by community-syndication | Mar 27, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
If you’re looking to dig a bit deeper into WCF security, and specifically how to perform particular tasks, go check out J.D. Meier’s blog for a link list of new “how tos” and videos recently posted to CodePlex.
Specifically, you’ll find some useful demonstrations for creating temporary certificates for message-based security, some interesting looks at impersonation, […]
by community-syndication | Mar 27, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Thanks to all the folks who attended to my session about RESTful services at the New York Connected Systems User Group and at the Orlando Code Camp. I had a lot of fun in both event and got some interesting feedback. The presentations and demos can be…(read more)
by community-syndication | Mar 26, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Report Manager web application has help pages in several languages. They display nicely in IE, but in Firefox they are reduced to a mere %u00ef%u00bb%u00bf
%u00ef%u00bb%u00bf is the unicode byte-order mark, coded in UTF-8. A first inspection with Firebug revealed that this application does not set the charset in the http […]
by community-syndication | Mar 26, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
How would you like to take portions of MSDN online documentation in your laptop without installing the entire library? Package This is a GUI tool written in C# for creating help files (.chm and .hxs) from the content obtained from the MSDN Library or…(read more)
by community-syndication | Mar 26, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
One of the core priorities we focused on when building IIS 7 was to enable a rich .NET extensibility model that provides developers with the hooks to easily plug-in and extend the web server.
These extensibility hooks are provided in the web-server pipeline (enabling scenarios like the new IIS7 Bit Rate Throttler), within the configuration system (enabling developers to create new web.config schema settings), within the health monitoring system (enabling developers to add custom trace events), and within the admin tool (enabling developers to plug-in new admin UI modules).
We added these extensibility hooks so that anyone can easily extend and enhance the web server using .NET. We also selfishly wanted them so that we can ship regular feature packs that add additional features to the core web server.
IIS 7 Admin Pack Preview 1 Released
Last week the IIS team shipped the first technical preview of some really cool administration modules that I think web developers will find super useful. This preview adds several new features to the IIS7 Admin Tool:
-
Database Manager: Built-in SQL Server database management, including the ability to create, delete, and edit tables and indexes, create/edit SPROCs and execute custom queries. Because it is integrated in the IIS administration tool it all works over HTTP/SSL – which means you can use the module to remotely manage your hosted applications (even with low-cost shared hosting accounts), without having to expose your database directly on the Internet.
-
Log Reports: Built-in report visualization with charting support for log files data. Full range selection and custom chart creation is supported, as well as the ability to print or save reports. Like the database manager you can use this module remotely over HTTP/SSL – which means it works in remote shared hosting scenarios.
Below are some screen-shots and simple walkthroughs of the Log Reporting and Database Manager administration UI modules:
Log Reporting Admin Module
Have you ever deployed a web application onto a server and wondered how much load it is getting?, what the average response time from the server is?, or whether many server errors are occurring (and if so on what URLs)? All of these settings are carefully logged by IIS in a text based log file. Today most people use command-line tools like the IIS Log Parser utility to query and analyze these files.
The IIS 7 Admin Pack and the new "IIS Reports" admin module now enable you to also query and chart your reports graphically within the IIS admin tool:
Out of the box the "IIS Reports" admin module comes with a bunch of pre-built logparser-based reports that you can easily run on your sites and applications:
Below is a simple graphical report we could pull up that looks at the HTTP status codes being returned by my "TestSite" application (note how we are using the "bar graph" visualization option):
Reports can optionally be filtered using a date range. You can also push the print or save buttons within the report page to generate a printer or a local saved version of the report.
The IIS7 Admin Tool is a rich client application (built using WinForms) – but it does all of its remote access and work using HTTP based web-services that connect to the remote web-server. This means it will work through firewalls, and a hoster does not need to open up ports in their network in order to enable it.
Once a hoster installs the IIS 7 Admin Pack on their web-servers, remote customers managing their hosted sites using the IIS admin tool (which is built-into Vista and available as a download for Windows XP clients) will automatically be prompted to enable the IIS Reports admin module (the install of the client-side module is seamless). They’ll then be able to use the reports module inside their admin tool to pull up reports for their remote hosted sites.
Note: hosters can optionally disable this feature if they want, or choose to restrict or customize the list of reports provided. Hopefully most hosters will chose to just make this a standard feature of all IIS and ASP.NET plans they offer.
