The ADO.NET team at Microsoft has released an update to EF since the Beta release of VS2010/Net4.
They are calling it Entity Framework Feature CTP 1. Some of these features are not scheduled to be in .NET 4 when it releases, so if you want them, download the CTP and give them feedback.
From InfoQ:
Microsoft announced System.Data.OracleClient will be deprecated after .NET 4.0. Classes in the namespace will be marked obsolete in .NET 4.0 and removed from future releases. OracleClient is the ADO.NET provider for Oracle developed by Microsoft and shipped as part of the .NET Framework Class Library.
Part of the reasoning for this decision is the increasingly availability and improvements of 3rd party ADO.NET data providers for Oracle. There have been significant performance improvements and enhanced multi-version compatibility among the popular Oracle providers:
- Oracle's free Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) ODP.NET 11g is compatbile with all versions of Oracle Database back to 9.2, and multiple versions can coexist in a single OS
- DataDirect ADO.NET Data Provider for Oracle 100% managed code, free trial
- Devart dotConnect for Oracle Formerly known of as OraDirect.NET, free trial, supports Entity Framework, LINQ to Oracle, and ASP.NET Provider Model
Rob Eisenberg has a blog post in which he details the important changes since the beta release of Caliburn.
What is Caliburn?
Caliburn is a toolkit to help you build Silverlight and WPF applications that are compliant with a number of UI design patterns (MVVM and Command Pattern being the relevant ones for me).
I’ve been working with Prism for a few weeks and now I have to figure out how to get Prism and Caliburn to play nice together.
Dinesh Kulkarni, from the RIA Services team, has published a roadmap for RIA Services. No guarantees here, but they hope to release a beta at PDC in November. The next CTP will be in July.
It's a bit disappointing to me. I had heard a rumor that RIA would release with Silverlight 3 in July. Perhaps it referred to the CTP. According to the roadmap, they are making changes to the underlying protocol (moving to ADO.NET Data Services), so you know that will take a lot of time.
Highlights from his post:
July 2009 CTP
This is a preview, not the V1 release. We plan to drop go-live restriction from EULA – still use it at your own risk.
Try to get significant known breaking changes (the ones we don’t know about will come later)
Feature enhancements (e.g. code-gen hookpoints to add your custom code, improved library support, better shared code support, query for singletons, cleaner user model and better extensibility support for Application Services etc.)
Usual fare of bug fixes, API improvements etc
Enable a first set of better together experiences with ADO.NET Data Services (add a DomainService to Data Service for writing app logic / expose DomainService as DataService)
PDC 2009 Beta
Additional core feature work (list TBD, under consideration – hierarchy support, presentation model)
Work on Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4 support
Drag-drop support for databinding
Run in medium trust
Move to ADO.NET Data Services as the underlying protocol
First part of 2010: RTW
Polish beta release (bugs, perf, stress, security, localization, …)
Small design changes / tweaks
Keep up with changes in other products
A note on Platforms and tools
In each CTP, we will be keeping up with corresponding public Silverlight drops as and when they are scheduled (sorry, I don’t have that schedule)
For RTW, we are planning Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4 as the primary story. Support for previous version TBD (depends on feedback about relative importance / cost / options)