All posts by : Pluralsight Blogs

101 of 134 | The MTPS Content Service - A SOAP Success Story - When I wrote the MTPS Content Service (was that a year ago already?) I didn't really expect people to use it much. I figured there'd be a few small and interesting apps - for instance, I wrote msdnman mostly for fun - but that it would largely be a useful but little-used service.   I was quite wrong.   The other day I found out the usage numbers for the service. The conversation went something like this:   Kim: "Hey, I wanted to tell you the stats are in for the content service." Me: "Oh really? I'm curious - what are they like." Kim: "Here, I'll email you the numbers." Me: "Wow! It's only been a year and there's been 1.3 million hits - that's a lot!" Kim: "No, that was for yesterday."......

102 of 134 | WCF Bindings In-Depth - My latest Service Station column is now online -- it's called WCF Bindings In-Depth.     It starts out by reviewing the WCF binding architecture, the various built-in binding classes and how to configure them. Then it shows you how to define custom bindings using the various binding element classes that ship with the framework -- it also shows you how to make your custom bindings easy to use via configuration. Enjoy.  ...

103 of 134 | Tech Ed Demos for WCF Adapter session and chalk talk - For those of you who attended Tech Ed and wanted the demos from the breakout and chalk talk about the WCF adapter, you will find them below.  Thanks to all who attended, and enjoy.    Breakout session (445 kb) (Connected Systems application) includes transaction flow example and basic adapter configuration. See the setup folder for db scripts and setup directions.   Chalk Talk (5.5 MB) -- includes three demos: BTS as WCF message router, WCF channel extensibilty in BTS (PO + line items = single transaction), and using BizTalk Services in the cloud (multi-cast vendor request).  Each demo should have an installer for the BTS portion and other files to update configuration etc.    any questio......

104 of 134 | What if you like SOAP and don't like web references? - Redux - I started the first post on this, with "this is interesting, sort of" - well judging by the number of people who've asked me for more details on doing it I think I was wrong. Apologies to all, I've been so busy the last few months that I just haven't had time to get some code examples up there...until now! Get the code here to try this for yourself. Essentially, this is an example of what I discussed before, where you can do dynamic sends using the SOAP adapter. For those that haven't tried it, you might be thinking, what's the big deal, but as I mentioned, theres a couple of gotchas which stop this from working as cleanly as with other adapters. The first is that you can't just set the ......

105 of 134 | TechEd Session - I just got done with my TechEd session on using WF and WCF - if you attended the session - here is the code: teched2007.zip (474.59 KB).  If you didn't attend my session "This is not the code you are looking for ....." ;-) Thanks for everyone who came (295 people - wow!).  BTW - here are the three best and worst thing about teched 2007 according to the people in my session: BEST1)HOL (hands on labs)2)Just the Information3)BOF (birds of a feather sessions) Worst1)Bathrooms (this was the men only of course)2)Buses(slow/scalable)3)Session are too short...

106 of 134 | BizTalk RFID Training - In case you missed Jon's announcement yesterday, we are excited to announce our new Applied BizTalk RFID training course (3 days). BizTalk RFID is a new technology offering from Microsoft that is being packaged under the "BizTalk" umbrella brand, but doesn't actually require BizTalk Server in any way (you can use it standalone). However, when you purchase BizTalk Server 2006 R2, you'll also get a license to BizTalk RFID.   Jon is at the helm of this one and as a result, it will be outstanding training. We'll be scheduling some open enrollments for later this fall, but if you're interested in an onsite, let us know.  ...

107 of 134 | Our first Applied Windows Workflow Foundation training is coming to London! - OK, Reading actually, but if you are in the London area and interested in workflow, then this is your chance to get a thorough understanding of not only the how of WF, but the why.  We will look deep under the covers of building WF programs, hosts and activities/components.  Check out the course information for more details and to register.    July 30 - August 2 Microsoft Technology Center in Reading Course details: http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/appliedwf.aspx  ...

108 of 134 | Another new Pluralsight course - I and Pluralsight are excited to announce another new BizTalk Server 2006 R2 course - one specifically geared toward RFID!  Check it out here - http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/AppliedBizTalkRfid.aspx  no public offerings schedule yet - but there should be one RSN....

109 of 134 | Orchestration performance - So I had to fire up my XP laptop today because my new Rode Podcaster microphone (which is otherwise is totally awesome) won't start on Vista despite getting a usbaudio.sys hotfix from MS Support (which was a suprisingly painless experience).  Anyway - cleaning out my old harddrive I found this picture:   This is a picture of the BAM portal.  What I was doing was using BAM to give me some rough performance metrics between two version of an orchestration.  In the "XmlDocument" version of the orchestration I was reading in a 9MB Xml file into BizTalk.  In the orchestration I was passing the document to a .NET component as "XmlDocument" and reading the whole docum......

