InterOp | Vinod Kumar (Blog home)

Posts Tagged ‘InterOp’

Denali – TSQL Paging November 15th, 2010

Vinod Kumar

I am slightly late on writing about next version of SQL Server release. But here you go – SQL Server “Denali” CTP1 is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center here. Best part is I got did download and get the instance of SQL Denali side-by-side with SQL 2008 R2 instance. These work just as expected even in the current CTP1.

As soon as I got the instance running was looking for something interesting. And this TSQL enhancement caught my attention. All of us do Paging and we do tons of gimmicks to get this working in our application. Now there is a much more Simplified result-set paging via new ANSI standard OFFSET clause within SQL Server natively.

select * from sys.objects
Order by name
Offset 5 rows
Fetch Next 10 Rows ONLY;

You can see how easy now paging is with SQL Server. I will explore the “Improved generation of numeric identifiers using new SEQUENCE object.” and post a simple sample soon.

So what are you waiting for? Download and post me what you found interesting with SQL Server Denali CTP1 …

Books On-Line: Programmability Enhancements topic here.

1 Comment »

Composite Service Application Guidance CTP1 November 7th, 2010

Vinod Kumar

The goal of this guidance developed by patterns& practices team is to provide best practices to implement the most common SOA Patterns and Integration Patterns.

P&P Team published the first public community preview here, which contains reusable source code and samples to illustrate the following patterns and scenarios for enterprise customers:

Repair and Resubmit pattern – this pattern is implemented in ESB Toolkit 2.0 as part of Exception Management Framework (EMF). This code drop provides a code sample showing how to implement this pattern for Windows AppFabric workflow service, Exceptions Web Service and workflow activities to create fault message. In addition, we included a sample Operations service to allow integrating ESB Management Portal from ESB Toolkit to browse fault messages and fault report metrics generated by applications that leverage Windows Server AppFabric.
Analytic Tracing – this code drop contains reusable code and samples for implementing ETW tracing, which includes event collector service and database to store collected events. This capability may be used for scenarios that need flexibility on how collected events are decoded and processed using extensibility points you can configure and/or implement as plugins and event decoders while leveraging ETW tracing capabilities provided by the event collector service.
Inventory Centralization patterns – this code drop contains a service catalog database, web services, utility and samples to show how to implement service Metadata Centralization and Policy Centralization patterns.
Service Governance patterns – this code drop contains reusable code and samples to illustrate how to define service business metrics and collect these metrics using analytic tracing and policy centralization capabilities.
Service Virtualization pattern – we included a sample for implementing this pattern using WCF routing service( which is part of .NET framework) and service metadata centralization capabilities to define routing service metadata in service catalog.

No Comments »

WebMatrix Beta 2, ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta Released October 8th, 2010

Vinod Kumar

This is the latest release of WebMatrix, the stack that makes it easier to build websites and web applications. This product will make the web platform much more approachable all developers who build apps from scratch or who use open source applications as a starting point. Here’s a sample of what’s new in this release:

Theming Support
HTML5 Templates
NuPack Package Management
New @helper syntax
Razor syntax improvements

Resources -

ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta

This is the latest release of the ASP.NET MVC 3 open source project from Microsoft. ASP.NET MVC, like ASP.NET Web Forms is an approach for professional developers to build web applications using the MVC paradigm and the Microsoft Web Platform. Some of the additions in this release include -

Razor Enhancements
Unobtrusive JavaScript and HTML5
NuPack Integration
Dependency Injection
And much more

Lookup resources -

3 Comments »

P&P: Developing Applications for the Cloud September 22nd, 2010

Vinod Kumar

Tailspin is a fictitious startup ISV company of approximately 20 employees that specializes in developing solutions using Microsoft® technologies. The developers at Tailspin are knowledgeable about various Microsoft products and technologies, including the .NET Framework, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server®, and Microsoft Visual Studio® development system. These developers are aware of Windows Azure but have not yet developed any complete applications for the platform.

The Surveys application is the first of several innovative online services that Tailspin wants to take to market. As a startup, Tailspin wants to develop and launch these services with a minimal investment in hardware and IT personnel. Tailspin hopes that some of these services will grow rapidly, and the company wants to have the ability to respond quickly to increasing demand. Similarly, it fully expects some of these services to fail, and it does not want to be left with redundant hardware on its hands.

The Surveys application enables Tailspin’s customers to design a survey, publish the survey, and collect the results of the survey for analysis. A survey is a collection of questions, each of which can be one of several types such as multiple-choice, numeric range, or free text. Customers begin by creating a subscription with the Surveys service, which they use to manage their surveys and to apply branding by using styles and logo images. Customers can also select a geographic region for their account, so that they can host their surveys as close as possible to the survey audience.

