Jan Tielens' Bloggings

Last night I went to a presentation of Ingo Rammer about Remoting vs. Webservices, in Brussels, organised by the Belgian .NET Usergroup (BENUG) and sponsored by Ineta. The first part of the presentation was about Webservices (the usual stuff), and the second part was about Remoting (which was the reason I think, that people wanted to see this presentation because Ingo is known as a Remoting guy). Ingo did a nice job explaining the Remoting basics: creating servers/clients, registering channels, client activated, ...

After the presentation, he mentioned an article on his website about the performance differences between Webservices and Remoting, which I did not know (yet). It compares Webservices to Remoting (both in and out IIS), and shows that Remoting with a TCP channel is the way to go if you want pure performance. However I was surprised that in some case Remoting hosted in IIS, is not really faster then Webservices.

Btw: I have to say that if there were competitions held for typing code, Ingo could have the world record! Man, he types really fast... ;-)

Roy Osherove posted a link to some cool Registry settings. One of them I found quite usefull: Enable AutoCompletion in Command Prompt. Once this setting is done, you can use the tab key for autocompleting while typing in the command prompt (cmd)! For example you type "cd c:\progr" (without return) and press the tab key, "progr" will be completed to "Program Files".

To enable this setting, change the following key in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar
Change this value (or create the key, DWORD) to 9.

Maybe you've read my post about the problems I had while using a custom SoapExtension class. Thanks to an anonymous reaction, I found the sollution!! I was testing the webservice by using the default test page from Internet Explorer, but the testpage in IE uses the GET protocol, not the SOAP protocol. So there was nothing wrong with my code (I started believing I really sucked ;-), I only had to make a very simple test application. Thanks again to the person who submitted this tip!

So the result was that I had an application that showed the encrypted data... After some searching I discovered that I needed to alter the Reference.vb file manually and add an extra attribute on the Webservice proxy method:

<System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapDocumentMethodAttribute("http://tempuri.org/TestEncr/Service1/TestMe", RequestNamespace:="http://tempuri.org/TestEncr/Service1", ResponseNamespace:="http://tempuri.org/TestEncr/Service1", Use:=System.Web.Services.Description.SoapBindingUse.Literal, ParameterStyle:=System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapParameterStyle.Wrapped) _
, EncryptionExtension(decrypt:=DecryptMode.Response)> _
Public Function TestMe() As String
   Dim results() As Object = Me.Invoke("TestMe", New Object(-1) {})
   Return CType(results(0), String)
End Function

It's great to have such a nice community of people to help you out!

UPDATE: Problem solved!!

I'm trying to use the example on MSDN Encrypting SOAP Messages. I've spent quite some time trying to make this work, but I think I missed something... The article describes how to make a custom SoapExtension class that encrypts Soap messages. I thought I only needed to include the dll (downloaded from GotDotNet), and add an attribute to my WebMethod:

Public Function TestMe() As String

Return "Test..."

End Function

But, whatever I try, if I test my webservice in IE, the response is always plain, readable text... Does anyone has any experience with this? I really would appriciate some help! Thanks!!

Dim customers As New ArrayList

'Or you can use the Sort method of the strong typed collection,

'inheriting from CollectionBase.



customers.Sort(New SimpleComparer("Name"))

'or

customers.Sort(New SimpleComparer("Name", SortOrder.Descending))

    Public Class SimpleComparer

        Implements IComparer



        Private _propertyToSort As String

        Private _sortOrder As SortOrder



        Public Sub New(ByVal propertyToSort As String)

            Me.new(propertyToSort, System.Windows.Forms.SortOrder.Ascending)

        End Sub



        Public Sub New(ByVal propertyToSort As String, ByVal sortOrder As SortOrder)

            MyBase.new()

            _propertyToSort = propertyToSort

            _sortOrder = sortOrder

        End Sub



        Public Function Compare(ByVal x As Object, ByVal y As Object) As Integer _

            Implements System.Collections.IComparer.Compare

            Dim prop As Reflection.PropertyInfo = x.GetType.GetProperty(Me.PropertyToSort)



            If Me.SortOrder = SortOrder.None OrElse prop.GetValue(x, Nothing) = _

                prop.GetValue(y, Nothing) Then

                Return 0

            Else

                If prop.GetValue(x, Nothing) > prop.GetValue(y, Nothing) Then

                    If Me.SortOrder = System.Windows.Forms.SortOrder.Ascending Then

                        Return 1

                    Else

                        Return -1

                    End If

                Else

                    If Me.SortOrder = System.Windows.Forms.SortOrder.Ascending Then

                        Return -1

                    Else

                        Return 1

                    End If

                End If

            End If

        End Function



        Public Property SortOrder() As SortOrder

            Get

                Return _sortOrder

            End Get

            Set(ByVal Value As SortOrder)

                _sortOrder = Value

            End Set

        End Property



        Public Property PropertyToSort() As String

            Get

                Return _propertyToSort

            End Get

            Set(ByVal Value As String)

                _propertyToSort = Value

            End Set

        End Property

    End Class