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Archive for July, 2010

Nightly news, 30 July 2010

We’ve been busy this week nailing down the hatches on WPF Elements 3.0, but we’ve also got a bunch of stuff into the latest nightly builds. Here’s what’s new.

LightSpeed

• Now you don’t even need to leave the designer to get your database created. If the designer can’t find the database when you try to do an Update Database, it will now offer to create it for you — if you’re on SQL Server, MySQL or PostgreSQL, anyway. Let us know if you want this feature for other databases too. (Except Oracle. If you want it for Oracle… please don’t let us know.) Rumours that the next version of the designer will download and install the database software for you are greatly exaggerated.
• Fixed an error with client-side boolean literals.
• Fix for an error when projecting a property declared in a derived class when using class table inheritance.
• Fixed an issue where discriminators were not respected when joining to a derived class.
• Beta support for the SQL Server Compact 4 CTP. This requires an additional assembly reference: see here for instructions. At the moment, this is only runtime support: there’s no designer integration. Of course you can still use designer-built models with the LightSpeed runtime, you just won’t be able to do database sync or migrations.
• Ninja association support, or ‘cross-cutting composite keys’ as they are more prosaically known. We’ll post more about this later, but if you can’t wait, see here for the details.

WPF Property Grid

• Fix for an exception when editing a subnode in a collection when the collection contains expandable structs.

Don’t forget the WPF Elements 3.0 beta is now available to existing property grid customers. This contains some changes to the property grid so check it out sooner rather than later!

WPF Flow Diagrams

• We’ve added some hooks to make it easier to serialise custom connections. Here’s a sample.

All these features and fixes are available in current nightly builds — get free and trial editions from the downloads page, or retail versions from the store.

WPF Elements 3.0 beta

We’re pleased to announce that a beta build of WPF Elements 3.0 is now available to existing WPF Elements, WPF Property Grid and WPF Themes customers.

WPF Elements is our suite of controls for Windows Presentation Foundation and in 3.0 we’re not only bundling in the popular Property Grid control and our stylish WPF themes, we’re also adding a whole load of new controls:

• Scheduler – Outlook-style calendar display
• DualProgressBar – display operation and sub-operation progress
• DualSlider – a handy and visual way for users to select a range
• OutlookBar – an attractive and compact tab control
• PaletteColorPicker – help your users select colors that work well together
• SplitButton – it’s a button! It’s a menu! No, it’s a benu! Or possibly a menton
• TimePicker – for selecting a time of day
• TimeSpanPicker – for selecting a duration
• RichTextToolBar – a convenient and familiar UI for formatting the WPF RichTextBox

The PropertyGrid control has also been enhanced with new themes, and WPF Themes extends these to the built-in WPF controls.

The WPF Elements 3.0 beta is in the store now and is free to current WPF Elements, WPF Property Grid and WPF Themes customers. Take it for a spin and if you run into any issues, let us know!

VS File Explorer beta for Visual Studio 2010

If you’re familiar with our free Visual Studio File Explorer product, and you’ve started the move to Visual Studio 2010, you’ll no doubt be missing the Explorer integration already. (And if you’re not familiar with VS File Explorer, check it out!)

Well, good news! Dedicated engineers* have been labouring day and night** ever since Visual Studio 2010 came out***, and we’re now able to offer a beta release of VS File Explorer for Visual Studio 2010.

The beta release is available for free download now. Take it for a spin and let us know how you get on!

* Actual number of engineers and level of dedication may differ from that printed on promotional material.
** Actual working hours may differ from those printed on promotional material.
*** Actual project duration may differ from that printed on promotional material.

Nightly news, 23 July 2010

We’ve been busy this week preparing WPF Elements 3.0 for release — time’s running out to grab 2.0 and lock in the current pricing — but we’ve still found time to ship a bunch of LightSpeed fixes and tweaks. Here’s what’s new in this week’s nightly builds.

LightSpeed

• Fixed invalid UPDATE statements when a class table inheritance hierarchy contained a level with no persistent fields
• Added support for further Visual Basic Group By overloads
• Fix for KeyNotFoundException when sorting on the property of an eager-loaded child entity when the association is nullable
• User- and provider-defined types are now displayed in alphabetical order in the designer Data Type drop-down
• Added validation in the designer to detect if an association was redeclared in a derived class
• Fix to allow the designer to work with integrated authentication on Oracle
• The results of Count are now aligned with the results of Find and Count Distinct in paging scenarios

These fixes and enhancements are available in current nightly builds — you can get the free Express edition from the downloads page or the retail edition from the store.

Nightly news, 16 July 2010

Did you know? According to I Write Like, the LightSpeed designer code generation templates are written in the inimitable style of H P Lovecraft. I must get JD to run up a new logo. In the meantime, here’s what’s new in the latest Mindscape product nightly builds.

LightSpeed

• Fix for designer DTO compilation error if entities were declared internal
• Fix for ordering a query on a property of an associated entity when the association is declared in a derived class and the mapping mode is class table inheritance
• Fix for LINQ projections on SimpleDB
• Fix for generation SQL Compact blob columns from designer
• Fix for inequality comparisons and unique validations on SimpleDB
• Added a feature to the VS2010 designer to warn if the project targets the .NET Client Profile
• Fixed an issue where an empty linked model caused a compiler error
• Fixed “arrows to nowhere” when using external class references in VS2010 designer
• Fixed spurious table creation with auto through entities with ambiguously singular/plural names

WPF Elements

• Added an option to TimePicker to auto-refresh the list of suggested times

All these fixes and features are included in the currently downloadable nightly builds — free editions from the downloads page, retail editions from the store.