MSDN

IIS 7.0 Rocks the House!

Bill Evjen — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:55:33 GMT

Yes, we have Windows Server 2008 coming. Yes, also SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, the .NET Framework 3.5, and more - but probably one of the more exciting new items to come at this same time is IIS 7. As Scott Guthrie states in his recent blog post on IIS, this is a major update to the technology.

IIS 7 will allow for a plug-in architecture and allows you to take out all the pieces of the IIS stack that your applications don't need. It also allows you to build your own extensions and plug those directly in the stack. Before this, when Microsoft came out with enhancements to IIS, they usually had to wait for the next release of IIS. With the new IIS 7, new enhancements can be sent out as extensions and easily plugged in. If you work with IIS in anyway, you really should start getting up to speed on this.

IIS has just hit RC0 and here are some good sites to start taking a look at:

Microsoft Releases XML Schema Designer CTP1

Bill Evjen — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:02:55 GMT

As noted to me from Scott Hanselman, Microsoft just released the CTP1 of the XML Schema Explorer. Seems that there are a lot of changes coming in the XML space for the .NET 3.5 release and the XML tools that are currently present in VS2005 will be no more as they are replaced by some new XML tools - the XML Schema Designer being one of them.

Here is a screenshot of the new XML Schema Explorer. You can see from this screenshot that the schema is open on the left-hand side of the shot, while the schema explorer is open on the right. The big items that Microsoft seems to be making note of is the ease of visually dissecting your schema document from this explorer. You can see the search capabilities across the document and the highlighting in the explorer to quickly point you to the correct places in the document.

Quite interesting that they are using the "ticks" on the scrollbar showing places in the document that the search results are found. Clicking on one of these scrollbar ticks will bring you to that place in the document. This is a style of navigation that I am a big fan of ever since using the ReSharper tool from JetBrains. Navigating large documents through visual signifiers in the scrollbar is an something I would think we are going to see a lot more of in tools coming forward.

Overall - I like it. Haven't played with it - but you can see the video about it here. You can also read the XML team blog about it here. And you can download the new XML Schema tool here.

Microsoft Surface and the Future of Home Computing?

Bill Evjen — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:41:17 GMT

The big news of the day is that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer introduced Microsoft Surface.

A table computer that allows the end user to interact with the computer through their fingertips! No keyboard - no mouse. First thing you should do is take a look at the movies Microsoft made about this:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

The ability to drag and drop items around with your fingers. The ability to place a digital camera on the table surface and automatically pull the images / send them / edit them / etc. A bit off in the future but a wonderful look at where technology might be taking us. Is this a glimpse of the future of home computing? I think so. Will it be a table? - maybe not - or will it be a stand up screen like in the movie Minority Report? Its funny, but the table reminds me of my first days of seeing a "computer gaming machine" which was a pong game at my local Pizza Hut when I was a kid. We would lean on the tabletop computer game and play a ton of those pong/asteroids games. Though - that table got really greasy after awhile.

It is interesting to see where Microsoft is spending their dollars for the future of home computing. There will be a emergence of technologies in the future for the home - but when will that come is anyone's guess. Though, right now, Microsoft is making investments in gaming consoles (and doing a good job at it I might add), Tivo-like machines such as Media Center, this Microsoft Surface and more.

Whatever it will be - there will be a heavy emphasis on networking with devices, dummy terminals in the house, communicating with house members at their jobs, as they travel and more. There will be a heavy emphasis on a massive data store in the home for the huge amount of video, pictures, history that a family will want to digitally collect. I, today, could use a 5TB data store for everything I want to store - but alas - not yet.

Too bad we die and don't live on and on as I love seeing technology evolve and the experience just gets better over time. My kids are the lucky ones that will get to play with all those cool gadgets. Enjoy the moment, eh?

Alas my friends - I'm not TechEd bound

Bill Evjen — Tue, 29 May 2007 03:10:57 GMT

I wanted to ... oh yes, I wanted to come to TechEd. It is one of the best conferences out there and it is something that you will find simply overwhelming. I am unable to attend as the product that I have been working on for more than a year for Lipper is about to release (June 15th) and that is tooooo close to be messing around at a conference (no matter how cool I think that conference might be).

