Matevž Gačnik's Weblog

While preparing for my Tuesday demonstration of XML features in Office 2003 I found out that Word XML namespace changed from: http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2003/2/wordml to http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2003/wordml.

It's not that I'm opposed to changing beta-time namespaces but all my documents, saved in Office 2003 beta2 as XML, won't open up properly in Office 2003 RTM. I have to change them by hand.

Another thing that pops a question is: What if Microsoft releases two Word versions within a year that need different namespaces? That has not happened yet, but this kind of namespace naming convention is not as flexible as a standard year/month, W3C like one.

Changing the namespace to http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2003/10/wordml would break things too, but wouldn't brake the convention.

Conventions, especially namespace declarations, carry a semantic meaning and one should avoid breaking them.

Brad Abrams asks:

Then I thought I’d ask you folks – what do you value?  What gets you to give high marks on the session survey?  (we take that very seriously you know)..

Make demos simple. If possible write them by hand. Use as little as possible precooked. Describe every line, method and mechanism. Don't demonstrate 7 pages of code. Things can be done efficiently in 5 lines of code for demonstration purposes. Entertain.

Mono guys are dogfooding their own product. The Mono homepage is running on top of Mono ASP .NET implementation.

Bad news is: their site is down.

I just installed and used Skype beta and I like it.

Windows Messenger and it's voice calls are peanuts, compared to this app. Microsoft should embrace and extend again.

I fell asleep for a couple of days.

Jeff is doing a tremendous job with Snippet Compiler. I use this tool to show can-be-done-quickly demos. What makes is special? It sits patiently in my system tray, has the ability to increase font size and is lightweight. Just cool.

Now. What I miss is the ability to generate snippets from command prompt tools. Since code generation is the second best thing, I would like to click File/New/Snippet from Command Prompt and type "wsdl http://myserver/myservice.asmx" or "xsd /c myschema.xsd". Then I just need a simple cross referencing ability to compile my client and auto generated code. And yes, I know about the references textbox.

I also wonder if Jeff is still accepting donations. He managed to get that textbox control from Syncfusion donated, but a man can't eat .NET components.

Latest daily build of Mono already allows web service proxy creation, compilation and execution. I had to manually compile the wsdl.exe equivalent (called MonoWSDL.exe) and then do:

• mono MonoWSDL.exe http://www.gama-system.com/webservices/stockquotes.asmx?wsdl (outputs StockQuotes.cs proxy)
• mcs /r:/usr/local/lib/System.Web.Services.dll /t:library StockQuotes.cs
• write a simple console web service client app (StockQuotesClient.cs)
• compile it using mcs /r:StockQuotes.dll StockQuotesClient.cs
• run it with mono StockQuotesClient.exe NASDAQ MSFT

What did I get?

This:

That's sweet. But Mono can now also do it the other way around. I can generate proxies on our platform using the standard wsdl.exe tool. Mono web services test page looks like this:

When one adds the "?wsdl" suffix to a web service endpoint WSDL is returned as expected.

I like it.

[Note: http://www.gama-system.com/webservices/stockquotes.asmx is our free stock ticker web service]

To require a reboot for every security path installed is simply unacceptable. An OS like Win2K3 should never have to be rebooted and should be able to go a year or more without a reboot.
[Via: Sam Gentile's Blog]

This is so true. The frequency of patch distribution is too high for Microsoft to push "perfect OS - no patches needed" strategy. It is definitely more expensive (if not impossible, nowadays) to eliminate all possible buffer overruns in Windows Server 2003. Patches are here, and they will keep coming here for quite some time. We need a different application method.

Based on my previous posting I knew someone else would be affected too.

Today it was Pete Cole.

Here's my implementation of Microsoft.com Web Services client: http://www.request-response.com/playground/mscomws.

It's done manually:

1. Create SOAP Request
2. Get response
3. Scrape through response using XSLT
4. Generate HTML, using XSLT's for-each, value-of, concat, substring-before, ...
5. Insert HTML into .aspx page

I finally found some time, so I reorganized my site layout and updated some old, old pages with the new design.

Check out the playground section.

Since vdirs have been changed, my RSS Query web service is no longer available on http://www.request-response.com/webservices/rssquery/rssquery.asmx.

It has a new home: http://www.request-response.com/playground/rssquery/rssquery.asmx.

Two words: Jeff Key.

Version 1.4 of Snippet Compiler will be used in one of my next demos. If v 1.5 comes out with an option to halt the command prompt process (keep it alive) after ending (simple programmatic Console.Readline() injection would suffice), I will marry it.

In case you're wondering, how's the weather like here - in Ljubljana.

62 minutes ago, at 19:00 UTC, the wind was blowing at a speed of 0.5 meters per second (1.2 miles per hour) from variable directions in Ljubljana / Brnik. The temperature was 12 degrees Celsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit), and the pressure was 1,027 hPa (30.33 inHg). The relative humidity was 81.9%. There are no clouds below 1,524 meter (5,000 feet). The visibility was >10 kilometers (>6.2 miles).

Based on my last sentence in previous posting, this explains it pretty good.

Most favourite claims made by THOSE people:

• Microsoft doesn't respect its customers
• Products are unreliable and insecure
• Microsoft is evil
• Company's products are overpriced

It should be noted that we live in a market economy (most of us) and the will to change is not punished. Do it.

Jeff Key just uploaded v1.3 of SnippetCompiler, which is a great tool for short .NET tests/presentations. It seems he's taking requests, so here's another one.

Please make fonts adjustable. It would make life much easier for people in last rows.

My server is running dasBlog from this moment on. I was able to keep all my content, existing RSS URL and permalinks.

From now on, my public RSS URL is http://www.request-response.com/blog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss, and the old BlogX one is redirected to it.

In early November you should be updating your blogrolls with this OPML list.

A lot of fresh information will be posted on those blogs.

I'm a strong believer in virtual machine software (and its integration into Microsoft OS). Although I use VMWare and not Virtual PC, it's quite useful that I can play with all betas without reinstalling my bread-making machine.

Why is Virtual PC 5.2 available for MSDN subscribers and not the newest, 6.1 version? What seems to be the policy anyway?

... and I know I'm not the only one.

It just happened to my server.

Damn. Two hours of my time wasted because I happen to have the exact config I shouldn't have. It seems that Win XP + IIS5.1 + ASP.NET 1.0 + MS03-32 Security update are not compatible. Drew notified me about my server failure. Thanks!

This is the solution.

Beware.