I took the certification exam for 70-503 - .NET Framework 3.5 - Windows Communication Foundation last month and passed it with a score of 700. Passing score is 700. I prepared from the "Programming WCF Services – Juval Lowy" book. This book is one of the best resources for WCF, it is more like a reference book. The MCTS book does not cover a lot. Technorati Tags: WCF,MCTS,70-503,Web services,.NET 3.5...
I was trying to regenerate a Silverlight proxy, but I kept getting this error: Turns out, Win 7 sometimes adds an <extendedProtectionPolicy policyEnforcement="Never" /> element to your Web.config. Here’s the workaround according to the Silverlight Web Services team: On Windows 7, when you use the Silverlight-enabled WCF Service item template, an <extendedProtectionPolicy /> element may be generated in Web.config. This element is not supported by Silverlight. Simply remove the element...
I have always been annoyed with the mechanics of the Team Foundation Server check-in policies. I understand the limitations, but having to have a specific policy installed on every developers computer before you can use it is slightly ridicules and practically unmanageable. Why is there not a way to have a single installation that allows you to select any policy you want and have it execute in the desired manor on every client, including web clients? I think it is. With the advent of the Dynamic...
Yet another internal .NET Team email in my current company, Injazat Data Systems, that I sent yesterday, and am sharing with you as well. jQuery: · Simplify calling ASP.NET AJAX services from jQuery · Use jQuery and ASP.NET AJAX to build a client side Repeater · Reordering invoice lines using jqGrid and TableDND extension · LA.NET jQuery Posts/Articles Agile · Implementing Scrum ASP.NET · Web Development With ASP.NET Learning Material (Course - Source: MSDN Ramp up Learning Program) · ASP.NET Articles...
Allow me to quote here some emails I sent to the the Dot NET developers group in my company, Injazat, or, as we call ourselves, Ninjazat. I thought it’ll be useful to share some with you as well. · ASP.NET MVC - 20 Hours of FREE Video Tutorials · LINQ FAQ o LINQ FAQ for Newbie’s o LINQ FAQ Part 2 · How we handle application configuration · ScottGu ASPNETMVC Session Video Available Now (Part 1/2 & 2/2) · Web Validation: Best Practices and Tutorials · Building a Single Sign On Provider Using ASPNET...
I was trying to implement a simple autocomplete behavior on a textbox using JQuery and the JQuery Autocomplete plugin but it wasn’t as simple as I expected. The basic idea was to get the options from a WCF web service as the user typed. The first obstacle was preparing the Service to accept the calls from the plugin. The plugin accepts a url as the data source and invokes it with two parameters (and a timestamp), q is the query and limit the maximum number of results to return, so I created the following...
Up to now I haven't explained what my mobile test application does. The main thing I wanted to test was calling a WCF service. If you use .NET CF 3.5 WCF will be available in your application to make the call but you can also call the service as "web service" (asmx) (1) Calling the service as ASMX In you Smart Device Application project just do "Add Web Reference", enter the url of the service (no "mex" part but with final /, like this: http://server:port/Design_Time_Addresses/WcfService/Service1/)...
When we started WCFing in my current project, the first challenge that we had was to get the WCF Services to impersonate the callers, I had burned a lot of mid night oil trying to figure out the right configuration that would make this happen. Till that time I had not gone through the WCF Security Guidance on CodePlex. The Guidance turned out to be quite helpful and very comprehensive. If you have not gone though that yet, I strongly recommend going to CodePlex and reading it right away. For those...
Suppose you have three tables in your database where one of them specifies a many-to-many relationship between the other two (example from AdventureWorks): Suppose also that you have a method such as GetVendors(int productID) that will retrieve all the vendors for a given product through the ProductVendors table (that is , the many-to-many table). Now, if this method is exposed via a WCF service, when your client calls it you will see an exception like this one: "System.ServiceModel.CommunicationException...
Although I hate to quote that often, but, this one is totally worth it: Brad Abrams recently wrote a reference to this great "Evolving a .NET 3.5 Application" white paper, about the common scenario of migrating a .NEt 2.0 project to .NET 3.5. The white paper is available in PDF format here (direct link). About which I quote Brad's words: I reader recently forwarded me an interesting case study that covers a very common scenario: Porting a .NET Framework 2.0 based application to .NET Framework 3.5....
