https://blogs.msdn.com/synergist/archive/2009/03/30/silverlight-for-the-myspace-developer-platform.aspx

You know I work at Microsoft, and that I love technology.  Sometimes I love Microsoft technology so much that I can’t wait to tell people about it, and this is one of those times.  Microsoft has just released the Release Candidate 1 for Internet Explorer 8, and I think you should install it and use it today.

You may want to know what a “release candidate” is:  that’s techno-speak for an almost-final version of software, like a sneak preview.

Internet Explorer 8 RC1 is much faster than previous versions of Internet Explorer, so you’ll notice that difference right away.  But you’ll also notice some cool new features that will make your surfing experience faster and easier—not mention a whole lot safer.

· Highlight a street address in your Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or other web mail account, right-click on the blue button that appears, and hover over “Map with Live Search.”  Presto!  You’ll see the map with the location right there—no more copying and pasting street addresses from web mail to a mapping site.  Plus, you can choose what mapping service you want to use.

· Go to the search box in the top right, and type a search item—see how the enhanced Instant Search Box is more helpful, providing real-time search suggestions, including images, from your chosen search provider.

· Click on a new tab, and see the options that are presented there, including “InPrivate Browsing.”  Click InPrivate Browsing and watch what happens—you are now in a browser session that is leaving no trail behind, so research gift suggestions for your significant other to your heart’s content without worrying about who might pick up the crumbs after you. 

Harder to see are the many security enhancements that will help keep you protected against the ever-evolving online threats—things like protection from cross-site scripting attacks that no other browser offers.

We’re friends, and you know I wouldn’t lead you astray.  Let me know what you think of IE8 RC1.

'--------------------------------------
'Script Start
'Owner - Imayakumar J.
'Date - December 5 2008
'--------------------------------------

'---------------------------------------------------------
' Get the Folder name
'---------------------------------------------------------

'wscript.Echo Date

dim thismonth, thisday, thisyear, foldername

'wscript.echo Month(Date)

thismonth = Month(Date)
thisday = Day(Date)
thisyear = Year(Date)

if len(thisday) = 1 then
thisday = "0"&thisday
end if

foldername = thismonth&thisday&thisyear

'----------------------------------------------------
'Create folder
'----------------------------------------------------

Dim filesys, returnvalue

Set filesys = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

'wscript.Echo returnvalue

filesys.createfolder "c:\"&foldername

'---------------------------------------------------------
' Check if another shar with the same name exists
'---------------------------------------------------------

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
    & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colShares = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    ("Select * from Win32_Share Where Name = 'INGEST'")
For Each objShare in colShares
    objShare.Delete
Next

'-----------------------------------------------------
' Share the created folder
'-----------------------------------------------------

Const FILE_SHARE = 0
Const MAXIMUM_CONNECTIONS = 25
strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
    & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set objNewShare = objWMIService.Get("Win32_Share")
errReturn = objNewShare.Create _
    ("c:\"&foldername, "INGEST", FILE_SHARE, _
        MAXIMUM_CONNECTIONS, "Notes to Exchange Migration Share.")

if errReturn = "0" then
    wscript.echo "Success"
else
    wscript.echo "Task Failed"
end if

'---------------------------------------------
' Script End
'-------------------------------———————

Enjoy !!

What is Microsoft Web Platform Installer? (WebPI)

The Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a simple tool that installs Microsoft's entire Web Platform, including IIS7, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s user interface, you can choose to install either specific products or the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. The Web PI also helps keep your products up to date by always offering the latest additions to the Web Platform.

What is the Microsoft Web Application Installer? (WebAI):

The Web Application Installer Beta is designed to help get you up and running with the most widely used Web Applications freely available for your Windows Server. Web AI provides support for popular ASP.Net and PHP Web applications including Graffiti, DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal, OSCommerce and more. With just a few simple clicks, Web AI will check your machine for the necessary pre-requisites, download these applications from their source location in the community, walk you through basic configuration items and then install them on your computer.

Microsoft Web Platform Installer Benefits

Obtain components of the Microsoft Web Platform quickly and easily

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer provides a single installer that runs on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2003 SP2, and Windows Server 2008, to download the Microsoft Web Platform, including IIS 6.0 and 7.0, SQL Server 2008 Express, .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1. The installer also identifies and installs Extensions for IIS 7.0 and ASP.NET, service packs, database drivers and other relevant Web platform technologies.

