It’s been a busy 24 hours!

The RC of ASP.NET AJAX shipped last night, and is now available to download from the Microsoft site.

Looking at the changelog whitepaper there have been a fair few bits and pieces moved about. The RC is being offered alongside a ‘Futures’ CTP. Together they comprise all of the functionality that was available in earlier CTP releases (the RTM release has a cut-down feature set; you’ll have to wait until ‘Orcas’ in 2007 to get the whole package).

A couple of quick gotchas:

• The ASP.NET AJAX namespace has been changed from Microsoft.Web.Extensions.dll to System.Web.Extensions.dll with the server functionality moving from Microsoft.Web to System.Web (this is to make upgrading to ASP.NET ‘Orcas’ easier, since the namespaces won’t need to change again – you’ll just select the preferred runtime in web.conf).


• There’s now a true ASP.NET AJAX template available from File | New Projects in VS 2005, so you can start building ASP.NET AJAX applications directly.


• Something’s changed within the globalisation support, but I’ve not worked that out yet; Scott Guthrie provides a pointer on his blog.

It’s an ASP.NET 2.0 tool for generating and manipulating websites directly from database schema. You’ll find it in the asp.net sandbox here.

As you’ll have guessed from the name, rather than using SQL Server queries BLINQ relies on the forthcoming LINQ (Language Integrated Query) technology that’s being released as part of the .NET 3.0 Framework alongside Visual Studio ‘Orcas’ this coming summer/fall. I’ve been playing with it a little over the last few days and I must say that it’s rather good. If you’re developing web applications and have an instance of Visual Studio 2005 installed (Express will do), I suggest you give it a try. As the sandbox page says, you’ll need the May CTP of LINQ.