Database Manager Module
Have you ever deployed your application and database to a remote hosting provider and wanted to make a quick change to the database (but your hosting provider didn’t support accessing it using the SQL admin tool)? Using the new "database manager" module within the IIS admin tool you can now remotely access your database and make changes to it using HTTP/SSL through the web-server.
Just connect your IIS administration tool to your remote site and click the new "Database Manager" icon:
By default the Database Manager module will look at the <connectionStrings> section of your web application’s web.config file, and allow you to easily access any of the databases your hosted application is using.
For example, below my TestSite application has a "NorthwindConnectionString" setting in the <connectionStrings> section of my web.config (which is why it shows up in my list of connection nodes). When I click it I can view and edit my SPROCs and Table Schema (including indexes):
We could right-click on any table to edit the row data within it, or alternatively perform a custom SQL query to retrieve a custom set of data:
What is nice is that a hoster can easily enable all of the above database admin features for both dedicated and shared hosting plans (even when there are hundreds or thousands of customers on a single server). Like all other modules in the admin tool, all communication between the rich client front-end and the backend at the hoster is done over HTTP/SSL based web-services (meaning it goes through firewalls and doesn’t require the hoster to open any new ports – nor expose the SQL server directly on the Internet).
Hopefully this database administration module will just be a standard feature that all IIS hosters enable – which will make remote hosted data management much easier going forward.
Summary
Over time you’ll see even more admin UI modules be shipped in the IIS 7 Admin Pack and many more features enabled (Carlos, who runs the dev team building the admin tool, is actively asking for suggestions on what you’d like to see via his blog – so drop him a comment if you have a suggestion or want to provide some encouragement).
You can download the first technical preview of IIS 7 Admin Pack release here as well as learn more about it via the online documentation here. The above modules work with both the IIS7 release in Vista SP1 as well as Windows Server 2008.
Hope this helps,
Scott
by community-syndication | Mar 26, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
One of the core priorities we focused on when building IIS 7 was to enable a rich .NET extensibility model that provides developers with the hooks to easily plug-in and extend the web server.
These extensibility hooks are provided in the web-server pipeline (enabling scenarios like the new IIS7 Bit Rate Throttler), within the configuration system (enabling developers to create new web.config schema settings), within the health monitoring system (enabling developers to add custom trace events), and within the admin tool (enabling developers to plug-in new admin UI modules).
We added these extensibility hooks so that anyone can easily extend and enhance the web server using .NET. We also selfishly wanted them so that we can ship regular feature packs that add additional features to the core web server.
IIS 7 Admin Pack Preview 1 Released
Last week the IIS team shipped the first technical preview of some really cool administration modules that I think web developers will find super useful. This preview adds several new features to the IIS7 Admin Tool:
-
Database Manager: Built-in SQL Server database management, including the ability to create, delete, and edit tables and indexes, create/edit SPROCs and execute custom queries. Because it is integrated in the IIS administration tool it all works over HTTP/SSL – which means you can use the module to remotely manage your hosted applications (even with low-cost shared hosting accounts), without having to expose your database directly on the Internet.
-
Log Reports: Built-in report visualization with charting support for log files data. Full range selection and custom chart creation is supported, as well as the ability to print or save reports. Like the database manager you can use this module remotely over HTTP/SSL – which means it works in remote shared hosting scenarios.
Below are some screen-shots and simple walkthroughs of the Log Reporting and Database Manager administration UI modules:
Log Reporting Admin Module
Have you ever deployed a web application onto a server and wondered how much load it is getting?, what the average response time from the server is?, or whether many server errors are occurring (and if so on what URLs)? All of these settings are carefully logged by IIS in a text based log file. Today most people use command-line tools like the IIS Log Parser utility to query and analyze these files.
The IIS 7 Admin Pack and the new "IIS Reports" admin module now enable you to also query and chart your reports graphically within the IIS admin tool:
Out of the box the "IIS Reports" admin module comes with a bunch of pre-built logparser-based reports that you can easily run on your sites and applications:
Below is a simple graphical report we could pull up that looks at the HTTP status codes being returned by my "TestSite" application (note how we are using the "bar graph" visualization option):
Reports can optionally be filtered using a date range. You can also push the print or save buttons within the report page to generate a printer or a local saved version of the report.
The IIS7 Admin Tool is a rich client application (built using WinForms) – but it does all of its remote access and work using HTTP based web-services that connect to the remote web-server. This means it will work through firewalls, and a hoster does not need to open up ports in their network in order to enable it.
