First look at Windows 10 and what is expected more?

First look at Windows 10 and highlights -
Terry Myerson - Executive Vice President for Microsoft's Operating Systems Group announced Windows 10 release and here are few excerpts -

1 Huge stress on enterprise and differentiation of personal and enterprise data. This will helps enterprise admins to simplify their job and be worried only about enterprise data.

2 New OS will allow enterprises to have its own marketplace and store fronts that will allow them to host their own applications, distribute and control.

3 Multi-tasking tool that should boost productivity in Windows 10 is Snap Assist, which lets you "snap" up to four apps at once to get suggestions for other open apps that may help you with a given task

4. Virtual desktops

5. Multi views in One - optimized for all devices - keyboard for one and touch for other

6. Start is back... yes, we heard that!

7. Key is Microsoft is now talking to have Windows 10 has the CORE OS across devices - not just PC's and laptops but phones, tables and may be consoles!

8. Though Microsoft has not revealed their business model and pricing yet but seems it will be a free upgrade for users/enterprises that own Windows 8/8.1. There may be sub $99 version of Windows 10 that would be provisioned on windows phone devices. Joe Belfiore - Corporate Vice President, Operating Systems Group at Microsoft. He is responsible for the design and software product definition of forthcoming generations of Windows Phones and to bring new OS Windows 10 across phone and devices.

9. Release date will be likely after Developer's build conference in April 2015, hence there is huge opportunity for developers to get their hands on the OS and play/test the new Windows 10.

10. Microsoft has release Windows Insider program which will likely read your feedback and incorporate as part of their flight feature program in development of Windows OS.
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Technical preview bits are available here for free and immediate Windows Test by developers. This barebones version will eventually become Windows 10 and will be available to the public for download at preview.windows.com.

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What would be good to have in Windows 10 operating system?

1 With Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, recent split of ebay and PayPal, and entry of Alibaba in US markets what's the strategy for Microsoft Payments? What's the roadmap in consumer space, especially, for Windows phone devices ...?

2 Plans to build and distribute more enterprise apps that would bring productivity and assist enterprises on the lines of IBM and Apple deal? Growth of marketplace apps will be key to Microsoft's success and adoption of its devices.

3 Security - still grey area, please avoid UAC popups as we had in Windows Vista.

4 Internet of Things (IoT) - Great to hear that Windows 10 will be also on IOT or so called embedded devices and connected car, but double click details missing. Whats the product roadmap on wearables?  Agree, Microsoft should not be in the race of catch up... but to stop being reactive... its imperative that there is a clear vision and roadmap for next 3 years in devices and services space which will help partners and developer community significantly.

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Side bar - Did you miss Windows 9 news or seems like we fast forwarded our life :) Nope, its just that Microsoft thought 10 is luckier than 9 and they decided to skip :)

These are all early findings. Will report back with more on Windows 10 in coming months, beginning with the availability of the early build preview.

Cheers - DJ

Microsoft releases new Azure services for Internet of Things (IoT) - Azure Intelligent Systems Service along with Analytics Platform

Microsoft releases new Azure services for Internet of Things (IoT) - Azure Intelligent Systems Service along with Analytics Platform and SQL Server 2014 in memory capabilities release. This shapes up there BI/Analytics strategy along with Cloud first/mobile first after failed attempt of mediocre release of Performance Point product few years back. :)

"The era of ambient intelligence has begun, and we are delivering a platform that allows companies of any size to create a data culture and ensure insights reach every individual in every organization," quoted by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

Personally, think this is one of the biggest pain point for most of client business where there is a need to "store and query big data" over cloud efficiently, quickly and cheap. There is a preview available for Azure Intelligent Systems Service to test only on request and registration.

News -
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/5658/20140416/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-talks-ambient-intelligence-announces-big-data-analytics-platform.htm


Below link shows how to use the Microsoft Avro Library and Hadoop scnearios to serialize objects and other data structures into streams in order to persist them to memory, a database or a file, and also how to deserialize them to recover the original objects.

Microsoft Azure site with various offerings and Big data sheet details:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/solutions/big-data.aspx#fbid=mEBV57JBsZA

-D

Windows Azure Data Strategies and management - deciding factor

Interesting read to explore in detail on Windows Azure data strategies published here by Microsoft. Help you decide on pros and cons on Azure. Also will help you decide choose right approach and data management strategies.

