Learn about related technologies

You may find these resources helpful as you work with other technologies in your DevForce application. 

Entity Framework

Programming Entity Framework, 2nd edition, by Julie Lerman. Absolutely essential, for beginners and experts alike. It's comprehensive and it's big but it's easy to read in small doses. Get the second edition for Entity Framework version 4 published in August, 2010.

Julie posts about Entity Framework regularly on her blog. 

The Microsoft-sponsored videos are short, excellent guides to building entity models in Visual Studio.

Microsoft maintains a list of resources. The Microsoft documentation on EDM modeling tools is noteworthy.

C#

C# 4 in a Nutshell by Albahari brothers. By far the best book for the seasoned programmer and the C# expert who thinks he knows everything. We really like their LINQPad too which is an incredible interpreter for quickly trying out LINQ and C# expressions.

LINQ

C# 4 in a Nutshell belongs under the C# category but deserves a second mention here for its crisp and clear treatment of the subject. We think it's the best.

LINQ in Action for gory details

MVVM

Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) is a recommended pattern for building screens or views. It is a pattern for arranging UI code.

MVVM is primarily concerned with separating the controls on the glass (the View) from the logic that feeds and responds to those controls (the ViewModel). The ViewModel often manages the flow of data between objects in a Model and their presentation in the View 

MVVM is not itself a framework nor is there one necessary implementation. In fact, many DevForce examples and reference implementations are done in MVVM style.

The MVVM pattern and its implementations have almost nothing to say about the Model. They leave that to you ... or in our case, they leave it to DevForce. DevForce plays well with all kinds of MVVM implementations. Think of DevForce as supplying the Model to your MVVM implementation. 

Accordingly, you can pick any MVVM style or implementation that works for you... and fit DevForce right in.

Silverlight

Silverlight 4 Unleashed by Laurent Bugnion (due November 2010). Laurent is the author of the open source MVVM-Lite Toolkit and the author of the earlier edition for Silverlight 2. A top choice.

Silverlight 4 in Action by Pete Brown. Excellent content and a pleasure to read. Covers much the same ground as Laurent's book but with a different perspective. Get both books.

Data Driven Services with Silverlight 2 by John Papa is dated but much of value remains. Silverlight 4 improves upon but is not radically different than Silverlight 4. The  biggest gap is the absence of WCF RIA Services (which did not exist at the time) and DevForce.

Azure

Azure in Action by Chris Hay and Brian H. Prince. A good choice for learning what Azure is and why it matters as well as how to make it work. 

Windows Identity Foundation

Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control from the Microsoft Patterns and Practices team. Excellent tour of federated identity issues and how WIF addresses them written with a minimum of jargon and a maximum of real world sensibility. Why are we even mentioning WIF? Because more and more of our customers are moving to Azure and the cloud presents special security challenges for which WIF is well suited. Nuts and bolts books will come ... but this will endure simply because it is such a clear and compelling introduction to the space.