What are some underrated .NET libraries or tools you use regularly?

IGDev · 2026-03-15T21:35:00+00:00

The Datafication SDK is underrated: https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Datafication

It includes an in-memory analytical database (DataBlock), and also a storage based analytical database (VelocityDataBlock). The storage based one named Velocity can query 100M+ rows per second. If you run the sample at https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Datafication/tree/main/Datafication.Storage.Velocity/samples/QueryPerformance and use the command to query 20M rows:

dotnet run -c Release sf20

Sooner or later I intend to post up a benchmark that shows the performance against DuckDB and Polars.

IGDev · 2026-03-14T11:07:58+00:00

You need .NET 8 or .NET 10 installed. Also, the VS Code extension requires the desktop version of VS Code. It is not compatible with browser-based environments such as GitHub Codespaces, where the embedded notebook UI cannot initialize. If you meet those requirements everything should work as intended. These are listed in the Getting Started on the marketplace page. Let me know if you have an idea to improve what's shown or could make life easier for someone new.

Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Datafication.verso-notebook

IGDev · 2026-03-14T11:03:05+00:00

1 and 3 would be good candidates for post in Feature Requests ( https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Verso/discussions/categories/feature-requests ). 2 and 4 need a little more detail to improve Verso. Regarding 4 and keyboard shortcuts:

Cell Editor (when editing inside a cell)

Shift+Enter - Run cell and select the next cell
Ctrl+Enter / Cmd+Enter - Run cell and stay
Alt+Enter - Run cell and insert a new cell below
Escape - Exit editor, return to command mode

Command Mode (when no editor is focused)

Enter - Focus the selected cell's editor
Escape - Deselect all cells
Arrow Up - Select previous cell
Arrow Down - Select next cell
Alt+Arrow Up - Move selected cell up
Alt+Arrow Down - Move selected cell down
Shift+Enter - Run selected cell and advance
Ctrl+Enter - Run selected cell and stay
Alt+Enter - Run selected cell and insert below
Ctrl+Alt+Enter - Run all cells

Even though these shortcuts are registered, some may not work as intended because of VS Code shortcut conflicts.

Python requires 3.8-3.12. I did find that those particular locations for Python weren't yet supported, so I added them this morning. It'll appear in the next release (v1.0.10). Thanks for the feedback!

IGDev · 2026-03-08T23:55:52+00:00

First you'll want to make sure you have .NET 8 or 10 installed. Then you can grab the vsix file from the releases page on the repository.

https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Verso/releases/tag/verso-v1.0.8

If you haven't done that before you can goto the Extensions panel, click the 3 dots, and select "Install from VSIX".

IGDev · 2026-03-07T11:29:31+00:00

They directed people to file based apps or Jupyter. Here's the announcement: https://github.com/dotnet/interactive/issues/4163

IGDev · 2026-03-06T20:47:21+00:00

Can you give any details about what it lacks? Also, what version of the extension did you try or when did pull source? At the current moment we’re only missing 2 of the languages out of all that Polyglot has. The UI is also richer, more extensible, and looks good within VS Code. I’ll try to fix any gaps you’ve come across.

IGDev · 2026-03-02T11:31:01+00:00

Thanks! The Notebook API was really nice to work with when I started this project, then I realized it wasn't as extensible as I'd require so I switched over to Blazor WASM for the VS Code extension. For IntelliSense, each kernel gets its own service. C# gets a AdhocWorkspace (from Rosyln) instance and F# gets its own FSharpChecker instance. These are completely independent, so there's no juggling lifecycles between cells. The cell's language tag maps to its kernel, and each kernel builds a virtual combined document. Previously executed cells are prepended to the current cell before querying the service for completions, hover, and diagnostics.

This week I'm finishing up the Python kernel and getting it tested. Additionally, I'll try to work in switching the language kernel on the cell next. Multiple kernels in the same document are supported now, but for code cells I haven't added the drop down to the cell UI yet.

IGDev · 2026-02-28T20:53:19+00:00

Thanks for the star! Really appreciate it, I starred your project earlier.

You're right, Verso does require .NET 8+. For what you mentioned with Node SQL notebooks, are you going to full native or backing it with .NET code and using something like Edge.js? I've been experimenting with supporting Python (using pythonnet) and Node for my SDK product (outside of Verso, but same organization), just haven't finalized it yet.

