February 2003 - Posts

• About the necessity for advanced Web Services support on mobile devices

  I absolutely agree with Anil. He complains that mobile devices (such as my little iPaq running the .NET Compact Framework) do currently have no (official) support for all the WS-* stuff. Or better said: Please Microsoft, give us a WSE implementation for the CF! There is a partial implementation of DIME and WS-Security for the CF by Casey Chesnut, but hey: although this guy is really bright and hard working, we need this as an integral part from the manufacturer itself. But I have the dim feeling that such a support is not under the top five issues to be currently looked at in Redmond :-( Posted Feb 28 2003, 11:08 AM by CWeyer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Web services in .NET, Web Services specs & more

• About three smart brains musing about XML Web Services and the future

  No comment - just read Clemens' post about his meeting with Steve Swartz and Don Box. Great :-) I had a fantastic dinner with Don and Steve Swartz (Steve should start a blog so I can finally link to him and so that he can share his infinite wisdom; folks, you don't know what you're missing). Great Indian food and surprisingly good beer -- and we Germans have pretty high standards. Posted Feb 27 2003, 04:24 PM by CWeyer Filed under: Web Services specs & more, This & that ...

• About a wonderful article supporting my opinion on XML Web Services (among other things)

  This is comforting - I stand confirmed, as well as Yasser (especially his great article in MSDN Magazine) and many, many others, too. ASP.NET's [WebMethod] feature is very cool, but I must say that it can lead to sham ... you really tend to see the Web Services world just as another OO or RPC thingie. No! It is all about messages. Period! Read Tim Ewald's excellent MSDN article on XML Web Services as a message based communications means - OK, the main tenet is about showing how to access the raw SOAP message in ASP.NET Web Services (which is really interesting stuff, I also have a working implementation for this). But the really important message is in the few sentences in the introduction - be sure not to miss them! Posted Feb 26 2003, 08:25 PM by CWeyer Filed under: Web services in .NET

• About a nice small and free WSDL editor

  I love this application. I have been using CapeClear's WSDL Editor for about a year or so (although it is written in Java ;-)). Now they have updated the bits on their homepage - go and get it if you are doing Web Services development. Here are some of the highlight features (from the tool's homepage): Intuitive graphical environment for viewing and editing WSDL files. Web services creation wizard, which automates the creation of service definitions, port types, binding, template operations, and messages. Fully automated wizards for creating and editing XML Schema, schema arrays, complex types, simple types, and enumerations. Support for validation where WSDL is tested against WSDL schema. Support for advanced WSDL capabilities such as imports, faults, SOAP headers, multiple bindings, and parameter ordering. WSDL 1.1 specification support. Retrieval of WSDL from across networks, UDDI repositories, or Internet locations. Full support for WSDL documentation. But don't forget about this: you need the 'real' JDK installed on your machine :-) Posted Feb 26 2003, 07:00 PM by CWeyer Filed under: Web Services specs & more

• About a lost son returning back to weblog home

  Finally! Rob Howard, ASP.NET Program Manager, is blogging again, and you guess where? Of course: dotnetweblogs.com. Welcome Rob. Posted Feb 25 2003, 08:43 PM by CWeyer Filed under: This & that ...

• About a series of articles on XML Web Services and .NET

  OK, so here we go. I decided to write up some articles about the XML Web Services capabilities in the .NET Framework (ASP.NET and .NET Remoting). The technical difficulty ranges from beginner-level to in-depth discussion. Time will show how deep I can get ;-) Here is the first one: Mixing the Web Services Cocktail - How ASP.NET does XML Web Services BTW, this article has been published in a modified version on http://www.csharpnewsletter.com/ (has been stopped for a while now). Posted Feb 25 2003, 04:52 PM by CWeyer with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Web services in .NET, .NET, ASP.NET

• About a Web Services spec that reminds me of a great song: BPEL

  Perhaps I am not the only one who thinks of Depeche Mode when reading about BPEL(4WS). Anyway, here is a great site which has a lot of information all around BPEL: quick start, downloads, code samples and many, many more. BTW, BPEL stands for Business Process Execution Language (for Web Services) and is Microsoft's, IBM's and BEA's proposal for the Web Services collaboration/orchestration/choreography or whatever 'war'. We should expect to see the first Microsoft BPEL implementations in the next BizTalk Server ... Don't miss this when you are talking Web Services! Posted Feb 24 2003, 10:51 AM by CWeyer Filed under: Web Services specs & more

• About a time saving configuration section handler (the last one you will need)

  Craig has posted a very smart implementation of his 'final' .NET configuration section handler. His idea was so simple that it is actually brilliant: he took XmlSerializer and lets it do all the work ... this is the last config section handler you will ever need. Just write your custom .NET type, map the handler to your XML section, type the appropriate XML values in this section - voila! Cool and impressive. Check it out. Posted Feb 21 2003, 06:41 PM by CWeyer Filed under: .NET

• About a sick but working way to keep your ASP.NET apps 'alive'

  I received an email from Paul Wilson. He pointed me to his article where he describes a cool mechanism to keep your ASP.NET application alive between requests. ASP.NET web applications only keep running for as long as there are some active sessions -- then they shut down until there is another page request. This means that if your site isn't always getting hits, then it will stop, and later requests will have to endure the slow startup and recompilation. It also means that you cannot ever expect your ASP.NET web applications to periodically perform a background task, since it may not be running. Go ahead and check out his bits. But beware of any side effects ... ;-) Posted Feb 21 2003, 05:11 PM by CWeyer with 3 comment(s) Filed under: ASP.NET

• About a beautiful place on earth - but without highspeed connectivity

  Nearly nobody believes my story: I live in a small village called Neustadt am Main in southern Germany (Bavaria). The only means for me to access the Internet is by a simple ISDN line - and that makes 64 KBit per seconds. OK, I could use a double line, but the costs here in Germany are horrendous :-( No DSL, no cable ... nothing! Besides that, it is really beautiful here in Neustadt. I guess the following pictures are especially valuable for Anil who had explicitely requested such visual information. Winter impressions from my small village ...       Posted Feb 21 2003, 04:37 PM by CWeyer with 3 comment(s) Filed under: This & that ...