Ran into a serialization problem with WCF the other day that was rather interesting to find and fix. It wasn't a problem with WCF, in the end, but rather with what we were telling WCF to do. So we have some complex entities that we're shoving through the serialization layer. We also send through lists of these entities, and the list may have references to itself. To keep our list sizes small, we've implemented a DataContractSerializerOperationBehavior where when we create the data serializer, we...
Last night (July 22, 2008) I presented on Windows Communication Foundation vs. Web Services at the Kansas City .NET User Group. I talked about Web Services, and how they existed in the .NET 2.0 Framework, and compared them to the new WCF framework in .NET 3.0 and 3.5. There was a turnout of 57 developers, and Modis brought Gates BBQ! I've uploaded the presentation to my SkyDrive here. Many thanks to everyone who showed up to hear me ramble! Technorati Tags: Windows Communication Foundation,WCF,Web...
I found this great article that tells you how to do testing for WCF services exposed as web services, especially REST services (like the ones we create in my company for the project I work on now). What’s the problem ? Typically, for HTTP GET services, you can just put a URL that matches the URI template of the service (the template of the URLs that call the service) in the browser, and simply see what comes back in the browser itself However, when you want to test a service with other HTTP verbs...
Had a problem with WCF that I thought I should blog about. We're in the scenario where we have a WCF service that needs to call another service to do some calculating and then return the result back to the client. For now, the service is hosted on the same server, but eventually, it could get expensive, so we'll push out that calculation to another server. The WCF configuration also has an endpoint address that is not the same as the base address reported to it by IIS; IIS is of course reporting...
· Everything You Wanted To Know About MVC and MVP But Were Afraid To Ask · Functional Programming in C# 3.0: How Map/Reduce/Filter can Rock your World · MbUnit 2.4 - Avoiding Crappy Data Resulted From The Test · Managed Extensibility Framework · IronRuby at Tech Ed 2008 · Velocity: A Distributed In-Memory Cache from Microsoft · Must See WF/WCF Influencer MSDN Webcasts · WCF Webcast Series (Old but good) · Using CSS to Fix Anything: 20+ Common Bugs and Fixes (Found by Mohamed Tayseer) · A jQuery Client...
I have a situation where I want to use a transaction to keep track of a particular message process in order to roll back various parts if there is a failure. The service operation is listening on a queue using the NetMSMQBinding and the operation is marked with the transaction properties of the OperationBehavior like so: <OperationBehavior(TransactionAutoComplete:=True,TransactionScopeRequired:=True)> Public Sub SendHello( ... Using the above attribute enables the operation for transaction...
I seam to be having a little problem. Now, this may be me being stupid, but I can't get an ObservableCollection to work if you pass it a generic type! For example, consider the following code: Public Class ItemBitCollection(Of TItem) Inherits ObservableCollection(Of ItemBit(Of TItem)) End Class Public Class ItemBit(Of TItem) Private m_item As TItem End Class Now, if you create an instance of ItemBitCollection you will see an error on the IDE regardless of wither you use a custom object type or a...
This is the email I sent to SilverKey Tech. Egypt dev team yesterday, sharing here as usual. Article: Info Q: Don't Let Consumers and Service Providers Communicate Directly Just because someone is developing with Web Services does not mean they are following SOA principles Just because you're using HTTP and HTML doesn't mean you get into that camp and vice versa Weblog: "Making IT work" - Musings of a Holistict Architect Weblog: Udi Dahan Article: Autonomous Services and Enterprise Entity Aggregation...
I am looking around on the net for some classes for WPF, WCF, and WF plus any type of certification classes for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Tests. I want to try and pass at least one certification exam for MOSS by the middle of the year. I would also like to learn more information and start writing my own work flows. I know barely anything about WPF, except that it looks really nice. I bet that I could make some really snazzy webparts implementing this technology. I'm not the most awesome...
Today was .NETwork usergroup second gathering. The usergroup is the first and only large/effective "offline" usergroup in Egypt (although there're many others in INETA). They had a great success in their first gathering when they brought Steven Forte to talk about SQL Server 2008 new features for developers and ASP.NET MVC design pattern. I had a detailed post about it in my GWB blog at that time. Check it out for details. Background: First To Second Gathering (Warning: Boring Part!!) The .NETwork...
