AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service Walkthrough (C#)

by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

In this walkthrough I’ll show you how to use the AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service (C#) template for Visual Studio 2010 to enhance your WCF Data Services by providing

• Monitoring events and errors to the AppFabric Data Store
• Eliminating the need to use the .svc extension in your URI

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2010
• .NET Framework 4
• Windows Server AppFabric

Step 1 – Create a Web Application

1. Start Visual Studio 2010
2. Select File / New Project
3. Choose a Web Application Template – for this example I used Empty Web Application

Step 2 – Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model

1. For my database I’m using the AdventureWorksLT sample database for SQL Server 2008R2
2. Right click on your project and select Add / New Item…
3. Select the ADO.NET Entity Data Model template
4. Name the model AdventureWorks.edmx
5. Select Generate From Database
6. Connect to AdventureWorksLT and use the default settings
7. Select all the tables by checking the Tables checkbox

Step 3 – Add an AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service

1. Right click on your project and select Add / New Item…
2. Select Online Templates
3. In the search box type AppFabric
4. Select the AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service (C#) template
5. Name it AdventureWorks.svc 
6. Click Install to install the template on your machine

Step 4 – Modify the template code

We have added TODO tasks in the template to guide you through tasks you need to do to make your service ready

1. Replace [[class name]] with AdventureWorksLTEntities
2. Modify the SetEntitySetAccessRule code as shown for all entities (“*”)
3. If you want to use a different route you can set that as well

// This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies.
public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config)
{            
    // Enable read only access to all entities
    config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead);
    config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2;

    RouteTable.Routes.Add(
        new ServiceRoute("AdventureWorks", new DataServiceHostFactory(), typeof(AdventureWorks)));
}

Step 5 – Modify the web.config

1. In AdventureWorks.svc.cs expand #region Sample Config with End-To-End Monitoring enabled”
2. Select the commented XML and uncomment it (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U)
3. Copy it to the clipboard
4. Comment it again (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C)
5. Open web.config
6. Paste the XML inside the <configuration> tag

  </connectionStrings>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" />
    <diagnostics etwProviderId="830b12d1-bb5b-4887-aa3f-ab508fd4c8ba">
      <endToEndTracing propagateActivity="true" messageFlowTracing="true" />
    </diagnostics>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="">
          <etwTracking profileName="EndToEndMonitoring Tracking Profile" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>
  <system.webServer>
    <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
      <remove name="UrlRoutingModule"/>
      <add name="UrlRoutingModule" type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule, System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </modules>
    <handlers>
      <add
      name="UrlRoutingHandler"
      preCondition="integratedMode"
      verb="*" path="UrlRouting.axd"
      type="System.Web.HttpForbiddenHandler, System.Web, 
                      Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
                      PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/>
    </handlers>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Step 6 – Run the Service in IIS

To see the events in Windows Server AppFabric you need to deploy the Web project to IIS or modify your project to host the solution in the local IIS Server.  For this example I’m going to modify the project to host with the local IIS server.  Note: This requires you to run Visual Studio as Administrator

1. If you are not running Visual Studio as Administrator, exit and restart Visual Studio as Administrator and reload your project.  For more information see Using Visual Studio with IIS 7
2. Right click on the WebApplication and select properties
3. Go to the Web tab
4. Check Use Local IIS Web Server and click Create Virtual Directory
5. Press Ctrl+Shift+S to save your project settings (Debugging will not save them)
6. Open AdventureWorks.svc.cs
7. Press F5 to Debug
8. The Service will open in the debugger and show the service document 
9. Remove the .svc extension from the URI and try it again.  It will work without the .svc extension in the URI. 

   If this isn’t working for you see System.Web.Routing RouteTable not working with IIS?
   If you want to disable the URI with the .svc extension (and eliminate the .svc file) see this post

10. If you see an error in the event log (Login failed for user ‘IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool’. Reason: Failed to open the explicitly specified database. [CLIENT: <local machine>]) You need to grant permission to IIS Users to access the database

USE [AdventureWorksLT]
GO
CREATE USER [IIS USERS] FOR LOGIN [BUILTIN\IIS_IUSRS]
GO
USE [AdventureWorksLT]
GO
EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_datareader', N'IIS USERS'
GO

Step 7 – View Events in AppFabric

1. Start IIS Manager
2. Open the AppFabric Dashboard
3. Click one of the links for WCF
4. Right click on an event and select View All Related Events to see detailed events

AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service Walkthrough (VB)

by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

In this walkthrough I’ll show you how to use the AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service (VB) template for Visual Studio 2010 to enhance your WCF Data Services by providing

