New features in VS 2008

• Multi-Targeting support
• Javascript Intellisense
• Javascript debugging
• Code editing improvements
• Nested Master Page support
• Web designer and CSS improvements
• New Split View including vertical split
• Enhanced support for the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions
• LINQ to SQL designer
• Enhanced XML support
• Support for Silverlight
• Support for WPF
• Support for debugging .NET Framework 3.5 class libraries

What are HTTP Handlers?

HTTP handlers are the .NET components that implement the System.Web.IHttpHandler interface, they can act as a target for the incoming HTTP requests and can be called directly by using their file name in the URL.

HTTP handlers implement the following two methods:
1) ProcessRequest: called to process http requests and
2) IsReusable which indicates whether this instance of http handler can be reused for fulfilling another requests of the same type.

Auto-Start Web Applications IN ASP.NET 4.0

Some Web applications need to load large amounts of data or perform expensive initialization processing before serving the first request. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, for these situations you had to devise custom approaches to "wake up" an ASP.NET application and then run initialization code during the Application_Load method in the Global.asax file.
A new scalability feature named auto-start that directly addresses this scenario is available when ASP.NET 4.0 runs on IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2. The auto-start feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application pool, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests.
To use the auto-start feature, an IIS administrator sets an application pool in IIS 7.5 to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file:

Because a single application pool can contain multiple applications, you specify individual applications to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file:

When an IIS 7.5 server is cold-started or when an individual application pool is recycled, IIS 7.5 uses the information in the applicationHost.config file to determine which Web applications need to be automatically started. For each application that is marked for auto-start, IIS7.5 sends a request to ASP.NET 4.0 to start the application in a state during which the application temporarily does not accept HTTP requests. When it is in this state, ASP.NET instantiates the type defined by the preloadProvider attribute (as shown in the previous example) and calls into its public entry point.
You create a managed auto-start type with the necessary entry point by implementing the IProcessHostPreloadClient interface, as shown in the following example:
public class CustomInitialization : System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient
{
public void Preload(string[] parameters)
{
// Perform initialization.
}
}
After your initialization code runs in the Preload method and the method returns, the ASP.NET application is ready to process requests.
With the addition of auto-start to IIS 7.5 and ASP.NET 4.0, you now have a well-defined approach for performing expensive application initialization prior to processing the first HTTP request. For example, you can use the new auto-start feature to initialize an application and then signal a load-balancer that the application was initialized and ready to accept HTTP traffic.

Handling Routing Failures in Biztalk

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa559421.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa578574.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa578516.aspx

The current transaction cannot be committed when using service broker

The current transaction cannot be committed when using service broker
=================================================================
when we use service broker queue to comunicate biztalk and sql sever we might get error meaasgae in some cases.To avoid this use xact_state(). Is a scalar function that reports the user transaction state of a current running request. XACT_STATE indicates whether the request has an active user transaction, and whether the transaction is capable of being committed.

The current request has an active user transaction. The request can perform any actions, including writing data and committing the transaction.

1 - The current request has an active user transaction. The request can perform any actions, including writing data and committing the transaction.
0 - There is no active user transaction for the current request.
-1 - The current request has an active user transaction, but an error has occurred that has caused the transaction to be classified as an uncommittable transaction. The request cannot commit the transaction or roll back to a savepoint; it can only request a full rollback of the transaction.

SET XACT_ABORT ON;
BEGIN TRY

BEGIN TRANSACTION;

-- A FOREIGN KEY constraint exists on this table. This

-- statement will generate a constraint violation error.

DELETE FROM Production.Product WHERE ProductID = 980;
-- If the delete operation succeeds, commit the transaction. The CATCH

-- block will not execute.

COMMIT TRANSACTION;

END TRY

BEGIN CATCH

-- Test XACT_STATE for 0, 1, or -1.

-- If 1, the transaction is committable.

-- If -1, the transaction is uncommittable and should

-- be rolled back.

-- XACT_STATE = 0 means there is no transaction and

-- a commit or rollback operation would generate an error.
-- Test whether the transaction is uncommittable.

IF (XACT_STATE()) = -1

BEGIN PRINT 'The transaction is in an uncommittable state.' + ' Rolling back transaction.'

ROLLBACK TRANSACTION;

END;
-- Test whether the transaction is active and valid.

IF (XACT_STATE()) = 1

BEGIN PRINT 'The transaction is committable.' + ' Committing transaction.'

COMMIT TRANSACTION;

END;

END CATCH;

GO