I have to say though that the product we are releasing (for the financial services industry) is outstanding and will be the premier product in the collective investment space. I am simple amazed and stunned by it and will give you all more details after its release!

With that said, enjoy TechEd! If this is your first time - don't get hung up with all the PPT sessions. The absolute best experiences in learning that I have EVER had at TechEd is sitting with the MSFT teams in the exhibition hall and going over my issues and their futures. Keep that in mind. You will get the DVDs with all the PPTs and the audio and can review those later - you will not get the opportunity to sit next to Steve Lasker everyday and go over what you are dealing with in your SQL Server environment!

New Book - Professional VB 2005 with .NET 3.0!

Bill Evjen — Tue, 29 May 2007 03:03:46 GMT

Another book! I and some friends just finished a new release of our Visual Basic book. This is another book I wrote with the wonderful Kent Sharkey! :) We really cleaned up this version of the book. This book came together quite well and shows not only the core of .NET 2.0 in depth - but it also covers the new ground of .NET 3.0. The .NET Framework 3.0 includes the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

The table of contents of the book is as follows - (the new chapters are in yellow):

1. Understanding the .NET Framework.

2. Visual Basic 2005 Core Basics.

3. Object Syntax Introduction.

4. Object-Oriented Programming.

5. The Common Language Runtime.

6. Localization.

7. Generics.

8. Namespaces.

9. Exception Handling and Debugging.

10. Data Access with ADO.NET 2.0.

11. Using XML in Visual Basic 2005.

12. Security in the .NET Framework 2.0.

13. Visual Studio 2005.

14. Working with SQL Server.

15. Windows Forms.

16. Windows Forms Advanced Features.

17. Windows Presentation Foundation.

18. Integrating WPF with Windows Forms.

19. Working with ASP.NET 2.0.

20. ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Features.

21. Assemblies.

22. Deployment.

23. Working with Classic .COM.

24. Threading.

25. Windows Workflow Foundation.

26. XML Web Services.

27. Remoting.

28. Enterprise Services.

29. Network Programming.

30. Windows Communication Foundation.

31. Windows Services.

32. Visual Basic and the Internet.

Appendix A. The VB.NET Compiler.

Appendix B. VB.NET References.

My Latest Book - Professional XML

Bill Evjen — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:52:00 GMT

This week marked the release of my latest book - Professional XML. I wrote this with friend Kent Sharkey and some other authors including Michael Kay (editor of the XSLT specification and other things). This book came out really nice and after quickly covering XML - goes straight into covering all the major technologies that are based upon XML. The Amazon site doesn't seem to provide the table of contents at the moment, so here it is:

1. XML Syntax
2. XML Editors
3. XHTML and CSS
4. XFL-FO
5. Document Type Definitions
6. XML Schemas
7. RELAX-NG
8. XSLT
9. XPATH
10. XQUERY
11. XML in the Data Tier
12. The XML Document Model (XML (DOM)
13. Simple API for XML (SAX)
14. Ajax
15. XML and .NET
16. XML and Java
17. Dynamic Languages and XML
18. RSS and Atom
19. Web Services
20. SOAP &WSDL
21. Advanced Web Services
22. REST
23. XML Form Development
24. Resource Description Framework
25. XML in Office
26. XAML

HOW TO: Build Your First WPF Application

Bill Evjen — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:16:00 GMT

I just really started playing around with WPF and XAML and how to build an application in this new format. I really like it, but at the same time, I have a lot to still learn! For my first example, I wanted a form that would have some sort of event that caused UI to change in some manner. For this, I put together a form with a simple Button control on it and a place to put some results on the form after the button is clicked. This form really needs two pieces to work - Window1.xaml and Window1.xaml.cs. Window1.xaml is the visual form and it is laid out using XAML, while Window1.xaml.cs is the code-behind file.

