All posts by : Pluralsight Blogs

1 of 116 | Technical Currency Metric - I was recently presented a rather interesting question, “Are our products technically current?” The easy answer is to look at something like whether or not our web applications will run on the latest version of IIS and whether or not our applications perform properly under the latest browser versions. That’s the easy way out though. It turns out to be a far more layered question as you begin asking these sorts of follow-on question. How far back must we provide functionality to our clients? Do we still support that version of SQL Server, Oracle, IIS, or Apache? How much time between a new product releases (say, Internet Explorer 8) and our public support for it? 3months, 6 months,......

2 of 116 | Null Strings in ASP.NET Declarative DataSource Updates - I just spent about 15 minutes debugging a problem where a document was getting unexpected nulls where empty strings should have been. Indeed controls like the TextBox have code in them that allows you to set the Text property to null and the TextBox will convert that into an empty string. So it's a bit counterintuitive that the declarative data source works the opposite way by default. When you use a declarative data source to perform a parameterized update that contains string parameters, consider setting ConvertEmptyStringToNull='false' on your <asp:Parameter> elements, because it's true by default! In other words, if a text field contains an empty string, it'll ......

3 of 116 | Programming the MetaWeblog API in .NET/C# - Most modern blogging engines support the MetaWeblog API, which was defined by XML-RPC.com many years ago.  It's become one of the most popular API's for programmatically interacting with blogs because of its simplicity. Even Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces provides support for it. I wanted to use this API recently to interact with our Community Server implementation so I started searching around for client-side implementations that would be easy to program in C#. I was surprised that I couldn't find a mainstream implementation readily available. So I followed the example on MSDN and built my own MetaWeblog library in C# on top of Cook Computing's XML-RPC.NET library......

4 of 116 | Serializable XmlDocument - It's surprising that XmlDocument isn't marked [Serializable], because it's very natural to serialize one into a stream. I wanted to put an object into ASP.NET ViewState the other day, and quickly ran into this roadblock, because part of the object included an XmlDocument, which is not serializable. A quick search revealed that most people deal with this problem by storing a string instead. Indeed, that was where I started, but I quickly realized that there are multiple places in my code where I want to do this sort of thing, and I don't want to have to mess with it in each data structure that contains an XmlDocument. So I put together a simple class that holds an XmlDocumen......

5 of 116 | Visual Studio SP1 and The Metification of REST - Metification – verb The act of adding metadata to a web service in order to facilitate tooling and discovery. The act of adding complexity to a web service in order to achieve tight coupling. Pick one. Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 has just arrived with new features, including version 1.0 of ADO.NET Data Services (a.k.a Astoria). From the description (highlighting is mine): ADO.NET Data Services … consists of a combination of patterns and libraries that enables any data store to be exposed as a flexible data service, naturally integrating with the Web, that can be consumed by Web clients within a corporate network or across the Internet. ADO.NET Data Services us......

6 of 116 | Introducing Microsoft Code Name Zermatt - For a couple of years now, I've been giving talks about "claims-based identity", and "claims-aware applications". The most concrete example of a claims-based identity architecture that I've been able to show so far is Active Directory Federation Services v1 (ADFS) and Windows CardSpace. And the claims programming model I've been using is the one that shipped with WCF in the System.IdentityModel assembly.But today I'm happy to announce that there's a new path forward in the claims world. Zermatt is the "identity framework" that I've been itching to talk about, but until today, hasn't been announced publicly.Well, Vittorio just made th......

7 of 116 | Keeping LINQ Code Healthy - In the BI space I’ve seen a lot of SQL queries succumb to complexity. A data extraction query adds some joins, then some filters, then some nested SELET statements, and it becomes an unhealthy mess in short order. It’s unfortunate, but standard SQL just isn’t a language geared for refactoring towards simplification (although UDFs and CTEs in T-SQL have helped). I’ve really enjoyed writing LINQ queries this year, and I’ve found them easy to keep pretty. For example, suppose you need to parse some values out of the following XML: <ROOT> <data> <record> <field name="Country">Afghanistan</field> <field name="Year"&g......

