Articles by Julia Lerman Data Points Column: Entity Framework Preview: code first, ObjectSet and DbContext MSDN Magazine October 2010 With the code first feature in Entity Framework, there is no visual data model and no XML describing that model. You simply create the classes for your application domain and go. We’ll show you this and several other nifty new features in the latest EF CTP. Using Entity Framework POCOs in WCF Services DevProConnections September 2010 Following is an edited excerpt from Julia Lerman's book, Programming Entity Framework, Second Edition (O'Reilly Media). The excerpt comes from Chapter 18: Using POCO Entities and Self-Tracking Entities in WCF Services. Guest Editorial: Microsoft Entity Framework 4: Is It for You? DevProConnections September 2010 Entity Framework 4, released with Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4, embraces a variety of development styles. Learn why EF 4 might be the version you’ve been waiting for. Data Points: Deny Table Access to the Entity Framework Without Causing a Mutiny MSDN Magazine August 2010 Julie Lerman shows database administrators how to limit access to databases from the Entity Framework by allowing it to work only with views and stored procedures instead of tables—without impacting application code or alienating developers. Data Points: Windows Azure Table Storage – Not Your Father’s Database MSDN Magazine July 2010 Let go of your traditional relational database thinking if you want to understand how Windows Azure Table storage works, says Julie Lerman. Luckily for you, she’s done the hard work to grasp the new concepts and help you get up to speed. Video: Getting Started with Entity Framework 4, 11 Videos MSDN Online Summer 2010 11 part video series begins with creating Entity Data Models and follows on with exploring classes, querying, stored procedures, master-detail WinForms, WPF, POCOs and more Video: Entity Framework 4 By Example Pluralsight Summer 2010 11 part video series begins with creating Entity Data Models and follows on with exploring classes, querying, stored procedures, master-detail WinForms, WPF, POCOs and more Data Points: LINQ Projection Queries and Alternatives in WCF Services MSDN Magazine May 2010 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. Data Points: Precompiling LINQ Queries MSDN Magazine March 2010 Did you know that by precompiling LINQ queries you might actually be degrading your app’s performance if you’re not careful? Julie Lerman explains how to ensure you’re not re-precompiling queries each time and losing the expected performance benefits across post-backs, short-lived service operations and other code where critical instances are going out of scope. Data Points Column: Precompiling LINQ Queries MSDN Magazine March 2010 In this column, I’ll first explain how to precompile queries and then focus on the problem of losing the precompilation benefits in Web applications, services and other scenarios. You’ll learn how to ensure that you’re getting the performance benefit across postbacks, short-lived service operations and other code where critical instances are going out of scope Tour the Top 10 Treats in Entity Framework 4 OReilly Media Webcast 1/27/2010 Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 bring us a new version of ADO.NET Entity Framework, called Entity Framework 4. From the designer, to the APIs to entire new feature sets to support agile development, even former EF skeptics are getting excited about this version. There is a lot to see. In this one hour webcast, Julie Lerman, who is currently working on the 2nd edition of Programming Entity Framework, will highlight the ten most significant changes to the Entity Framework. Video:Tour the Top 10 Treats in EF4 OReilly Media Jan 2010 Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 bring us a new version of ADO.NET Entity Framework, called Entity Framework 4. From the designer, to the APIs to entire new feature sets to support agile development, even former EF skeptics are getting excited about this version. There is a lot to see. In this one hour webcast, Julie Lerman, who is currently working on the 2nd edition of Programming Entity Framework, will highlight the ten most significant changes to the Entity Framework. Entity Framework 4 Beta 2 is Here DevProConnections Jan 2010 Foreign keys, stored procedure improvements, and changes to the EntityDataSource control are among the highlights to expect in EF 4 What's New in Entity Framework 4 Part 2: Modeling Changes CoDe Magazine Nov/Dec 2009 Part 1 of this article appeared in the September/October 2009 issue of CODE Magazine and covered API changes. EF4 also contains a lot of highly anticipated improvements to the Entity Data Model (EDM) designer as well as some very interesting additions to the EDM itself. This article will focus on these changes. Renovations to .NET 4.0's Entity Framework DevProConnections Nov 2009 This article reviews a lot of the changes in Entity Framework 4. It is more of an overview, with some code, compared to the more indepth articles I did for Code Magazine. Quicker read. What's New in Entity Framework 4 Part 1: API Changes CoDe Magazine Sept/Oct 2009 If you have been working with the ADO.NET Entity Framework, you have probably been extremely eager to get your hands on the next version that is now part of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. Long referred to as “EF Version 2,” this version is now called Entity Framework 4 or EF4, to align with the .NET Framework 4.0 version. Video: Entity Framework Tips & Tricks OReilly Media August 2009 Developers discover a lot of behavior in the ADO.NET Entity Framework that is quite unexpected. Programming Entity Framework author, Julie Lerman, will help you avoid some surprises and show you tricks to make the most of Entity Framework. Learn how to provide default navigation property (foreign key) values, practical uses for Entity SQL, how to improve the performance of your LINQ and Entity SQL queries, combine Entities with .NET Generics to write reusable code and more. 8 Entity Framework Gotchas CoDe Magazine July/August 2009 As a developer, it is no surprise to encounter unexpected behavior when working with a new technology.Microsoft added the Entity Framework (EF) to ADO.NET with the .