Entries for Chakkaradeep Chandran

WorldWide Telescope is live! [WorldWide Telescope is live!]

chakkaradeep — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:07:56 GMT

Yes, WorldWide Telescope is live and now you can download it!

I am trying it out immediately! YaY!

in reply to WorldWide Telescope is live!

Possibly a bug? [Possibly a bug?]

chakkaradeep — Fri, 09 May 2008 07:43:59 GMT

I replied to a thread here in this forum, and once it was posted I still had the reply box shown, here is the screenshot

Possibly a bug?

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New WCF Features with Visual Studio 2008 [New WCF Features with Visual Studio 2008]

chakkaradeep — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:48:32 GMT

With Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), now developers can create interoperable services that send and receive messages between server and client. WCF is based on message based communication and supports many Communication Protocols like TCP, MSMQ, and HTTP etc.

This article discusses some of the new features that Visual Studio 2008 provides us for WCF. This article assumes that the reader has a basic knowledge on how WCF Services are built and used.

You can find more on how to get started with WCF here.

Multi-targeting
Visual Studio 2008 itself has many good and notable features like Refactoring, WPF support etc. and one such feature is also Multi-targeting. With Visual Studio 2008 you can build projects against .NET Framework 2.0 or 3.0 or 3.5.

Yes, one IDE for all the three framework versions! Gone are the days where you had to keep the earlier version of Visual Studio for the earlier .NET versions. Now you can use your Visual Studio 2005 projects which were targeted towards .NET 2.0 versions in Visual Studio 2008.

This means that you can also target your WCF Service to any of these versions. You can also change the target version later by going into the Project Properties page.

Default WCF Project Templates
Unlike in Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008 now has WCF Project Templates installed by default.

There is a separate section called WCF which also lists Windows Workflow Foundation templates along with WCF Service Library template.

And there is also a separate WCF Service Application template which can be used for creating Services that are hosted in web space.

Once you choose a template, the necessary project files are created for you.

For this blog post, I am using WCF Service Application and going to host it in IIS 7.

SimpleCalculator – Our WCF Example
We are going to create a simple calculator service which can

1) Add two numbers
2) Subtract two numbers
3) Multiply two numbers, and,
4) Return a set of numbers

So, we have two projects, mainly

1) SimpleCalculatorService – WCF Service
2) SimpleCalculatorClient – WCF Client for the above SimpleCalculatorService

Here is the class diagram for our Service

And for our Client

WcfTestClient
With Visual Studio 2008, we have a new tool called WcfTestClient which is a Windows application which can be used to test our WCF Services. We could use this to invoke service operations and check whether they are working properly or not. It is similar to how we test our ASMX Web Service applications, but here it is a separate Windows Application.

Open up Visual Studio command prompt. It can be found in your Visual Studio 2008 Tools folder in the Start menu

You can now test our CalculatorService by giving the WSDL address to WcfTestClient: http://localhost:7476/CalculatorService.svc?wsdl

The WcfTestClient then adds the service and loads all the operations available.

To test the operations, you can just double click on each operation and then supply the parameters. Here is for the Add operation:

It’s now easy to see whether your Service works or not before actually starting to write a Client.

WCF Services are Self Hosted now
With Visual Studio 2008 now you can actually debug a WCF Service and that is possible because they are self hosted when you start debugging (when you hit F5).

The WcfSvcHost.exe does the trick for you. If it’s a WCF Service Library, then it’s hosted via WcfSvcHost.exe and if it’s WCF Service Application, it’s hosted in the local ASP.NET Development Server and that’s how we got http://localhost:7476/CalculatorService.svc?wsdl working.

Adding Service Reference
Let’s start building our Client. Our Client is a console application. Visual Studio 2008 provides you an improved Add Service Reference option when compared with what was available in Visual Studio 2005.

Now with the Add Service Reference wizard’s Advanced Options, you can also generate asynchronous operations for your Service!