8 of 116 | A Note From the New Guy - I took classes with Aaron, Don, Fritz, and Keith as far back as 2001. Back then subjects included XML, COM+ services, messaging we called web services, and something new coming from MSFT called .Net. It was soon clear that the people teaching these classes were a caliber above us “Average Joes”. These folks were genuine ninjas. I have followed their blogs and writings since I first met them and my regard for their work has only increased over the years. This is why I feel so honored to be considered a contributor in PluralSight’s team of instructors. I taught some classes on Team System through Accentient over the course of the last year or so. Thank you, Rich. I really appreciate the opp......

9 of 116 | Upcoming webcasts - There are some WCF-related webcasts coming up during July, with monday's one on transactional WCF support.  You can find links to them on the MSDN Webcasts site.  This month's talks are: Webcast Title Date/ Time Presenter Transactional Windows Communication Foundation Services with Juval Lowy 7/7/2008 10:00 AM PST Juval Lowy Using Windows Workflow Foundation to Build Services with Jon Flanders 7/9/2008 10:00 AM PST Jon Flanders WCF Extensibility Deep Dive with Jesus Rodriguez 7/11/2008 10:00 AM PST Jesus Rodriguez Bringing Enterprise Data to Life with SharePoint Serve......

10 of 116 | I guess I should be flattered - That some spammer thought my wiki pages where hit enough to warrant modifying them on a daily basis with links to various "odd" sites ;-) Thanks to Craig I've upgraded to FlexWiki 2.0 and now those pages are locked down - I apologize if you've visited them and they haven't been right,  should be ok from now on. My Workflow Sample Page My BizTalk Sample Page   ...

11 of 116 | E4X and/or VB9 XML Users - How's it going? - I've been spending a lot of time with XML again lately. Since my last stint with XML, I know we shipped native XML suppport in VB9. I also know that there are E4X implementations out in the wild. What I'd love to know is how either of these are working out for people? What do you love? What blows? What do you wish you had? I'm also interested in hearing from XQuery users, but I'm keenly interested on how the “you got peanut butter in my chocolate” solutions are working out. Feel free to comment here or via a private mail (dbox at the usual place).  ...

12 of 116 | Intellisense for XML config files broken in VS 2008? - I remember having trouble in VS 2005 with Intellisense not working - the trick back in those days was to remove the namespace declaration that was added by various tools. As long as the content was in no namespace, Intellisense seemed to work. In VS 2008, Intellisense for config files was working great for me until recently, and now, regardless of whether I have the namespace or not, it appears hopelessly broken. I checked under XML|Schemas to see if the schema was in place, and indeed I have DotNetConfig.xsd listed in there for an empty namespace, and it's got the little green checkmark by it, which makes me think VS recognizes that this is the schema it's supposed to use, but still no joy......

13 of 116 | Windows Mobile Webcast Series – Getting Ready for Tech Ed (and other life changing events) - If you've been thinking about getting started with Windows Mobile programming, then you'll want to check out this webcast series co-presented by Maarten Struys, Constanze Roman, and me. We originally put this series together so that people who are new to Windows Mobile could get a foundation in Windows Mobile before attending TechEd Windows Mobile-related sessions. Honestly though, this series is useful for anyone who is looking to start developing Windows Mobile applications whether or not you're attending TechEd. Part 1: Developing Applications for Windows Mobile Devices (now available on-demand) Part 2: Developing Your First Real Windows Mobile 6 Application (Wednesday 21-May) Part ......

14 of 116 | XML Schema Explorer in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 - In case you didn't notice, the XML Schema Designer that was made available as a downloadable CTP back in August 2007 made it into Visual Studio 2008 SP1. It's now called the XML Schema Explorer. You can read more about it here....