110 of 134 | Upcoming WCF/WF Training - Several people have asked if I'm going to be at Teched next week, and unfortunately I won't due to the limits on my travel schedule right now (thanks to our new little girl, Emma). However, several of my Pluralsight colleagues will be there speaking including Jon Flanders, Matt Milner, Brian Randell, and Ted Neward. Be sure to check out their talks.   As for my schedule, I'll be teaching our next Double Feature: WCF + WF event later this month, the week of 6/25 in Los Angeles. Matt Milner will co-present with me.   We've had a great response to our Double Feature offerings because they're a great way to pack a lot of information into a single week. You can kill two birds (WCF & WF) wit......

111 of 134 | Workflow Foundation Tracking Birds of a Feather (BOF) at Tech Ed 2007 - I'm excited to be hosting a BOF this year at Tech Ed on the tracking services in Windows Workflow Foundation.  If you are interested in talking about tracking in general, the use of the included SQL tracking and query APIs, or custom tracking services to solve real business problems, then be sure to attend.  I think it will be a lot of fun to see how people use this technology as it is the key piece to real visibility in your workflows.  Hope to see you there.    Session details (check schedules at Tech Ed to verify time and room): BOF24: Windows Workflow Tracking in Action Thursday, June 7, 2007 at 4:30 PM Room S331 ...

112 of 134 | WADL, WSDL, XSD, and the Web - More interesting fodder on Stefan Tilkov's blog, this time on whether RESTafarians need WSDL-like functionality, potentially in the form of WADL. Several points come to mind. First, I'm doubtful that WADL will be substantially better than WSDL given the reliance on XSD to describe XML payloads. Yes, some of the cruft WSDL introduces goes away, but that cruft wasn't where the interop probems were lurking.  I know WADL allows both RNG and XSD - I have no idea what the state of RNG import/export machinery looks like for Java (or Python or Ruby).  I'd love to hear of people's experience using RNG importers for their programming language of choice. Second, I think Stefan goes a......

113 of 134 | Templates for Windows Workflow XAML activation projects - One of my frustrations with Windows Workflow Foundation, is that there is no easy way in Visual Studio to create pure XAML workflows.  The tools really drive you toward compiling the XAML into a .NET assembly.  That, to me, defeats the purpose of using XAML.  So I created a bunch of project templates (console/library & state/sequence) that create pure XAML workflows using XAML activation.  This means the workflows are not compiled, the XAML is just copied into the build directory.  The console application project templates are setup in their program.cs to load these XAML files using an XMLReader and activate them that way.    I also started working on XAML item templates so you could a......

114 of 134 | Three reasons that REST is not RPC - I've gotten several comments saying that, at the end of the day, REST is just RPC. That's wrong, for at least 3 very reasons: 1) Each unique state in your protocol state machine has its own URI. That's different from an RPC endpoint that maintains a black-boxed state machine at a single endpoint. Being able to do state transition processing at disparate locations is hugely powerful. Watch the URLs you are navigating through as you browse, shop and checkout at Amazon. A single process can span machines offering differing levels of scalability, reliability and security. RPC doesn't do that. You could conceivably build an RPC system that did do that, but if that happens it is a very rar......

115 of 134 | An example might help... - I got a lot of great comments on last nights post, including a couple about REST being no different from xml-based RPC. I used to think so too, which is why my recent epiphany was so eye opening. Consider a protocol for finding and reserving a flight between two cities. The client is in one of these states: <ready>- searched- retrieved details- reserved These states map to URIs: <none>- http://quuxTravel.com/searched- ??? depends on previous state- ??? depends on previous stateA client begins by navigating to the searched state by GETting http://quuxTravel.com/searched?src=London&dest=NYC. The client gets back some XML like this: <itineraries>  <itinerary ......

116 of 134 | On programming models... - Ittay commented on my REST post: the thing is, when you write software, you use an RPC model. what bothers me about REST is that it is not only an API. it enforces you to change your programming model. that is not to say i don't like it. i do, for its simplicity and self documentation (e.g., provide all moves as links), but there is a price you pay. When you write software, you use a programming model that works. And sometimes you have to change models. We changed them for the Web: we moved to the notion of pages. It wasn't RPC, it wasn't even objects (at least from most developers perspectives originally). But it was simple and did what it was supposed to do. I've done RPC, CORBA, DCOM,......

117 of 134 | Thinking Like Tim - I talk to Tim on a regular basis. So when he outed himself as a REST convert lately, it actually wasn't a huge surprise to me - we've been talking a lot lately about what the last few years have taught us about web service programming, and how more and more SOAP/WS-* just doesn't seem to be all that and a bag of chips. Still, the key part of the analysis in his latest post - that you can use HTTP as a way to publish application states and the transitions between them - really struck me as something significant, and brought a lot more clarity to the whole problem.   Here's where my thinking is at: Basically every SOAP web service I've written in the last four years could have been done just......