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 released in 2008 enabling developers to incorporate a data model directly in their application and interact with their data through the model rather than ADO.NET Entity Framework Overview SDN Magazine May 2009 A few years ago, Microsoft’s Data Access team began showing developers a new direction for ADO.NET, the Entity Framework. This new framework, released in August 2008 as part of Visual Studio 2008 SP1, brings data modeling into the hands of the developers. This version of the Entity Framework is the beginning of a long-term strategy for ADO.NET, and part of a larger data access and modeling strategy for Microsoft’s applications in general. Lessons Learned: Sorting out Crystal Reports 2008 Versioning, Service Packs and Deployment ASPAlliance 9/24/08 Moving reports in a sizable application from Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005 to Crystal Reports 2008 is a time consuming and frustrating transition - mostly because of some missing key information. This article helps you to avoid this pain by providing guidance based on the lessons the author has learned from her development experience. After providing a brief history and comparison of different versions of Crystal Reports, she examines the development of applications using Crystal Reports under Windows Vista 64 bit and gives some tips to avoid potential problems along with a brief outline of Redistribution of Reports. Data Access Options in Visual Studio 2008 CoDe Magazine Sept/Oct 2008 With Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5, developer’s data access options have increased substantially. In addition to using ADO.NET to create DataReaders or DataSets, Microsoft has added LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework as well as ADO.NET Data Services, which leverages those two. In addition to these new options, there are new syntaxes to learn. LINQ, which is built into Visual Basic and C#, has one implementation for LINQ to SQL and another for LINQ to Entities. In Entity Framework, you have the option to use LINQ to Entities as well as two other ways of querying with Entity SQL, as you can see in Figure 1. Write On!: Create Web Apps You Can Draw On with Silverlight 2 MSDN Magazine August 2008 We build a Silverlight 2.0 application using the InkPresenter to let users annotate a pre-defined collection of images, perform handwriting recognition, and save the annotations and recognized text into a server-side database. { End Bracket } The Magic of Software MSDN Magazine April 2008 Are the transparent computer screens in the movie Minority Report or the flashy fingerprint analysis software programs used on CSI closer than we think? Maybe so. MVP Corner: Coders Anonymous? CoDe Magazine Nov/Dec 2007 In this MVP Corner essay, I have a little fun with two traits that many of us developers (and I know I'm a poster child) exhibit when it comes to our impatience and our obsessiveness. Introducing ADO.NET Entity Framework CoDe Magazine Nov/Dec 2007 The ADO.NET Entity Framework is the core of Microsoft’s evolving Data Platform, enabling developers to bridge the gap between data structures and objects in your applications. This article provides an explanation of the basic concepts of ADO.NET Entity Framework, an opportunity to get your hands dirty with code, and a look at the possibilities that ADO.NET Entity Framework opens up for developers. Writing a Viewer Utility for Crystal Reports ASPAlliance 10/23/07 In this article, you will learn to write a Windows Forms application to view reports that were created in the Crystal Reports end-user program (e.g. Crystal Reports XI). The viewer allows users to view the existing reports with fresh data as well as input parameter variables at run time. This application can be written with Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008. Proud to be a Geekette O'ReillyNet Women in Tech series 9/13/07 They say that "the clothes make the man." Read Julia Lerman's account of her personal growth being reflected outwardly. Build Dynamic Database Applications in .NET with Project Codename "Jasper" O'Reilly Windows Dev Center 7/31/07 Instead of moving to Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET developers might consider Project Codename "Jasper" and the growing number of .NET dynamic languages. In this article, you'll learn how to use Jasper. [Interview] Looking to LINQ Redmond Developer News April 2007 Cover story on LINQ - interviewing Anders Hejlsberg and li'l ol' me INKED! aspnetPRO Magazine April 2007 Ink-enabled Web sites can be used for fun or as part of business applications. Julia Lerman presents an introduction to the Ink APIs for Web