Here's a fantastic bit of ASP.NET news from the DOTNET-CLR list...this bug has personally bit me a few times:

We are in the process of creating a hotfix for the "slow modem copy" issue described below.  The hotfix has two new config settings: <httpRuntime waitChangeNotification="0" maxWaitChangeNotification="0" /> [...snip...] A production server under load will have a constant stream of incoming requests.  Without the fix, a content update like the one described above might result in several AppDomain unloads/loads.  It's also possible for sharing violations to occur, which would be seen as an error such as "Cannot access file 'AssemblyName' because it is being used by another process".  It's easy to imagine a situation where ASP.NET is trying to load an assembly that is currently being copied into the bin folder. [...snip...] The fix is not yet available.  I expect the KB article will be relased around the first week of December, at which point you can request the fix at no charge.

I hearby declare November to be "Web Services Month!"  There are several Webby seminars in Portland slated for the next few weeks:

Tues, Nov 12, 5-9pm (TONIGHT) –  Web Application Platforms: .NET, J2EE, Open Source - Which is best for you? – Internet Professionals Northwest (www.ipn.org) - http://www.ipn.org/ProgramDetail.asp?id=18

Thurs, Nov 14, 6:15-9pm - Patrick Cauldwell and Implementing Web Services in .NET: Remoting vs. ASP.NET – Web Services SIG (http://www.padnug.org/padnug/WebServicesSIG.aspx) – register at: http://cpd.ogi.edu/coursespecific.asp?pam=1066.

Wed, Nov 20, 6:30-8:30pm - Scott Hanselman and Web Services: Behind the Magic – Software Association of Oregon, Developer’s SIG (www.sao.org) - http://db.sao.org/calendar_of_events/event_description.lasso?eventID=11_20_02

Ah, Greg Reinacker has sent me the Java quote I mentioned before..it was in fact he who said:

"1. I personally believe you can write performant, scalable systems with either Java/J2EE or .NET.  It's all a matter of good design.  And I certainly didn't mean to sound like election coverage!
2. Most ".NET people" I know also believe that you can certainly write good, scalable systems with Java/J2EE.  In contrast, many "Java people" don't believe that .NET is even worth considering.  And it doesn't seem to be based on technology - it seems to be fear of Microsoft.  Here's a great example.  Yikes.  Can't we all just get along?  (this is a part of why I've spent so much time working with web services.)"  [Greg Reinacker's Weblog]

And here I am, 6 days late.  Congrats!  Finally a reason for eBooks...Fantastic...well, you know I HAVE to get this....

"Thinking in C# is a 957-page book for programmers moving to the C# language, especially for those programmers moving from Visual Basic, C and C++, or Java. The book contains 249 sample programs from 305 source code files; all source code is available here. The first half of the book introduces the language and the concepts of object-orientation. The second half of the book is an introduction to the major programming subjects of the .NET Framework."

Buy it at http://www.thinkingin.net

Something interesting was said recently on the Blogs on to the recent uproar caused by the Middleware Company's PetStore whitepaper...I can't remember where, but I knew I should have just posted it when I saw it. 

The gist of it was that "Isn't it interesting that even most fervent .NET supporters when asked, will say that it is just as possible to do most any large project in Java as it is in .NET.  You don't here a lot of Java zealots saying that."

Let me know if you, or someone you know, posted a quote like this a few days back...

I wonder what that says about the mindset of the average Java Joe.  Myself, I worked at Nike for ayear on a Java project that did it all (at the time, in the old days) - JDBC, beta of RMI, talked to DB2, ran on Win95, MacOS 8, a Hot Java box, and Solaris.  I feel that I've been there, I've programmed entirely with VI because the Java tools weren't there.  (Actually I even cheated some and used VNC from Solaris to talk to a remote Windows box and used Visual Studio for HTML editing, but don't tell my boss). 

Basically I want something like the following to work -

 public class BookService : RestService 
 {
  [RestMethod(Verb="POST", Uri="something")] 
  public XmlNode MethodOne(string uri, XmlNode input) { } 

  [RestMethod(Verb="GET", Pattern="/book/**")] 
  public XmlNode MethodTwo(string uri) { } 

  [RestMethod(Verb="GET", Pattern="/order/")] 
  public XmlNode MethodThree(string uri, NameValueCollection queryString) { } 
} 

So for MethodOne, only POSTs to the URI "something" will be dispatched to it. And since it has an XmlNode as a parameter, I would check the content type of the incoming request. If it is text/xml (or one of the XML variants like application/soap+xml), I will load it and pass it in.

For MethodTwo, only POSTs to the URI /book/ and all the sub-URIs underneath book will be dispatched to it. Nothing is passed in by default. That does not mean you can't get access to the information. You can get access to the stuff through the Current HttpContext or the helper properties you inherit from RestService.

Finally for MethodThree, it is similar to MethodTwo except that the parameter it takes is NameValueCollection. This is just for convenience. The framework will pass in the query string directly. If MethodThree happened to want handle a POST, then the NameValueCollection would be a combination of Form variables as well as query string. I'm debating whether or not to make that configurable through an attribute. 

[News from the Forest]

This will be pretty slick when Justin gets it done...I'm looking a lot into how to implement REST on .NET, as well as how a Message Broker would look for a more SOAP-y document-y world looks.

Gary Klimowicz’s First Law of Organizational Development

Most business meetings do not progress beyond the average High School Student Council meeting.