I just had a call from a client with some big problems on their server that has IIS and SQL Server on it.

Their most used application that interacts directly with SQL Server was having problems – from many computers and randomly throughout the application.

I watched the SQL Server profiler and saw rpc requests coming in and occasionaly that request was not being followed by a BatchCompleted.

Also on that server, things were really slow.

A quick peek in the task manager showed a very bloated ASP.Net worker process (w3wp.exe). On the first call to a particular webservice, it was flying up from about 108,000K to over 550,000K.

Restarting that application made the memory drop back down to 108,000 or so.

I checked everything I could think of and tested each time after I made a change. Still the worker process was bloating.

Finally, I targetted two little seemingly innocent lines in my web.config. The flags whcih enable wse2 to trace it’s incoming and outgoing messages to xml files and also policy tracing. These are simple settings in the WSE2 config tool.

I commented them out and voila – all was well again.

Lesson learned – remember to turn of the darn analysis tools in a live app when you are not using them.

Crisis averted – phew!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Since I have an interest in WS-Federation and Liberty, I found this post from Tim Bray (by way of Robert Scoble) also notable. It’s very difficult to always know what the big picture is of things like these – especially since I am pretty uninvolved in Interop still.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Rebecca Dias: WS-* and Liberty

Matt Powell Excellent News around Web Service Federation

Hervey Wilson Moving On…Federation Calls…  Active Directory Federation Server/Indigo/WS* – cool!!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Nice to see this kind of forward movement! Cheers to everyone who has worked so hard on these specs.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Bhagvan Chougule left a comment in one of my blog posts asking how I got WSE2 to install as part of my application install for an app that uses WSE2. I remember having a hard time figuring it out the first time, too, since I had never done this with any types of apps – not just WSE. So I thought I would show here how to do that.

First, if you right click on the setup project, you can choose View/Launch Conditions

Once you are in there, you can add launch conditions. I added a “File Launch Condition” which created a folder called “Search Target Machine”.

Here is how I set it up.

I think it’s time for me to start focusing on concepts like Contract First and tools like ThinkTecture’s WSCF as well as Kirk Allen Evan’s new WSE2 templates. Web Methods mask messaging from us and using them in VS.NET makes me think I am working with objects. I think I have done more than enough with Web Services to finally get rid of the training wheels and prepare my head for Indigo. And definitely check out John Bristowe’s and Benjamin Mitchell’s thoughts on this.

http://www.AcehAid.org

This is my bookmark to an article I really want to read, but I want to do it away from email, i.m. and the phone. It is a topic that I get stuck on because I basically understand it, but not enough to deal with more detailed questions..

Routing Secured SOAP Messages Through Multiple SOAP Intermediaries Using WSE 2.0

It’s written by William Tay, who is one of my WSE2 pals – though I think I ask him many  more questions on i.m. about WSE2 than he asks me! Hmmm, I wonder why? 🙂 (Because he understands this stuff at a much deeper level than me, that’s why!!)

http://www.AcehAid.org

For those that attended my afternoon workshop at ASP.NET Connections on Sunday, thanks so much for coming. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy teaching that particular session and I hope everyone got a lot out of it. I know from talking to a bunch of you that you did!!

I have posted the powerpoint for this 3 hour talk on my website on the presentations page. It isn’t much different than what you have in the printed book. Look for the ppt link under the session entitled “Web Services Security for Dummies with WSE2”.

I will post the code from the demos shortly. [update: these have been posted on 3/26]

streaming video! Check it out.

I was there live. He did a great job.

http://www.AcehAid.org

As I am looking at my presentation for the 3 hour workshop I am doing on WSE Security at Connections in a few weeks, I am really excited about it. This the first time I won’t have to cram all of this information in a short session – or skip a lot of it. I am going to have plenty of time to go over the security fundamentals as well as the basics of WSE 2.0, such as what they are, how they work and how to work with the API and Policy.

Remember that this is not a regular session at ASP.NET Connections, but a pre-conference Workshop on Sunday afternoon, which you have to register for additionally. There don’t seem to be any other WSE 2.0 focused talks at the conference, although there will be some Indigo sessions and Christian Weyer and Malek Kemmou will be doing sessions on Web Services . So if you want to get started with WSE and also be prepared to start learning about Indigo, I highly recommend the extra session so that you won’t feel lost at the higher level ones!

http://www.AcehAid.org