Windows Azure provides several different ways to store and manage data. This diversity lets users of the platform address a variety of different problems. Yet diversity implies choice: Which data management option is right for a particular situation?
This short overview is intended to help you answer that question. After a quick summary of the data management technologies in Windows Azure, we’ll walk through several different scenarios, describing which of these technologies is most appropriate in each case. The goal is to make it easier to choose the right options for the problem you face.

Here -

1. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/windows/fundamentals/cloud-storage-scenarios/
2. http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/solutions/data-management/#scenarios

Free trial to start with any of your Azure services on Microsoft as below -

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/
SQL Azure:
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/sql-database/
Cache Service:
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/cache/
Storage:
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/storage/
HD Insight:
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/hdinsight/
Virtual Machines -
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/virtual-machines/

-DJ

Basic and architecture Windows and SQL Azure interview questions and answers...

Here is the list of basic and architectural Windows Azure interview questions and answers. Will uncover and add some more as we move along and learn. Intend to grow this list further....

What are the services provided in Cloud Computing/Azure?
Services provided would be basically three fundamental models: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS), and Software as a service (SaaS).

 

What are the steps involved in creating a Windows Azure Project with Visual Studio?
Refer for detailed steps here -http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee405487.aspx 

What are various roles available in Windows Azure?
There are three roles (Web, worker, VM) available. Web and Worker roles are nearly identical: With Web and Worker roles, the OS and related patches are taken care for you; you build your app's components without having to manage a VM.

What are the three main components of Windows Azure Platform?  

1. Compute
2. Storage
3. AppFabric

What are the benefits of Azure?

• Platform as a Service (PaaS) / Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) / Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Variable pricing - see here (Azure retail subscription pricing calculator
  http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/calculator)
• On demand and simple service procurement
• More predictable solution environments
• Small infrastructure management responsibility
• Scalability with Global model - 15 global data centers (to date) and growing...
• Security/privacy compliance – HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27007
• Compatibility with existing development tools

What are the capabilities that are provided with Visual Studio?

• Windows Azure Cloud Service Visual Studio Template
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee405487.aspx
• ASP.Net web role
• WCF Service web role
• Worker Role with Service Bus Queue
• Worker Role
• Cache Worker Role – provides a dedicated cache
• Integration with Emulators
• Sophisticated debugging and tracing capability including remote debugging w/- SDK 2.2
• Publish capability
• Basic Azure component management in Server Explorer
• Azure storage error log and application diagnostic analysis

What is Windows Azure compute emulator? 

The compute emulator is a local emulator of Windows Azure that you can use to build and test your application before deploying it to Windows Azure. 

  

What is the difference between Web Sites versus Web Roles (Azure Compute Services)?

• Web site uses .azurewebsites.net versus .cloudapp.net for web roles
• Web sites offer very quick deployment, scaling and rollback
• Web sites have out of box support for Git and other continuous publishing tools
• Web sites have less capability than web roles e.g. no remote management, no traffic manager
• Web sites are good for a 2-tier application architecture
• 10 per region multi-tenant web sites are free

Which is the latest version of Microsoft Windows Azure? (March 2014) and what are some of the key features/capabilities that come along with SDK v2.2?

SDK v2.2 -
•BizTalk Services: EDIFACT protocol support, Service Bus Integration, Backup and Restore
•Web Sites: Backup and Restore Support

•HDInsight: Hadoop 2.2 support

•Mobile Services: .NET support, Notification Hub Integration, PhoneGap support

•Management: Co-admin limit increased from 10->200 users

•Monitoring: Service Outage Notifications Integrated within Management Portal

•Virtual Machines: VM Agent and Background Information Support

•ExpressRoute: Dedicated, private, high-throughput network connectivity with on-premises.

Pricing - $5000 per month for 10GBps connection 

•Active Directory: More SaaS apps, more reports, self-service group management

 

What are Windows Azure Data Services? 

Windows Azure SQL Database Service provides -

• Data replication – backups are only required for user / application errors
• Relational data structures
• Only SQL authentication
• No always-on availability groups
• SQL Data Sync for mirroring
• No SQL Server Agent – use worker roles and windows workflow foundation (WWF)
• Data Sharding – SQL Azure Database federation:
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh597452.aspx
• Database backup and auomatic scheduled data backup to Azure Storage

What is Blob?

BLOB stands for Binary Large Object. Blob is file of any type and size.

The Azure Blob Storage offers two types of blobs –

1. Block Blob

2. Page Blob 

Learn more here -http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-dotnet-how-to-use-blobs-20/ 

                                         

What is Windows Azure AppFabric? What are various services provided?

