Dan Roth Takes Us on a Deep Dive into Web API

ADO.NET Entity Framework

The Microsoft® ADO.NET Entity Framework is an Object/Relational Mapping (ORM) framework that enables developers to work with relational data as domain-specific objects, eliminating the need for most of the data access plumbing code that developers usually need to write. Using the Entity Framework, developers issue queries using LINQ, then retrieve and manipulate data as strongly typed objects. The Entity Framework’s ORM implementation provides services like change tracking, identity resolution, lazy loading, and query translation so that developers can focus on their application-specific business logic rather than the data access fundamentals.

High-level capabilities of the Entity Framework:

Works with a variety of database servers (including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2)

Includes a rich mapping engine that can handle real-world database schemas and works well with stored procedures

Provides integrated Visual Studio tools to visually create entity models and to auto-generate models from an existing database. New databases can be deployed from a model, which can also be hand-edited for full control

Provides a Code First experience to create entity models using code. Code First can map to an existing database or generate a database from the model.

Integrates well into all the .NET application programming models including ASP.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and WCF Data Services (formerly ADO.NET Data Services)

The Entity Framework is built on the existing ADO.NET provider model, with existing providers being updated additively to support the new Entity Framework functionality. Because of this, existing applications built on ADO.NET can be carried forward to the Entity Framework easily with a programming model that is familiar to ADO.NET developers.

Using the Entity Framework to write data-oriented applications provides the following benefits:

• Reduced development time: the framework provides the core data access capabilities so developers can concentrate on application logic.
• Developers can work in terms of a more application-centric object model, including types with inheritance, complex members, and relationships. In .NET Framework 4, the Entity Framework also supports Persistence Ignorance through Plain Old CLR Objects (POCO) entities.
• Applications are freed from hard-coded dependencies on a particular data engine or storage schema by supporting a conceptual model that is independent of the physical/storage model.
• Mappings between the object model and the storage-specific schema can change without changing the application code.
• Language-Integrated Query support (called LINQ to Entities) provides IntelliSense and compile-time syntax validation for writing queries against a conceptual model.

More details please visit - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/aa937709

JSON Parsing using JQuery

Takes a well-formed JSON string and returns the resulting JavaScript object.

• version added: 1.4.1 

  usage  -- jQuery.parseJSON( json )

  json  --- The JSON string to parse.

Passing in a malformed JSON string may result in an exception being thrown. For example, the following are all malformed JSON strings:

• {test: 1} (test does not have double quotes around it).
• {'test': 1} ('test' is using single quotes instead of double quotes).

Additionally if you pass in nothing, an empty string, null, or undefined, 'null' will be returned from parseJSON. Where the browser provides a native implementation of JSON.parse, jQuery uses it to parse the string. For details on the JSON format, see http://json.org/.

Example:

Parse a JSON string.

var obj = jQuery.parseJSON('{"name":"John"}');
alert( obj.name === "John" );

How to view generated source by AJAX (or by JS)

One of the challenging things about debugging an AJAX application is that it isn't obvious how to view the html source that is being rendered by the browser after you have made modifications to it via an AJAX callback.  If you use the browser's built-in View Source command then it will show you the source that was used to render the original page, but it will not include any modifications made via javascript/AJAX calls.

If you are trying to view the generated source in Firefox, the simplest way is to first download and install the WebDeveloper extension   Then go to the View Source menu item and select "View Generated Source".
To view the generated source in IE you can type the following in the address bar

ASP.NET Profile Properties Overview

In many applications, you want to store and use information that is unique to a user. When a user visits your site, you can use the information you have stored to present the user with a personalized version of your Web application. Personalizing an application requires a number of elements: you must store the information using a unique user identifier, be able to recognize users when they visit again, and then fetch the user information as needed. To simplify your applications, you can use the ASP.NET profile feature, which can perform all of these tasks for you.

The ASP.NET profile feature associates information with an individual user and stores the information in a persistent format. Profiles allow you to manage user information without requiring you to create and maintain your own database. In addition, the ASP.NET profile feature makes the user information available using a strongly typed API that you can access from anywhere in your application.

You can store objects of any type using profiles. The profile feature provides a generic storage feature that allows you to define and maintain almost any kind of data while still making the data available in a type-safe manner.

You configure the profile feature by defining a list of properties whose values you want to maintain. For example, you might want to store the user's postal code so that your application can offer region-specific information, such as weather reports. In the configuration file, you would define a profile property named PostalCode. The profile section of the configuration file might look like the following:

When the user enters a postal code, you set a "profile" property to store the value for the current user, as in the following example:

Profile.PostalCode = txtPostalCode.Text;

When you want to use the value, you can get it in much the same way that
 you set it. For example, the following code example shows how to call 
an imaginary function named GetWeatherInfo, passing it the current user's postal code as stored in a profile: 

weatherInfo = GetWeatherInfo( Profile.PostalCode );

Please refer this MSDN article for more details.

JSONView - Firefox addon

Today i came across a firefox plug-in for viewing JSON Data.
After installing this plug in you can see JSON data formatted and highlighted in browser.
Can download JSON View from below link..
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/jsonview/

Free REST service can try after installing JSON View.
http://api.worldbank.org/countries?format=json
 

ASP.NET Web API

ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services that reach a broad range of clients, including browsers and mobile devices. ASP.NET Web API is an ideal platform for building RESTful applications on the .NET Framework.

• ASP.NET MVC includes ASP.NET Web API.
• Choose either the Web Platform for Visual Studio 2010 or for Visual Studio 11, depending on which version you are running.

for samples , please visit -  http://www.asp.net/web-api/samples
for more details - http://www.asp.net/web-api