The architecture of the Surveys Application is straightforward and one that many other Windows Azure applications use. The core of the application uses Windows Azure web roles, worker roles, and storage. It also highlights how the application uses SQL Azure™ technology platform to provide a mechanism for subscribers to dump their survey results into a relational database to analyze the results in detail.

"The Tailspin Scenario" introduces you to the Tailspin company and the Surveys application. It provides an architectural overview of the Surveys application; the following chapters provide more information about how Tailspin designed and implemented the Surveys application for the cloud. Reading this chapter will help you understand Tailspin’s business model, its strategy for adopting the cloud platform, and some of its concerns.

"Hosting a Multi-Tenant Application on Windows Azure" discusses some of the issues that surround architecting and building multi-tenant applications to run on Windows Azure. It describes the benefits of a multi-tenant architecture and the trade-offs that you must consider. This chapter provides a conceptual framework that helps the reader understand some of the topics discussed in more detail in the subsequent chapters.

"Accessing the Surveys Application" describes some of the challenges that the developers at Tailspin faced when they designed and implemented some of the customer-facing components of the application. Topics include the choice of URLs for accessing the surveys application, security, hosting the application in multiple geographic locations, and using the Content Delivery Network to cache content.

"Building a Scalable, Multi-Tenant Application for Windows Azure" examines how Tailspin ensured the scalability of the multi-tenant Surveys application. It describes how the application is partitioned, how the application uses worker roles, and how the application supports on-boarding, customization, and billing for customers.

"Working with Data in the Surveys Application" describes how the application uses data. It begins by describing how the Surveys application stores data in both Windows Azure tables and blobs, and how the developers at Tailspin designed their storage classes to be testable. The chapter also describes how Tailspin solved some specific problems related to data, including paging through data, and implementing session state. Finally, this chapter describes the role that SQL Azure™ technology platform plays in the Surveys application.

"Updating a Windows Azure Service" describes the options for updating a Windows Azure application and how you can update an application with no interruption in service.

"Debugging and Troubleshooting Windows Azure Applications" describes some of the techniques specific to Windows Azure applications that will help you to detect and resolve issues when building, deploying, and running Windows Azure applications. It includes descriptions of how to use Windows Azure Diagnostics and how to use Microsoft IntelliTrace™ with applications deployed to Windows Azure.

Click here to download this release.

An extension to this scenario is being developed for mobile users using Windows Phone 7 devices. Early versions of this are available here: http://wp7guide.codeplex.com

No Comments »

Mirrored Backups with SQL Server September 20th, 2010

Vinod Kumar

The Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2005+ introduces the concepts – “mirroring of backup media sets” to provide redundancy of your critical database backups. Mirroring a media set increases backup reliability by reducing the impact of backup-device malfunctions. These malfunctions are very serious because backups are the last line of defense against data loss. SQL Server Standard Editions supports only a single backup copy during your backup operations. Depending on your requirements, Enterprise Edition allows you to create up to four mirrored media sets. An unique yet a powerful option.

Each disk file in the backup must have a corresponding file in the mirror media set. A crisis that required a database restore may have occurred. During the restore, if a the Backup file returned a critical error. Since the mirror files contain identical content, you are able to restore Backup easily. Without the mirrored files, your restore operation may have required database and log backups from many days or weeks earlier, which would significantly increase the time to restore and introduce more risk to the process.

Benefits: Mirrored backup media sets improve availability by minimizing downtime during restore operations. A damaged backup could result in a longer restore time, or a restore failure. As databases grow, the probability increases that the failure of a backup device or media will make a backup unrestorable. Restoring a database is time sensitive, and mirrored backup media sets give you added protection to get your application fully functional more quickly.

No Comments »

Microsoft Protocols Documentation and Interoperability September 9th, 2010

Vinod Kumar

Microsoft publishes documentation for protocols in certain versions of Windows Client (including the .NET Framework), Windows Server, Office, SharePoint products and technologies, Exchange Server, and SQL Server that are used to communicate with other Microsoft software products. This includes documentation for Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP), the Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP), and the recently-launched Microsoft Interoperability Program (MIP). Protocol documentation is available to view and download from the MSDN web site.

I got into this topic because in the recent past there have been updates to the existing documentation.

SQL Server Protocol Documentation – September 3
Windows Protocol Documentation – August 31
Exchange Protocol Documentation – August 4

The website has all the details. In addition to the protocols, there are interesting resources in terms of interoperability on the Interoperability Bridges Center. The Center is dedicated to technical collaborative work to improve interoperability between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies. In this site, you will find a live directory of freely downloadable technical Interoperability Bridges & Labs and related content such as demos, technical guidance and articles. The vast majority of the projects are Open Source. The Center is run by the Microsoft Interoperability Strategy Group working with the community at large.

