I got a new book to read: Entity Framework Code First by Julie Lerman.

It’s a rather small book but I know what I’ll be doing during the holidays soon. There are 8 chapters covered in this book:

1. Welcome to code first: a high level and end to end overview
2. First look at code first
3. Using conventions for property attributes
4. Using conventions for relationships
5. Using conventions for database mappings
6. Controlling database location, creation process and seed data
7. Advanced concepts
8. What’s coming next for code first

Grz, Kris.

From the Swiss MSDN blog:

In this 108 page hands-on lab you will learn how to use Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2010 and Beta 1 of Microsoft Silverlight 4 to create a data driven line of business style rich internet application that implements many of the new features that Silverlight 4 introduces. We will base our solution on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) RIA Services.

The solution will be an order-management system that shows a list of orders in a data grid and details of a selected order in a details pane. The system will validate user entries and have the capabilities of printing order reports and exporting order lists to Microsoft Excel.

Download the hands-on lab manual in PDF and Word format, the database and the final sample solution.

These features are implemented in the lab:

• True multi-tier architecture.
• Entity framework and service layer definition.
• Data filtering, paging, sorting and grouping.
• Data modification and validation.
• Foreign key management.
• Projections.
• Programmatic printing from a Silverlight application.
• COM interop with Microsoft Excel and running full-trust out-of-browser.

Grz, Kris.