Web Services, Web Services, Web Services....

So have the .NET WCF based Web Services gotten too complicated? I mean they say Web Services, but really they want to say Services. They have Web Servers, Windows Services, Stand Alone services, etc. Services is becoming a generic term to umbrella over any communication service. Hence, Windows Commmunication Services.

I wanted to write a simple Web Service in .NET 4.0 and after fiddling with it for a few minutes, I just gave up. The .NET web.config file are starting to become an art and a skill requiring an explicit mention on the resume. It's a skill in itself to be able to understand the web.config file. To edit it, is another level of skill. One can't just go in a web.config file and change things around. If your projects service didn't get added properly, you don't just go around and try to correct that in the web.config. You hope to delete all service related items and re-add the service.

I added a new service to a project and something wasn't add properly. So, it would not compile. As a result, I removed the service and it left entries in the web.config file. It would still not compile. So I manually deleted all service related nodes. Then the project compiled. Then I added the service again. This time, it would run but wouldn't show me any method on the browse page. It talked about modifying the web.config to allow method display. After a minute, I realized that that is something I don't know.

So while it was easy to write Web Services in 2.0, 3.0 with older compilers, the new WCF based services are something that require some research and reading.

I will spend time reading about the WCF to learn about these. I'll be blogging about those soon.

ReiserFS guy crazy, depressing.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/28/no.body.case.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Reiser, known in programming circles as creator of the ReiserFS computer file system, testified for several days in the six-month trial, often giving rambling answers and getting scolded by the judge for arguing with the prosecutor.

Yahoo to Microsoft....

Microsoft is obviously desperate to gain Yahoo audience or else they wouldn't have offered 62% premium on Yahoo stock. This may not necessarily indicate that Microsoft is in desperate need to get into search engine business. They're doing alright, believe it or not. Microsoft may be more interested in acquiring a better ad revenue system.

That's a very interesting concept. Where Yahoo decided to throw exteremely annoying smiling-girl dating commercials in the mailboxes and browsers of their users, Google took a more educated approach. They decided to target the content for the user. In other words, the user is not seeing a dating commercial if they're shopping for memory in a page.

While Yahoo hasn't changed their ad model (well they have probably made the banners bigger), Microsoft may have decided that this is a good time to get the Yahoo userbase and set up a good and profitable ad revenue model. This will be good for Microsoft and the users. And the uses might appreciate the ads a lot more if they're invested in the ad business.

However, Yahoo's response was to act like a big company and refuse. They're asking the Microsoft pay even more! Another 13 billion!

Wow, that's a lot of money! Microsoft has the option to directly take the deal to Yahoo shareholders. Well, Microsoft shouldn't pay the extra money. Already the bid is pretty decent.

Sending UDP messages in C#

How to send a UDP message to a UDP server in C#.

string mHost="hostname";
int mPort="1111";
string mMessage="message";

try {
  mClient=new UdpClient();
  IPAddress mIPAddress=Dns.GetHostEntry(mHost).AddressList[0];
  mRemoteEndPoint=new IPEndPoint(mIPAddress, mPort);

  mClient.Connect(mRemoteEndPoint);
}
catch(Exception mEX) {
  MessageBox.Show(mEX.Message);
}

mClient.Send(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(mMessage), Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(mMessage).Length);

The best Database Server

Moving stuff to Oracle from SQL Server. Well, Oracle certainly has come a long way to nowhere. It is still cumbersome to use and in it's own little world. But at least Oracle would be happy because they think that they are the more robust database.

In today's world where people really don't have mass amounts of data, Oracle's supposed egde doesn't make much of a bargaining chip. SQL Server does more than fine for all the corporate needs. Most companies aren't in business long enough to have a database big enough to really cause problems. Others have backups and rollovers and database syncs and server farms to solve problems. And many really huge ones still use mainframes. So what is the point of Oracle? It has it's place but they're making it hard to let other people use the database system. By making simple things hard, they exclude a big group of people.

The TNS thing alone is a big nuisance. Any client that needs to connect must use TNS names. There's a cases where people have been able to make connections without using the TNS names entries and the oracle client. Mostly, the oracle client needs to be isntalled with all of it's MB (disk space) eating additions. Plus it needs to be configured. In a world where 2000 workstations need to do database stuff, it's not always easy to deploy the Oracle client and configure it remotely. Not to mention updates are not very easy to implement.

On the other hand if you want to hire someone who can write instructions to Oracle in bad english, and use PL/SQL instead of plain SQL or T-SQL then you'd want Oracle. If you want to have snobby DBAs who can hold up everything to their schedule, you really want Oracle.

SQL Server vs. Oracle

So we wrote some pretty involved code for a project. It was using SQL Server 2000. There was all kinds of .NET controls that use the SQLDataSource component. All of a sudden at the last minute the requirement was changed to use Oracle 9.2. Now you would think simply changing the connection string would good to set all things pointing to Oracle.

Well! You'd be wrong!

The SQLDataSource component need to be specifically told the client type is Sql.OracleClient and it won't just read the correct configuration from the config file.

So all the code needs to re-examined. All test cases need to re-run.

Not to mention all schemas need to be regenerated in Oracle. And of course, Oracle doesn't do anything the easy or nice way. So that'll be who knows how long spent trying to fix this.

SQL Server 2000/5 have it so much better. Any thougths?