15 of 116 | Optimizing declarative datasource binding within UpdatePanels - If you've been working with UpdatePanels in ASP.NET Ajax, I'm sure you appreciate how simple they make it to add Ajax behavior to almost any ASP.NET page. You can easily isolate portions of your page to update independently using asynchronous callbacks instead of refreshing the entire page with a standard post-back. In order to keep the programming model identical to that of a synchronous post-back page, however, the UpdatePanel-initiated request will run through your server-side page logic in its entirety, which is often doing more than needed to fulfill the request to update only the contents of the UpdatePanel that actually initiated the request (this is assuming you have set UpdateMode=......

16 of 116 | WCF Strategies for Windows Mobile Webcast - Due to a last minute scheduling problem, my planned appearance on geekSpeak last week to talk about Windows Communications Foundation (WCF) Strategies for Windows Mobile had to be rescheduled. I realize it's a bit of short notice but I wanted to let everyone know that it is now scheduled for Monday 12-May at 12-noon PDT (3PM EDT, 19:00 UTC). The URL to register for the webcast is still the same. I really encourage you to come by and checkout this webcast. Although, our initial point of reference is WCF on Windows Mobile, most of what we talk about applies equally to all mobile-oriented applications whether running on a Windows Mobile device, or laptop/notebook computer. One of the key ......

17 of 116 | MSDN Updates - Yesterday was a big day for me with respect to MSDN. There were a pair of "the new replaces the old" moments.   The first event was the one Larry Jordan amusingly subtitles "There will be only one!" What happened was, the old MSDN finally got turned off - the MTPS-based version of MSDN is now the only version running. http://msdn2.microsoft.com now redirects to http://msdn.microsoft.com. That means no more fun URLs like https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_basics/shell_basics_extending/fileassociations/fileassoc.asp. Now it's http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb776847.aspx. Ahh - that's better.   Since I hel......

18 of 116 | A Whirlwind of Webcasts - It looks like Webcast season is upon us J … Between now and Tech Ed, Maarten Struys and I will be presenting a combined total of 7 webcasts. This Wednesday, 30-April and next Wednesday, 7-May I'll be the guest on MSDN's geekSpeak. Then starting next week (week of 5-May), Maarten Strays and I will be co-presenting a multi-part webcast series on a variety of Windows Mobile topics as a lead-in to Tech Ed Developer 2008. geekSpeak This Wednesday (30-April) I'll be talking about SQL Server Compact Tips and Tricks (both devices and desktop). I'm really looking forward to this talk. Those of you who have followed my blog or who have seen my whitepapers or webcasts know that I'm a big fa......

19 of 116 | BizTalk Server 2006 R3 just announced - Steve Martin, director of product management for Microsoft's Connected Systems Division (CSD), just announced their plans for the next version of BizTalk Server on his blog. It will be called BizTalk Server 2006 R3. This new version will be updated to work with Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008. It will also be updated with the following SOA-related features: New web service registry capabilities with support for UDDI v3.0 Enhanced service enablement of applications through new and enhanced adapters Enhanced service enablement of “edge” devices through BizTalk RFID Mobile Enhanced interoperability and connectivity support for B2B......

20 of 116 | Randomizing rows in a DataTable - I've been working on a project recently where I had the need to randomly shuffle all of the rows in a DataTable. I wanted to do it with the DataTable itself instead of in the act of populating the DataTable for a couple of reasons: 1) I wanted to keep the DataTable in memory and shuffle it in place multiple times without going back to the source, and 2) I had multiple sources where data was coming from (SQL and XML) so I preferred to keep the randomization logic in one place. I also didn't want to copy all of the data (even though it was not a large amount) each time I shuffled, so I decided to use a DataView to display the data shuffled each time I needed it. Here's the utility function I......

21 of 116 | Applied BTS R2 in the Windy City - I've been teaching mostly WF and WCF lately, so I'm excited that in a couple of weeks (April 22) I'll be getting a chance to teach our core BizTalk course again in the lovely city of Chicago.  I'm excited because there is a lot of cool stuff for this particular open enrollment.  1) R2 - need I say more? I will.  We will be using the latest bits to teach the core course from now on so you'll be learning BizTalk Server fundamentals using the latest and greatest version.  This is still a class for developers new to BizTalk, so if you have taken this class, you might be interested in the R2 features class that Jon is teaching in May and August.  2) Dual Monitors!&nb......

