Indigo

The Dot NET Framework is focused on unifying all Microsoft application development. It's primary tenets include platform independence and network transparency. Dot NET is Microsoft's strategic initiative for server and desktop development for the next decade. We are now approaching Longhorn era with key products like BizTalk Server, Indigo, MapPoint, Microsoft Business Solutions, SharePoint, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Web Services Enhancements (WSE) and Windows Server 2003. Indigo is one of the biggest steps toward this goal as it provides facility of Communication between all these which is most important thing behind the whole idea.

Recently I attended a Microsoft's MSDN meet at Chennai and got some idea about this great technology- “Windows Communication Foundation – Indigo Architecture”.

I have read some descriptions about Indigo but the one written below is, I think, OK.

“Indigo is a unified programming model that enables developers to build connected systems in a productive manner.”

The most beautiful thing about Indigo is that it allows you to publish your services as ASMX, WSE or .Net Remoting... whatever you like. I mean while coding you need not to worry about the publishing aspect of the application. Learning API has considered more difficult than learning a new language. Now you don't have to look for learning WSE, ASMX, System.Messaging, System.EnterpriseServices, and .NET Remoting as Indigo will bring the best aspects of these together with single API, although with some limitations for COM+ (I don't know what exactly they are).

If you go into details about finding whether indigo is Service Oriented Architecture (SOA, more popularly) or Enterprise Service Bus (ESB or messaging middleware), you are putting yourself in the maze because it is both. You can use Indigo API as SOA as well as ESB. Indigo provides all those facility which should be provided by a basic ESB facility.

You can use this API if you have Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 beta 2 or later (I don't remember exact version of framework and SDK provided with that). Here you don't need IIS server or anything like that. HTTP listener will run on kernel mode and .net framework can use it to provide all those basic services provided by a web server (of course including XML-SOAP).

It seems Microsoft will gain good respect of geeks with this new “open standards” technologies. Dot Net technologies are getting recognized at all levels. Dot Net technologies are GNU DotNET and Mono Project are good example of it, plus all those language which has just got “.net” suffix.

With more advancements, Indigo will be really hot technology similar to idea of “synapse” of the movie “Antitrust”.

Some good links you can refer:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/indigo/default.aspx

http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2005_03/magazine/departments/guestop/

http://itmanagement.webopedia.com/TERM/I/Indigo.html

http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/3357621

Google and Yahoo version of Sitemap

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Google Sitemap

Google has announced sitemap program with “beta” tag. This
service is free and cool. With this service, you can list all of the
URLs of a web site for inclusion in the Google index. Just you have
to do is to create an XML file according to specification of Google
and put it on your site (Home directory is preferred location). Don’t
get afraid by the “XML” as you don’t have to create
a complex xml file. Sample xml is given below.

<urlset
xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
<url>

<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>

<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>

<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>

<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

You
can add as many URLs as you want. Google also provides the status of
your submitted sitemap. You can even submit your sitemaps for web
pages that are designed for mobile devices.
It’s not long
time google has launched this service (nearly starting of this
summer) as “beta” but many tools are available in market
to generate the XML sitemap file automatically. Google Sitemap Gen is
such a tool which is free. Visit
http://goog-sitemapgen.sourceforge.net/ for more information. Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html to know more about Gooooogle site map.

Yahoo version of sitemap

Yahoo!
has its own simplified version of a sitemap for crawling and
indexing. http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request. You can also
provide the location of a text file containing a list of URLs, one
URL per line, say urllist.txt. Compressed versions of sitemap are
also recognized (e.g. urllist.gz). Sites with crawlable urls may
benefit from using the multiple URL submission option at Yahoo rather
than the Search Submit paid inclusion.

It's important to note
that inclusion is not search engine optimization (SEO more
popularly). But it’s important when a part of your site in not
index. In this case it’s natural that you will generate more
traffic for your site.

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A seminar on ASP .net 2.0 ("Whidbey")

This is specially useful for those who missed the seminar on “Building Secure Web Applications using ASP.NET 2.0 ("Whidbey")” on Feb. 25, 2005 (by Anand M. see: http://www.microsoft.com/india/msdn/speakers.aspx#AnandM).

ASP.NET Whidbey is next version of ASP.NET (see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/whidbey/default.aspx). Beta version of ASP.NET Whidbey is available for testing purpose. It's first release is expected in this September (so very near!!).

Basically Security as two aspects 1. Authentication and 2. Authorization. The speaker covered mainly the Authentication part with presentation and demos. The session started with some questions and difficulties the developers are getting while developing an ASP application. Major difficulties with the most of developers were writing too much code for security and support for cookies (A short line of text that a web site puts on your computer's hard drive when you access the web site) on mobile browsers. Microsoft is well known to provide solutions in which developers has to write minimum code and that also with great ease. Anand was cool as solution for both the problem was there in presentation (precisely, only that was there) ! I have described the overview of the presentation here.

At starting we came to know that in Visual Studio .net 2005 there is an integrated web server for debug purpose.

A web application need to perform many authentication. Main techniques are form authentication and role authentication. Role authentication is mainly useful for authorization activities in modern programs. Normally authentication information is stored in the cookies of the browser. But many browsers do not support cookies (mostly browsers on mobile devices). So ASP.NET provides four different type of facility for storing authentication information.

1. Device ID (default)

2. Cookies

3. Automatic

4. URI

Here automatic is buzz point. If you set “Automatic” then automatically it will select Cookies or URI or Device ID (written in priority order). Cookies and URI are more secure then device ID as device ID can be tampered. So if the browse is not supporting cookies then automatically URI will be selected which is still secure at some extend (If you don't hate the ugly URI on the address bar ;-) ). Anand has given demos to show all 4 possibilities.

Now let's come on second question, i.e. reducing number of code !! Defiantly the topic of anyone's interest...

Microsoft Visual Studio .net 2005 is providing a control to authenticate the user. Just drag and drop the control on you design screen and you have done most of the work !! You can make GUI of the box of your choice by changing the parameters.

Now mention the database in which database provider's address which stores the address of database and column name for database and password. A sample database table is automatically created which has facility to store login and password information + registration details + roles information details and rest all necessary information. And you have done !

To add/update/delete information about roles, there is admin tool or MMC with GUI. You can edit .config file manually or programmatic way. You can write code to show content according to the role that user belongs to.

For registration, change password and rest of common things for authentication information maintenance.

He did this all there only.. yes.. in 2 hour seminar !

This controls give many advantage over traditional system of writing the whole code at our own. First thing is code is not just reduced... it's now redundant. Second thing is security issues (like SQL injections and all) are handled automatically as code is written by Microsoft ;) .

Now let's talk about database supported by it's first version. You can guess easily (and for obvious reason)... they MS Access and MS SQL server. We were advised to use MS Access just for debugging purpose. And for real application MS SQL.

If you want to experiment this technology then download it from Microsoft's web site. It's available as a beta release and free of cost for testing purpose.

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After many yeas I sat on the first row. We got a November-December MSDN india magazine. We got a good coffee and evening snack apart from the knowledge that I have described. And of course a new experience!!

This is my first blog. Comments are invited. Visit my web site. http://www.rajput-yh.tk