VS Live 2008 - Las Vegas - Day 2

Jumpstart Your Web site with ASP.NET Dynamic Data
ASP.NET Dynamic Data provides a framework that enables you to quickly build a functional data driven application based on a LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework data model. It annotates the data model with metadata using attributes. Requires .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1.

Data-Driven ASP.NET AJAX
ASP.NET AJAX is built into ASP.NET 3.5. Also available as an optional free install for ASP.NET 2.0. Things to note when architect AJAX into a data-driven web application:
1. Avoid using AJAX for the sake of using it.
2. follow the "principle of least astonishment"
3. use AJAX to satisfy specific user needs such as providing information to the user quickly, economically, and in context, draw the user's attention to important events, and provide visual feedback during long-running events

JSON - JavaScript Object Notation is a very efficient way to handle data in a browser client. However, ASP.NET AJAX does not expose JSON bindings to the application developer. The JSON libraries enables a developer to serialize/deserialize objects as JSON. JSON.NET and Jayrock are two free JSON libraries and both are free.

AJAX libraries are available. Some of the mature ones are JQuery, YUI, Ext JS, Dojo, and Prototype JS. However, JQuery seems to be the favorite and it is free.

Distributed Caching of ASP.NET Applications
Why do we do this? We are trying to take load off the database, reduce the need to do expensive data operations as often, and decouple caching from any particular platform or development environment. How do we do this? We can use memcached or Microsoft Velocity.

Differences between memcached and Microsoft Velocity are
1. Velocity has a model that is more complicated / sophisticated
2. memcached configuration is done at the application level while MS Velocity is done through a shared folder
3. MS Velocity has the capability to reroute traffice to available cache hosts if one is unavailable
4. MS Velocity also add supports for routing clients, locking and tags
5. MS Velocity is Windows-only. It has only NOT been road-tested to the extend of memcached.

Custom Control for Silverlight 2
Should be familiar with parts model, Visual State Manager (VSM), and generic.xaml.