• Monitoring events and errors to the AppFabric Data Store
• Eliminating the need to use the .svc extension in your URI

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2010
• .NET Framework 4
• Windows Server AppFabric

Step 1 – Create a Web Application

1. Start Visual Studio 2010
2. Select File / New Project
3. Choose a Web Application Template – for this example I used Empty Web Application

Step 2 – Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model

1. For my database I’m using the AdventureWorksLT sample database for SQL Server 2008R2
2. Right click on your project and select Add / New Item
3. Select the ADO.NET Entity Data Model template
4. Name the model AdventureWorks.edmx
5. Select Generate From Database
6. Connect to AdventureWorksLT and use the default settings
7. Select all the tables by checking the Tables checkbox

Step 3 – Add an AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service

1. Right click on your project and select Add / New Item
2. Select Online Templates
3. In the search box type AppFabric
4. Select the AppFabric-enabled WCF Data Service (VB) template
5. Name it AdventureWorks.svc

6. Click Install to install the template on your machine

Step 4 – Modify the template code

We have added TODO tasks in the template to guide you through tasks you need to do to make your service ready

1. Replace [[class name]] with AdventureWorksLTEntities
2. Modify the SetEntitySetAccessRule code as shown for all entities (“*”)
3. If you want to use a different route you can set that as well

    ' This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies.
    Public Shared Sub InitializeService(ByVal config As DataServiceConfiguration)

        ' Enable read only access to all entities
        config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead)
        config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2

        ' TODO: Set your route name
        RouteTable.Routes.Add(
            New ServiceRoute("AdventureWorks", New DataServiceHostFactory(), GetType(AdventureWorks)))
    End Sub

Step 5 – Modify the web.config

1. In AdventureWorks.svc.vb expand #Region "Sample Config with End-To-End Monitoring enabled"
2. Select the commented XML and uncomment it (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U)
3. Copy it to the clipboard
4. Comment it again (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C)
5. Open web.config
6. Paste the XML inside the <configuration> tag

  </connectionStrings>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" />
    <diagnostics etwProviderId="830b12d1-bb5b-4887-aa3f-ab508fd4c8ba">
      <endToEndTracing propagateActivity="true" messageFlowTracing="true" />
    </diagnostics>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="">
          <etwTracking profileName="EndToEndMonitoring Tracking Profile" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>
  <system.webServer>
    <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true">
      <remove name="UrlRoutingModule"/>
      <add name="UrlRoutingModule" type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule, System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />
    </modules>
    <handlers>
      <add
      name="UrlRoutingHandler"
      preCondition="integratedMode"
      verb="*" path="UrlRouting.axd"
      type="System.Web.HttpForbiddenHandler, System.Web, 
                      Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, 
                      PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/>
    </handlers>
  </system.webServer>
</configuration>

Step 6 – Run the Service in IIS

To see the events in Windows Server AppFabric you need to deploy the Web project to IIS or modify your project to host the solution in the local IIS Server.  For this example I’m going to modify the project to host with the local IIS server.  Note: This requires you to run Visual Studio as Administrator

1. If you are not running Visual Studio as Administrator, exit and restart Visual Studio as Administrator and reload your project.  For more information see Using Visual Studio with IIS 7
2. Right click on the WebApplication and select properties
3. Go to the Web tab
4. Check Use Local IIS Web Server and click Create Virtual Directory
5. Press Ctrl+Shift+S to save your project settings (Debugging will not save them)
6. Open AdventureWorks.svc.cs
7. Press F5 to Debug
8. The Service will open in the debugger and show the service document  
9. Remove the .svc extension from the URI and try it again.  It will work without the .svc extension in the URI. 

   If this isn’t working for you see System.Web.Routing RouteTable not working with IIS?

   If you want to disable the URI with the .svc extension (and eliminate the .svc file) see this post

10. If you see an error in the event log (Login failed for user ‘IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool’. Reason: Failed to open the explicitly specified database. [CLIENT: <local machine>]) You need to grant permission to IIS Users to access the database

USE [AdventureWorksLT]
GO
CREATE USER [IIS USERS] FOR LOGIN [BUILTIN\IIS_IUSRS]
GO
USE [AdventureWorksLT]
GO
EXEC sp_addrolemember N'db_datareader', N'IIS USERS'
GO

Step 7 – View Events in AppFabric

1. Start IIS Manager
2. Open the AppFabric Dashboard
3. Click one of the links for WCF
4. Right click on an event and select View All Related Events to see detailed events

Interessante Blog Postings

by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Gedurende een bepaalde periode kom je op het internet interessante zaken tegen of zijn er interesante blogpostings gedaan. Soms google je wat en kom je een oude maar zeer interessante blogposting tegen. In dit artikel wil ik een aantal van deze blogpostings…(read more)

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Make WCF Simpler

by community-syndication | Jun 29, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

If there is one thing I hear from people over and over again it is this.  Please make WCF simpler, easier to understand and use.  I totally agree with this sentiment.  In fact, in .NET 4 we made it much easier but we still have a long way to go.  Once in a while each of us gets the opportunity to change the world for the better (ok we aren’t solving world hunger here but) If you want your voice to be heard take a minute and fill out this survey.