This is also from an internal mail to SilverKey Tech Egypt office dev. team. Slightly modified this time! (Yes, I know. I should stop this habit of link collection and get back to writing - hopefully soon) Joe On .NET - Windows Workflow Foundation Tutorial Series SourceMaking (Design Patterns, Antipatterns, Refactoring) Brennan’s Blog » Blog Archive » Intellisense for jQuery in Visual Studio 2008 Happy Coding: OOP and FOOP Linq to SQL DataContext Lifetime Management - Rick Strahl's Web Log Dan Driscoll's...
I stumbled upon an excellent utility for WCF Testing that comes with Visual Studio 2008 - WCFTestClient. The tool is an simple way to test WCF clients HTTP and TCP bindings. Some things are not supported, however, for basic WCF Testing, this definitely beats the old ASMX test page. Note: Also check out the WCFSvcHost utility from Visual Studio to host an arbitrary WCF Service. Technorati Tags: Debugging, Development, Microsoft Office, Tips, Tools, WCF, Visual Studio Cross Posted from http://blog.tfanshteyn.com/2008/01/wcftestclient-testing-utility-from.html...
I've encountered a problem trying fix the WCF / WPF Visual Studio 2005 Integration components after I've installed Visual Studio 2008. Installing a VS 2008 will install .NET 3.0 SP1 and remove the installation of .NET 3.0. When trying to install the WCF / WPF Extension, installation display's a message Setup has detected that a prerequisite is missing. To use Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP you must have the .NET Framework 3.0 runtime installed....
In the new paradigm of contract first designs for services a lot of it revolves around exposing a contract that defines the operations and messages for a service. In terms of Web Services (or WCF exposed via a web service) this also means exposing the schemas via the WSDL so that consumers know the inputs and outputs for that service and its methods. This is my big question: When working with NIEM how many are exposing their subset schemas to their web services and how many are using a generic "Package...
My application is distributed via ClickOnce and a requirement is to be able to provide endpoint overrides for multiple environments. Here's what was done to create the solution Smart Client Software Factory includes a service called EndpointCatalog. It allow for easy management of endpoints with environment overrides. Start by adding a Microsoft.Practices.SmartClient.EndpointCatalog.dll as a reference to Infrastructure.Module. Then open ModuleController class in and register the EndpointCatalog service....
I decided that I should have a go at this LINQ thing, so as .NET 3.5 will be RTM at the end of the month I am using LINQ and .NET 3.5 in my new Locator project. The Locator project is just a small application that will run on a users computer and tell a central server where they are. In Aggreko we have the problem that people are moving about a lot (everyone has a laptop) and when you are looking for someone you need to be able to find them. The application sits and poles the IP address of the local...
I have decided to have a little go at creating a Team Foundation Server Event Handler in .NET 3.5 that is resilient and scaleable. I will be using as many of the features of Team Suit as I can, but bear with me as there are a few things that are new to me. TFS Event Handler in .NET 3.5 Articles TFS Event Handler in .NET 3.5 Part 1 - The Architecture TFS Event Handler in .NET 3.5 Part 2 - Handling Team Foundation Server Events TFS Event Handler in .NET 3.5 Part 3 - Passing the events over a Windows...
I recently had the need to create and deliver a presentation on Developing Peer-To-Peer Applications With WCF. Although the technical content was good, my delivery was not. I got stage fright... As I approached the room to give the presentation in which I expected to see a couple of people, I was horrified to hear a clamor of voices, no, a venerable din of idle conversation coming from the room. Not that room, please... but that was indeed the room, and I had to give my presentation to more than...
Something I have noticed in writing an article is that the "Application diagram" in VS2008 does not support Windows Communication Foundation. This I think is an oversight even for Beta 2. Is this going to be in the RTM, I hope so as it would be virtually useless without it! Technorati Tags: VS2008, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio Team System, WCF...