• Windows Azure AppFabric is a part of the Microsoft Windows Azure Platform. Positioned by Microsoft as middleware, it provides several cloud computing services:
• Access Control Service: Provides an easy way for web applications and web services to identify users, and grant access control to the applications and services.
• AppFabric Applications: Provides tools and APIs for developing and hosting a composite application expressly for deployment through the service.
• Service Bus: Provides secure connections between distributed and disconnected applications in the cloud.
• Caching: Provides a distributed, in-memory, application cache service for Windows Azure and SQL Azure applications.
• Integration: Leverages several capabilities of Microsoft BizTalk Server such as transforming messages from one format to another, or providing a queue for message passing.

What is a Queue in Azure terminology?
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-dotnet-how-to-use-queues-20/

Features provided by HDInsight?
Here's a quick start tutorial to get started and learn basics on HDInsight - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/hdinsight-get-started/

•  Provides nice way to also use Microsoft Office tools like Excel to view output using power query and more with power BI features.
• HDInsight is our 100% compatible Apache Hadoop-based distribution for Windows Azure.  With HDInsight you can leverage data stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage or the native HDFS file system local to the compute nodes and crunch massive amounts of data.
  We now support Hadoop 2.2 clusters (in preview mode) with our HDInsight service.  This new update provides an order of magnitude (up to 40x) faster query response times, much better data compression (up to 80%), and enables you to leverage the benefits of YARN.

What are Azure app Services?

1 Media Services
.Net libraries (Media Services SDK) for uploading, storing, encoding, format converting, protection and delivery of media

2 Azure content delivery network (CDN) for Azure storage accounts -
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/media-services-dotnet-get-started/

3 Service Bus Explorer- .Net library and components for message communication processing. Architecture approach for communicating between on premise and private cloud to Azure Components.

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Service-Bus-Explorer-f2abca5a

4 Queues (FIFO)  -

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/service-bus-dotnet-how-to-use-queues/

5 Topics and Subscriptions – Topic filters– Special implementation of a queue that uses a subscriber model -

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/service-bus-dotnet-how-to-use-topics-subscriptions/

 

6 Relays – provides capability to communicate to existing WCF corporate domain web services
7 Notification Hubs – pushing cross-platform back end notifications to mobile clients. Get started building these applications on Windows Azure and learn about notification hubs here -

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/articles/notification-hubs-windows-phone-get-started/
8 Scheduler (new) -
This is an exposed API for job operations and helps create jobs on a schedule:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/dn495651.aspx
9 BizTalk Services -B2B EDI in Azure
EAI in Azure
10 Active Directory -
Identity management in Azure
Can sync with access control service (ACS)
Can sync with on premise Active Directory
11 MSFT Active Directory Federated Services - https://corp.sts.microsoft.com/Onboard/ADFSOnboard.htm
http://sharepoint/sites/windowsazure/windowsazureinternal/Pages/ADFSAuthentication.aspx

.... Cheers - DJ
  

Azure Starter Steps - Building your own first Azure application

As the next technology trend gets strong inclined towards Cloud Computing be it - Sales Force.com, Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, my curiosity towards technology increases and have made an attempt to learn more about it myself :) I needed to get this blog rebooted to a new start as well and think this is the right topic to learn, explore and share as I move along further too.
Focus here would be Microsoft Cloud technology stack - Azure. Here are few bytes that would be helpful for starters who would want to learn about Windows Azure and Cloud computing in general. Ofcourse, there are bunch of materials lying out there but this is one stop shop for everything you need to know about Microsoft Azure.

First, you can create your own Microsoft Azure Account and get free space on cloud - absolutely free! Microsoft has announced that it doesn't even require Credit Card information, only thing required is your cell number to validate your identity! It also provides retail subscriptions for Windows Azure. You would like to go here to sign up -

 

https://account.windowsazure.com/signup

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/purchase-options/

Benefits that come along with -

• 30 day free trial
• Pay as you go
• 6 month plans - $500 per month minimum w/- discounts
• 12 month plans - $500 per month minimum w/- greater discounts
• VL Enterprise agreements
• MSDN Subscription

https://account.windowsazure.com/signup?offer=Azure_MSDN

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/member-offers/msdn-benefits/

• Free credit depending on MSDN level up to $150 / month for Ultimate
• Discounted rates
• Microsoft FTE Azure employee pass was discontinued -> MSDN
• Microsoft Internal Billing for sponsored Azure solutions

Once you have created your Azure subscription account, you can get started creating your first Azure application with easy steps- 

1. Install Visual Studio and Azure SDK
2. Sign in to Windows Azure in Visual Studio Server Explorer
3. Create a Windows Azure Cloud Service Visual Studio project
4. Enter project name
5. Add ASP.Net Web role which would be Empty
6. Add "default.aspx" web form
7. Publish the Azure application from Visual Studio
8. Access your application – http://.cloudapp.net/ from cloud and wola!