Welcoming a new citizen to the blogosphere and thinking about “Back-room” programmers

by community-syndication | Jun 29, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

During my years in the IT world I’ve been fortunate enough to ton of really intelligent and brilliant people. Many of them have been a joy to speak with and work along side of. However a number of them have been incredibly painful to interact with. I’m sure most of you who have worked in along side “techies” and programmers know what I’m talking about. I’ve always referred to these people as “back-room” programmers.  There are the people who you want to be creating your software and IT systems, but you also want to keep them shut up in the back-room so that they don’t interact with you clients, direct reports, partners or business users.  There are many reasons why we don’t want them to emerge from their back-room solitude.  Some are quick to anger, some are quick to belittle or diminish others, others can’t communicate well. Some of these folks have trouble interacting with others, some are extremely shy while others simply can’t pull themselves out of the technical world long enough to be able to effectively interact with others.  For all of these reasons, we often see these folks left along in a back-room to continue churning out great code/solutions on their own.

Now as brilliant as a back-room programmer may be, they are often limited in their career. Being brilliant isn’t enough to have success in a professional field. We need those soft skills and people skills in order to grow beyond a simple programmer and into an effective IT consultant or team leader. Over the years, I’ve seen many back-room programmers passed over for promotions, public recognition and general career advancement. 

Of course, when people are routinely passed over for advance and feel that they are missing out on the success that others are achieving, resentment sets in. They come up with any number of reasons why they are left behind while others advance. “Some manager doesn’t like them”, “Some manager is stupid and can’t see how brilliant they are”, “so and so over on that team played politics to get their new job”, “so and so over their boast about their accomplishments and therefore got a role they didn’t deserve”. There are any number of reasons why they haven’t achieved the career success that they hoped for, but the sad thing is, they often fail to look at themselves and assess whether or not they are the reason. We need more than simple technical brilliance to achieve in a professional career. We do need all of those great soft skills and people skills. However, above and beyond all of these soft skills, we really need to have a modicum of self awareness. If we aren’t aware of our own needs, wants, limitations, fears, hang-ups, strengths and limitations then we simply can’t expect that we are going to being able to connect well with other people. I achieve career success  (and life success really), we really need to be aware of why we think the way we think, why we act the way that we act and why we think what we do about others. Once we’ve mastered that (although you never really master this), then we can go out and have great personal and working relationships with others. When you combine this with a strong technical expertise and natural talent, then you have the formula for tremendous success.  I often look at new graduates from university and wonder which ones will bring this complete package and which ones will only bring strong technical skills. Its sad really, to see brilliant people trapped in a back-room wasting their talent due to a self imposed lack of self awareness.

Now that I’ve said my piece about that, I also wanted to welcome my wife to the blogosphere. (http://susyfonseca.wordpress.com) There is a connection between my rant today and my welcome message to her. My wife has recently left the IT field (she lead a product development team at a large Telco here) to purse a new career as an art therapist (www.susyfonseca.ca). She’s focused on helping children and adults connect with themselves so that they can realize why they think the way they do and why they act the way they do. I knew nothing about Art Therapy before I met her, but over the years I’ve found it to be a very fascinating discipline. Human minds are conditioned with all kinds of inhibitions and filters which keep our words in check. We often think things that we will never verbally admit. However, the neat thing is, these filters are pretty much only setup to filter verbal communication. When an individual creates art, their true feelings, wants desires, hates and fears will often slip past these filters. When combined with an ongoing discussion with an Art Therapist, this unfiltered art can become a powerful tool for self discovery. It can be used to help an individual discover a ton of great stuff about themselves. This then leads into an ability to interact with others in a healthier and more open way.  This is certainly a program that many of the people I have worked with over the years would have benefited from! (and yes, that includes me :))  Hopefully, this new career will help many many people achieve better success (in the IT field and everywhere else in life).

To wrap up, today’s blog entry certainly wasn’t technically focused, but hey! I have a blog tag for “personal” entries that I have never used. I figured it was time. I’ve been ending my recent blogs with the tagline “stay connected”. Today I’ll expand that a little bit and end with

“Stay Connected (with yourself first!)”

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