Interface Blogs

Last night we released a new version of the OrgChart.NET ASP.NET server control under a new name of "SmartChartPro".  We decided to give the control a new name since it's capable of doing more than just OrgCharts (although that's what most companies use it for).  We also released a  new company website named SmartWebControls.com based on .NET 3.5 where SmartChartPro and other upcoming controls will now reside. 

I decided to use LINQ and Lambdas in conjunction with LINQ to SQL in the back-end data classes for the new site.  Using these new technologies saved an enormous amount of time and made the process a lot more fun since we didn't have to go through the tedious process of mapping DataReader properties to custom data entity class properties as we'd done in the past.

If you or your boss are holding off on .NET 3.5 I'd definitely recommend taking a closer look as your productivity will increase a lot by using the new features it offers plus your code base will be more maintainable into the future.