January 2005 - Mike Taulty's Blog

WS-MetadataExchange on ASMX

Christian posted a link to a starting-point implementation of WS-MetadataExchange that's been put on top of ASMX web services through Soap Extensions. Read no further if you already know what that means. Web services are all about the exchange of messages and we have WSDL (and its friend, XML Schema) to help us define what the message exchange patterns are like for a particular web service. Beyond that, a web service may have a particular policy that it applies to messages that it sends or receives and that policy might state information such as whether the messages need to contain authentication information or whether they need to be digitally signed or encrypted and so on. WS-Policy provides a generic framework for describing the policy requirements of a web service and other specifications (such as WS-SecurityPolicy ) apply WS-Policy to a particular area that require policy assertions to be made. When two services interact it's going to be handy for them to be aware of each other's policies in order that they...

Published Mon, Jan 31 2005 5:27 AM by mtaulty

Smile! You're on camera...

Interesting one from The Inquirer about Logica CMG doing work with facial recognition in a shopping centre - some interesting implications in there I'd think.

Published Thu, Jan 27 2005 4:31 AM by mtaulty

Shipping icon files in VS 2005

There's a post here about the icons that ship with VS2005 for re-use in your own applications . This is a small thing but I think it's a really good thing. Most software companies don't have any kind of artist to draw this kind of stuff and the developer usually gets told "Get some nice icons onto that menu bar for the demo in three hours" and you're left wondering where you're supposed to get them from.

Published Thu, Jan 27 2005 3:13 AM by mtaulty

Avalon Property Triggers

This posting by Joe Marini explains a bit about how "property triggers" work in Avalon. I'd not seen this stuff before - this looks like a really elegant way of replacing a tonne of UI code with a bunch of declarative statements.

Published Thu, Jan 27 2005 3:09 AM by mtaulty

Service Pack 1 of BizTalk Server 2004

The first service pack for BizTalk Server 2004 has been released . It contains a bunch of fixes and the recommendation is that all installations of 2004 install it. There's also the BizTalk Server Adapter Migration Toolkit - if you had AICs or custom preprocessors for BizTalk Server 2002 then there are bits here to assist in getting those migrated across to plug in for 2004.

Published Thu, Jan 27 2005 1:47 AM by mtaulty

NetHousePrices

Like many people in the UK, I've recently registered to use a fantastic service which makes Land Registry house prices available. The service is provided by NetHousePrices and, essentially, it allows you to type in the name of a post code or street and find out what price people paid for properties that match the search criteria. The most recent update from the site is that the service will now be provided free for the foreseeable future which is a major boon. So, if you want to find out what a house last sold for check out the site. I could actually see this kind of site having a real effect on house prices. For example - if you turn up to view Number 7, Acacia Avenue and it's for sale for £350,000 you might feel a little squeamish about paying that if you can do a quick search and find out that it was bought for, say, £180,000 about 4 years ago. I know, I'm a dreamer...

Published Wed, Jan 26 2005 2:51 AM by mtaulty

TaskMan in Avalon

I really like this little sample application that Karsten Januszewski has built for this MSDN Article up at the Longhorn developer centre . The thing I like about is that I haven't seen a lot of code samples where people start from first principles with Avalon. I've seen lots of things that look really cool but, often, they leave me wondering how they were actually built. The stuff that Karsten's done here fleshes out how I'd assumed that you program animations (for cases where dropping them into the static XAML doesn't work for you) so that's really nice. What it does make me realise however, is how long I need to spend with Avalon trying to figure out how to put things together.

Published Tue, Jan 25 2005 11:32 AM by mtaulty

Windows Internals - 4th Edition

It's very obviously an advertisement but I got my new edition of " Microsoft Windows Internals " in the post today and it's sitting on my table trying to trick me into opening it up and reading it. I can't think of many technical books where I've gone out and bought multiple editions and there certainly isn't another where I'd consider buying 4 editions but for this particular book it just has to be done. The definitive guide to how things work in Windows and understanding how things work is 90% of the battle in my view.

Published Mon, Jan 24 2005 7:31 AM by mtaulty

Films, films, films.