Choose which components to install to set up a complete or custom Web platform

The Web Platform Installer offers three installation options – Complete, which installs all available server and development products, Web server components, Web server extensions, and additional technologies; ASP.NET Developer, which installs the server components, tools and technologies that support the development and hosting of ASP.NET applications; and Custom, which allows you to choose exactly which components are installed to customize and streamline your Web platform. For example, you can choose specific components to support developing and hosting PHP applications on IIS 7.0, with support for data-driven applications through the SQL Server driver for PHP.

Install the latest versions of Microsoft Web Platform products, components and tools.

The Web Platform Installer downloads an XML-based manifest of available products and technologies, which is continually updated to ensure that each time the tool is run, it will offer the most current components and the latest versions of each technology, including service packs and other software updates. In addition, the Web Platform Installer will highlight newly available or pre-release software.

Features

• Single installer for all Microsoft Web Platform components including:
• Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.1 on Windows XP SP3
• IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 SP2
• IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Express
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• Visual Web Developer 2008 Express SP1
• ASP.NET, Complete and Custom installation options
• XML-based product manifest updated automatically when tool is run

Links

• Microsoft Web Platform Installer Overview
• Microsoft Web Platform Installer Forum
• Microsoft Web Platform Portal
• IIS.net Community Portal

He has detailed every aspect of .NET threads, its management, pooling and lifecycle. I would recommend anyone to have a look at this great series of 10 posts here

https://blogs.msdn.com/rnarayan/archive/2008/06/17/threading-deep-dive-day-1.aspx

Enjoy !!

It is 56% faster than previous, clean and friendly looking and very readable. This is really a very good step forward by the Live Mail team in order to compete and win back the people from the competitors.

I love the below Contacts picker..

The contact picker is lightning fast and very easy and intuitive to use.

With the upcoming ever-growing mailbox limit, faster uploads, IM on the web feature, and better use interface, Live Mail might even pull back customers lost in the past few years.

Overall, the new interface deserves a 5 star rating.

Happy Emailing !!! :)

You must have encountered the following error message often while coding WCF,

The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state.

And yes, it does not give any other detail except the above message. I had no clue on what is happening when I got this error the first time. But the solution to it is simple. Just *remove* the ‘using..{}’ block and replace it with a try{}..catch() and it works as expected.

Unless you do so, you would never get the actual exception information that has taken place in the method because, WCF replaces all information detail with the above exception message.

For more information on why this happens, take a look at the following blog post.

https://blog.genom-e.com/CommentView,guid,b9e3019d-0d68-4344-9c7a-407774323d0f.aspx

Happy Coding !!

Here is the requirement,

Develop a WCF client which should talk to a Java Web Service running on Aqua Logic Web Server. The service is secured by 2 Way HTTPS (both Server & Client Certs) and message signing for non-repudiation.

Immediately after you see this requirement, anyone would just advice “TransportWithMessageCredentail” security mode which is out of the box as I did. I precisely did the same but wouldn’t succeed. Why?

The reason is simple. “TransportWithMessageCredential” by default signs the “timestamp” element on the SOAP Header and sends it across. It is designed in this way because, the timestamp is the smallest attribute and signing it takes lesser cycles of canonicalization, compared to any other element in the entire SOAP content. But, ALSB (AquaLogic Service Bus)  wouldn’t recognize this request. It was always throwing an error saying,

No id attribute on element https://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/:Body

This means that ALSB requires the Body to be signed, and nothing else.

There is no way to address this interop issue with not only the out-of-box “TransportWithMessageCredentail” security mode but also with any other custom configuration as well.

But there is always a way to make things work in some or the other way. Here I show you how to make it work with a small modification on the service side.

In my above said requirement, the Request is signed (SOAP Body), but not the Response. With the following configuration, you can make WCF sign the request (body) and still use transport security.

<customBinding>
        <binding name="SigningBinding">
          <textMessageEncoding messageVersion="Soap11" />
          <security authenticationMode="MutualCertificate" requireDerivedKeys="false"
              includeTimestamp="false" keyEntropyMode="ClientEntropy"
              messageProtectionOrder="SignBeforeEncrypt"
              messageSecurityVersion="WSSecurity10WSTrustFebruary2005WSSecureConversation

February2005WSSecurityPolicy11BasicSecurityProfile10"
              requireSecurityContextCancellation="false" securityHeaderLayout="Strict" allowSerializedSigningTokenOnReply="true">
            <secureConversationBootstrap />
            <localClientSettings detectReplays="false"/>
          </security>
          <httpsTransport requireClientCertificate="true"/>
        </binding>
      </customBinding>

But the catch here is, WCF expects the response also to be signed as it signs the request. It necessarily asks you to have the server certificate as well, installed on the client machine which is accessing the service.

