Load, Edit, Save & Convert Office 2007 Open XML Formats Documents using Aspose.Words

Aspose.Words is a word processing component that enables .NET applications to read, write, modify & convert Word documents without using Microsoft Word.

Other useful features include document creation, content and formatting manipulation, mail merge abilities, reporting features and support of Office Open XML formats, DOCX, DOC, WordprocessingML, HTML, XHTML, TXT and PDF formats. It supports Windows Vista and 64-bit operating systems. You can even use Aspose.Words to build applications with Mono.

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InCisif.net is an automation tool designed to implement client-side functional testing of web applications under Internet Explorer 6 or 7, using languages such as VB.Net, C# or IronPython.

Tests can be developed within Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2005, 2008 or Express Editions.

To learn more and download an evaluation copy, go to http://www.incisif.net

SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta release for the Windows Desktop platform to support the ADO.Net Entity Framework Beta 3 and the ADO.Net Entity Framework Tools December 2007 CTP.

SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta release for the ADO.Net Entity Framework Beta 3 enables the following scenarios:

• Applications can work in terms of a more application-centric conceptual model, including types with inheritance, complex members, and relationships
• Applications are freed from hard-coded dependencies on a particular data engine or storage schema
• Mappings between the conceptual application model and the storage-specific schema can change without changing the application code
• Developers can work with a consistent application object model that can be mapped to various storage schemas, possibly implemented in different database management systems
• Multiple application models can be mapped to a single storage schema
• Language-integrated query support provides compile-time syntax validation for queries against a conceptual model

For more information please see the ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 3 Documentation and ADO.NET Entity Framework Samples

Post feedback and questions to SQL Server Compact 3.5 MSDN Forum and ADO.NET MSDN Forum

For tips and tricks visit SQL Server Compact blog and ADO.Net team blog

Download Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 Beta for ADO.Net Entity Framework Beta 3

Download the Community Distribution CDs as ISO images, burn and distribute them among your friends and colleagues.

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Vista; Windows XP

CD/DVD drive or a virtual disk drive

This download offers you the benefits of registering with Microsoft. Click the Continue button near the top of this page to register. After you have gone through the registration process, you will be returned to this page to begin the download

Download MSDN Community Distribution CD January 2008.

This data sheet provides a comprehensive product comparison of the Visual Studio 2008 IDE products. It does not provide data about Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Explorer, or Visual Studio Team System 2008 Test Load Agent. This data sheet is provided for illustrative purposes only.

• To view the Word document, you’ll need a copy of Microsoft Office Word 2007, or Microsoft Word 97 or later with the free Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.
• To view the PDF file, you’ll need a PDF reader, such as the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.
• To view the XPS file, you’ll need Windows Vista, or the Microsoft XML Paper Specification Essentials Pack.

Download this white paper in your choice of the following formats: Microsoft Word document (DOCX), PDF file or XPS file.

Download Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison Data Sheet.

This article looks at a line of business application built using .NET 2.0, Windows Communication Foundation, and Visual Studio 2005 that automatically chooses the most suitable connection based on the state of the user’s network connection, providing reliability via message queuing on top of it.

Since network connectivity cannot always be guaranteed, what happens when the network goes down or a network connection is simply unavailable? How can you provide your users with the best connected experience regardless of the state of the network?

I’ll start off with an overview and step-by-step configuration of a WCF service that exposes multiple bindings and wrap up with a pattern for adding logic to a Windows Forms test harness client that detects available network options and chooses the appropriate WCF binding at run time. Where the network is down or otherwise unavailable, I will provide the user with a reliable, “always on” computing experience using Queued Calls via Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ). As you will learn, MSMQ integrates seamlessly with WCF services. When network state is online, I will explore appropriate uses for TCP and HTTP depending on the geographical location of the user.

In addition to queued calls, WCF provides a number of powerful reliability features that are supported out of the box including WS-Reliable Messaging for managing message delivery even across multiple hops, and WS-Atomic Transactions for implementing distributed transactions. In this article, I will focus specifically on Queued Services, which are implemented seamlessly in WCF using Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ). I will discuss these additional reliability features in future articles.

Read the rest of the article at DevX.

The software maker puts the “D” in declarative programming as a key part of its larger Oslo model-driven development strategy.

Microsoft, which in October officially announced its intent to support model-driven development in a broad strategy known as “ Oslo,” is beginning work on a new declarative programming language, a supporting editing tool and other components of the initiative, according to sources close to the company.

Microsoft announced Oslo as part of an amorphous vision for simplifying application development, design, management and deployment. Company officials said Oslo will represent a core set of technology investments that will encompass both a services infrastructure—spanning server, client and the Internet “cloud”—and an executable modeling platform that will include a general-purpose modeling language, tools and repository.

However, the sources said that at the heart of the Oslo initiative lies a new declarative programming language currently known simply as “D.” If, as the code name implies, Oslo were a city, D would be the key to Oslo.

According to the sources, D is a new language under development at Microsoft aimed at building applications and components for the Oslo repository. However, D is but one piece of a much larger puzzle that will include graphical modeling tools and other components. D is expected to be a textual modeling language suitable for use by business professionals and domain experts.

Read the rest at eWeek.

MelodyCan has a capability to watch an arbitrary media library folder and convert media content as soon as it was downloaded from a music provider or simply copied to that folder. This is implemented by means of ‘Automatic Conversion Folder’ engine and can be configured with corresponding fields in MelodyCan settings dialog.

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