In addition, below you can find Azure Service Visual Studio Template:

Visual Studio Template

It includes templates and components around Windows Azure services -
1 ASP.Net web role
2 WCF Service web role
3 Worker Role with Service Bus Queue
4 Worker Role
5 Basic Azure component management in Server Explorer

6 Cache Worker Role – provides a dedicated cache

Azure retail subscription pricing calculator:

Pricing Calculator

Manage your portal w/easy to use Azure management portal:

https://manage.windowsazure.com/

 

 

More.... - DJ

Microsoft officially releases Visual Studio 2013...

Microsoft officially releases Visual Studio 2013

 

Personally still haven't installed it myself but planning soon. Here are few highlights as read on MSDN forums and blogs on the new VS 2013 released:

•	New MVC 5 web application template and SharePointContext for SharePoint apps - MVC web application template for app for SharePoint has been introduced since Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013 Preview. In this Visual Studio 2013 RTM release, the MVC web application template in app for SharePoint has been updated based on the latest one for MVC 5.   SharePointContext is a set of classes (in SharePointContext.cs/SharePointContext.vb) that provides a set of APIs to relieve you from the tedious steps of dealing with communication between SharePoint and web application. Need to decide whether your app be authenticated with Windows Azure Control Services or a certificate (high-trust)? SharePointContext makes it possible for you to use the same snippet of code no matter which way you go. Need efficient but safe strategy to cache the access tokens? APIs in SharePointContext provide a good pattern and the default implementation for you. Which APIs can you use for hosting web and which ones for app web? API naming convention carefully designed in SharePointContext gives you an explicit view what you can use in which case. You can also easily extend the SharePointContext helper by subclassing to provide more advanced features to fulfill your scenarios. Apart from the Visual Studio 2013 in-box release, the new SharePointContext helper is also included in App for SharePoint Web Toolkit - NuGet package, which means you can install the package and leverage the helper APIs in any VS 2013 or VS 2012 project that you want to communicate with SharePoint. For the app for SharePoint projects that you’ve created with VS 2013 Preview, you can simply upgrade the SharePointContext helper to the latest by updating the App for SharePoint Web Toolkit NuGet package (which is installed in the web project when you created the app for SharePoint).
•	Support for Windows 8.1 app development: Visual Studio 2013 provides the ideal toolset for building modern applications that leverage the next wave in Windows platform innovation (Windows 8.1), while supporting devices and services across all Microsoft platforms. Support for Windows Store app development in Windows 8.1 includes updates to the tools, controls and templates, new Coded UI test support for XAML apps, UI Responsiveness Analyzer and Energy Consumption profiler for XAML & HTML apps, enhanced memory profiling tools for HTML apps, and improved integration with the Windows Store.
•	Web development advances: Creating websites or services on the Microsoft platform provides you with many options, including ASP.NET WebForms, ASP.NET MVC, WCF or Web API services, and more. Previously, working with each of these approaches meant working with separate project types and tooling isolated to that project’s capabilities. The One ASP.NET vision unifies your web project experience in Visual Studio 2013 so that you can create ASP.NET web applications using your preference of ASP.NET component frameworks in a single project. Now you can mix and match the right tools for the job within your web projects, giving you increased flexibility and productivity.

You can download Visual Studio 2013 here - http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=306566 

More here...  http://startupnext.blogspot.com/2013/10/microsoft-officially-releases-visual.html

 

 

-D

Microsoft SQL Server CTP2 announced...

Microsoft SQL Server CTP2 announced...

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 brings to market new in-memory capabilities built into the core database and provides new cloud capabilities to simplify cloud adoption for your SQL databases and help you unlock new hybrid scenarios.

 

Key SQL 2014 Architecture features and improvements:

 

1.) Provides new disaster recovery and backup solutions with Windows Azure, enabling customers to use their existing skills with the on-premises product offerings to take advantage of Microsoft’s global datacenters.

