SOAP/HTTP vs SOAP/TCP

Recently I had to check out SOAP/HTTP and SOAP/TCP as solutions to a WCF service. I know SOAP/TCP was not there in previous WCF versions. However, after analyzing WCF 4.0, I came to know that it is still not there but can be implemented only thru custom binding.

Tabulated below are some key differentiators on SOAP/HTTP vs SOAP/TCP

SOAP/HTTP	SOAP/TCP
Not connection-based	Connection-based
Stateless	Stateful
Request-Response delivery mechanism	Supports fast infoset
Need to use WSReliableMessaging for reliable data delivery	Reliable data delivery,
	Provides duplex communication
Slowest of the three	Fastest of the three, since only the new/changed data packets are transmitted
OOTB WCF binding available	Custom binding to be created, third-party component available

The SaaS Revolution

SaaS – Software as a Service, the present day mantra of the software industry. Looking at the history of this revolutionary concept, we can see that this concept has evolved to this stage from the centralized hosting of business applications dating back to 1960s. Today’s SaaS essentially extends the idea of Application Service Providers, which came up in the 1990s.  SaaS solutions today are more focused in terms of SaaS vendors typically develop and manage their own software, rely predominantly on the Web and only require an internet browser to use and solutions normally utilize a multi-tenant architecture, in which the application serves multiple businesses and users, and partitions its data accordingly.

So what is SaaS?

SaaS is a software application deployed as a hosted service and accessed over the internet. To be more precise, SaaS is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet.

SaaS is increasingly becoming prevalent delivery model as the underlying technologies that support web popular. Benefits of the SaaS model include

·         easier administration

·         effective maintenance like updates and patch management

·         compatibility: All users will have the same version of software.

·         easier collaboration

·         global accessibility

·         reduced TCO

Risks of the SaaS model are

·         Increased risk of service disruption, connectivity and online security

·         All of the documentation and productivity is in the vendor's hands.

·         Security and protection of the data and privacy becomes even more necessary

Above all these, SaaS proves to be the perfect cost-effective solution for small and medium enterprises.

What am I upto now?!?!

First of all, let me share with you about what I do now.

I was a developer three years back and now I am no more a core fulltime developer. I am now into technical pre-sales... This role is really interesting. I get a chance to look a wider range of technologies and learn more. Though I do not write code much, I enjoy exploring the ways and means of solving technical challenges.

Back after a long break!!!

After a long break I am back in to the blog world...I hope to post regularly from now on(atleast one post a week)... :-)

Microsoft WEBDAY at Chennai

CNUG is organizing the Microsoft WEB-DAY at chennai on 3rd June, 2007, Sunday. If you are interested in the latest Microsoft Web Technologies, visit the CNUG homepage and register yourself.

WPF/E from now on aka Silverlight!!!

WPF/E is now Silverlight. I don't understand why the name Silverlight. Visit the site here...

Contract-First or Code-First???

Just stumbled over this blog entry this morning. Quite interesting. Give it a read here...

Web Service Software Factory for WCF

The second version of the Web Service Software Factory has released. This new release has everything the first one had with the addition of loads of new stuff specifically for building WCF Web services using VS 2005. Though this was released in Jan itself, I couldn't peep into it for quite sometime.

The new features help you apply message-level security, construct services from WSDL/XSD, perform design-time code/config analysis, apply message validation, and migrate from ASMX services. If you're building WCF Web services, you would surely want to check this out at Web Service Software Factory.

Prescriptive Guidance for VSTS available now

The Patterns & Practices team at MS have come out with a new prescriptive guidanse for VSTS and can be available at http://www.codeplex.com/VSTSGuidance. Here you can find information on Practices, Source Control/Versioning, Extensibility, Project/Process Management, TFS, build, work items, reporting and much more.

Via: J D Meier

Recommended Reading: NULL Vs NULL

Mike Coles has posted a follow-up article "NULL Vs NULL" to his previous article "Four Rules On Nulls"

I noticed that SET ANSI_NULLS is been deprecated and will be removed in future versions only when I read this article. Now I have started looking for other deprecated features in SQL 2005. How I see that MS has not documented alternatives for SET ANSI_NULLS and few opther deprectaed features. Check Deprecated Database Engine Features in SQL Server 2005 for more details.

Implementing STS for Infocards

I have been trying to use Infocards in my WinFX app and had some problems in using them. I was not able to import my self-created Infocards into my identity store. The problem was that when importing the infocard into the identity store, it was checking for the provider address where an STS(Security Token Service) needs to be running which was not the case in my system. Searching for a solution came across this STS implementation in Martin Gudgin's blog.

Adobe Illustrator to XAML Export Plug-In

Michael Swanson has created an Adobe Illustrator Plug-in that exports images to XAML for use in Avalon. With only a few minor color saturation issues, the plug-in is able to faithfully reproduce almost any image from Illustrator into XAML.

Michael Swanson has done a really amazing job. Actually I was searching for a way out to provide a dynamic UI builder for my WPF app and ended up in this plug-in. The plug-in gives out XAML syntax that is compatible with the February 2006 CTP and later (including Beta 2).

Read more about the plug-in here...

Download the plug-in here...

US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletin for 2005

Happened to read the US-CERT cyber security bulletin summary. It reads...

"...The information is presented only as a index with links to the US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletin the information was published in. There were 5198 reported vulnerabilities: 812 Windows operating system vulnerabilities; 2328 Unix/Linux operating vulnerabilities; and 2058 Multiple operating system vulnerabilities..."

However, they have put a disclaimer stating that the results are an aggregation of reports from various sources.

TechEd 2006

I had the opportunity of attending the TechEd 2006 at Chennai. That was great rocking TechEd. However, when compared to the previous TechEds, I felt the liveliness was missing. More so, could be due to that instead of a live keynote session, this time they had a video played which didn't help to kick start the enthusiasm.

