Monday 26 February 2007

YouTube - Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

I found this video which explains Web 2.0, very interesting and well done.
Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Monday 5 February 2007

Web Service Software Factory Videos Section

There is a new video section on the codeplex space for the Web Service Software Factory. On the first video it demonstrates with a few slides the Web service domain model.

WS-BPEL 2.0 has reached Committee Specification status

WS-BPEL 2.0 has reached Committee Specification status, you can find a link to the document at Loosely Coupled thinking

John Evdemon posted on November a comparison of WS-BPEL and WF. Well as long as you are not tempted to use 75% of the WF features you will be fine.

An export tool and / or validator similar to the accesibity one for Asp.Net will help to keep your workflows interoperable.

Friday 2 February 2007

Cannot Find Server (404) or Get Plain Text for WCF .svc Files From IIS?

I have been going mad today trying to run some services hosted in IIS, until i have found that the IIS metadata was corrupted in the machine i was using.

You can find all the info and how to fix it on Wenlong Dong's Blog

Using XML-based Web Services to Enhance Information Interoperability in the Department of Defense

Talking about conferences I have found the white paper "Using XML-based Web Services to Enhance Information Interoperability in the Department of Defense" which I was presented by Robert D. Cherinka on the 2000s Amsterdam's Wrox Conference.

It seems not so long ago when I was there learning about Asp+ !!

Configuration Editor Tool (SvcConfigEditor.exe)

I have tinkering on and off with WCF for nearly two years, I still remember when Ingo Rammer gave us a small peak at how we will create our DataContracts on DevWeek 2005.

WCF is great but you have lots of settings to remember, the Service Software Factory it has done a great job on layering your architecture, but I have found that the Configuration Editor Tool will be the swiss army tool that will be used from Infrastructure guys to Developers and forgetful people like me.

Web Services Testing, SOA Development: SOAtest - Parasoft

I have been looking at Parasoft's SOA testing tool, and it looks very promising it includes:


  • WS* Standards compliance testing and validation.

  • Performance testing including stats from Windows Perfmon, SNMP, and JMX Monitors.

  • Test Management support and integrations to Mercury Test Director, Rational TestManager and more.

  • Scriptless Web Services testing.

  • WS-Security, SAML, Username Token, X.509, XML Encryption, and XML Signature support.

  • UDDI support: query verification, validation, and load testing.

  • Automatic test creation from WSDL, WSIL, UDDI, HTTP Traffic, and BPEL deployment artifacts.

  • Asynchronous Testing: JMS, Parlay (X), SCP, WS-Addressing support.

  • Complete test workflow from simple single service through complex scenarios and multiple service endpoints.

  • WSDL schema and semantic verification and compliance to WS-I Basic Profile 1.1.

  • Data-driven testing through data sources (Excel, CSV, Database Queries, etc).

  • MIME/DIME Attachment support.

  • Windows Perfmon, SNMP, and JMX Monitors.

  • Detailed Report generation in HTML, XML and Text formats.

  • Real-Time graphs and charts.

  • Protocol Support



Definitely worth having a look at the flash demo.

Thursday 1 February 2007

Integrating WCF and WF

Graham Elliott describes how to integrate WF and WCF. WF does not have a WCF specific activity so you are forced to use basicHttpBinding.

He also describes on how to integrate using a code activity, which allows you to use all the WCF features but not limited in problems.

Other alternative is to decouple the service interface by using an adaptor, this is demonstrated by Roman Kiss at Code Project

Service Station: The Service Factory for WCF -- MSDN Magazine, February 2007

More info on the Service Factory, Aaron Skonnard takes you throug step by step on how to use the Service Factory in his article for MSDN Magazine

Don Smith : Service Factory: Contracts

Don Smith released in his blog a series of blogcasts last April describing the Service Factory. Its never to late to have a look.

Part1 is an Introduction , Part2 Service Contracts and Part 3 Entity Translation

WCF News and Announcements : Just Released: Web Service Software Factory for WCF

The guys over at patterns & practices have just released (in December) the second version of the Web Service Software Factory. This new release has everything the first one had with the addition of loads of new stuff specifically for building WCF Web services using VS 2005. Some of the many new features help you apply message-level security, construct services from WSDL/XSD, perform design-time code/config analysis, apply message validation, and migrate from ASMX services. If you're building WCF Web services, you definitely want to check this out. http://msdn.com/servicefactory

Next one is planned for Nov 2007. To get more info check it out in CodePlex