118 of 134 | I finally get REST. Wow. - Yeah, I'm alive. And I remember the password to my blog. I've been away for a bit, working on something very cool involving the TV. If all goes well, you'll hear about it in a big way. Anyway, I'm still having a ball out here in reality. Building something real has a way of focusing your decisions about technology. My app is a distributed system, some of which runs in a cable plant head-end or telco office (whatever's on the other end of the wire in your living room), and some of which runs elsewhere. We also connect to some things on the Web. These connections have to be extremely flexible and the bar to adoption has to be low. The thing I finally realized (some of you will say “Duh!......

119 of 134 | Ahh - workflows in the clouds - Coming soon - http://labs.biztalk.net/...

120 of 134 | BizTalkGenerateStrongName Redux - I've been traveling the world (ok technically traveling to Redmond, London or Dublin) teaching BizTalk Server 2006 R2 training.  I have some interesting posts planned around the technology in R2 - this post is about a tool I built quite a while ago - and that Carlos Medina improved.  I've been doing demos around BizTalk and one of the tedious things I find when developing with BizTalk is that there isn't anyway to "auto-sign" a BizTalk project.  If you've ever seen me demo BizTalk - I always at some point create a BizTalk project - and I have a tool under the Tools menu in Visual Studio which autogenerates a .snk file and puts in the proper path to that file in my project s......

121 of 134 | Pixels. I see Pixels. - My day job has caused me to pull my head out of the plumbing a bit and start working with WPF. Back in 2003 when ChrisAn and I did PDC, we learned enough of each other's technologies to pull together a coherent story, but except for XAML, I pretty much let my Avalon knowledge get swapped out of cache. Now, I'm finding myself working more and more on WPF-based goop, so I took the plunge this week and started swapping in WPF-isms as fast as I can. I have to say that this week was the first time since joining MS that I've used the terms WM_NCHITTEST and WM_NCPAINT in conversation - I can feel the InSendMessage discussion coming... I must say, it's great having Chris on the team to explain w......

122 of 134 | BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Training - Jon Flanders just announced our newest Pluralsight course -- Applied BizTalk Server 2006 R2 -- that covers all the new features/technologies built into the new R2 release currently in beta.    It covers the new WCF adapters, WF integration, BAM interceptors, the new RFID support, EDI/X12, and the new .NET adapter framework built on WCF. You can find more course details here.   The first public offering will be held in Los Angeles, CA mid July.  ...

123 of 134 | Fix Debugging QIs in ATL Code Under Vista - I think I have whiplash: in the space of a few hours I've gone from writing web services in C# to implementing COM stuff in C++. I don't do much C++ any more, so the adjustment has been somewhat extremely painful.   See, I'm trying to implement a new protocol handler to integrate with Windows Search. I have some content in a database, and I want to surface it along with other search results using Windows Desktop Search or the native Vista stuff. In the process, this set of posts has been an excellent resource. In fact, it's nearly the only resource for writing protocol handlers as far as I can tell.   While I was reading the posts and (slowly) implementing away, I decided that it would be ......

124 of 134 | My first Pluralsight course - Sorry for the lack of blogging - I have a bunch of good posts on WF/WCF and BizTalk R2 planned -but I've been busy flying around the world running Microsoft's jumpstart program on BizTalk R2.   I am excited to announce Pluralsight's Applied BizTalk R2 course  (I think the first public course offering of a BizTalk Server 2006 R2 course - although I could be wrong)/   The first offering will be in my home town of LA - http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/AppliedBizTalkServer2006R2.aspx  - on my birthday no less!.  Come to LA - learn about BizTalk R2 and we'll go hang out in Hollywood with Paris Hilton for my birthday (oh wait - maybe not)... how about the beach? ......

125 of 134 | Single assembly CSS control adapters - This is a follow-up post to my last post on CSS control adapters. It turns out that Brian Demarzo has built a precompiled version of the CSS control adapters with the accompanying JavaScript files and base CSS files bundled as embedded resources, so incorporating them into a project is quite a bit less detailed than with the default toolkit. He has placed the source (with Microsoft's permission) to a project on codeplex.com (http://www.codeplex.com/cssfriendly) where you can download the latest binaries, or contribute to the project yourself. Thanks for taking the initiative Brian! ...

