Thursday, September 18, 2003

Web Services versus Remoting versus Enterprise Services Google Search It OK, it is about time I wrote my thoughts down on this topic so here goes: Web Services Features Microsoft's direction based on their marketing The stuff Don Box always talks about and, bear in mind, he is the key player on that team Standards compliant - GXA/WS-* etc Issues No plugability for varying channels and formatters A nightmare over wireless channels like GPRS .NET Remoting Features Separates out the format from the transport channel  (way cool)! More extensible Support events Simply configuration The coolest geek architecture available Issues No standards... .NET required on both sides BinaryFormatter isn't actually that efficient (especially for datsets) Meta data flows on every call No support on compact framework Enterprise Services Features The stinkin'. fastest of all the communication options short of going to a lower level (System.Net) Queued components Transaction support (with a performance cost) Authorization/Authentication Resource pooling (object pooling, just-in-time activation) etc. DllHost.exe Component activation Issues Let's face it... this was developed before .NET... it isn't cool anymore (that doesn't mean you should no longer buy my COM+ book.) No standards No cross platform (without the web service add-on) No marketing from Microsoft indicating future direction. No support on compact framework So were do we go from here? Professional Developers Conference Professional Developers Conference Consider the following decision matrix: Whatever you are doing now:      - Keep....it will eventually have some kind of future. If you are starting to do development today and you can't wait for Whidbey:      - Analyze the above feature/issues list and follow your gut. If you can wait for the Whidbey release then:      - Go with Web Services and figure out a way to hoist in the Enterprise Service and        Remoting features that don't come in the Whidbey box.  4:09:01 PM   []    comment []

Connectix Virtual PC for Windows 5.2 Available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads Google Search It This could have happened some time ago for all I know but Connectix Virtual PC for Windows 5.2 is now available on MSDN Subscriber downloads.  I love this app! 11:52:54 AM   []    comment []

More on Configuration Management Application Block for .NET - from Microsoft Patterns & Practices Google Search It I wrote on Configuration Management Application Block for .NET  - from Microsoft Patterns & Practices a few weeks ago.  Since then my team and I have investigated it further.  Here are the reasons we decided to go with our own implementation, one that we had already written. No explicit support for scope.  Scope is the ability to specify that a setting is related to a user, roaming user, group of users, application, and system. The API does not allow you to specify a default such that if there is no setting then a default would be returned. No integrated security support such that only certain users can write and read specific settings. Data persistence into a database is not configurable and we needed to do custom schema stuff. As a result of these we would end up having to wrap the front end with our own to add additional features to the interface and then plug-in our own data store at the back end...  This is essentially replacing the key pieces so why use it. Our settings related interfaces can be found here. 10:41:23 AM   []    comment []

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