Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity

archWorkshop starting on September 7th, with focus on Enterprise Solutions Architect

• September        Peter Scheffel to present his role as Enterprise Solutions Architect. I am hoping that we can nudge Clifford to the session as well.
• October            Derek to present Infrastructure Architecture or Horatio to present Security Architecture
• November        Derek to present Infrastructure Architecture or Horatio to present Security Architecture
• December        No session planned, other than working on whitepaper.

Anonymous Comments Disabled due to SPAM

We are getting bombarded with excessive SPAM, added to our BLOGs as anonymous comments and are therefore forced to disable anonymous comments. To all the SPAM’ers … thank you for destroying the open information sharing community through your unacceptable behaviour. To the rest please note that you need to login to dotnet.org.za before you can add a comment and again we had to enforce moderation as SPAM is already arriving through that channel as well.

Team Foundation Server - Toubles with TFS Key

When you are nearing the end of the TFS trial period, please not that:

• Volume licensing media contains an embedded key and therefore no key is required when installing from Volume licensing media. Also have a look at Rob's blog http://blogs.msdn.com/robcaron/archive/2006/02/09/529033.aspx , which talks about finding the key in the setup.sdb.
• Volume licensing media cannot be installed on top of the Trial edition. In this case you need to either uninstall trial and reinstall using VL, or contact Microsoft Developer Support to obtain a unique key to unlock the trial.

When asking for a uniqeue key, refer MS support to their internal KB articles  #909628 and #908114.

saArchitect .NET3.x Poll

MSFWinBuild executable release

The GotDotNet Community released the MSFWinBuild executable. This release contains the list of known issues and links to information required to use the MSFWinBuild. The source code is also included.

Here is the link to the community site: http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/members.aspx?id=c0ce8992-2955-4371-904b-1f93a9efffe6

Free SharePoint Server 2007 Book

“.NET Enterprise Solutions … Interoperability for the Connoisseur (Book 2 Ready)

The BB&D DRP book 2, titled “.NET Enterprise Solutions … Interoperability for the Connoisseur”, ISBN: 0-620 34680-9, is complete and currently on the printing press. We thank the authors, the contributors, the coordinators and the reviewers for sharing their knowledge and experience, for finally completing this mammoth project and are looking forward to the final product.

Books can be pre-ordered by emailing your details and number of copies to be reserved to drpsupport@bbd.co.za.

For saArchitect.net and saDeveloper community members a special price of ZAR275 per book, excluding VAT and postage, is valid until September 15, 2006. Contact us for more information.

Proxy Server Authentication Issue, using .NET 2 - SRQ060529601297

We still have no resolution to our problem using solutions with proxies running on .NET 2 Runtime, trying to pass through a Squid-based proxy server. What is known is that with .NET 2.0 another header is being used. It seems that Squid is unable to understand the new header and subsequently the challenge-response fails.

Has anyone else experienced software successfully passing third-party proxy servers using .NET 1.x and going on strike with .NETR 2.x? If yes, please can you give us details of your proxy server and problems encountered, so that we can combine with the SEQ we are busy investigating.

WCF Dok #5 - Hosting Modes

Did you know that there are three basic hosting modes in which COM+ can expose web services?

1. COM+ Hosted … the web service is hosted in the application’s COM+ server process (DllHost.exe), which has the benefits of providing both Web Service and DCOM access to the application. The mode requires that the application is explicitly started before it can service web service requests.
2. Web Hosted … hosts the web service in a web server worker process, which has the benefit of automatic activation of the application before a request is processed. While this mode still supports DCOM and web service access, it incurs a process hop (and thus additional overhead) for web service requests.
3. Web Hosted In-Process … hosts the web service and COM+ application logic within the web server process, with the benefit of automatic activation and no process hop as in web hosted mode (see above). The drawback of this mode is that it supports web service access only, loosing the DCOM access.

See the WCF SDK documentation for detailed information on all three modes.

WCF Dok #4 – Transactions

Did you know that you can control the transaction protocol in your configuration? WCF provides OleTx used for transactions occurring on a Microsoft platform, Wsat for Ws-Atomic transactions and TxNegro which allows the service to expose both.

<bindings>
   <netTcpBinding>
       <binding name = “Sample”
                       …
                       transactionProtocol = “Wsat”
                       …
   </netTcpBinding>
</bindings> 

The following summarises the default support for transactions:

Binding                           Default Protocol
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
BasicHttpBinding              Tx not supported
WSHttpBinding                 WS-AT
WsDualHttpBinding           WS-AT
WsFederationBinding        WS-AT
NetTcpBinding                  OleTx
NetNamedPipeBinding      OleTx
NetMsmqBinding              OleTx
NetPeerTcpBinding           Tx not supported
MsmqIntegrationBinding    OleTx

Note above that we seem to have two MSMQ bindings we can chose from. Use MsmqIntegrationBinding if either the service or consumer are not using WCF for communications. If both use WCF, use NetMsmqBinding instead.

WCF Dok #3 – XmlSerialiser

Did you know that you can alter the default XML serialiser used? By default  XmlFormatter is the default XML seraliser of WCF, which can be configured to do serialization using the System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer class which is part of the class libraries. TO achieve this, add the [XmlSerializer] attribute to your contract.

For example:

[ServiceContract(Namespace=”Good.2.Know”, Name=”SampleContract”]
[XmlSerializer]
public interface ISampleInterface
{ … }

-or

[OperationContract(Name=”Good2KnowMethod”)]
[XmlSerializer]
public message ProcessGoodies() {…}

WCF Dok #2 – OperationContract

Did you know that you can alter the default operation name by using the OperationContract attribute?

WCF Dok #1 – ServiceContract

Did you know that you can alter the default contract name using the ServiceContract attribute and defining a Namespace and Name?

For example:

[ServiceContract(Namespace=”Good.2.Know”, Name=”SampleContract”]
public interface ISampleInterface { … }