May 2010

MSDN Magazine May 2010 Issue cover  

Silverlight Security: Securing Your Silverlight Applications
Josh Twist explains the unique challenges developers face in securing Silverlight applications. He shows where to focus your efforts, concentrating on the key aspects of authentication and authorization.
Josh Twist

Now Playing: Building Custom Players with the Silverlight Media Framework
The Silverlight Media Framework is an extensible and scalable video framework upon which you can create your own player experiences. We’ll walk you through a custom player project that displays suggested videos for further viewing after the current video ends.
Ben Rush

RIA Services: Enterprise Patterns with WCF RIA Services
Learn how to leverage WCF RIA Services in your Silverlight applications. Michael D. Brown uses an extensive point-of-sale program to illustrate how to meet the needs of the simplest to the most complex business apps with various enterprise design patterns.
Michael D. Brown

Workflow Services: Visual Design of Workflows with WCF and WF 4
The .NET Framework 4 makes it easier than ever to implement WCF services using WF. We’ll demonstrate just how easy it is by modeling a long-running, durable and instrumented workflow based on a real-world business case without having to write any code.
Leon Welicki

Columns

Editor's Note:
This Way-Cool 'Internet' Doohickey

It wasn't all that long ago that surfing meant grabbing a board and hanging 10.
Keith Ward

Don't Get Me Started:
Fundamental Laws

Programmers will never develop great software until they learn that it’s not about themselves.
David Platt

Foundations:
Service Bus Buffers

Learn some advanced Windows Communication Foundation programming techniques as Juval Lowy begins an in-depth examination of the Azure service bus, focusing first on buffers.
Juval Lowy

UI Frontiers:
Thinking Outside the Grid

In Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight, using a Canvas or a single-cell Grid seems very similar. The difference is in how the container appears to the rest of the layout system. Canvas doesn’t participate in layout, so you can use it whenever you need to transcend layout.
Charles Petzold

Cutting Edge:
Using the Dynamic Keyword in C# 4.0

C# 4 provide a new dynamic keyword that enables dynamic typing in what has traditionally been a strongly typed language. We explain how the dynamic keyword works and what it offers that casting, var, and System.Object can't match.
Dino Esposito

Test Run:
Combinations and Permutations with F#

Understanding combinations and permutations is a fundamental skill in software testing. We show you how to work with combinations and permutations using code written in the new F# language.
James McCaffrey

Data Points:
LINQ Projection Queries and Alternatives in WCF Services

LINQ's ability to project randomly shaped data into anonymous types can be a blessing and a source of frustration, says Julie Lerman. It’s great when you just need to grab a special view of your data, but it can be problematic in certain circumstances. She explains what the limitations are and how to get around them.
Julie Lerman

Security Briefs:
Regular Expression Denial of Service Attacks and Defenses

Microsoft security expert Bryan Sullivan believes denial-of-service blackmail attacks will become more common as privilege escalation attacks become more difficult to execute. He demonstrates how to protect your apps against regular expression DoS threats.
Bryan Sullivan

CLR Inside Out:
Production Diagnostics Improvements in CLR 4

The Common Language Runtime (CLR) 4 includes new APIs that expand diagnostic support toward the production end of the spectrum. We explain how the debugging APIs support dump debugging for application crash and hang scenarios and make it easier to detect when hangs are caused by multi-threading issues.
Jon Langdon

The Working Programmer:
Going NoSQL with MongoDB

MongoDB is one of the principal tools of the NoSQL movement, which offers alternatives to the traditional relational database system. Learn its strengths and weaknesses as Ted Neward examines the document-based database in detail in the first of a series of columns.
Ted Neward