2.) Code named "Hekaton" is now known simply "In-Memory" Online Transaction Processing (OLTP). In-Memory OLTP will let administrators move selected tables into main memory, thereby delivering performance improvements without having to touch the actual applications.

3.) Support for additional index types.

4.) Natively compiled stored procedures for efficient execution of business logic.

5.) New tools to help administrators access database performance so that they can determine which tables would most benefit from in-memory optimization.

 

Download Microsoft SQL Server 2014 here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/sql-server-2014.aspx

 

Here's more to In memory architecture overview of SQL server 2014 -

http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2013/07/22/architectural-overview-of-sql-server-2014-s-in-memory-oltp-technology.aspx

 

Tech net blog on how to get started with SQL 2014 -

http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2013/06/26/getting-started-with-sql-server-2014-in-memory-oltp.aspx

 

Hardware Considerations for SQL Server 2014 (Microsoft does claim backward compatibility -if you can run your applications on SQL 2012, you can run on SQL 2014)-

http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2013/08/01/hardware-considerations-for-in-memory-oltp-in-sql-server-2014.aspx 

 

Final release expected to be announced sometime later half of CY 2014, but will learn more from developer community as we play around this!

 

Pass Summit 2013 is going on now... stay tuned for more innovation!!!

 

Cheers - Dipesh

How to upgrade Office 2013 on Surface RT to the final version?

How to upgrade Office 2013 on Surface RT to the final version?

The Microsoft Surface running Windows RT includes Office 2013 Home and Student Version which runs on the tablet's desktop. Out of the box it comes with the Review version of Office, but you can upgrade to the final version which is currently available, here's how.
 

http://www.groovypost.com/howto/upgrade-office-2013-microsoft-surface-windows-rt/ 

 

Cheers - Dipesh

 

Entity Framework 6: now available

Entity Framework 6: Preview Alpha 2 released recently... few key features:

• Async language support is now available for queries and updates when running on .NET 4.5.
• Custom conventions now provide the ability to override the default conventions that Code First uses for mapping types, properties, etc. to your database.
• Multi-tenant migrations allow the same database to be used by multiple contexts with full Code First Migrations support for independently evolving the model backing each context.
• Using Enumerable.Contains in a LINQ query is now handled much more efficiently by EF and the SQL Server provider resulting greatly improved performance.
• All features of EF6 (except async) are available on both .NET 4 and .NET 4.5. This includes support for enums and spatial types and the performance improvements that were previously only available when using .NET 4.5.
• Start-up time for many large models has been dramatically improved thanks to improved view generation performance. 

Entity Framework 6 is the first open source release of Entity Framework being developed in CodePlex. The preview release of EF6 is also available on NuGet, and contains some really great features for you to try.

Entity Framework 5 release is available on NuGet and has following key features:

• Enum support allows you to have enum properties in your entity classes. This new feature is available for Model, Database and Code First.
• Table-valued functions in your database can now be used with Database First.
• Spatial data types can now be exposed in your model using the DbGeography and DbGeometry types. Spatial data is supported in Model, Database and Code First.

The following new features are also available in the Entity Model Designer in Visual Studio 2012:

• Multiple-diagrams per model allows you to have several diagrams that visualize subsections of your overall model.
• Batch import of stored procedures allows multiple stored procedures to be added to the model during model creation.

- DJ

How to migrate from Quality Center to TFS Visual Team Foundation Server 2010?

How to migrate from Quality Center to TFS Visual Team Foundation Server 2010? Here is the link to achieve this in pretty straight forward steps -

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/shair/archive/2010/03/24/quality-center-2-tfs-2010-migration-in-3-hours.aspx

- D

WCF Interview questions and answers (reference only, uuber level)

The intent to draft this list of questions is for learning purpose only and at very high level understanding of WCF services. This is not a dump :)

Question 1: What is the difference WCF and Web services?
Answer: -

Web services can only be invoked by HTTP. While Service or a WCF component can be invoked by any protocol and any transport type. Second web services are not flexible. However, Services are flexible. If you make a new version of the service then you need to just expose a new end. Therefore, services are agile and which is a very practical approach looking at the current business trends.

Question 2: What are different bindings supported by WCF?
Answer: -

WCF includes predefined bindings. They cover most of bindings widely needed in day-to-day application. However, just incase you find that you need to define something custom WCF does not stop you. So let us try to understand what each binding provides.

