It has taken me a while to get an opportunity to play with the March Orcas CTP but I figured that I could do without a couple more hours of sleep to have a play. I’m just going to post a few things I noticed – some a small, some a not….
First things first – you have to hand it to the product team they really know how to deliver features that are going to make a difference to every developer I know. Take for example the following screen shot of the right-click shortcut on the solution explorer – notice anything cool?
Yeh, that’s right, they have rounded the corners. This has been extended to the Ctrl-Tab dialog where they have not only rounded the corners, they have also added a preview of the document you are about to navigate to.
Ok, so now onto something more interesting. As most of you will know I have a particular interest in SQL Server Compact Edition (SSCE – www.sqlserverce.org) and the MS Sync Services (aka Occasionally Connected Services, OCS). Despite only recently releasing v3.1 of SSCE the team has been hard at work and the March CTP already has v3.5 of SSCE. It also has not only the CTP of MS Sync Services, but also the first cut of the designer dialogs to facilitate working with this framework.
After creating a basic windows forms solution you can go to the Add New Item dialog (the usual way – right-click solution explorer, Add New Item), which looks like…
You will notice that I’ve highlighted the Local Database Cache option – which generates a .sync file, and the Service-based Database option – which generates a .mdf file (error in the image – should be .mdf). This is an interesting move for this designer as we can now create SQL Server Database file (.mdf) and a helper class for working with MS Sync Services (.sync).
Unfortunately I will have to leave you hanging on to see what the .sync file is and how the designers look as I really need to get some sleep….