126 of 134 | Steps for adding a CSS Control Adapter - I have had the chance to present the CSS Control Adapter Toolkit at several conferences and classes recently, and each time I present them they are very well received. People are pleased that it is possible to use the standard ASP.NET server controls but to be able to control their appearance entirely from CSS files. They also like the fact that many of the controls that render by default as HTML tables render with div and ul tags using the adapters.   I wrote an article on control adapters for MSDN Magazine back in October last year where I cover the mechanics of control adapters and how the CSS Control Adapter toolkit implements the changes they do. At the time, howeve......

127 of 134 | WCF Binding Comparison - In my ongoing quest to produce the simplest table possible summarizing the key differences between the various Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) built-in bindings, I came up with the following:   Binding Class Name Transport Message Encoding Message Version Security Mode RM Tx Flow* BasicHttpBinding HTTP Text SOAP 1.1 None X X WSHttpBinding HTTP Text SOAP 1.2 WS-A 1.0 Message Disabled WS-AT WSDualHttpBinding HTTP Text SOAP 1.2 WS-A 1.0 Message Enabled WS-AT WSFederationHttpBinding HTTP Text SOAP 1.2 WS-A 1.0 Message Disabled WS-AT NetTcpBinding TCP Binary SOAP 1.2 Transport Disabled OleTx NetPeerTcpBinding P2P Binary SO......

128 of 134 | .NET 3.0 Training (WCF + WF + WPF + CardSpace) - We are pleased to announce a new training course focused on ramping developers up on .NET 3.0 -- Applied .NET 3.0.     It covers the four pillars of .NET 3.0 including Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and Windows CardSpace. The course will be offered publicly or it can be scheduled privately for onsite situations. You can check the course page for upcoming offerings or you can subscribe to our course schedule feed.   Please contact us with any questions....

129 of 134 | Jon Fancey joins Pluralsight - I'm pleased to announce that Jon Fancey has joined Pluralsight as an instructor. He will be teaching our BizTalk Server and .NET 3.0 courses. Jon lives in the UK and will be representing us well across the pond.   Jon is a BizTalk MVP and has written numerous whitepapers and articles on BizTalk Server and Web Services. He comes to us with years of real-world consulting experience. You can find his new Pluralsight blog here.   Welcome aboard Jon! Our team of BizTalk/WF/WCF instructors simply can't be beat....

130 of 134 | Aaron's new article on WCF - If you are working on BizTalk R2's WCF adapter - Aaron's article about WCF messaging is essential reading....

131 of 134 | What a week - So, I'm sitting in Sea-Tac airport waiting to return home with Charles Young from the MVP Summit. Not only has it been great to meet and put so many faces to names but the whole experience was fantastic. Of course, it pretty much rained all week, but I certainly can't complain about that. A big thanks go out to all the people behind the organization and especially Marjan Kalantar from the product group for putting together a great show and giving us plenty to think about. The fact that I am writing this on pluralsight rather than jonfancey.com is also of course very significant. I've just joined up and will be starting to teach Applied BizTalk alongside my new BizTalk and WF col......

132 of 134 | InlineUIContainer and BlockUIContainer - I've been doing a project using Avalon (WPF, if you insist on using the sucky name), and have been learning a lot. I think it's the coolest of the .NET 3.0 family of technologies. Although I'm going to be attending Pluralsight's upcoming Workflow & WCF Double Feature in Waltham, so maybe more exposure will change my mind. I doubt it, though. :)   One of the areas that really interests me in Avalon is System.Windows.Documents. It interests me because it looks like it could make the next version of FlexWikiPad really easy to write - a well-thought-out model for text presentation that doesn't require messing around with a WebBrowser control. I'd even gone so far as to start writing a text ......

133 of 134 | .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2 is Available!! - You can download the English version of .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2 now The localized versions should be available soon. This version provides an update to the Remote Performance Monitor that allows you to now take snapshots of the heap and compare those snapshots over time. If you're not familiar with the Remote Performance Monitor, see Steven Pratschner's (from the .NET CF team) Remote Performance Monitor article. Here's the published list of bug fixes… Remote Performance Monitor fails on x64 Setup install/uninstall fails silently when the MSI is launched from Control Panel-Programs and Features on Vista Finalizers fail on RTF objects because COM bindings are alrea......

134 of 134 | Outlook Feed Bug? - I ran into this today when I was fixing up FlexWiki 2.0's RSS mechanism to work with the new security provider. I finally got the page with the links to the RSS feeds to render, and I was a bit surprised when Outlook popped up showing what was obviously an ASP.NET error message. I was even more surprised that the same URL worked just fine in IE (I'd been testing with Firefox).   A little debugging and I think I figured out what's happening. Firefox appears to be launching Outlook as the registered application for RSS documents (presumably based on the ContentType, which is text/xml). Anyway, that's fine - I use Outlook to read RSS feeds, so great. What's not great is that Outlook decided t......