22 of 116 | Problem creating data-bound DataGrid in Device Project - The other day while working in Visual Studio 2008, I encountered an unexpected error while attempting to create a DataGrid by dragging a table from the Data Sources pane onto a form (something we've all done many times). At first Visual Studio appeared to be creating the DataGrid and associated components (BindingSource, TableAdapter, etc.) correctly but then Visual Studio threw an error: An error occurred while performing the drop: Length cannot be less than zero. Parameter name: length The error message might have been useful if I had access to the Visual Studio source code – but I was just using Visual Studio, not building it. Needless to say, the error mes......

23 of 116 | WCF Security Guidance from P&P - This is new; J.D. and crew are hosting it on CodePlex to get feedback. From J.D.'s blog: Our patterns & practices WCF Security Guidance Project is in progress on CodePlex.  This is our first release of prescriptive guidance modules for WCF Security.  How TosOur How Tos give you step by step instructions for performing key tasks: How To - Create and Install Temporary Certificates in WCF for Message Security During Development How To - Create and Install Temporary Certificates in WCF for Transport Security During Development How To - Impersonate the Original Caller in WCF calling from Web Application How To - Impersonate the Original Caller in WCF calling from Windows Forms Ho......

24 of 116 | Automating the process of associating the Device Emulator with the Cellular Emulator - If you do much work with Windows Mobile applications, there's a good chance that you frequently use the Cellular Emulator to test out things like call handling, SMS message handling, as well as cellular network behavior. I'm a pretty big fan of the Cellular Emulator … I remember what it was not that long ago when we didn't have it … that said … There is one thing that I do sometimes find bothersome (yes I know this is a very small thing) – it's the process of associating the Cellular Emulator with a Device Emulator. You have to: Open the Device Emulator Configuration dialog Select the Peripherals tab Enter the Cellular Emulator COMx port number into the Serial Port 0 field Dismiss the ......

25 of 116 | Elegant Code Podcast - Last week I had the pleasure of teaching a class for Healthwise in Boise, and while there met David Starr.  David has a website called Elegant Code and we got a chance to sit down for a podcast during the week.  We chatted about WF, WCF, BizTalk, "Oslo" and being a Pluralsight instructor.  Have a listen if you are interested, and check out the rest of the site while you are there.  David also organized the Boise Code Camp, which I, sadly, missed by just a day.  From the sound of it, this was a huge success and a pretty large event, even by west coast standards.  I'm sorry I missed it....

26 of 116 | DevWeek 2008 wrap-up - I just wrapped up DevWeek 2008, a wonderful developer conference held each year in London. This show brings in some of the best attendees around...I always really enjoy my time here. I'm sitting in my hotel here decompressing before my long journey home. Here are the demos from my sessions:  Programming WCF (workshop) The ABC's of Programming WCF Message-Oriented WCF SOAP, REST, POX, & RSS Getting Started with BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (workshop) Thanks again to the attendees for making this a great event once again, for all the thought provoking questions and discussions along the way. Hope to see you again next year! I'm going to especially miss the Indian food and running along......

27 of 116 | Request for Input from WF - Request for input from the Windows Workflow Foundation Team: “The Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) team is looking for YOUR input to help us prioritize our efforts around designer re-hosting scenarios. If you're interested in helping us shape the future of this feature, tell us what you think by filling in this survey. https://live.datstat.com/MSCSD-Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=WF_Rules_Designer_Rehosting_Blogs The survey will close on Wednesday, March 19th 2008.”...

