http://www.AcehAid.org
I realize that I have started referring to the high level policy files you create by clicking on the check boxes in WSE2 Config Settings Tool as “click click policies”. I think I’m going to coin that phrase for myself!
Jerry Dennany sums up his experience with working with WSE2 for a while.
I have to agree with much of what he is saying which is why I have been working hard to try to digest as much as I can and spit it out for other developers to save them some of the pain of learning how to leverage WSE2 beyond just clicking a few checkmarks in the config tool.
http://www.AcehAid.org
My favorite method of inspecting SOAP messages when I am working with WSE2.0 is Mike Taulty’s WSE 2.0 Tracing Utility. Mike had to update the tool to work with SP2. If you use this tool, and have updated to SP2, be sure to grab the new version here. You will need to modify your config files as well.
If you are using WSE2 and not using Mike’s utility, I highly recommend that you try it. The messages are so much more disoverable and readable than opening up the log files in notepad..
Posted from BLInk!
At Web Services Edge, someone asked me in the hallway about doing WSE2 Security without X509 certificates. Although there is, out of the box, support for Kerberos (which I still know nearly zip about) and you can write custom tokens as well, I think the question was really about how to do security well with login/pw —> UsernameTokens.
The answer is that you can, but with the caveat that logins/passwords are often (thanks to social engineering and use of passwords like “cat”) not the best way to go.
However, if you are hoping to do this with UsernameTokens, there are two important resources you should be aware of.
1) Keith Brown’s recent article on the Web Services dev center on Securing UsernameTokens with WSE 2.0
2) To solve another problem – doing SecureConversation with UsernameTokens – which still basically requires a web server x509 certificate – see William Stacy’s blog post which accomplished what a number of us have been trying to do for some time!
Keith Brown’s new article on MSDN Online is high on my reading list and will be incorporated into my WSE2 talk at DevConnections. UsernameTokens will be much more highly used than I think was originally planned for with WSE2.
http://www.AcehAid.org
Mark Fussell writes that the Hands on Labs for WSE2 have been updated for the SP2 version, added to and released. Mark refers to the first rev of these HOLs written by Aaron Skonnard, as “without doubt the best resource for getting up to speed with understanding WSE 2.0 quickly.” I couldn’t agree more. I have mentioned these HOLs in many posts and both my WSE2 presentation and an upcoming article make many references to them i.e. “please refer to the HOLs for more details on ______” just about everything.
So the one I worked with Security & Policy C# version now has a VB partner! Hooray. Though I loved the opportunity to keep working on my C# skills, it’s really hard to deal with two learning curves at once.There is also one for Messaging in both C# and VB.
See Marks’ post for more details. If you want to learn WSE2.0, you must must must do these HOLs.
The security one also is the best resource I have seen for installing certs into your windows box, by the way!
http://www.AcehAid.org
Posted from BLInk!
One of the very frequently asked questions on the WSE newsgroup is “what about whidbey”. Right now, you just can’t use WSE 2 with Whidbey (okay so I’m having fun with these W’s…). But (via Matt Powell) Hervey says that some of the worst hindrances have been dealt with and we should be able to start experimenting with WSE & Whidbey when WSE 2 sp2 comes out. Ahh, there go the rest of my Friday nights! 😉 Whoopee.
update: chatting with Softwaremaker, I learned that he was using WSE2.0 SP1 with Whidbey with no problem. I had never even tried it!