Matevž Gačnik's Weblog

I just finished another developer-oriented product specification. The product is called Gama System® EDocs.

It grew to 160 pages/5 documents. It's a .NET app, which includes MSMQ integration, system services and a WinForms client. Backend storage is SQL Server. It's using partitioned views to achive maximum scalability, since we're expecting over 1TB of data on particular installations.

It's time to use that whip on our developers again.

Clemens released dasBlog, a successor to BlogX. Since my cycles are running out, I'll have to install it with some lag.

Maybe, someday, he will even embrace and extend an RSS aggregator and implement this functionality. The circle would be closed then.

This just came through:  Finally, Whidbey will provide increased power for performing common tasks involving the manipulation of XML. In addition to delivering increased performance when accessing and managing XML, Whidbey will include support for XML-based data processing using XML Query Language (XQuery).

It just seems strange to me, since XQuery is still in working draft status and will probably stay that way for quite some time.

It seems that it is that time of year again. Sun started another web services attack by releasing competing stack of standards.

Eventually we will drown in web services specs. History is evidently repeating itself. We're going down the COM/CORBA route.

I just had another lenghty discussion with another developer trying to convey the benefits of XPathNavigator usage.

It seems to me, that Infoset-based access to SQL Server data can only be done using this:

• Get DataSet
• DataSet -> XmlDataDocument (constructor, which takes DataSet, public XmlDataDocument(DataSet))
• XmlDataDocument -> XPathNavigator (XmlDataDocument.CreateNavigator)

One can also create an XmlNode instead of XPathNavigator, but I prefer the XPath data model.

This seems a much more scalable solution than using "FOR XML RAW/AUTO/EXPLICIT" and populating an XmlReader with SqlCommand.ExecuteXmlReader. "FOR XML RAW/AUTO/EXPLICIT" is slow and requires an XML serialization/deserialization pair.

It's bad/wrong/sloppy, when people do that between app tiers.

Based on this and this I just wrote a web service, which enables RSS URL lookup for web logs registered at UDDI.

It should be simple to integrate this into current RSS aggregators. Email me for code.

Web service URL: http://www.request-response.com/webservices/rssquery/rssquery.asmx

There are two metods. One returns an RSS URL based on UDDI service key. One returns an RSS URL based on UDDI service name. If multiple versions of RSS feeds are found, service looks for RSS 2.0 feed first. Then RSS 1.0, then RSS 0.9x. It returns '-1' if no feed is found.

Web service does dynamic queries against Microsoft's UDDI server inquire API.

I just noticed that Greg's OPML structure isn't compatible with BlogX's OPML structure.

The differences I encountered were found at least in xmlurl and htmlurl attributes of the outline element. Since I don't have the cycles to look further, I just hand edited those two attributes.

Greg dumps xmlurl and htmlurl out.
Dare/Chris dump xmlUrl and htmlUrl out.

And the spec doesn't help here either.
[Rant: We need OPML schema, which is more restrictive.]

Clemens updates his OPML list.

For those of you who thought his web site isn't working, here's a hint: Wait.

Errr, no more waiting (courtesy of .NET threading model and Clemens).

When is Greg going to include this one into the product I'm using right now? It would be great if it got into version 1.3 feature list.

Via email:

Thank you for contacting Microsoft.com. 
We have forwarded your mail to the appropriate Microsoft group for further review.  Additional information may be required to assist you.

By taking the time to write, you are helping us provide the best possible products and services.

Thanks again!

Ampee
Microsoft.com Customer Support

Glad to be of any help. I just want to get UDDI level 2 status. We have more than four services, which we would like to register. InfoPath demos would go through much smoother...

[Note: Who/What is Ampee?]

The list is getting longer...

If only people would register their weblogs on UDDI. Or UDDI. Or UDDI. It really doesn't matter.

RSS.Next should specify this in its spec. What good can a weblog do, if nobody can find it? What good can a blogger do if he/she can't move/join another company?

We really need redirect semantics in blogspace.

I just updated our UDDI profile, which until now included only web services that we provide to general public. Now it includes my personal web log as a service linked to RSS 2.0 tModel.

Clemens implemented an OMPL view over this, which makes it damn simple for aggregator folks to do what seems logical...

... implement UDDI lookup features, so people can change their virtual addresses without a headache.

Via sellsbrothers.com: Dave Winer has transferred the copyright to RSS 2.0 to Harvard Law School as well as opened it up for more public feedback. This is good because RSS 2.0 is gaining in popularity but has come under fire lately for being controlled by Dave alone.

This is good. Really good.

One of my favourite ex patriots Dejan Jelović had a weblog for quite some time, but today I found out he put an RSS facade over it.

Subscribed.

My dog made me swap my car. He's just too big right now (height ~65 cm, 40 kg) to be comfortable in the back seat. So I'm changing my car, which is a limousine version of Audi A4 for a caravan (Avant) Audi A4.

Hope everything goes though today. I'm just too busy to let this one take a week.

I hope Lupus stops at 85 cm. I wouldn't like driving him around in a bus. Speaking about dogs and cars, this just doesn't fit.

WSE 2.0 Tech Preview is out. Finally.

Got a few sleepless nights ahead and some thinking to do. Looks like we will have an option to abandon lonely hosting of web services in IIS, which is fun to have.

I like options. Options make people think.

Well, been there, done that.

When I came home at least one thing in blogspace was worth reading: new Chris Brumme article.