Why Serilog? It is easy to set up, has a clean API, and is portable between recent .NET platforms. The big difference between Serilog and the other frameworks is that it is designed to do structured logging out of the box. Another thing I really like about Serilog is that it can be configured via the appsetting.json file alongside configuring through code. Changing logging configuration without touching the codebase is really helpful, especially in the production environment. 

Entity Framework is Microsoft’s flagship Object/Relation Mapper, and the recommended way to access relational databases. Entity Framework Core is a complete rewrite from the “classic” Entity Framework, building on the new multiplatform .NET Core framework and adding the ability to connect to nonrelational data sources while keeping the features that made Entity Framework Code First so popular. In Entity Framework Core Succinctly, join Ricardo Peres to explore this new version of the O/RM, from getting set up to avoiding common traps. 

To reduce allocations and memory usage when serializing Json.NET 8.0 adds a new IArrayPool interface. Json.NET is already very lean when it comes to allocations, working with raw characters on array buffers instead of allocated strings, but those buffers can easily grow large, and a new buffer is created each time JSON is read or written. IArrayPool allows array buffers to be reused, similar to connection pooling with a database, or thread pooling in .NET. 

Today, we are releasing the 3.4.3 RTM version of the NuGet Visual Studio 2015 extension and the Windows x86 commandline executable. We continue to heavily invest in improving the quality of NuGet scenarios in Visual Studio and commandline. The complete list of issues fixed in this version is available on GitHub. In this post, we will review the important changes in 3.4.3 release. 

This is the first release of a 64-bit Visual Studio and we’d love for you to download it, try it out, and join us in shaping the next major release of Visual Studio with your feedback. 

In this series, we're going to walk through the database design of our Workflow app and show each part of the solution was implemented, and finally how they were all wired together 

Issues Fixed in 15.9.12

These are the customer-reported issues addressed in 15.9.12:

• Access violation C++ /CLI 15.9.5 ISO C++ Latest Draft Standard since 15.9.5.
• An error occurred loading this property page (CSS & JSON).
• Visual Studio 2017 crashing when editing package.json.
• Opening package.json locks up Visual Studio.
• PGO Code Gen Bug - Vectorized instruction accessing memory OOB.
• Bad code gen in recursive bucket split routine.
• Compiler optimization bug in 15.8.9.
• We have fixed a linker error LNK4020 when using PCH, /Zi, and /GL in distributed build systems, such as IncrediBuild. The C++ compiler backend now correctly associates CIL OBJs with their corresponding compiler generated PDB when generating debug info for cross-module inlining.

Security Advisory Notices

• Diagnostics Hub Standard Collector Vulnerability