28 of 116 | March CTP of HPC Server 2008 just released - Microsoft has just released a CTP of its upcoming HPC Server 2008 product (the next version of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003).  The MPI library has undergone a series of performance enhancements (e.g. Network Direct for more efficient message communication), and the scheduler now provides an easier and more interactive way to execute kernels of work (based on the scheduler's new SOA capabilities for job submission and execution).  I'm just starting to kick the tires, existing MPI and OpenMP apps runs just fine on the new version.  Next up is to start playing with the new scheduler... The CTP also includes numerous other improvements, including better setup an......

29 of 116 | Windows Workflow/Rules Designer Re-hosting - The design surface of the shipping Windows Workflow Designer can be re-hosted in applications other than Visual Studio. The team that owns building the vNext designer is looking for input around re-hosting scenarios. If you have an interest in this feature, you can help shape its future by filling out this survey, on or before March 19....

30 of 116 | Building the transaction protocol documents - You've undoubtedly read about the announcement last week to publish our protocol documents on msdn.  If you've gone and looked, there's an extensive set of documents posted. You may also remember that I mentioned that I'd been involved in some projects that had taken up quite a bit of my time over the past 18 months.  One of those projects involved some of those documents -- the MSDTC protocols [MS-CMPO], [MS-CMP], [MS-DTCO], and others.  If you take a look at these documents, you'll find that they describe a fairly complex set of messages, state machines, and inter-component interactions.  Constructing this documentation was a pretty interesting challenge, and one that......

31 of 116 | Disappearing BizTalk Add Generated Items wizard with SQL adapter - I've run into this in two different places now so I figured it was time to blog about it and hopefully help someone else out since I didn't see much about this on the web when searching.  What I experienced was that when I would try to add a schema for a table in SQL Server, the wizard would get part way through allowing me to configure it, and then it would just disappear (usually when I hit the next button after specifying the select state or when I was about to choose the tables for an updategram) with no errors in the UI or in the event log.  I have seen this in two different cases.  In the first case, and easiest to fix, I was trying to access tables to create an update......

32 of 116 | MTPS REST API Updates - Well, I warned you that we'd be updating the MTPS REST API (located at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/restapistubs/). And we did. A bunch of things have changed. Mostly, I've added new functionality. I did, however, change the way one thing works in a fairly significant way, but it just makes for a good opportunity to talk a bit about how the service works.   If you visit the content section of the service, you'll be given a list of all the content item IDs in the system. (A content item is an atom of information - for example the documentation for one of the overloads of System.Xml.XmlReader.Read.) Right now that list is very short, because we're still not hooked up to the live database, s......

33 of 116 | XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. - This quote isn't mine, it's from the slashdot article on the Future of XML but I just had to reference it....

34 of 116 | XML: Done like a well-cooked steak - This recent Slashdot post on “The Future of XML” made me think about Ted’s post on Java and doneness. Personally (not speaking for my employer) XML has achieved Patriot-esque doneness (ignoring last Sunday's disappointment with the Giants). The format and data model stabilized ages ago (at least internet-scale ages). The standardization effort went into the errata/sustained-engineering phase years ago. Most development platforms have moved beyond the W3C’s first (and hopefully last) attempt to define programmatic interfaces. XQuery seems firmly implanted as a promising technology of the future. More importantly, XML survived XSD. Like Java (and C for that mat......

35 of 116 | Creating JSON-enabled WCF services in .NET 3.5 – an even simpler approach - If some of you were reading my post yesterday and thinking "forget this – I'm going back to raw XmlHttpRequest…", fear not J Ryan Dunn reminded me that WCF 3.5 supports an even simpler model for building script services than the approach I outlined – by setting Factory="System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebScriptServiceHostFactory" in your .svc file, you can completely remove all configuration file settings. In fact, you can reduce the entire service to a single file if you like by embedding the service class directly in the .svc file – here's a single file version of the WeatherService I posted yesterday: <%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Service="SimpleWeatherService"......

