Orcas introduced a new DateTimeOffset class that is easier to use for representing absolute times than the original DateTime class. However, if you run svcutil on a contract that contains a DateTimeOffset, you'll get an ugly generated structure because DateTimeOffset isn’t recognized as a natively supported type by the system. A new class is generated by svcutil to match the schema for DateTimeOffset in the metadata. namespace System { using System.Runtime.Serialization; [DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()]

The reference source server for debugging into framework code is underway with propagating a new release of source code for Orcas SP1. The following components should already be available for debugging into updated source. mscorlib.dll system.dll System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.dll system.data.dll system.drawing.dll System.Web.Abstractions.dll system.web.dll System.Web.Routing.dll System.Web.DynamicData.Design.dll system.web.extensions.dll System.Web.DynamicData.dll System.Web.Extensions.Design.dll

Robert Bell wrote an article a few weeks ago discussing how to achieve interoperability between a Silverlight application and a Java application . In the article Robert covers interoperability when building SOAP services, REST services, and RSS services. Note that this description is targeted at the Beta 2 release of Silverlight 2, so there may be a few more features and tricks at your disposal in the final release.

Patrick Smacchia has done some analysis on SP1 using the NDepend tool to compare different versions of assemblies. This is an interesting way to understand the large, standalone changes that we did, such as the new syndication features, but there's no easy way to distinguish whether individual changes in methods are due to fixing bugs, improving performance, or adding new features. For example, some of the serialization changes are easy to spot because they touch many methods with distinguishing

Brad Abrams and Krzysztof Cwalina have got an early access version of the Framework Design Guidelines, 2nd Edition available for purchase, along with preordering for the final version. The Framework Design Guidelines cover the common idioms and patterns that should be followed when using or writing libraries for the .NET Framework. The 2nd Edition primarily focuses on adding coverage of features that are new in Orcas, although some of the original material is updated with new annotations as well.

How do I deliver content from a WCF service as part of a web page? Web page content in this case typically refers to HTML, images, or other data that is directly consumed by the web browser rather than an application running in the web browser. There are a few things you need to do to make your web service serve up content in a way that's indistinguishable from an ordinary web server. I'll serve up a static image at a fixed location for this example but you can get as fancy as you'd like. The first

One last bit of Orcas news for this week. PluralSight will be providing a weekly screencast throughout the year on using WF and WCF. They're focusing on the capabilities of Orcas but will be starting from the basics so you don't need to have any background going into these. The first screencast is by Aaron Skonnard and covers contracts and creating services. Creating Your First WCF Service

With Orcas SP1 having come out, the training kit has been updated for SP1 as well, along with new and updated labs and presentations in several of the area. The training kit collects together different presentations, hands on labs, demos, and whitepapers that cover the features in Orcas. .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit

The first service pack for .NET Framework 3.5 came out yesterday, primarily focusing on fixing bugs and performance issues. There are some new features, notably around improving the support for REST based services and around serialization. Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Readme Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 Here are some known issues related to WCF in this release.

The .NET StockTrader was an end-to-end sample application released last year to demonstrate WCF and web service programming. A new version of StockTrader has been released to update the application with some of the new features in Orcas and Windows Server 2008. You can get StockTrader from MSDN. StockTrader 2.01 StockTrader 2.0 Overview StockTrader Configuration Service Overview