Izindaba #18

Time for another weekly round-up of developer news that focuses on .NET, agile and general development content.  (Izindaba = Zulu for News).

.NET

1. ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 1) - Scott Guthrie builds an e-commerce store application to illustrate how to use the cool new ASP.NET MVC Framework   
2. So Many Tools - So Little Time! - Jesse Liberty tries to summarize when to use what tools for doing Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1 development.
3. Code Metrics as Check-in Policy - The Code Analysis Team shows how to prevent check-in in TFS based on the violation of some code metrics.
4. Visual C++ Libraries update - Somasegar unveils some post Orcas Visual C++ plans.
5. Official Release of FastCGI Extension for IIS6 - News from TechEd IT Forum in Barcelona on the official support from Microsoft for FastCGI that allows high-performance hosting for PHP and other CGI-based applications on production Windows servers with full support from Microsoft.

Design

1. Performance Frame v2 - J.D Meier provides a framework for thinking about and organizing the performance knowledge of your application.
2. What is the MVC noise all about? Part 1, 2 and 3 - A series of posts by Ian Cooper on the MVC pattern and how to utilize the pattern when doing .NET development.
3. Naming Standards for Unit Tests - Roy Osherove provides some guidance on how to name your unit tests.

SQL Server

1. New Compression Features in SQL Server 2008 - InfoQ reports on the new compression features that have been added to SQL Server 2008.

SDLC

1. You Don't Know What You Don't Know Until You Take the Next Step - "Feedback is good. Rapid feedback is better. Seek it whenever you can. Learn what you don’t know, make corrections, and proceed."
2. How Long Should Retrospectives Last? - InfoQ looks at how frequently and for how long retrospectives should be held.

Software

1. Snippet Editor for VS 2005/2008 - Bill McCarthy has updated his Snippet Editor to support VS 2008.
2. ScrewTurn Wiki 2.0.20 - Update to my favourite ASP.NET Wiki includes a new Statistics plugin.

KB Articles

1. FIX: Visual Studio 2005 stops responding or performance is slow when you use the IntelliSense feature
2. FIX: All the developers must use the same Web server settings when you develop Web applications in a team environment that uses the source control features in Visual Studio 2005

Misc

1. Don't Forget To Lock Your Computer - Can't wait to let Clippy loose on somebody
2. What's going on with NHibernate 2.0? - Ayende Rahien reports on the change log for the release of NHibernate 2.0.

Happy reading