36 of 116 | Creating JSON-enabled WCF services in .NET 3.5 - Just over a year ago, I wrote an article for MSDN Magazine detailing how to make client-side web service calls with the ASP.NET Ajax extensions to .asmx web services. While most of the contents of that article still apply today to .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, there is a fundamental shift going on away from .asmx and towards .svc (WCF) for web services, so I thought it would be timely to post an update to that article to describe how to use WCF for your script-callable web services in .NET 3.5. With .asmx Ajax services, you create a class in a .asmx file (or associated code behind file), attribute it with the [ScriptService] attribute, reference the .asmx endpoint in the Services sectio......

37 of 116 | Geeks sharing recipes - So I'm a divorced father who cares for his three sons 50% of the time. It's a challenging but tremendously fun task. Since the separation, I've been spending much more time with my kids than I ever did before, and I'm loving it. But I'm still a geek at heart, and I hate doing clerk-like work to figure out what to buy at the grocery store. I'd rather automate much of this menial work so that I have more time to spend with my kids or with my work. My first step in my quest for automation was to find a program that helped me create shopping lists. I bought a copy of SimplyShopping, which has worked pretty well for what it does. What I like about this program is that it helps you print aisle-by......

38 of 116 | Announcing the MTPS REST API - If you've been reading my blog for long, you know that a while back I wrote the MTPS Content Service. And you've probably also noticed that as part of that experience, I learned a lot about SOAP and REST. Well, those lessons weren't just academic; for the last few months I've been working on the next generation of MTPS web services, and this time, they're RESTian!   As of today, you can go out to http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/restapistubs/ and see for yourself. That URL is the root of a prototype REST API that exposes basically everything that the SOAP API does, plus a bunch of other pieces of information. Over the coming months, we'll be adding more functionality to it, too, as we try out......

39 of 116 | Extending WCF with Custom Behaviors - My last Service Station column on Extending WCF with Custom Behaviors is online (it's actually been online for a little while now but I missed blogging about it with the holiday craze). Here's the abstract: Windows® Communication Foundation (WCF) provides numerous extensibility points that allow developers to customize the runtime behavior for service dispatching and client proxy invocation. You can tap into these extensibility points by writing custom behaviors that can be applied declaratively to your services. This month I'll show you how this process works....

40 of 116 | Java and doneness - Ted Neward has an excellent post on the state of Java. In general, I really like the piece a lot. I do think Ted slightly misses the point when he talks about Bruce Eckel's statement:     Arguably one of the best features of C is that it hasn't changed at all for decades. Ted cites C99 and D as flies in that ointment. I don't buy it. Just because a standards body can't recogonize done-ness and declare victory, that doesn't mean the fruits of that body have any bearing on reality. Go look here for evidence. The average C developer doesn't even know C99 exists and probably doesn't care. And as for D being so much better than C or C++, I would expect D to over......

41 of 116 | Where has Jim been? - I have clearly been away for a while.  This blog effectively shut down about 18 months ago.  For the last few months I've been trying to figure out if I should reopen it, and I set a date of Jan 1 to make that decision.  I've decided to attempt to return to writing entries in this blog.   So what happened?   At work, the simple answer is that I got extremely busy.  There was a 12-15 month period where I had a series of projects with very short term deadlines.  Almost none of them involved my normal day job (which also pretty much stopped for that same period).   At one level it was a pretty interesting period -- I got involved with teams and peo......

42 of 116 | Design and Implementation - Episode 1 - Update: I managed to mess up the permissions on the MP3 file, resulting in a few "access denied" errors. Ironically, I did this while trying to fix the Content-Type. Anyway, it should be working again. Sorry!   (For the impatient: link to episode 1 (MP3).)   For a long time now, Tim and I have called each other up on the phone whenever we have an interesting or difficult technological decision to make. The conversations have often been very interesting, and are in a large part responsible for the way I think about software. A while back, I was thinking to myself, "Man, we should record these - I bet other people would be interested in this stuff as well."   So we did.   Announcing the fi......