What I really like about this WPF model is that it is very much like the ASP.NET model - which I find quite attractive. You have a page dealing with presentation and another page that deals with all of the business logic surrounding the page. The code for the Window1.xaml file is presented here:

<Window x:Class="XAML_Example.Window1"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="XAML_Example" Height="300" Width="300"
>
<Grid>
   <Button Height="23" Margin="15,15,125,0" Name="button1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Click="button1_Click">Random Number</Button>
   <ScrollViewer Margin="0,50,0,0">
      <TextBlock Name="textBlock1" TextWrapping="Wrap" FontSize="20" FontWeight="Bold" />
   </ScrollViewer>
</Grid>
</Window>

From this, you can see the entire form is defined using the <Window> element. Looking at the attributes of the element, you can also see that I defined the title of the form and its size. All the items within the <Grid> element can actually be in any order you want as the real emphasis is on the Margin attribute which specifies the location of the object. You can see that I have a Button control, a ScrollViewer control, and a TextBlock control on the form. Looking more closely at at the <Button> control, you can create an event for this by simply adding the appropriate attribute. In this case, the Click attribute is added and a method name is assigned to it (button1_Click()). This points to a method that is contained in your code-behind file - Window1.xaml.cs.

using System;

namespace XAML_Example
{

   public partial class Window1: System.Windows.Window
   {
       public Window1()
       {
             InitializeComponent();
        }

        public void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
             Random generator = new Random();
             int randomValue;
             randomValue = generator.Next(10, 100);
             textBlock1.Text += " " + randomValue.ToString();
         }

       }
}

Running this bit of code and pressing the button to initiate the button1_Click event will give you something like the following results as presented here:

Enjoy!

Office 2007 to the Rescue!

Bill Evjen — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:12:00 GMT

I installed Office 2007 on my laptop. This was for me an upgrade from Office 2003 and the upgrade went beautifully. It launches by asking you for the Office key right at the beginning and you can copy and paste the entire key in at once as it is a single textbox (which is a nice feature). You can also provide the key later and just install Office directly without this key. From there, you are provided two buttons - Upgrade and Custom. For kicks, I pressed the Custom tab to see what it was installing and you could also see how the install was going to occur. It was interesting to note that it seems it is not doing an actual upgrade of Office 2003 - but instead, does an uninstall of Office 2003 (saving your files and settings of course in the process) and then doing a new install of Office 2007.

The results? Outstanding and completely worth the upgrade! I love the Ribbon approach and I am of the opinion that all application styles will change over the next few years to incorporate this feature to be the norm. The reason I think this is that end users using Office will learn to use the Ribbon feature and will then come to expect this functionality in the other products that they use each and every day. In fact, Infragistics realizes this as well and is already providing a Ribbon control for your Windows Forms applications and the other control vendors are also jumping on the bandwagon. Really, wait till the product managers, end users, and others start using this and when those guys start designing applications and feeding requirements into development, they will be asking for a Ribbon control functionality.

The other and by far the best product of the Office 2007 suite is Outlook 2007. Really, that is the application that most people spend their entire day in and by far the first feature I have gravitated to is the To-Do Bar:

This bar, on the right, shows the calendar, your next three appointments and all the emails that you have marked for Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week, and more. You can also type tasks in as you get them and have them appear in the Today section. Talk about keeping me organized! I love it. I didn't use the past Task section of Office 2003 because it wasn't in my face as the To-Do Bar is. I now can't live without it.

Bravo Microsoft for putting out a great release!

Web Services - Sending Large SOAP Messages

Bill Evjen — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:33:00 GMT

I have been working in the area of Web services for some time and I am on a project where I needed to distribute some extremely large datasets to some clients (Windows Forms). So, imagine an interface where you need to request information about an entity and you have a service where you can send in an array of entities to then get back an array of result sets about each one of the identifiers passed in. We had one such application and it worked quite nicely in that we built some ASP.NET 2.0 Web services to push out the SOAP messages to the client in just this scenario. It worked so well since we were only sending in 30 identifiers at a time but then we really decided to test it out when we put in 1,000 - 5,000 identifiers into one request. This in return was giving us back tremendously large SOAP messages and in many cases our Windows Forms application was simply timing out. How to approach this we thought. There are many methods of approach and we had to pick one and go with it as we had to support this scenario for our clients.