developers targeted at Windows XP Tablet PC users. Follow along and you’ll learn to build a simple Windows Forms control that is Ink-enabled, embed it into a Web page, then interact with it. Inking in ASP.NET 2.0, AJAX, and IE7 CoDe Magazine: CoDe Focus on Mobility In the past year, new technologies from Microsoft have changed how we can add ink to Web sites and the change is definitely for the better! ClickOnce for the Real World, Not Hello World Code Magazine Nov/Dec 2006 After four years of trying out every iteration of Web server application deployment that Microsoft created for .NET, ClickOnce has finally allowed me to succeed in deploying one particularly complex smart client application. But I still had to tear a few more hairs out before I got it working and came to love ClickOnce. I’m writing this article to share some of the not-so-obvious ways (including a hack or two) to use ClickOnce for application deployment. Zip (Demo Code):  ClickOnceLerman.zip Playing in the ASP.NET Sandbox aspnetPRO Magazine Nov 2006 This article provides and introduction to two of the tools that are in the works by the ASP.NET team and available for us to play with in the "Sandbox" area of the www.asp.net site. The article discusses the RSS Control Toolkit and the CSS Friendly Control Adapters Dynamically Update Portions of Cached Web Pages with Post-Cache Substitution DevSource 10/14/2006 If a page is mostly static, why reload the whole thing every time? You don't have to choose between the efficiency of caching and the flexibility of dynamic content. Using post-cache substitution adds another layer of flexibility to your Web sites. Visual Studio 2005... That Legacy Software! CoDe Magazine Sept/Oct 2006 I still have to write production applications today. What do I use? Those old-fashioned, dinosaur-age tools: Visual Studio 2005, ASP.NET 2.0 and WSE 3.0. Egad. SQL Server 2005 Query Notifications Tell .NET 2.0 Apps When Critical Data Changes CoDe Magazine May/June 2006 If you have struggled in the past with keeping dynamic data in sync with rather static Web pages, SQL Server 2005 and ADO.NET 2.0 offer new features that can make your applications easier to build. NOTE: August 2006: Code samples have been modified to simplify use of cached datatable with VB Shared rather than VB Static. If you would like to see the original sample code, please contact me by email. Zip (Demo Code):  LermanQueryNotificationDemos.zip MVP Corner: Technology Overload CoDe Magazine May/June 2006 Opinion piece on the problem of so much developer technology coming out of Microsoft. Can we learn it all? What do we choose to focus on? Using WSE 3.0 Today to Secure Web Services for Tomorrow DevSource March 2006 With Windows Communication Foundation (aka WCF aka Indigo) around the corner, many people are wondering if it is worth the investment to use WSE 3.0 to secure today's web services. The answer is a resounding Yes! ... (Interview) Julie Lerman on ADO.NET Academic.NET Radio 12/15/2005 Teenage programmer, Matt Cassell, interviews .NET experts to share programming concepts with other young programmers. This interview focused on ADO.NET. Ink on the Web CoDe Magazine: CoDe Focus Mobile & Tablet PC Vol 5 (Nov 2005) One of the more interesting and challenging places to use Ink is in Web applications. But how can this technology, which is dependent on the physical relationship between the stylus, the digitizer, and the operating system, work over the Internet? This article details how to do this as well as including advanced techniques. Zip (Demo Code):  CODEMagInkontheWeb.zip Persisting Ink on the Web MSDN Tablet PC Developer Center 10/1/2005 This article shows you how to move ink around in a Web site without falling prey to the many potential programming problems. Example code is in C# and JavaScript. (16 printed pages) Doodling on the Web MSDN Tablet PC Developer Center May 2005 An explanation of how I wrote The Data Farm Doodle app (www.thedatafarm.com/doodle.aspx), this article demonstrates an additional way to redisplay ink images drawn on ASP.NET pages as regular GIF images, without having to waste unnecessary resources. It also addresses the need to do so in a way that is consistent with a professionally designed Web Site. Flex Your Data: Teach Old Data New Tricks with the Fully Loaded Advances in ADO.NET 2.0 MSDN Magazine April 2005 Detailed overview of new features in ADO.NET 2.0 Creating Debugger Visualizers with Visual Studio 2005 CoDe Magazine Mar/Apr 2005 (Interview) Catching up with Julie Lerman DotNetRocks 11/19/2004 Julie talks with Carl Franklin and Rory Blyth about .NET 2.0, ADO.NET 2.0, Tablet PCs, Chicks who Code and more... (Interview) Julia Lerman: .NET Rock Star Seri DevSource 4/23/04 Part of a series of .NET Rock Star interviews on DevSource.com (Interview) Sys-Con Radio Interviews: Julia lerman SysCon Radio Feb 2004 SysCon Radio talks with Julie about everything from Tablet PCs to Web Services to Women in Technology Embed DTDs into XML Files with .NET File Streams Visual Studio Mag Online (Hot Tips) June 2003 Solve a problem that goes outside of the scope of .NET classes Enable Toolbars to Trigger Control Validation on Windows Forms Visual Studio Mag Online (Hot Tips) April 2003 Fixes something that was basically a bug in VS.NET 2002 How to Create a Data Grid Server Control with a Scrollbar DotNet Junkies 9/19/2002 Picked as an ASP.NET home page highlight :-) How to Validate "Time" Data to work with SQL Server DotNet Junkies 9/16/2002 short and sweet