Monthly Archives: March 2006

Writing WSE 3.0 and other ASMX web services today to be used by WCF tomorrow

WSE

Not only can you write web services today that can be consumed by WCF (Indigo) apps in the future, but working with WSE 3.0 today to secure your web services will also help you get a handle on many of the concepts of WCF. I have written an article for DevSource called “Using WSE 3.0 Today to Secure Web Services Tomorrow” based on current guidance (based on WSE 3.0 and WCF Beta 1) on just such a topic.

I will also be doing a talk on this topic next week at DevConnections.

Thanks to Mark Fussell for his insights on this topic.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Mucking with session powerpoints before a conference

Presentations

With most conferences,speakers need to submit their powerpoints way in advace of the conferences. Attendees are provided with books filled with the printouts of the decks so that they can take notes during the conference. It is not uncommon with a new talk to fine tune it between that early preparation and the actual time you your presentation.

Though this has only happened once, it struck me (and stuck in my brain) when an attendee wrote on an eval that it was a pain that the slides in my talk were different than the book.

So this time around,rather than hoping that I’m going to remember in the middle of a talk and say “oh, I changed this slide a little (for your benefit)” I am just putting tiny little notes on the bottom of modified slides: “This slide is slightly modified from the original printed version”.

Hopefully that will mean one less negative comment this time around! 🙂

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

How many vpcs?

Tools

I now have built three VPCs to be used as bases for various testing. I can make a copy of a VPC and then use that copy to install “dangerous” bits – eg betas, ctps etc.

My first VPC is a clean Windows XP SP2 system with all of the current updates.

My second VPC is that plus .NET 2.0,  VS2005 RTM and SQL Server Express RTM. I can the throw things like Atlas or WinFX on top of them. It took quite a long time to install this. So I won’t have to do that again.

My third VPC is #2 PLUS the WinFX February CTP Components , SDK and VS2005 Extensions for WinFX. I plan to experiment with WCF (and need a very clean copy of this for a DevConnections session) with and without Atlas installed on top of it (ergo I want two) and also WPF.

I spent about two days creating them and then tucked them away onto my 200GB drive. Then I can make a copy on my external hard drive and go to town.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

DevConnectons, Deep Dive in .NET,DevTeach and INETA INETA INETA

Presentations

My quiet (snowless boo hoo hoo) winter at home is winding down. Soon I will have to start tugging at the roots that have been deeply embedding me into my beautiful little place in the world and flit about the country …err continent, that is.

It all begins again in about a week.

April 3 – 6: DevConnections in Orlando (I have 1 talk at ASPConnections and 2 at VSConnections)

April 10: Not a trip, but I’ll be presenting at Vermont.NET!

April 11-13 – Maybe attend  Devscovery in NYC.

April 22: Deeper in .NET in Milwaukee.This will be new for me – a big one day user group event with myself and 4 other speakers that I am honored to be included with (Michele on Indigo, Scott Hanselman on ASP.NET seen through dasBlog, UI guru Jason Beres and ASP.NET book author Bill Hatfield)! I also get to spend a few days visiting a good friend.

May 2: Huntsville, AL to speak at the HUNTUG User Group run by Lori McKinney (an INETA event). I am looking forward to this as well, though I won’t be doing the usual INETA speaker visit to the nearby Space Museum. nor two attractions that are more up my alley: Cathedral Caverns State Park and Burritt Museum.

May 9-11: Montreal for DevTeach! Yay yay! One of my favorite conferences. It’s less than 3 hours from my house. Many of my friends are there as speaker and attendees and Montreal is beautiful in the spring! Then after that Alan Griver and Beth Massi are coming home with me for visit and Alan will be speaking at VTdotNET. Yay.

June – A whirlwind. I’m hoping to announce soon a Vermont Code Camp in early June. Then there’s TechEd and then I’m off on a 10 day trip that is a combined vacation and INETA tour (with my hubby) to the Atlantic Provinces in Canada. I have always wanted to go to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and have been eyeing the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick for years, as well. I will be visiting New Brunswick.NET, the .NET Nova Scotia and finally We Develop.NET in St. John’s Newfoundland.

