ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview Released

Over the weekend Microsoft released the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview (direct download).  For those that haven't been following this is a pretty highly anticipated CTP.  The major components of the CTP include:

 

• ASP.NET MVC
• ASP.NET Dynamic Data
• ASP.NET AJAX
• ADO.NET Entity Framework
• Silverlight Controls for ASP.NET

 

The most exciting items in this release for me are ASP.NET MVC and the ADO.NET Entity Framework. Now if someone could only tell me why the hell this was included in something that is called ASP.NET Extensions!!  ADO != ASP people! 

 

ASP.NET MVC

For those of you that have been living under a rock for the last 3 months and haven't heard of the ASP.NET MVC framework here are some links to get you going.

 

• Scott Guthrie's Awesome MVC Series
  • ASP.NET MVC Framework Overview
  • ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 1)
  • ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 2): URL Routing
  • ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 3): Passing ViewData from Controllers to Views
  • ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 4): Handling Form Edit and Post Scenarios
  • Video from Alt.NET conference
• Fredrik Normén has a number of good posts.
  • I really like his post on Expression Language and custom tags. 
• Scott Hanselman
  • ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions - plus MVC How-To Screencast
  • ScottHa on MVC+DLR=Love at ALT.NET Conference
• Rob Conery has several good posts

 

Once I can find some time I hope to dive into the MVC bits.  I'm looking forward to seeing how I can combine Tibco GI and ASP.NET MVC.  I assume it will be similar to Brian Walsh's approach with AJAX and the Spring Framework with Tibco GI.

 

ADO.NET Entity Framework

This is one I've been excited about for a while but haven't had much time to dive into the previously releases.  I'm not sure what is different with the bits included with the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions compared to the Entity Framework Beta 3 release.  The download page on MSDN says that the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions download contains the Entity Framework runtime so not sure what that is exactly.  I should be diving into both of these very soon and if I can get some time I'm going to try to post some blogs on both topics.

For more info on the ADO.NET Entity Framework here are some links:

 

• ADO.NET Team Blog
• ADO.NET Entity Framework Overview
• ADO.NET Entity Framework Tools Dec 2007 CTP

 

Hopefully I'll have some time to start working with both of these soon.  And if possible I'd like to get some blog posts up on both topics.

Happy Coding.

Cheers. -Kyle