Well, such a nice tool was bound to be aquired by a company. Reflector has been acquired by Red-Gate software. You can find Reflector at http://reflector.red-gate.com.

Speaking of Reflector though, did you know there were over 30 plugins available ?

On the subject of plugins, the excellent TestDriven.net addin for Visual Studio will add a few context menu item for running your tests, but will also add one that allows you to jump back to Reflector. Isn't it nice when all these tools play nice together ?

We've been looking at tools lately that could an agile team get a better view of the quality of the software they are writing. On of those is NDepend, a tool that will inspect your assemblies, determine your code's dependencies and then calculate some metrics for you to analyze. The output will typically be a report, in HTML format. Since this step can be automated, We strongly suggest that you put this into your continuous integration process because from that point, you'll be able see the metrics for your software change with time.

On a previous project, we had integrated NDepend on the daily build and at the of each iteration, we would take a few minutes to look at the reports and note a few actions to be taken during the next one. It was a great way to maintain quality and I strongly recommend you integrate it on your next project.

Now where this tool really shines, is with the VisualNDepend application. This one allows you to visualize the metrics of your software, query your software's compiled code through a SQL like language, and perform comparisons between 2 different reports.

Here are a few examples of the queries you can do in CQL:

SELECT TOP 10 METHODS WHERE CouldBePrivate

SELECT TOP 10 FIELDS WHERE CouldBePrivate

SELECT TOP 10 TYPES WHERE IsClass AND NbChildren ==0 AND !IsSealed AND !IsStatic ORDER BY NbLinesOfCode

Here are a few snapshots of the tool when run on our own Umbrella library.

This image shows Umbrella being analyzed, with the mouse pointer on one method called "Truncate". NDepend shows metrics and information all on one easy screen.

This image shows the result of the execution of 1 CQL query and where in the assembly (in blue) are located the results. Once again, bravo for NDepend: quick, concise and visual.

The author of the product Patrick Smacchia gave an interview to the Visual Studio Talk Show, a french PodCast from Montreal; if you can, we strongly suggest you listen to it and hear what the author himself has to say about this great product.

Grigori, from Microsoft's PnP announced last week that there will be a new version of Enterprise Library coming out. It's a smaller version, when you look at the features coming out, but it's a welcome one as a few bugs will be fixed.

The first intermediate drop (before the final release) of the source code is already there, so feel free to grab it and see how the new features can help you right now at http://www.codeplex.com/entlib.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 has been out now for a few days, and we must say we like it. It brings a ton of enhancements to the IDE and to the .NET framework; and these are the things that hit us the most:

• Better WPF Designers - there were a few bugs in the original ones and I'm glad to say they are fixed.
• Entity Framework - well we were waiting for this one for a long time. We can now start to build OR architectures with design tools provided by Microsoft. You might hear in the community that version 1 is not perfect, and they are right. Version 2 is coming out eventually and they are already discussing ideas for people to judge, see this rss feed. The team also has a wiki to gather community ideas.
• ADO.NET Data Services - AKA Astoria, this project exposes a Data Service in a RESTful way. It can basically expose anything that is IQueryable and offers hooks to manage security, transactions, updates, etc... There is a small tool that will allow you to recreate the object model on the client side and get away from using the URL mecanism to query the service. This new service will yield a few new nice architectures we am certain.
• ASP.NET Dynamic Data - This technology will allow you to rapidly generate an interface from metadata attached to a business object. It's basically a scaffolding technique in order to rapidly generate data driven applications.

We suggest you install this service pack as soon as possible and use it with your forth coming developments. It is rare that a service pack brings so much new technology to the table and they are all welcome.

The Montreal .NET Community (formelly the GUVSM) has redone itself.

There is a new name and a new website in order to reflect the common interests that the community has in .net related technologies. There will be special interests groups for .Net, Team System, Sql and architecture. What's new though is that Francois and I will be pushing a new concept in the .net group called @Lunch.

@Lunch is basically an open session, once a month, where a subject will examined in a more informal way. It is modeled on the way Alt.NET and opens spaces work and will surely provoke a few interesting discussions. One of the things we will promote is to determine the subject of the next meeting, during the last few minutes of the meeting occuring. What an "Agile" way of learning what's most important. The first @Lunch is scheduled for September 24th and will be moderated by Francois, speaking on extension methods.

I suggest you visit the calendar, and find which sessions interest you the most. You can even subscribe to the calendar through a RSS feed; what a nice touch !

The last thing for this post is an upcoming Umbrella talk; we will be presenting our session called "Top 10 Umbrellas" at the .Net group of the Montreal .Net Community on October 20th. If you're interested in what it is, or how it can help you, we suggest you come by and listen what we have to say.

nVentive helped a group at the Canada DND (Department of National Defense) by producing an audit for a internal project that related to the techniques, methodologies and technologies use by that team.