BasicHttpBinding: - This binding is used when we need to use SOAP over HTTP. This binding can also be configured to be used as HTTPS. It can be also configured to send data in plain text or in optimized form like MTOM.
WsHttpBinding: - It is same like BasicHttpBinding. In short, it uses SOAP over HTTP. But with it also supports reliable message transfer, security and transaction. WS-Reliable Messaging, security with WS-Security, and transactions with WS-Atomic Transaction supports reliable message.
NetTcpBinding: - This binding sends binary-encoded SOAP, including support for reliable message transfer, security, and transactions, directly over TCP. The biggest disadvantage of NetTcpBinding is that both server and client should be also made in .NET language.
NetMsmqBinding: - This binding sends binary-encoded SOAP over MSMQ. This binding can only be used for WCF-to-WCF communication.
NetNamedPipesBinding:-Ths binding Sends binary-encoded SOAP over named pipes. This binding is only usable for WCF-to-WCF communication between processes on the same Windows-based machine.

Note: - An interprocess control (IPC) protocol is used for exchanging information between two applications, possibly running on different computers in a network. The difference between Named pipes and TCP is that named pipes have good performance in terms of communication with in processes. But when it comes to communicate across network TCP holds the best choice. So if you are using WCF to communicate with process it’s the best choice to use in terms for performance. Named pipes do not perform when the traffic is heavy as compared to TCPIP.

Question 3: What are the main components of WCF?
Answer: -

We need to define three main components in WCF:-

• Service class. • Hosting environment • End point

Question 4: What are the various ways of hosting a WCF service?
Answer: -

There are three major ways to host a WCF service:-

• Self-hosting the service in his own application domain. This we have already covered in the first section. The service comes in to existence when you create the object of Service Host class and the service closes when you call the Close of the Service Host class.
• Host in application domain or process provided by IIS Server.
• Host in Application domain and process provided by WAS (Windows Activation Service) Server.

Question 5: What is a service level message and transport level message?
Answer: -
You can log WCF message at two levels one is service level and the other is transport level. Service level:-In this the messages are logged as they enter the user code or leave the user code. Transport level: - In this the messages are logged as they are ready to be encoded / decoded. All transport level, infrastructure messages and also reliable messaging is logged. You specify the message levels in the diagnostics node as shown in the below code snippet.

Question 6: For which bindings are transport, message and mixed mode supported?
Answer: -
Below is a table which shows for which binding which mode is supported. We did not discuss the mixed mode. It’s nothing but combination of transport and mixed mode. For instance data encrypted and passed over WsHttp using HTTPS is a mixed mode of security. Encryption is nothing but message security and HTTPS is a transport mode. In a combination they form mixed mode.

Question 7: Which bindings in WCF support the message streaming?
Answer: -
Following bindings supports the streaming in WCF:
1. basicHttpBinding 2. netTcpBinding 3. netNamedPipeBinding

Question 8: What are the various ways of hosting a WCF Service?
Answer: - 1.IIS 2.Self Hosting 3.WAS (Windows Activation Service)

Question 9: What is the use of ServiceBehavior attribute in WCF ?
Answer: -
ServiceBehaviour attribute is used to specify the InstanceContextMode for the WCF Service class (This can be used to maintained a state of the service or a client too).

There are three instance Context Mode in the WFC PerSession : This is used to create a new instance for a service and the same instance is used for all method for a particular client. (eg: State can be maintained per session by declaring a variable) PerCall : This is used to create a new instance for every call from the client whether same client or different. (eg: No state can be maintained as every time a new instance of the service is created) Single : This is used to create only one instance of the service and the same instance is used for all the client request. (eg: Global state can be maintained but this will be applicable for all clients)

Question 10: How the concurrency mode is specified in WCF service?
Answer: - The concurrency mode is specified using the ServiceBehavior attribute on the class that implements the service. Ex. [ServiceBehavior(ConcurrencyMode=ConcurrencyMode.Single)] Public class ServiceClass : IServiceInterface{ //Implementation Code } There are 3 possible values of ConcurrencyMode enumeration Single Reentrant Multiple.

Question 11: hat the different transaction options ?
Answer:-

We can specify transaction in 3 ways in WCF:-
TransactionFlowOption.NotAllowed This is a default option. Using this option no transaction will be propagated across the binding. If any client attempts to call the WCF service in a transaction it will be ignored for this option. This option specifies that client can call this WCF service in a transaction. It’s not compulsory that the service needs to be called in a transaction. You can call without the transaction also. TransactionFlowOption.Mandatory This option specifies that client must call the WCF service in a transaction mode. If the WCF service is called without transaction, ‘FaultException’ will be raised.