Adding the Reference generates a new folder called Service References in your project where the Service resides.

To configure/update our Service Reference later, we could right click on our service and say Update or Configure. I find this feature to be more stable than in Visual Studio 2005.

Our SimpleCalculatorClient also uses asynchronous calls to our SimpleCalculatorService to add and here is the code for that

In our Service, we have an operation which could return the numbers, the client requested from a start number to end number. The signature of that method in our Service is

[OperationContract]
List[int] GetNumbers(int from, int to);

And how has the Client interpreted it?

If a WCF Service returns IEnumerable[T] or IList[T] or ICollection[T], the proxy by default converts them to array type and thus we got int[] in place of List[int].

Can we change this behavior? Yes, you can. In your Add Service Reference Wizard’s Advanced Options, there is an option which lets you specify this behavior.

Deploying our Service
With IIS 7 deploying our WCF Service is simple thanks to WAS (Windows Process Activation Services)! Read here on how to configure IIS 7 for WCF.

Open up your IIS Manager and traverse to your Default Website and Add Application

And then add an Alias to our Service and give the path where we have our Service files

And now we are ready and deployed our SimpleCalculatorService! You can check in your browser by typing
http:///SimpleCalculatorService/CalculatorService.svc

You can also add the CalculatorService.svc as your Default Document, and now with Visual Studio 2008 and IIS 7 you can do it in your web.config:

And now you can just type http:///SimpleCalculatorService

You can download the sample SimpleCalculatorService and SimpleCalculatorClient application here.

in reply to New WCF Features with Visual Studio 2008

My 3 Part Series - C# 3.0 Language Enhancements for LINQ [My 3 Part Series - C# 3.0 Language Enhancements for LINQ]

chakkaradeep — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:33:48 GMT

Hi All,

I have just completed posting all the parts of C# 3.0 Language Enhancements for LINQ in my blog :)

Please feel free to read and comment :)

Thanks

in reply to My 3 Part Series - C# 3.0 Language Enhancements for LINQ

How to post in Channel 8? [How to post in Channel 8?]

chakkaradeep — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:38:06 GMT

Hi All,

How to post (not in forums) in Channel 8? Is it only by Microsoft people or open for Microsoft Student Partners too? I am a MSP in New Zealand. I asked my ADE too, but he also told that we will not be able to post in channel 8.

So, can someone explain me whats the procedure here :)

Thanks,

Regards,
Chakkaradeep

in reply to How to post in Channel 8?

WWTelescope! [WWTelescope!]

chakkaradeep — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:33:28 GMT

WoW :)

1) Want to tour the Universe?

2) Want to pick some Astronomer as your Guide?

3) Do you know your own way in the Universe and want to create a new Tour?

Then, don’t look further than the Microsoft Worldwide Telescope! This is truly amazing!

You can watch a video tour of WWTelescope at Long’s blog.

:)

How do you feel about this new invention from Microsoft :) ?

in reply to WWTelescope!

Get back your Search after installing Vista SP1 [Get back your Search after installing Vista SP1]

chakkaradeep — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:20:07 GMT

We all know that Microsoft had to change somethings on the default Search option in Vista. For me this was really bad, because most of the Google Client Products sucks! If you want proof for that, just get a new Dell system or any other OEM system and look for Google products which makes your system so slow and painful to use as well as remove those products. But Google is good in the Web Sphere. I for one love Windows Vista Search option and has helped me a lot. Its really better than Google Desktop Search and integrates very well with your Vista. Not sure how good is this in XP, because, its been a long time since I used XP :D

So, plain and simple, if you want your search back as it was before applying SP1, then here are your steps :)

in reply to Get back your Search after installing Vista SP1

Mac Vs PC Ad :) [Mac Vs PC Ad :)]

chakkaradeep — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:15:53 GMT

I dont know how many have seen this, but its the best Mac Vs PC :)...Watch it here

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