.NET Framework 4.6.1 Improves on WPF, SQL Connectivity -- Visual Studio Magazine

.NET Framework 4.6.1 Improves on WPF, SQL Connectivity

.NET Framework 4.6.1 released. Meanwhile, variations of .NET Framework 4.x older than 4.5.2 are approaching end of support.

By Michael Domingo
12/11/2015

Microsoft's .NET Fundamentals Team a few weeks ago announced a new version of .NET Framework 4.6.1. It includes a number of streamline improvements to Windows Presentation Foundation and SQL Connectivity, to name a few. And just recently, the team also re-emphasized end of support for versions of .NET Framework versions older than 4.5.1.

.NET Framework 4.6.1 streamlines some functions of WPF, including touch events and rich text box typing. WPF can also recognize globally registered custom dictionaries, and now is able to spell check more languages when deployed on Windows 8.1 systems and newer. The team said it also released new implementations of D3Dimage for interoperation of DX 10 and 11 content, available as a Nuget package. The team said it also moved 200 WPF samples from MSDN to Github.

.NET 4.6.1 security performance has also been improved, with support for X509 certificates containing the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. "ECDSA keys are smaller than equivalent-security RSA keys, resulting in better performance in uses such as Transport Layer Security," notes the team, in a blog post.

On the data end, .NET 4.6.1 also adds sports a number of data connectivity improvements, including support for SQL Connectivity for AlwaysOn, Always Encrypted and improved connection open resiliency when connecting to Azure SQL Database. There's also support for distributed transactions using the updated System.Transactions APIs from within Azure SQL Database.

Meanwhile, the team also has made it known for some time that support for .NET. Once again, they've announced it here, now that the date is a bit over a month away.

"Beginning January 12, 2016 only .NET Framework 4.5.2 will continue receiving technical support and security updates," according to a post from August 2014 from the .NET Fundamentals team, as soon as the team worked out the roadmap. "There is no change to the support timelines for any other .NET Framework version, including .NET 3.5 SP1, which will continue to be supported for the duration of the operating system lifecycle."

According to the team's post, because .NET 4.5.2 is a runtime change, nothing needs to be done for those using apps installed over older versions of .NET 4.x. From the team: "Since .NET 4.5.2 is a compatible, in-place update on top of the .NET 4, 4.5, and 4.5.1 even a large software application such as Exchange that was built using .NET 4 will continue to run without any
changes when the .NET runtime is updated from .NET 4 or .NET 4.5 to .NET 4.5.2."

The team provides a matrix and instructions that can be used to figure out which version of .NET 4.x is deployed in the blog, here.

About the Author

You Tell 'Em, Readers: If you've read this far, know that Michael Domingo, Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief, is here to serve you, dear readers, and wants to get you the information you so richly deserve. What news, content, topics, issues do you want to see covered in Visual Studio Magazine? He's listening at [email protected].

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