I have decided to have a little go at creating a Team Foundation Server Event Handler in .NET 3.5 that is resilient and scaleable. I will be using as many of the features of Team Suit as I can, but bear with me as there are a few things that are new to me. TFS Event Handler in .NET 3.5 Articles TFS Event Handler in .NET 3.5 Part 1 - The Architecture TFS Event Handler in .NET 3.5 Part 2 - Handling Team Foundation Server Events TFS Event Handler in .NET 3.5 Part 3 - Passing the events over a Windows...
It has been a while since I last posted, but I haven't stopped working :) I am currently on a project involving WPF and WCF. While I am not a big fan of WPF, but I quite like WCF. During the development of our project we run into a very annoying problem with WCF. After some help from Microsoft, we found a solution at last. The problem is very easy to describe. On the one side, we have a WCF service running. On the other side, we have a client with a reference with to this service. Now and then, we...
I have been tinkering with VS2008 for a week now, but I had not had time to really look at it. They have made the interface slicker, and faster making the whole experience a little nicer. When you go to create new projects you get a number of nice options that allow you to target multiple versions of the .NET Framework with a single IDE. This will be of real advantage to those companies that still want to use .NET 2.0 while still evaluating 3.0 and 3.5. It should come as no surprise though that you...
So far we have a contract, 2 client/server pairs (one programmatic and one administrative). We can observe that the highly difficult tasks of text concatenation and changing case are happening. But these examples are extremely trivial, and as we increase complexity, try new things, it would be nice to observer what is going on, especially when it does not go well. Luck for us, there is a built in logging facility in .NET and a complete feature set and viewing tool specifically for WCF. And all can...
We have overhauled the server to support the endpoints in the config file. Let's do the same for the Client. We can then start playing with various config file settings. Just to preserve the samples, I am going to copy the client code to a new app, and modify the new one. Let's call it WCFConsoleClientCfg. Step 1. Delete the interface file we had in the previous client. We are going to use a tool to recreate it. Or at least it's equivalent. Step 2. go to project->add new and pick a application...
Okay, that was a joke. I like writing code. I am not trying to get rid of coders. Okay, trust me? One of the interesting features of WCF is the ability to do the Address and Binding portion of our 3 legged stool administratively. In a xml file called app.config or web.config. This allows some interesting possibilities of changing the service endpoint without changing code. Being able to take a project from development to QA to production (assuming all is well with it) without a recompile to redirect...
If you want to create a Windows Communication Foundation Service Host on the fly then you will need to first create a base address. I would recommend using the DNS host entry instead of the My.Computer.Name as I had many problems on the corporate network with [computername] not working with our proxy settings. Dim baseAddresses() As Uri = {New Uri(String.Format("http://{0}:{1}/TFSEventHandler/Queuer", System.Net.Dns.GetHostEntry(System.Net.Dns.GetHostName).HostName, Port))} Then you need to create...
This week we need to choose the most appropriate communication technology for one of our projects. The project constraints are the following: .NET on both client and server client and server on same LAN A lot of information to be passed from server to client and vice-versa Performance is important Typed DataSets will be used on server side Presentation layer is developed with WPF Security is needed (sensitive or confidential data) The options we have are the following: ASMX Web Services .NET Remoting...
Yasser Shohoud has a very good article on introducing WCF and talking about its internal architecture a bit. This is a really good read. Its also linked off of the wcfguide which I blogged about previously. Link: http://www.yassers.com/content/soa/WCFArchOverview.aspx Technorati tags: WCF, Anatomy, Architecture Cross-posted from tariqayad.com...
I found the following reference pretty good for WCF. Its more streamlined, and bite sized than WCF Community site put up by Microsoft (sorry Ami thats just the truth) Check out http://wcfguide.blogspot.com Technorati tags: WCF, .NET 3.0, Windows Communication Foundation, Framework, WebServices Cross-posted from tariqayad.com...
This isn't new news, but cool nonetheless... LINQ: Language INtegrated Query... Finally set based operations become first class citizens! Here’s a snippet from Dan Fernandez’s post about LINQ static voidMain(string[] args) { string[] aBunchOfWords = {"One","Two", "Hello", "World", "Four", "Five"}; var result = from s in aBunchOfWords // query the string array where s.Length == 5 // for all words with length = 5 select s; // and return the string //PrintToConsole is an Extension method...