I wanted to have good short start overview on WCF. My first pick was from Microsoft E-Learning, Clinic 6264: Introducing Windows Communication Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008. For me, it was a great choice, exactly what I need to start my learning steps on WCF.

Here I'm going to write my review about this Free E-Learning Course which is part of a Free E-Learning Collection, Collection 6261: Developing Rich Experiences using Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008.

Course Objectives:

• Describe WCF and provide scenarios for building WCF applications.
• Describe WCF features for developers of service-oriented applications.
• Describe how to create a WCF service.
• Describe how to create and invoke a WCF client.
• Describe how to customize WCF with behaviors.
• Describe bindings in WCF.
• Explain the main features of WCF security.
• Describe reliability in WCF applications.

More...

This collection of 3 2-hour premium clinics teaches about the new capabilities provided by the .NET Framework 3.5. These clinics are for experienced Developers and Software Architects who are looking to adopt Microsoft's next generation technology within their solutions.

Collection 6261: Developing Rich Experiences using Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008:

• Clinic 6262: Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008
• Clinic 6263: Introducing Windows Presentation Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008
• Clinic 6264: Introducing Windows Communication Foundation using .Net Framework 3.5 & Visual Studio 2008

This is a one year subscription offer for free. I've already take Clinic 6262 and started with Clinic 6264. I must say I am ignorant about these new technology and I decided to start from scratch and have an overview over them before starting reading more detailed materials. And it needs total of 2 hours for each clinic.

The WPF team at Microsoft is going give us “WPF Application Quality Guide”. They plan to release the Guide in stages, updating and fine-tuning the content, based on feedback provided by audiences.

Current version is 0.2, this version contains -as specified in the link above- more examples that illustrate how to find the AutomationElement object by using UI Automation; introduction to the WPF programming stack and software testing; high level overview of test methodology, planning, and strategies; visual verification testing; media testing; verification of animations and other transitions; performance best practices resources; security testing considerations; a list of tools for creating, debugging, and testing WPF applications; and additional topics in the Appendix about resources for WPF data binding and debugging, and about WPF interoperability with Win32 and Windows Forms.

In Introducing SQL Server 2008by Peter DeBetta (ISBN: 9780735625587), you’ll learn about major new features in SQL Server 2008, including security, administration, and performance. Downloading the book require registration.

This initial installment of the book is very small; it is devided into 11 chapters and about 33 PDF pages. I guess it is a good focused book on the new features of SQL Server 2008. Myself didn't read it yet.

I also recommend to visit SQL Server 2008 Learning Portalthere you'll find free e-learning offers such as  Collection 6187: What's New in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (includes three free clinics).

Last year (2007) on March I joind CSharp-Online community. It is Wiki Media based community web site. Actually that was the first time to use Wiki. I was always watching Wikies but never touch them. I liked that Wiki. It is easy and smart or may be I'm a dump.

Anyway, I had finalized my first contribution on there and it is about Creating Custom ASP.NET AJAX Client Controls. I've built this article on top of this tutorial
"Adding Client Capability to a Web Server Control Using ASP.NET AJAX Extensions".

Hope it will be useful for someone.

Last year I wrote an article about how to build multi-languange web sites with ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio.Net 2005. This is a bookmark to the articles (C#,VB.NET) [poste migrated from old blog]

Introduction: In order to reach international markets through the Internet, supporting different cultures through our applications is essential for being successful. The .NET Framework 2.0 as well as 1.x comes with an integrated infrastructure for creating international applications. Basically, the CLR supports a mechanism for packaging and deploying resources with any type of application. The CLR and the base class library of the .NET Framework come with several classes for managing and accessing resources in applications. These classes are located in the System.Resources and System.Globalization namespaces. Here we will explore the necessary details for working with resources in ASP.NET applications and for creating international ASP.NET applications based on embedded resources and the integrated localization support.

Assumptions: This article assumes that you already know how to build web forms and to use controls and validation controls.

Localization and resource files: Localization support in .Net Framework 2.0 in general and in ASP.Net 2.0 specifically become much more easier and brings fun during localization process. Usually resources are created for every culture the application should support. More specifically, each Web Form -Page- in your web site should have a resources for every culture -language- it should support. For example:If you have a web form with name default.aspx and your web site support English, German and Arabic, then you should have 3 resource files for each culture. The CLR defines a behavior for finding culture-specific resources. With that said, every set of resources has to define a base name that is specified through the first part of the name of the resource file. The second part of the name defines the culture. If the culture portion in the name is not specified, the resources defined in the resource file are used as default resources. For example:Your page name is default.aspx., you have 3 resource files as mentioned earlier, each one resource file should be named as:default.aspx.en-US.resx, default.aspx.de-DE.resx and default.aspx.ar-EG.resx. Not here that we are using United States English, German's Gemran, and Egyptian's Arabic. You can use general English or general German or general Arabic like this:default.aspx.en.resx, default.aspx.de.resx and default.aspx.ar.resx. Also you can use another specific culture like using Switzerland German culture this way: default.aspx.de-CH.resx. For list of supported cultures in .Net Framework return to MSDN.

Read the complete article at C-SharpCorner.com
Read the VB.Net version as VBDotNetHeaven.com

Dino Esposito wrote a serious about ASP.NET AJAX on MSDN Magazine Cutting Edge section.
I would like to share these good links with you so here they are:

• AJAX Application Architecture, Part 1
• AJAX Application Architecture, Part 2
• Managing the User Experience in AJAX

Have fun!

Yesterday DotNetSlackers.com posted a new article authored by Ahmad Mosa. It is about How to Expose Stored Procedures to ASP.NET through HTTP Endpoints. The article shows how to use HTTP endpoints of SQL Server 2005 to publish internal reports to your organization without using IIS Web Server and regardless of heterogeneous systems. Hope you'll like the article.

Ahmad Mosa is an MCT since 2005. He has MCSD.NET for both C# & VB.NET, MCDBA for SQL Server 2000 and MCPD for Enterprise application development (chartered member). Ahmad has been working in the training field for about 5 years and he has attended several overseas training in deferent locations.

Just published my artilce about getting started with WSE 3.0 on DotNetSlackers.com. In this article I'm walking through to build simple document transfer web service using ASP.NET 2.0 and make this web serice WSE 3.0 enabled. The article is covering the following topics:

• How to configure a web service to use WSE 3.0
• How to configure a client application to use WSE 3.0
• How to configure a web service to use MTOM messaging mechanism
• How to enable a client application to use MTOM while communicating with a MTOM enabled web service

As an extension to this article, currently I'm studying how to build WSS 3.0 Web Service to upload documents to document libraries and enable WSE 3.0 on this web service. Hope I could finalize this soon.

Your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Today my first article on Silverlight is published on DotNetSlackers. It is an introductory article on how to build a Silverlight "WPF/E" simple web content that represents an analog clock. On this article I showed basics of drawing and animation using Silverlight. Also I showed how to create dynamic Silverlight objects using JavaScript. You may refer to the article for more details! And hopefully you'll like it and find it useful.

You might read about or watch WPF: Monitoring operations at Zürich Airport application on Channel 10. It is realy wonderful demonistration of WPF.

You can read about this case study here.

I was wondering if I could have the code of this application or be able to have it run on my local machine?! And Yes with help of my friends we were able to do that, it was simple.

I would like to share it, but I'm not able to upload it somewhere. The application size is about 5 MB and after zipping it become 1.3 MB.

It contains an exe file which you can decompile it using .Net Reflector. Also the exe file contains a demo data. You can run the application on your local system or review the code!

 

If anyone interested you may contact me.