ADO.NET Data Services [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/bb931106.aspx] provides a robust REST API over top of a data source. That data source could be 1) the Entity Framework (EF), 2) LINQ to SQL, or 3) your own custom data source that implements IQueryable [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.linq.iqueryable.aspx] and/or IUpdatable [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.services.iupdatable.aspx].  However, it should be noted that in v1, EF is really the "first cla...

Often when creating web applications, it's common for us to want to submit or post forms to the server by using a hyperlink rather than an HTML submit button.  It might be visually more appealing/consistent or whatever your reason might be to have your buttons look like this: The Cancel button is easy because we can just use a normal Hmtl.ActionLink helper to redirect to whatever our cancel page is.  But what to do for the Save link given that we don't have anything in MVC out of the box that...

Often when I give presentations, I'm asked afterwards what Visual Studio add-ins I was using. The fact is that most of what you're seeing are not expensive add-ins at all but either built-in Visual Studio functionality or custom Visual Studio macros that I have written and bound to keyboard shortcuts which give the appearance that they're "built in" to Visual Studio.  The following 4 minute video shows how I use these shortcuts to maintain a fast pace during my presentations and not bore the aud...

Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation last night at CMAP.  The link to download both the code and power point is here [https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=michelotti&ReleaseId=2635] .  It also includes the SQL script for creating the database. I was asked what tool I was using for zooming – it was ZoomIt (which is free).  The link to ZoomIt (plus other tools) can be found here [http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2008/11/23/developer-tools...

Next Tuesday (May 5), I will be presenting WCF 3.5 REST Services at CMAP.  Details here: http://www.cmap-online.org/Meetings/Details/2009-05-05.aspx ....