Question 12: Wat are the advantages of hosting WCF Services in IIS as compared to self-hosting?
Answer: - There are two main advantages of using IIS over self-hosting:-

Automatic activation IIS provides automatic activation that means the service is not necessary to be running in advance. When any message is received by the service it then launches and fulfills the request. But in case of self hosting the service should always be running.
Process recycling If IIS finds that a service is not healthy that means if it has memory leaks etc, IIS recycles the process. Ok let us try to understand what is recycling in IIS process. For every browser instance, a worker process is spawned and the request is serviced. When the browser disconnects the worker, process stops and you loose all information. IIS also restarts the worker process. By default, the worker process is recycled at around 120 minutes. So why does IIS recycle. By restarting the worker process it ensures any bad code or memory leak do not cause issue to the whole system. In case of self-hosting both the above features, you will need to code yourself.

Question 13: What is trace listener?

Answer - ‘Tracelistener’ are objects that get tracing information from the trace class and they output the data to some medium. For instance you can see from the figure ‘TraceListener’ how it listens to the trace object and outputs the same to UI, File or a windows event log. There are three different types of ‘tracelistener’ first is the ‘defaulttracelistener’ (this outputs the data to UI), second is ‘textwritertracelistener’ (this outputs to a file) and the final one is ‘Eventlogtracelistener’ which outputs the same to a windows event log.

Question 14: What is service host factory in WCF?
Answer-

1. Service host factory is the mechanism by which we can create the instances of service host dynamically as the request comes in.
2. This is useful when we need to implement the event handlers for opening and closing the service.
3. WCF provides ServiceFactory class for this purpose.

Question 15: What are the advantages of hosting WCF service in WAS?

Answer- WAS (Windows Activation Service) is a component of IIS 7.0. Following are few advantages : 1. We are not only limited to HTTP protocol. We can also use supported protocols like TCP, named pipes and MSMQ 2. No need to completely install IIS. We can only install WAS component and keep away the WebServer.

Question 16: In WCF which bindings supports the reliable session?

Answer- In WCF, following bindings supports the reliable session - 1. wsHttpBinding 2. wsDualHttpBinding 3. wsFederationHttpBinding 4. netTcpBinding

Reference - Prasham on dotnetfunda.com and Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation -- Chris and Denis Mulder – Apress 2007.

- DJ

Asp.net migration to Sharepoint

ASP.NET web developers who are moving to SharePoint site creation. This article will explain in detail how an ASP.NET webpage developed in Visual Studio can be converted into a SharePoint site. If there is a requirement for a website created in Visual Studio, just the old fashioned way with the code-behind logic and other layers like Data Access and Business Logic, to be converted into a SharePoint site, and still make it work the same way with the same code-behind, you are in the right place. The article here along with the code explains 3 core steps that will help you to transform your ASP.NET Web Application into a SharePoint site. Step1: Add a Web Deployment Project to your website solution that will create a single DLL for the website. This step will give us the code-behind DLL and other dependency DLLs for the website. Step2: Copy the bin folder items (DLLs) into the SharePoint site, and tweak the web configuration file of the SharePoint site to use the copied DLLs. Step3: Open your created SharePoint site in SharePoint Designer and import the web pages from our web application and link it to the appropriate DLLs. Code and detail step by step instructions on code project - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/ASPNET_to_Sharepoint.aspx There are more instructions @ http://aspnet2sp.codeplex.com/ http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/pages/spsmigration.aspx

Build 2011 microsoft @ Anaheim

Build day 1 Key notes and Session videos here -
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/KEY-0001

Speakers: Chris Jones , Steven Sinofsky , Antoine Leblonde , Mike Angiulo , Julie Larson-Green

Build day 2 Key notes and Session videos here -
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/KEY-0002
Speakers: Scott Guthrie , Jeff Sandquist , John Shewchuk , Steve Ballmer , Jason Zander , Bryon Surace , Satya Nadella , Dan Fernandez

Covered topics include -
o Windows Server 8, Azure,
o Virtualization & Cloud
o Identity & secure access
o VS 2011 Developer Preview, Windows Azure SDK, Windows Azure Toolkit 1.5 available
• Application lifecycle management
• Visual Studio TFS on Azure as SAAS