Our options included:

Using the Windows Communication Foundation and building services that pushed binary objects around instead of using SOAP.
Using .NET Remoting instead and using the binary over HTTP that it offers.
Using an HTTP compression class technique along with SOAP Extensions to compress the SOAP message before it went out across the wire.
Using the HTTP Compression feature found on the Windows Server 2003 box with our standard ASP.NET Web services
Using WSE 3.0 MTOM capabilities to encapsulate our messages into binary objects to send across the wire

There are a lot of options, but we quickly narrowed them down. First off, we are not able to use the WCF yet as we are unable to put this on the client at this point in time as we are supporting so many operating systems that are below the required Windows XP SP2. .NET Remoting ... maybe, but we really wanted to stick to the SOAP model for later routing purposes. Soap Extensions - a possibility, but not the easiest to implement and would require us to put a decompression class on the client. HTTP Compression - that's a possibility. WSE 3.0 - another interesting stance, but would require us to put the WSE 3.0 on the client - something we weren't too interested in doing.

So, we narrowed our tests down to .NET Remoting as well as HTTP Compression using Windows Server 2003. We built a test application that first did a comparison between .NET Remoting and standard ASP.NET 2.0 Web services with no compression enabled. The tests were interesting. First off when a single identifier was sent in and a tiny SOAP message was returned - there really wasn't that much difference between the two. The results were pretty much the same. Though, when sending in 1,000 identifiers .NET Remoting considerably outperformed ASP.NET 2.0 Web services. This was due to the fact that the large SOAP message was being sent as binary over the wire and the entire serialization and deserialization process was eliminated. The results were that .NET Remoting performed by shrinking the time it took to get the response to less than HALF that of the ASP.NET 2.0 Web services approach.

Then we turned on HTTP Compression on the Windows Server 2003 box. Instructions for this can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=322603 but you want to do this for .asmx pages. Though, you will discover that enabling compression through IIS is not the only step you are required to take. In order for the HTTP message to be compressed on the server, you are going to need to get the client to ask for the message to be compressed. This means that the client will need to send a accept-encoding: gzip; in the HTTP header. By default, proxy classes don't do this for you. Instead, you are going to have to force the client to make this type of request by using the new EnableDecompression property in .NET 2.0.

Fundamental.Fundamentals_1_0 proxy = new Fundamental.Fundamentals_1_0();
proxy.EnableDecompression = true;

After you instantiate the proxy class, you simply set the EnableDecompression property to true and you are then good to go - the proper HTTP header will now be included. Enabling our client to do this and sending in the 1,000 identifiers we were amazed that we could just about replicate the .NET Remoting performance and in some cases we could match it. This showed us that we could deliver our large SOAP messages over HTTP and get away with doing the littlest impact to the client that was possible (as far as new installs of any software or code changes to the client app).

Other scenarios may of course warrant different approaches - I'm just describing what worked for us in this case. It was a good lesson.

Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition

Bill Evjen — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 19:07:00 GMT

Oh yeah .... Scott Hanselman beat me to the punch, but Mission “Build Biggest Book Possible” has been completed! Our Professional ASP.NET 2.0 book from Wrox just had to get bigger with all the cool stuff we wanted to add. 300 new pages! So big, that we could only offer the book in hardback because they don't make bindings big enough to handle all the pages (~1,700). Its called, Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition (because it is just so special). :)

And as was stated by others:

Here's a brief list of what's updated and new in this new edition.

FOUR completely new chapters:

Introduction to the Provider Model
Extending the Provider Model
Localization
Instrumentation

TWO new appendixes:

Migrating ASP.NET 1.x Projects
Using Atlas

...and dozens of additions throughout all the existing chapters, including:

Class Designers and Open Test Bench
Build providers
A More Complex Callback Example
Uploading multiple files from the same page
As an example, in Chapter 11, DataBinding in ASP.NET 2.0 these changes:
- Added SqlDataSource Configuration Wizard to add optimistic concurrency
- Added SqlDataSource Events, Using the SqlDataSource with Oracle, AccessDataSource Control
- Added GridView events that fire when the data binding occurs
- Added Using the TemplateField Column in the GridView Control
- Added Using the TemplateField's EditItemTemplate
- Added Expressions and Expression Builder
Using Oracle as Your Database with ASP.NET 2.0
Added Generating Custom XML from SQL 2005

That's the list up through about the first 1/2 of the book...there's a pile more...

And there's an added DVD which is the Visual Studio 2005 Professional 180 day trial, and there's an added CD which contains more than 1000 pages of selected chapters from other Wrox .NET 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0, VB 2005, C# 2005, and SQL Server books.