I've seen some cracking films just lately. 2005 (or at least the start of it) looks like it's going to be a really good year - not sure what's going on in the world of film makers that's caused January 2005 to be so strong but it's fantastic. So far, I've managed to see; A Very Long Engagement Million Dollar Baby Vera Drake all of which were excellent films - my preference being for the 1st and the 3rd - liked the Clint Eastwood thing but left feeling a bit numb. On my list to see are still; Sideways Team America: World Police Ray Hotel Rwanda In Good Company and I've managed to slip in a couple of "rental" releases as well finally catching up with " Infernal Affairs 2 " and " The Motorcycle Diaries" . Roll on February :-)

Published Sun, Jan 23 2005 7:32 AM by mtaulty

Digital Blackbelt Developer Security Webcasts

There's a cracking series of Webcasts being put together and delivered around looking at security topics from the developer's perspective. The series is called the " Digital Blackbelt Series " - they kick off in February and run through until May. I'm hoping that they'll also be recorded for offline viewing but if they're not you can always try and follow this guide for making them offline by yourself - I meet a lot of people out and about who's companies don't allow webcasts to get to their desks and so offline's the only way to go. The topic list looks like this; MSDN Webcast: Digital Blackbelt Series: The Software Security Crisis: Selling Management on the Need to Invest in Secure Software Development (Level 100) Friday, February 4, 2005 11:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M. Pacific Time, United States and Canada (UTC-8) MSDN Webcast: Digital Blackbelt Series: Building an Intentionally Secure Development Process (Level 200) Friday, February 18, 2005 11:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M. Pacific Time, United States and...

Published Sun, Jan 23 2005 7:21 AM by mtaulty

Unmanaged programming in Avalon/WinFX?

I found this thread over on the Longhorn developer centre to be an interesting one. If you follow it through you'll see the question that's being asked is a really good one in that it's asking where do you go for "unmanaged" (i.e. native Win32) API's for programming Avalon. The answers that come back are essentially that Avalon presents a "managed" (i.e. .NET) API rather than an unmanaged one and that calling from unmanaged code is going to involve interop from the unmanaged to the managed side. For the .NET developer who's been following the platform along since the announcements at the last PDC this is going to come as no big surprise. For the non .NET developer who's been writing ATL or MFC and hasn't seen the PDC picture that showed a transition from something like; MSDOS ---> Win16 ---> Win32 ---> WinFX this might come as something of a shock and that's presumably where this question has come from.

Published Sun, Jan 23 2005 7:14 AM by mtaulty

Smart Client Architecture Guide

I hadn't seen this architecture guide before today so I thought that I'd mention it. Those busy chaps over at MSDN Patterns & Practices have put together an entire architecture guide for Smart Client applications. Here's the hyperlink to the start page - it's 6 months old so you might well already be aware of it but I'd missed it. It has some good stuff on the Smart Client topics like online/offline, deployment/updates, security, asynchronous work and so on - as usual, it seems very well thought out and thorough and is certainly well worth a read if you've not seen it.

Published Tue, Jan 18 2005 4:13 PM by mtaulty

Designing Class Libraries on MSDN

I just came across an area of the MSDN site that I'd never seen before. The hyperlink is here - the section is about designing .NET class libraries and there's a wealth of good information up there about design principles, naming conventions and so on. This looks like an expansion of the design guidelines document that used to live up at MSDN - it certainly looks worth a visit if (like me) you've not been there before.

Published Tue, Jan 18 2005 1:32 AM by mtaulty

Apple's New Kit

So the MacWorld conference delivered what the rumour mill said it was going to deliver. A $499 computer (now, that should be around £250 but of course it'll be around £500 which is more like $1000 - quite how we get ripped off like that is beyond me - rant over) in a slinky looking box. I've not yet read what its capabilities are yet so I wouldn't comment on it right now. Also, a mini iPod like device which looks like the MP3 player that I bought a year or two back. The styling of this looks nice but it doesn't seem like anything particularly innovative to me. The only thing I'd say is that $99 sounds reasonable for a 512MB device. The weird thing is that, from the pictures, there doesn't seem to be any display on the device - can that be right?

Published Tue, Jan 11 2005 5:00 PM by mtaulty

Marcus is blogging

My team at Microsoft has grown a little lately with a couple of new members including Mr Mobile himself, Marcus Perryman who has a new blog site over here at MSDN . If you're interested in mobile development then Marcus is your man so subscribe right now. In fact, subscribe anyway :-)

Published Mon, Jan 10 2005 10:40 AM by mtaulty