The list goes on. I have a whole bunch of INETA gigs scheduled through September already and am talking with Thom Robbins about a possible mini-code camp, too.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Ladies’ Luncheon at DevConnections

Connections

DevConnections is coming in a little over a week. Hooray! At Tuesday’s lunch, there will be a bunch of tables reserved for women so that we can all get together and meet – attendees and the women speakers. That will be fun.

I remember when I first started going to conferences, I was so excited to see other women programmers that I just wanted to meet every chick that I saw in the hallways. This will be much more subtle and less embarrassing way to achieve that!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Upgrade ISA Server blocking some requests? Check HTTP filtering first!

Tools

One of my clients just had their ISA 2000 Server upgraded to ISA 2004 and were having some weird problems and finally got to the bottom of it – HTTP Request Filtering.

Symptoms

1) There was one ASP.NET 1.1 app that was having problems with buttons on new records that did a server.transfer. But on pre-existing records, the server.transfer worked.

2) In one of the ASP classic apps, we saw a pattern (pointed out by a non-programmer who asked “what about that ampersand?”!) where hyperlink requests with multiple query parameters failed but single query parameters succeeded.

The Pattern

Thanks to the eagle eyes of that user, I went back and looked more carefully at the asp.net app. Though the server.transfer involved only one query parameter, it was the page it was coming from that was the issue since the url doesn’t change with a server.transfer. And indeed, the new records had multiple parameters but the pre-existing ones did not. (I wrote this app over 3 years ago, so I definitely wasn’t too fresh on it!)

The Solution

So we went back to the i.t. guy and asked him to check the HTTP Filtering in ISA for either URL length or the ampersand and wouldn’t you know it – the ampersand had come over from ISA 2000 (where it was ignored) and fallen into the list of forbidden URL characters!

Ha!!



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Microsoft presentation demos compared to demos that us regular folks do

Presentations

Brad Abrams has a long list of credits for the folks who helped him create demos for this MIX session. When I was at TechEd last June, I saw a totally awesome demo in a WCF Reliablility session that also had some top talent at Microsoft involved in building the demo. The Microsoft demos for the Indigo overview talk that has been done a lot by Ari Bixhorn takes a truckload of equipment and even a mini support team to run (whereas I had some ho-hum console apps when I did that at TechEd South Africa). I spend a ridiculous amount of time on my demos  but will never have anything like the ones these guys get to pull off for their nice shiny sessions. Sheesh. 🙂

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Vermont IT Jobs: Reporting Analyst AND Internet Systems Architect

Jobs

Resolution Inc.  in Burlington

Reporting Analyst
  As Reporting Analyst, this position will be responsible for the design, programming, and analysis of reports / applications to support Resolution’s external and internal customers. Relational database experience and data analysis skills are required, as is a great team attitude. At least 3 years professional experience required. Experience with IBM AS400, Oracle, SQL, and MS Access preferred. Relational database experience and data analysis skills are required, as is a great team attitude. At least 3 years professional experience required. Experience with IBM AS400, Oracle, SQL, and MS Access preferred.

Internet Systems Architect
Resolution, Inc. is seeking an experienced, high-concept, solutions sales person to expand its considerable presence in the broadcast, publishing, educational and association markets.

 Necessary Skills: -Strong HTML & CSS skills -Strong Javascript skills including AJAX and JSON experience -Ruby programming ideally including Ruby On Rails -Experience implementing redundant file, database and application services -General web tools and languages (Python, PHP, Perl, etc.) -Experience directing a small team in a fast paced environment -Database administration (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle) -Unix / Linux system setup and administration skills -Experience with system monitoring and management tools (Nagios, BigSister, etc.) -Systems and procedure documentation (samples required).

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org