Browse all Projects

Recent update include OData Client for Objective C – this Enables Objective C developers targetting iOS (iPhone/iPad) and MacOS to interoperate through REST using the Open Data (OData) protocol specification.

These surely were something interesting to share … Enjoy and Have a great weekend !!!

No Comments »

Windows Server AppFabric Beta 2 Released March 11th, 2010

Vinod Kumar

With first announced at PDC 2009, Windows Server AppFabric is a set of application services focused on improving the speed, scale, and management of Web, Composite, and Enterprise applications.

Developers and IT Pros can expect the following benefits from Windows Server AppFabric:

Faster Web Apps Made Easy

Windows Server AppFabric helps developers improve the speed and availability of web applications through distributed in-memory caching and replication technology that works with current ASP.NET applications.

Simplified Composite Apps

Developers can simplify the development of composite applications with the pre-built application services in Windows Server AppFabric, used in conjunction with Visual Studio tools and .NET Framework capabilities (ASP.NET, WCF and WF). IT Pros can also simplify the deployment, monitoring, and management of composite applications with configuration and monitoring capabilities that are integrated with familiar tools (PowerShell, IIS Manager, and System Center).

Enterprise Performance and Availability

An enterprise’s most important and demanding applications can achieve elastic scale, performance, availability, and reliability (benefits often associated with the cloud) with the help of Windows Server AppFabric. These and countless other benefits from an unparalleled partner ecosystem utilize familiar skills from the .NET Framework and Windows Server.

Additional Resources:

Gartner Research Report: Microsoft AppFabric: A Platform for the Cloud Era is Under Construction

http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol13/article6/article6.html

Microsoft News Center feature story on Windows Server & Windows Azure platform AppFabric:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/nov09/11-17pdcappfabric.mspx

Beta2 Blog Post on Windows Server Blog:

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/

Additional information on Windows Server AppFabric:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/app-main.aspx

Information (including download link) for Windows Azure AppFabric:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/appfabric/

No Comments »

P&P – A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control March 8th, 2010

Vinod Kumar

Imagine a world where you don’t have to worry about authentication. Imagine instead that all requests to your application already include the information you need to make access control decisions and to personalize the application for the user.

In this world, your applications can trust another system component to securely provide user information, such as the user’s name or e-mail address, a manager’s e-mail address, or even a purchasing authorization limit. The user’s information always arrives in the same simple format, regardless of the authentication mechanism, whether it’s Microsoft® Windows® integrated authentication, forms-based authentication in a Web browser, an X.509 client certificate, or something more exotic. Even if someone in charge of your company’s security policy changes how users authenticate, you still get the information, and it’s always in the same format. This is the utopia of claims-based identity that A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control describes. As you’ll see, claims provide an innovative approach for building applications that authenticate and authorize users.

What’s in “A Guide to Claims-Based Identity”?

“An Introduction to Claims” explains what a claim is and gives general rules on what makes a good claim and how to incorporate them in your application. It’s probably a good idea that you read this chapter before you go on to the scenarios.

“Claims-Based Architectures” shows you how to use claims with browser-based applications and smart client–based applications. In particular, the chapter focuses on how to implement single sign-on for your users, whether they are on an intranet or an extranet. This chapter is optional. You don’t need to read it before you go on to the scenarios.

“Claims-Based Single Sign-On for the Web” shows you how to implement single-sign on within a corporate intranet. Although this may be something that you can also implement with Windows integrated authentication, it is the first stop on the way to implementing more complex scenarios. It includes a section for Windows Azure™ that shows you how to move the claims-based application to the cloud.

“Federated Identity for Web Applications” shows you how you can give your business partners access to your applications while maintaining the integrity of your corporate directory and theirs. In other words, your partners’ employees can use their corporate credentials to gain access to your applications.

“Federated Identity for Web Services” shows you how to use the claims-based approach with Web services, where a partner uses a smart client rather than a browser.

“Federated Identity with Multiple Partners” is a variation of the previous scenario that shows you how to federate with partners who have no issuer of their own as well as those who do. It demonstrates how to use the ASP.NET MVC framework to create a claims-aware application.

Click here to download this release.

On Channe9 Video’s

p&p Claims Identity and Access Control Guide is now available

p&p Claims Identity and Access Control Guide – A look into the Single Sign On scenario

For more information visit: http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices

No Comments »