AJAX 1.0
  • Upgrading ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 Websites and Web Applications to .NET Framework 3.5
  • Workaround: Beta 2 not showing your JavaScript Intellisense / Intellicode / Syntax Highlighting? 
  • New TFS offline support in Beta 2
  • ReadMe's for VS, Express, .NET Framework and MSDN Available Online