It’s not always about new features. Sometimes a framework is differentiated by performance, stability and reliability. Here’s a rundown of upcoming performance improvements in the .NET Framework 4.5 that affect the CLR, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Entity Framework and more.

TypeScript is a powerful, typed superset of JavaScript that presents developers with useful means for managing classes, modules and types. Learn how the open source TypeScript project broadens the appeal of JavaScript development.

Learn how StyleCop helps you maintain style and format consistency in your source code while implementing static code analysis in your Team Build.

In the implementation of a modern query stack, the LINQ language backed in the .NET Framework is immensely helpful. Dino Esposito goes through a possible implementation of a read stack where the storage is designed to be close to the organization of data required by the presentation

Chapter 4 of Framework Design Guidelines, titled "Type Design Guidelines," presents guidelines that describe when and how to design classes, structs and interfaces. In this chapter, the authors divide types into four groups and discuss the do's and don'ts of type design.

In the past couple of years, unit testing has gained tremendously in popularity; but while most developers understand the overall concept, certain aspects have been more elusive. Among these is how to effectively replace component servers for testing purposes. Most people call these replacements stubs or mocks, but as I will show in this article, these are only two types in a larger continuum of replacements.

This article extols the benefits of TDD when applied to database development—and supplies some useful techniques along the way.

Web Services are an integral part of the .NET framework that provide a cross-platform solution for exchanging data between distributed systems. Although Web Services are normally used to allow different operating systems, object models and programming languages to send and receive data, they can also be used to dynamically inject data into an ASP.NET AJAX page or send data from a page to a back-end system. All of this can be done without resorting to postback operations.

This article looks at implementing the Active Record Pattern in your .NET application and how aspect-oriented programming yields separation of concerns.

This article examines how the new support for functional programming techniques in .NET 3.5 can developers make code more declarative, reduce errors in code, and write fewer lines of code for many common tasks.