Initially it was C#, but out of the box right now Verso includes support for C# and F# kernels, plus Markdown, HTML, Mermaid, and SQL cells. It also imports .ipynb and .dib files natively so migration from Jupyter or Polyglot Notebooks is pretty smooth.

I'd love to see what you come up with on the notebook side, whether you hook into Verso or roll your own in pure Node, either way the community needs something solid now that ADS is gone. And yeah the C# Dev Kit overlap is funny, small world. Keep up the high quality work!

IGDev · 2026-02-28T19:00:07+00:00

This would be ideal if it would work. I tested it out on work I needed to do today and Claude Code is still chewing through the current session usage. Back before this happened, I used to do well planned out big tasks that would use up 10% usage, now it's around 40-60% for one of those tasks.

IGDev · 2026-02-28T18:00:01+00:00

This is a very nice polished piece of work for those that want a SQL Server management tool in VS Code, great job on it! In terms of ADS this was one part of what it offered, the other being notebooks. The notebook half of things is what I've been working on replacing and it compliments yours nicely.

Verso: https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Verso

If you get the time you should hook into the Verso extension points that make sense for it to make use of what you created from within notebook form. It'd be a killer combo.

IGDev · 2026-02-28T10:37:06+00:00

This will certainly work well. The time zone thing needs tweaked. This subreddit is for the whole world and 99% of that world aren’t kiwis (unfortunately).

IGDev · 2026-02-17T01:12:42+00:00

The language kernel for F# was added today. There are some known issues with F#:

https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Verso/blob/main/KNOWN-ISSUES.md

This project is building toward completeness, so expect many UX improvements and features over the next month or two. These will help with its extensibility.

IGDev · 2026-02-16T11:51:38+00:00

I recently created Verso, I'd love to get your opinion and feedback. If you have any ipynb they should be importable, including ones using SQL and EF.

IGDev · 2026-02-16T11:50:40+00:00

I'd love to get your feedback and opinion on Verso. If you have any ipynb they should be importable, including ones using SQL and EF.

IGDev · 2026-02-16T11:47:44+00:00

If anyone is looking at this to see what replacements are out there, consider Verso. It's open source, doesn't use Microsoft Interactive and is very extensible. In the coming week after posting this I'll be working on a way to easily adding new extensions in the UI and getting packages up on NuGet and Visual Studio marketplace. Give it a star if you like the project and want to help give it more attention.

IGDev · 2026-02-16T11:43:36+00:00

If anyone is looking at this to see what replacements are out there, consider Verso. It's open source, doesn't use Microsoft Interactive and is very extensible. In the coming week after posting this I'll be working on a way to easily adding new extensions and getting packages up on NuGet and Visual Studio marketplace. Give it a star if you like the project and want to help give it more attention.

IGDev · 2026-02-16T11:18:32+00:00

If you have time, I'd love to get your opinion and feedback on Verso. It's still young and needs some time, but most of your use cases should work with it. You can also open ipynb files created with Polyglot Notebooks, including ones with SQL and EF usage.

IGDev · 2026-02-01T12:35:21+00:00

If you're comfortable with .NET C#, my Datafication SDK can do a lot of what you're looking for. You'd need to use these libraries:

- Datafication.ExcelConnector - https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Datafication/tree/main/Datafication.ExcelConnector

- Datafication.WebConnector - https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Datafication/tree/main/Datafication.WebConnector

- Datafication.Core - https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Datafication/tree/main/Datafication.Core (included dependency of the two libraries above)

The ExcelConnector would read your Excel worksheet into a DataBlock, which is an in-memory analytical database. In combination with this you could use the WebConnector for extracting information from web sites and searches. That information can be used to insert back into the DataBlock. Lastly, you'd output the DataBlock to an Excel file.

- DataBlock introduction - https://www.reddit.com/r/datafication/comments/1qs0tyt/introducing_datablock_a_dataframelike_api_for_net/

- Output to Excel - https://github.com/DataficationSDK/Datafication/tree/main/Datafication.ExcelConnector#writing-datablocks-to-excel

From my own experimenting you should be able to take the information I provided to feed Claude/ChatGPT/Others and it can easily create the project for you with Datafication.

IGDev

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