Once a hoster installs the IIS 7 Admin Pack on their web-servers, remote customers managing their hosted sites using the IIS admin tool (which is built-into Vista and available as a download for Windows XP clients) will automatically be prompted to enable the IIS Reports admin module (the install of the client-side module is seamless). They’ll then be able to use the reports module inside their admin tool to pull up reports for their remote hosted sites.
Note: hosters can optionally disable this feature if they want, or choose to restrict or customize the list of reports provided. Hopefully most hosters will chose to just make this a standard feature of all IIS and ASP.NET plans they offer.
Database Manager Module
Have you ever deployed your application and database to a remote hosting provider and wanted to make a quick change to the database (but your hosting provider didn’t support accessing it using the SQL admin tool)? Using the new "database manager" module within the IIS admin tool you can now remotely access your database and make changes to it using HTTP/SSL through the web-server.
Just connect your IIS administration tool to your remote site and click the new "Database Manager" icon:
By default the Database Manager module will look at the <connectionStrings> section of your web application’s web.config file, and allow you to easily access any of the databases your hosted application is using.
For example, below my TestSite application has a "NorthwindConnectionString" setting in the <connectionStrings> section of my web.config (which is why it shows up in my list of connection nodes). When I click it I can view and edit my SPROCs and Table Schema (including indexes):
We could right-click on any table to edit the row data within it, or alternatively perform a custom SQL query to retrieve a custom set of data:
What is nice is that a hoster can easily enable all of the above database admin features for both dedicated and shared hosting plans (even when there are hundreds or thousands of customers on a single server). Like all other modules in the admin tool, all communication between the rich client front-end and the backend at the hoster is done over HTTP/SSL based web-services (meaning it goes through firewalls and doesn’t require the hoster to open any new ports – nor expose the SQL server directly on the Internet).
Hopefully this database administration module will just be a standard feature that all IIS hosters enable – which will make remote hosted data management much easier going forward.
Summary
Over time you’ll see even more admin UI modules be shipped in the IIS 7 Admin Pack and many more features enabled (Carlos, who runs the dev team building the admin tool, is actively asking for suggestions on what you’d like to see via his blog – so drop him a comment if you have a suggestion or want to provide some encouragement).
You can download the first technical preview of IIS 7 Admin Pack release here as well as learn more about it via the online documentation here. The above modules work with both the IIS7 release in Vista SP1 as well as Windows Server 2008.
Hope this helps,
Scott
by community-syndication | Mar 25, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I’m always looking for these:
InvalidType = -1
GenericList = 100
DocumentLibrary = 101
Survey = 102
Links = 103
Announcements = 104
Contacts = 105
Events = 106
Tasks = 107
DiscussionBoard = 108
PictureLibrary = 109
DataSources = 110
WebTemplateCatalog = 111
UserInformation = 112
WebPartCatalog = 113
ListTemplateCatalog = 114
XMLForm = 115
MasterPageCatalog = 116
NoCodeWorkflows = 117
WorkflowProcess = 118
WebPageLibrary = 119
CustomGrid = 120
DataConnectionLibrary = 130
WorkflowHistory = 140
GanttTasks = 150
Meetings = 200
Agenda = 201
MeetingUser = 202
Decision = 204
MeetingObjective = 207
TextBox = 210
ThingsToBring = 211
HomePageLibrary = 212
Posts = 301
Comments = 302
Categories = 303
Pages = 850 (thanks to Anders Jacobsen for this one)
IssueTracking = 1100
AdminTasks = 1200
Thanks Mike Smith – http://techtrainingnotes.blogspot.com/2008/01/sharepoint-registrationid-list-template.html
by community-syndication | Mar 25, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
For those of you wondering where I've been – I've been on vacation for the last 10 days, skiing and snowboarding. Although slightly of topic for this blog I just have to share one of the pictures we took with you, to give you an idea of the wonderful…(read more)
by community-syndication | Mar 25, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I’ve re-worked the BizTalk 2006 Message Archiving Component as a true streaming pipeline component – utilising a forward only eventing stream – to more efficiently use process resources when archiving large files, as suggested by Mikael H%u00e5kansson. The updated version is on CodePlex as version 0.3.
Writing of the archive file is now accomplished during the […]
by community-syndication | Mar 24, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
A good friend and colleague of mine has started a project on codplex to build a GUI for BizUnit,
Check it out here : http://www.codeplex.com/bud