April 2003 - Posts

• About my absence for the next two weeks

  Finally! Can't believe it ... we leave for summer holidays to the Canary Islands on Tuesday. No PC, no .NET, no XML, no SOAP - you understand!? Just my family and me in the sun. See you soon on the other side, when I am backed and hopefully relaxed. Posted Apr 18 2003, 08:19 PM by CWeyer with 4 comment(s) Filed under: This & that ...

• About the lack of WSDL design capabilities in Visual Studio .NET

  Yasser seems to complain a bit about the lack of WSDL design capabilities within Visual Studio .NET. And he's right. You can use VS.NET as an XML editor, but that is all. Maybe the next major release will have a graphical WSDL (or generally spoken Web Services contract) designer with support to leverage existing XML Schemas. In the meantime I have some interesting options for those willed to do Web Services development the rgiht way. Here we go with some useful tools: Altova XMLSpy CapeClear WSDL Editor BEA WebLogic Workshop (aka Cajun) Omniopera WS Eclipse with WSDL plugin (more a viewer, but cool) ... ??? Personally, I currently like Omniopera most of the tools. The more I think about this issue the more I am willed to develop a VS.NET plug-in (even a cool wizard comes to my mind) ... Posted Apr 14 2003, 05:31 PM by CWeyer with 11 comment(s) Filed under: Web services in .NET, Web services Design

• About my love afair with a little nice Web Services test tool

  WebServiceStudio is now available in version 2.0. Many thanks go to Sowmy (is this just the user name on GotDotNet or the real name?). The new release has (currently limited) support for the Web Services Enhancements (WSE) from Microsoft. New in V2.0: Limited WSE support: You can now send WSE message from WebServiceStudio. Goto WSDL options and set the “ProxyBaseType” property to “Microsoft.Web.Services.WebServicesClientProtocol,Microsoft.Web.Services, …”   You can set WSE properties in the proxy properties (select the root node of the tree that has the list of methods)   Load a compiled proxy: You can load a dll or exe that has the proxy compiled instead of getting the list of methods from a wsdl or remote end point. Just browse to the dll or exe and hit ‘GO’   Copy/Paste objects: You can right click on input or output tree to copy or paste method parameters.   WSDL Tree View: WSDL is listed as tree with corresponding XML version highlighted.   Custom CodeDOM provider: You can provide a Custom CodeDOM provider via Options – WSDL settings. No more Jscript support.   Custom Proxy Base: You can add your own class as the base type of the proxy generated via Options – WSDL settings. WSE is supported using this feature. I have been using this .NET application sinde the very first day it was available on GotDotNet - OK, its user interface is not too intuitive in the first moment - but hey it is a testing for XML based Web Services ;-) I really like it. Posted Apr 14 2003, 11:42 AM by CWeyer Filed under: Web services in .NET

• About some tools to detect WS-I Basic Profile conformance

  WS-I implementation tools The WS-I testing tools are designed to help developers determine whether their Web services are conformant with Profile Guidelines. This version is designed to test for version 1.0 of the Basic Profile. Comments and bug reports may be sent via email to wsi-tools@ws-i.org. All comments are governed by the WS-I Feedback License linked below. Posted Apr 12 2003, 01:11 PM by CWeyer Filed under: Web services in .NET, Web Services specs & more

• About Yasser thinking out loud on the sense of message formats

  Definitely worth a read! Well done Yasser. I guess Don also likes it ... RPC/Literal and Freedom of Choice Posted Apr 12 2003, 01:08 PM by CWeyer Filed under: Web Services specs & more

• About XML Web Services orchestration with BizTalk Server - today!

  There is a very interesting article on MSDN titled Creating Web Service Enterprise Applications by Using BizTalk Adapter for Web Services. It talks about the usage of BizTalk Server to somehow orchestrate XML Web Services - without the new and evolving technologies like BPEL, but ith what is currently available from Microsoft. This document uses two example projects to help you master all aspects of Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for Web Services. It also describes how to test the BizTalk Adapter for Web Services solutions that you create. Microsoft BizTalk Adapter for Web Services enables you to provide access to any enterprise server application as a collection of Web service methods. The format translation and process coordination abilities of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 and the philosophy of using configurable components—instead of custom programming—for integration, combined with the open data format and object access standards of Web services, all quickly and effectively make back-end server applications available over the Internet. This document uses two examples to help you master all aspects of BizTalk Adapter for Web Services, including the following: Installing Web services Creating Web services and Web methods Creating and selecting specifications, channels, and messaging ports Invoking Web methods from a client application This document consists of five major sections: An example in which you create a very simple Web service so that you can focus on learning how to install and configure BizTalk Adapter for Web Services An example in which you learn how to use an XLANG schedule to synchronize a complex, asynchronous, multiple-document business process and return a response document to a Web service Techniques that you can use to incrementally construct and test the solutions that you create by using BizTalk Adapter for Web Services and BizTalk Server Advanced techniques for controlling the document specifications of the Web method request and response formats and how to perform inbound and outbound mapping A description of how to use custom .NET preprocessors and postprocessors to read and modify the SOAP headers for a Web method Posted Apr 12 2003, 01:02 PM by CWeyer Filed under: Web services in .NET, Web Services specs & more

• About Simon's seek for a list of bug fixes in ASP.NET

  Simon is looking for something ... I have been asking a lot of people (inside and outside of Microsoft) if such a list of bug fixes and new features exists in any subfolder of any hard drive ... actually I got a lot of responses - but there doesn't seem to be any official list!!! Neither for the ASP.NET web features nor for the XML Web Services world ... could it be? Just those obvious links one can get through Google.   Posted Apr 11 2003, 04:35 PM by CWeyer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Web services in .NET, ASP.NET

• About ASP.NET 1.1

  Congrats to Rob, Scott and all other involved persons: ASP.NET 1.1 is RTW! Wahoo ... this rocks. Posted Apr 11 2003, 04:29 PM by CWeyer Filed under: .NET, ASP.NET

• About a long trip - Keith Pleas blogs

  After some blog, email and personal face-to-face conversations ang getting under 'pressure' Keith finally decided to enter blog space: Keith's palimpsest [RSS]- and you guess where!? Welcome Keith! Posted Apr 06 2003, 09:12 AM by CWeyer with 1 comment(s) Filed under: This & that ...

• About analysts, the real world, and the truth

  I am sure that a lot of you have seen these charts before because they are quite old (from May resp. August 2002)- if not take a close look at them, just wanted to bring them up here for the records (click to enlarge): They are from the Gartner Group. Well, I like them - but I generally do not like analysts ;-) No offense, though ... For my friends of the killer fraction the point with WSDL might be especially interesting. Perhaps we should contact Gartner to change the chart? ;-) Tell me what you think about the essence of the curves ... just leave me some comments! Posted Apr 04 2003, 09:47 AM by CWeyer with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Web Services specs & more, This & that ...