Device + Cloud
• Advance debugging in windows azure - (ability to do performance profiling on code deployed)
• Feature: Find Matching Clones(find copies of source code)
o Alpha blending etc

Web and Mobile Reach - ASP.Net MVC 4 Preview
• Page Inspector/DOM Explorer/Source View
• Unification/Bunding feature, folder reference
• jQuery.Mobile.MVC
• Shipping jquery as part of ASP.Net/Visual Studio 11

Windows Server 8
• High availability built into win8
• Ability to move private network to cloud along with IP infrastructure
More on Channel9 videos here - http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011

Vipersmart with Microsoft Azure and Visual Studio for car application tracking and automation

Viper smart start with new Windows 8 and connected with Cloud/Azure - building live tracking applications and alert systems with Microsoft Visual Studio = good for police and justice departments :) http://www.viper.com/smartstart/ key note @ timeframe - 1:10 http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/KEY-0002

Project Management using new Visual Studio 2011 Rosyln

Project Management using new Visual Studio 2011 developer preview - raw notes from Build Session 2 - 1 Visual Team foundation server as a service instead of setting up servers 2 Sprint planning and tracking user stories, tasks 3 All productivity tools are now part of Visual studio 2011 4 jQuery bundled with Visual studio 5 Image editor - making game development interesting Also works with VS 2010 and onto the cloud. More here - http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/KEY-0002 Cheers -Dipesh

MSDeploy - How do I compare 2 websites sitting on different environments behaving differently?

Thinking how do I compare 2 websites sitting on different environments behaving differently and makes you scratch your head whats's going wrong? :)

Use MS Deploy to compare two web sites quickly and find the differences and help you troubleshoot - http://blogs.iis.net/msdeploy/archive/2008/02/02/using-ms-deploy-to-compare-sites-or-see-what-components-your-site-uses.aspx

Helps you also visualize and see the components that your web site uses.

Upload/download files from secured SSH FTP server

Upload or download files from secured SSH FTP server usign SharpSSH.

SSH (Secure Shell) is a protocol to log into another computer over a network, to execute commands in a remote machine, and to move files from one machine to another. It provides strong authentication and secure communications over unsecured channels. The JSch library is a pure Java implementation of the SSH2 protocol suite; It contains many features such as port forwarding, X11 forwarding, secure file transfer and supports numerous cipher and MAC algorithms. JSch is licensed under BSD style license.

SSH ensures - secure download and user authentication with supported features like -
•Host key type: ssh-rsa and partial ssh-dss.
•Userauth: password, publickey (RSA)
•Generating RSA key pairs.
•SCP and SFTP

Download the demo project here on codeproject - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/sharpssh/sharpSsh_Demo.zip

More here - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/sharpssh.aspx

Build event for Microsoft 2011 - Keynotes, sessions and excerpts

Keynotes and sessions from Build event day1 -
Speakers: Chris Jones , Steven Sinofsky , Antoine Leblonde , Mike Angiulo , Julie Larson-Green
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/KEY-0001

Keynotes and sessions from Build event day2 -

http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/KEY-0002

o Windows Server 8 and Azure
o Virtualization & Cloud
o VS 2011 Developer Preview, Windows Azure SDK, Windows Azure Toolkit 1.5 available
o Visual Studio TFS on Azure

Mobile Device + Cloud
• Advance debugging in windows azure - (ability to do performance profiling on code deployed)
• Find Matching Clones(find copies of source code)
• Alpha blending

Demo by Scott Gutherie - Web and Mobile Reach - ASP.Net MVC 4 Preview
• Page Inspector/DOM Explorer/Source View
• Unification/Bunding feature, folder reference
• Shipping jquery as part of ASP.NET/visual studio Roslyn - jQuery.Mobile.MVC
• WebSocket API exposed with .NET 4.5 that allows connection to websocket from anywhere

Web and Mobile Reach/Web TFS
• SaaS for TFS and Windows Server 8 infrastructure

Tools for building Metro style applications

Video on channel 9 as part of Build event for Microsoft 2011 here on tools to build Metro style applications quickly.

http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/BPS-1006

Platform for understanding Metro style apps here -
http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/BPS-1005

Directory of companies that provide Cloud Computing Network Services & Products

Here is the exhaustive list of Cloud computing network services directory that details companies who have built enterprise solutions/software, platforms that are exposed to be consumed as services on Cloud.

Here on cloudbook -
http://www.cloudbook.net/directories/product-services/cloud-computing-directory?category=Network&type=Network