43 of 116 | Identity Framework Probable Feature List - Vittorio has just concluded a series of posts where he's sharing a sneak preview of the Identity Framework (Fx for this post). Based on what he's shown and his descriptions, I've put together a little list of some features we can probably expect from the Fx. This is all pre-alpha stuff and the API will probably change, but the core features being shown will probably be similar. These are a rather concise set notes that I've taken while looking over his code more closely. I created a wiki page to quickly hack up this list. Here's what it looks like now: Fx helps you implement a custom STS STS can issue managed cards (see below) Fx provides a base class for your STS, (it's currently calle......

44 of 116 | .NET Compact Framework WCF and Store and Forward Messaging - Webcast Follow Up - Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday's Webcast. BTW: You can now watch the Webcast On-Demand My apologies for the delay in getting the post-Webcast content released. Last night and today were one of those 24 hour periods that are just hard to believe sometimes. My wife and I both had to have unplanned dental work. I suddenly developed a problem with an existing root canal .. so I had to go in and start the process of doing a new root canal on the same tooth. Then my wife broke one of her molars today and was experiencing significant discomfort  ... to make things more interesting, her tooth broke while we're in the midst of a pretty significant snow fall here in New Hampshire (l......

45 of 116 | Screencast: BizTalk WCF Adapters -- Send Port Message Templates - This short demo illustrates how to take advantage of the message template feature made available by WCF send ports in BizTalk Server 2006 R2. ...

46 of 116 | .NET Compact Framework WCF and Store and Forward Messaging Webcast - Just a quick note to let everyone know that I'll be giving a Webcast this Wednesday (12-Dec) talking about Windows Communication Foundation as it's implemented on Windows Mobile with a focus on Store-and-Forward messaging. Store-and-Forward messaging is a .NET CF extension to WCF that significantly simplifies communication between mobile devices because it eliminates the need for the source and destination devices to be online at the same time. The sending device can send the message at anytime - if the receiving device is online, the device receives the message immediately; otherwise, the receiving device receives the message the next time the receiving device comes online. Please join me......

47 of 116 | PrincipalPermissionAttribute and Static ctor Leads to DoS - I recently heard a colleague lamenting that he was having difficulty using PrincipalPermissionAttribute at the class level in a certain scenario under WCF. I recommended caution in my guidebook, because of the nasty type load exception that you can run into if the first request to the class is denied by the attribute. Be careful about using this attribute at the class level. If the class to which you apply it happens to have a static constructor (or, even worse, if it may get one in the future), realize that this attribute applies to the static constructor as well! Why is this a problem? Well, if a static constructor throws an exception, the class is latched into a mode where each future a......

48 of 116 | Updating the Retry Activity - adding timed interval - Updated 11/29 - see below I recently created a retry activity that I've been wanting to write for some time now, and had a few features that I wanted to add. I was teaching a class a couple of weeks ago and took the opportunity to add a retry interval to the activity.  The activity is designed as a composite activity which can retry its child activities if it detects that a fault/exception has occurred.  Rather than retrying immediately, I wanted the consumer of my activity to be able to specify a TimeSpan indicating how long to wait between retry attempts. The simplest part was adding a property that allowed people to specify the interval.  private TimeSpan retryInt; p......

49 of 116 | MetadataExchangeBindings - WS-MetadataExchange is a wonderful thing. WCF implements this spec and provides support for it over several different transport protocols including HTTP(S), TCP, and named pipes. All you have to do is choose the appropriate MEX binding. If you're familiar with how bindings work in WCF, this all makes perfect sense. However, if you pull out .NET Reflector and begin looking for the various System.ServiceModel.Channels.Binding-derived classes, you might be surprised when you don't find any. I was surprised because when you specify MEX endpoints in configuration, there is a separate binding name for each supported MEX transport (mexHttpBinding, mexHttpsBinding,  mexNamedPipeBinding, and......

50 of 116 | Screencast: BizTalk WCF Adapters -- Send Ports and Action Mappings - This short demo illustrates how to configure a WCF send port to invoke multiple WCF operations by configuring an operation name -> action mapping. ...