If you have the freedom to make the service behave so, you are out of trouble.

Below is the rest of the configuration..

<endpoint address=https://domain.com/services/service
               behaviorConfiguration="ServiceSecurityBehavior" binding="customBinding"
               bindingConfiguration="SigningBinding" contract="MyContract"
               name="SuscribeEventEndPoint">
        <identity>
          <certificateReference storeLocation="LocalMachine" x509FindType="FindByThumbprint"
            findValue="v2d43d464abd384b5cc3a2d669862807241234567" />
        </identity>
      </endpoint>

<behaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="ServiceSecurityBehavior">
          <clientCredentials>
            <clientCertificate findValue="123459f47cb80f67tgb385ae0ebc0b92f8861234"
                               storeLocation="LocalMachine" x509FindType="FindByThumbprint"/>
            <serviceCertificate>
              <defaultCertificate findValue="v2d43d464abd384b5cc3a2d669862807241234567"
                                  storeLocation="LocalMachine" x509FindType="FindByThumbprint"/>

              </serviceCertificate>
          </clientCredentials>
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
</behaviors>

Error: Cannot import wsdl:portType
Detail: An exception was thrown while running a WSDL import extension: System.ServiceModel.Description.XmlSerializerMessageContractImporter
Error: The attribute tokenType is missing.
XPath to Error Source: //wsdl:definitions[@targetNamespace='https://fw3rd.services.telefonica.es/services/IDP']/wsdl:portType[@name='TokenTranslation']

Error: Cannot import wsdl:binding
Detail: There was an error importing a wsdl:portType that the wsdl:binding is dependent on.
XPath to wsdl:portType: //wsdl:definitions[@targetNamespace='https://fw3rd.services.telefonica.es/services/IDP']/wsdl:portType[@name='TokenTranslation']
XPath to Error Source: //wsdl:definitions[@targetNamespace='https://fw3rd.services.telefonica.es/services/IDP']/wsdl:binding[@name='TokenTranslationSOAP']

Error: Cannot import wsdl:port
Detail: There was an error importing a wsdl:binding that the wsdl:port is dependent on.
XPath to wsdl:binding: //wsdl:definitions[@targetNamespace='https://fw3rd.service
s.telefonica.es/services/IDP']/wsdl:binding[@name='TokenTranslationSOAP']
XPath to Error Source: //wsdl:definitions[@targetNamespace='https://fw3rd.services.telefonica.es/services/IDP']/wsdl:service[@name='TokenTranslation']/wsdl:port[@name='TokenTranslationSOAP']

Generating files...
Warning: No code was generated.
If you were trying to generate a client, this could be because the metadata documents did not contain any valid contracts or services
or because all contracts/services were discovered to exist in /reference assemblies. Verify that you passed all the metadata documents to the tool.

Warning: If you would like to generate data contracts from schemas make sure to use the /dataContractOnly option.

It took me plenty of time to figure out the problem. But actually, the solution to it is simple. The SvcUtil.exe requires you to pass the .XSD files as parameters along with the input. It does not take the .XSD by itself even if you have given referenced it in the WSDL document.

The following syntax will fix the problem.

> SvcUtil.exe <WSDL Path> <.XSD Path> [If you have multiple XSDs referenced, give all of them separated by space]

Write a Data class as shown below:

[DataContract(Namespace = “https://personalspace.org”, Name ="CustomHeader")]
public class CustomHeader
{
private string something;
[DataMember(Name=”CustomElement”)”]
public string someThing
{
get { return something; }
set { something= value; }
}
}

In the BeforeSendRequest() method of the class that you have implemented the IClientMessageInterceptor interface, add the code below

MessageHeader<CustomHeader> header = new MessageHeader<CustomHeader>();
MyHeaderClass customHeader= new MyHeaderClass();
customHeader.someThing = "My value";
header.Content = header;
header.Actor = “anonymoususer”;

MessageHeader unTypedHeader =
header.GetUntypedHeader("CustomHeader", “https://personalspace.org”);
request.Headers.Add(unTypedHeader);

That’s it. This will generate a header similar to the one below:

<CustomHeader:actor="Anyone" xmlns="https://personalspace.org">
<CustomElement>My Value</CustomElement>
</CustomHeader>

Enjoy !!