First thoughts: C# 2.0\.NET 2.0\VS2005\MSSQL2005
Been going through the class libraries in 2.0 like crazy this weekend. Also manged to get Visual Studio 2005 and Sql Server 2005 installed in the process. I managed to tear it apart a bit.
Here are some random first impressions:
- Direct serial port access is a nice feature thanks to the new “SerialPort” class..
- Little bit thrown off from partial classes in C#. I can see how this was a nice feature for Microsoft to remove the designer generated code for VS 2005 to a different file but I couldn’t figure out why this would be useful anywhere else. That was until I went and looked in my source control and found 9 major instances where they come to be very nice. For example, when you have a private embedded class in some class or where your want to seperate the properties, methods, and everything else.
- Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)? Thats neat. Look at that later.
- SqlBulkCopy is nice and well needed feature.
- System.Text.DecoderFallback and System.Text.EncoderFallback! I could of used this months ago. In our current model, this is going to be a little bit tough to make work for Mono.
- Visual Basic joins C# with support for variable paramaters in a function declaration using the “params” keyword or “ParamArray” in VB, but I’m not sure if this is new but if your langauge doesn’t support it then you get a nice little mapped class parameter called “ParamArrayAttribute”. By the looks of it, its not a really high preformance class and its not CLS compliant (so don’t expose them public).
- System Windows Forms has a BackgroundWorker. Something just like a async call wrapper or something. Figure that out later.
- Generics, Generics, Generics!
- Visual Studio has some nice features. Refractoring built-in, a quick code sniplet thingy, better InteliSense (show a ton more), Windows forns desinger is neater, less buttons…
- ASP.NET now ouputs XHTML by default and get this, its compliant out of the box. You can even switch it to a strict mode. Props to the ASP.NET team for that one.
- No more Server and Client versions of the GC. Its all one now.
- SQL Server 2005 now supports XML datatypes (not so bad, but its going to be hard convincing people that the database doesn’t store the data as text and parse it like that)
- SQL Server 2005 hosting the CLR is nice but it really doesn’t preform as fast as TSQL does for writing stored procs.
- TSQL stored procs now support try and catch blocks and you can expose stored procs as soap methods in line. (uuhhh.. wahoo?? I guess?)
- SQL Server 2005 supports a new multiple active recordset system. You maybe able to lower the number of needed open connections to MSSQL now. (more information)
I think that covers some of it. Time to code!!!
Tags: Mono & .NET