Advanced Microsoft C# 4.0 Programming — A 2-Day Course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Course Synopsis

This course is intended for developers who are solid C# programmers, experienced at navigating Visual Studio and are comfortable with the topics of the C# Introductory Language course.

This 2 day workshop concentrates on the more advanced features of the C# programming, leveraging it to address programming problems. The course is presented as a mixture of lectures and hands-on exercises. Practical sessions follow topics, designed to reinforce the points covered.

Course Objectives

On completion of this course, delegates will be able to:

• Use all C# language features up to and including C#4 features
• Working with files and data
• Fully understand the role of generics, delegates and particularly the increasing prevalence of generic delegates in the .NET Framework Class Library
• Appreciate the role of .NET metadata, use the types of the System Reflection namespace and develop custom attribute classes
• Use LINQ (Language Integrated Query), understand some of its flavours (LINQ to Objects / SQL / Dataset / XML) and its extension capabilities
• Understand the available choices and implications when writing multi-threaded applications
• Appreciate and use language constructs that enable Parallel processing options that utilise the power of modern multi-core processors

Intended Audience

This course is for developers who are solid C# programmers, experienced at navigating Visual Studio and are comfortable with the topics of the C# Introductory Language course.

Course Prerequisites

Delegates must have solid C# programming skills, Visual Studio skills and be familiar with the concepts covered in the Introduction to Microsoft C# 4 Programming Language course, particularly the rationale behind Generic types and the role of delegates. Students who attend the C# Introductory Language course are expected to have some practice before attending this course.

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Course Contents

A quick tour around advanced new features in Visual Studio 2010

• Window and Editor features
• Consume-First mode
• Search
• Dependency graphs
• UML
• Call Hierarchy
• (Thread visualization views)

Working with Files

• Streams, Readers and Writers
• File and Directory classes
• Compression
• FileSystemWatcher

Working with Data

• DataReaders
• DataSets

Language Features

• Flagged Enums
• Inheritance versioning
• More on generics
• Func<T> and Lambda expressions

Getting started with LINQ

• LINQ and the relationship to C#

More LINQ

• Aggregation
• Grouping
• Joins
• LINQ to XML
• LINQ to Relational
• Architectural usage of LINQ

Going Further with LINQ

• Extension points
• Expression trees
• A LINQ provider

Attributes, metadata & reflection

• Role of metadata
• Attributes
• Using Reflection
• Writing Custom Attributes

COM Interop and dynamic types

• PInvoke
• Run-time Callable Wrappers
• COM Callable Wrappers
• Primary Interop Assemblies and deploying without them

Code Contracts

• An introduction to Code Contracts

Asynchronous Programming

• Thread class
• ThreadPool class
• ASync Delegates
• Background worker
• Manual and Auto Reset events
• Synchronization

The Task Parallel Library

• Parallel Programming in the .NET Framework
• Task based programming
• The Task Parallel Library (TPL)
• Introduction to Parallel LINQ (PLINQ)
• Data Structures for Parallel Programming
• Concurrent Collection Classes
• Thread visualization In Visual Studio 2010