The Architect track sessions were more in a Business Process perspective, had little of technology. I request the oprganisers to please note that architects in India are techies who love to understand the new technologies and use them in their solutions. And due to this, the people who had registered for architect track, actually attended the developer track.

WinFX sessions where good. Mostly they were kind of introductory sessions rather than deep dives, except for the session on WCF by Gaurav Khanna. His session on CLR hosting was an eye-opener to understand the way CLR worked and how to extend the CLR capabilities in v2.0.

The security sessions by Vineet Gupta was very useful in the sense, developers got an idea of the things they could do out-of-the-box to aid security, showing security is not something outside the app, but something that runs through the app from the presentation layer to the DB.

For people who missed the TechEd 2006, you could get the presentations downloaded from http://www.techedindia.com

Vista is amazing!!!

For the past one week I am at Bangalore attending a training for Windows Vista.

We used to struggle to get a nice, jazzy UI for apps, which is far easy in WPF and I was amazed to look at getting all the UI gimmicks I would love to with just XAML... thanks to the declarative programming model introduced with WPF.

On WCF, exposing an app as a service is just for a few configurations and you are done... I have been working with SOA kind of appa for quite sometime, with WCF it is become so easy...

Thank you MS, for giving us such a nice technology.

Let's Rock the Community Launch!!!

The community launch of VS2005 is up at CNUG!!!

For more details check www.cnug.net. Registrations open at http://groups.msn.com/chennainetusergroup/communitylaunchsignup1.msnw

Awaiting to rock the community Launch!!!

Update: We had a Rocking Community launch with around 400 participants. Good thing was almost 80-85% of the crowd were developers.

VS 2005 Developer Launch - Chennai

The developer launch of VS2005 is happening at Chennai this Thursday(15/12/2005) at Le Royal Meridien. I just got the confirmation for my registration. I feel excited about attending the event and eagerly looking forward for the day!!!

Breaking Changes from Beta2 to RTM

MS has published the details of the breaking changes from .NET2.0 Beta2 to the RTM version.
The list goes like this:

Breaking Changes Overview

.NET Framework Version 2.0

• Threading Cancellation Functionality
• INullableValue Interface
• System.Nullable
• Boxing and Unboxing of Nullable

.NET Client

• MenuCommands Class
• Behavior Class
• ColumnWidthChangedEventArgs Class
• BindingContext Class
• DataGridViewRow Class
• DataGridViewCell Class
• Client Application User Settings
• Application Settings Serialization
• TreeView and TreeNode Classes
• BackgroundWorker Class
• MaskedTextBox Class
• GetPreferredSize Property of Form Controls
• Windows Forms API Changes
• CancelRowEdit Event
• AsyncCompletedEventArgs.Error Property
• RadioButton.TabStop Property
• MDI Automatic Merging
• BindingSource.Items Property

.NET Compact Framework

• EventArgs Classes

Common Language Runtime (CLR)

• XCertificateUI Class
• System.Threading.Thread Class
• KeyValuePair Class
• AssembliesVisibleTo Attribute

System.Data Namespace

• SqlDataReader.GetSchemaTable Method
• SqlNotificationEncryptionType Enumeration
• System.Data.SqlTypes.SqlStreamChars Property
• SqlDataReader.GetSqlValue Return Type

Globalization

• Persian Calendar Class
• DateTimeFormatInfo

ClassVisual Studio Tools for Office

• VSTView Interface

Visual C++ Programming Language

• ATL Server — CAtlHttpClient Class
• Floating-point Control Word Support Functions
• Dynamic Cast from Private Base
• MFC Wrapper for LoadLibraryEx()
• MFC -bit Message Map Support

C# Programming Language

• Compilation Error Due to Implicit Conversion
• Checked and Unchecked Expressions
• Nullable Does Not Satisfy IComparable Constraint Error
• Cannot Form a Delegate Over Nullable Error
• Operator "is" Returns true for T and Non-null T?

Visual Basic Programming Language

• TypeOf Statement
• Non-CLS Compliant Return Types
• Overriding Object Members in Structures
• Namespaces with Different Casing
• Implementing MustOverride Methods
• AppActivate Case-insensitivity
• AppActivate Right-Hand Title
• CreateObject Case-insensitivity
• Zero-Based Collection Object
• FileIO Enumerations
• FileLogTraceListener.CustomLocation Property
• FileLogTraceListener Date Format

ClickOnce Runtime Process

• ClickOnce Store Change
• WebBrowser Permissions

Visual Studio

• Visual Studio Settings
• Machine.config File Changes
• Visual C++ Beta Project Open Error
• Errors When Deploying Device Projects to the Device Emulator

ASP.NET

• Unique Class Names
• HTML Default Validation Schema
• Events for Non-Visible Controls
• ICallbackEventHandler.GetCallbackResult Method
• ASP.NET Personalization Database Schema
• Page.CreateStateFormatter Method
• Aspnet_regiis.exe Utility Argument Change
• WebPart File Format
• System.Web.UI.IPageHeader
• Relative References in the Configuration File
• Web Project Global Settings and Project Policy Settings

Check the Breaking Changes in Visual Studio and the .NET Framework for complete details. Just went through the document to have a bird's view of the changes, sounds good.

New Generation MS Certifications

Microsoft has come up with new certifications based on .NET2.0 technologies. Have a look at the details at The New Generation of Microsoft Certifications.

Case Study on Application Development with Whidbey & Yukon

Polaris Software Lab Triples Developer Productivity with Microsoft is a brand new case study that details the company's experience with one of its product Intellect-Collect that was ported to .NET from Java. The case study sounds pretty good. Just have a read and share your thought about it.