Month: October 2002

Mono Update:

Today Neal Ferguson’s support for the IBM S390 was checked into CVS.

The XSP processor has been fully integrated into the System.Web assembly, and Gonzalo has finished the hosting interfaces in Mono. This means that it is possible to embed ASP.NET with the same APIs used in Windows, and is possible to easily embed it with Apache for example.

We are looking for contributors that know Win32 to contribute to the Windows.Forms implementation. If you want to help write some controls using the Win32 API, get in touch with our new mono-winforms-list@ximian.com list mailing list.

Tim’s TDS System.Data set of classes can now talk to SQL servers using the TDS protocol (version 4.2). Currently it can connect, run transactions, update/insert/delete, and read some types. A data adapter is also coming soon.

Jim Klopfenstein is working on executing .asmx files without a web server.  If you’ve ever played around with .net, this should at the very least interest you.

Rogers Cadenhead:

I’m writing Java code to read Advogato diary entries using the site’s XML-RPC interface and the Apache XML-RPC library. I can’t get the getDates() method to work, and the cause appears to be some off-spec XML-RPC encoding in the response, as I describe on the XML-RPC discussion board. Help from XML-RPC gurus would be appreciated. I’m so deep into this debugging effort that I feel like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (“The horror. The horror.”).

Debugging web services == no fun.

TCPTrace can help, but it’s often not enough.

WebServices.Org: Westbridge Technology uses Ethereal, the open source network sniffer, to monitor SOAP traffic.

Mountain View, CA – October 21, 2002 – Westbridge Technology, Inc., a provider of security and monitoring solutions for XML Web Services has announced general availability of the Westbridge XML SOAP Monitor. The Westbridge XML SOAP Monitor enables enterprises to easily and effectively monitor their networks for all XML Web Services traffic without requiring changes to the network.

Dale Pike: “on links and chunks”

“…A piece of information has no value until it is linked to other information.”

CNet/Larry Dignan: “The ultimate promise of Web services–delivering software as a service–is at least a decade away from being fulfilled, according to a report from IDC.”

In the report, released Thursday, the market researcher said that Web services are proving their worth as corporations adopt the concept and plug disparate systems together, but also that the changeover still has years to go to reach its high-water mark.

…

For Web services to work as imagined, IDC said, technology hurdles must be the first challenges overcome, but businesses also will have to change the way they view software and intellectual property rights. Proponents of the Web services vision also face work in the areas of security, standards and privacy.

Local authoraties think that they may have arrested the Washington area sniper.

Have you seen this man?

Yahoo News:

John Allen Mohammed, a.k.a. John Allen Williams, is seen in this image released early Thursday, Oct. 24, 2002, by Montgomery County police officials. Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said Mohammed should be considered ‘armed and dangerous’ and that he was being sought on a federal weapons charge. ‘Do not assume from this allegation that John Allen Mohammed, also known as John Allen Williams, is involved in any of the shootings,’ Moose said. (AP Photo/Victoria Arocho)

I’m a bit worried about the possible terror angle if this guy changed his name to Mohammed.  FBI also rooted through a backyard outside Olympia, Washington and cut away part of a tree stump.  Chief Moose also communicated with the sniper:

“You have indicated that you want us to do and say certain things. You’ve asked us to say, ‘We have caught the sniper like a duck in a noose.’ We understand that hearing us say this is important to you,” Moose said.

Then he said: “The solution remains to call us and get a private toll-free number established just for you.” If that happens, Moose said, “we can offer other means of addressing what you have asked us for.”

XML.com/Edd Dumbill: Whither Web Services?

Whatever else they have or haven’t been, web services have been a boon for the popular technology media. On the way up the hype curve, breathless reports of the coming automation of our very existence filled pages and pages. Software executives jostled to join the right cabals, and to sit in smoke-filled rooms hammering out the formation of committees and specifications with daft acronyms.

CNet/Declan McCullagh: “WASHINGTON–A proposal to let copyright owners hack into and disrupt peer-to-peer networks will be revised, a congressional aide said Wednesday. “

Alec French, an aide to bill author Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., defended his boss’ ideas but acknowledged that some critics had made reasonable points about the controversial proposal.

“He plans to significantly redraft the bill to accommodate reasonable concerns before reintroduction in the 108th (Congress),” French said during an afternoon event at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Ahh, Mr. French’s first name is Alec.

I snagged AXIS: Next Generation Java SOAP last night at Border’s.  It looks like a good book that will go into a little more depth than the online stuff.  The only problem that I see with the book is that all of the examples and hints are in a DOS/Windows based format with no mention of running Axis on *nix at all (that I have found).  I have a strange feeling that most production Axis installations would most likely be on a *nix-based system, so I would have at least mentioned it somewhere.

I could be wrong, it could be right there in front of me and I haven’t noticed.

Russell Beattie has discovered BNF.  At times I’d like to forget it, but it has its use.

Linux Today: Red Hat’s takin’ a road trip.  Here’s the tour site, there’s the journal (though no RSS), and over there you’ll find the planned tour stops.  It looks like I’m scheduled to work during all three of the tour stops in my area, but I might be able to leave work early to hit the November 1 date.  We shall see.

XML-RPC is Not Dead Yet (Part II)

Charles Cook has released a new version of XML-RPC.NET:

I’ve just uploaded version 0.6.0 of XML-RPC.NET. This contains the changes listed below. I’ve not yet updated the docs. This will take another week or two.

• Added XmlRpcProxyGen class to dynamically create a proxy object from an interface, i.e. makes hand-coding of proxies unnecessary in most cases. bettyapp sample changed to illustrate this.
• Can now use an interface to define XML-RPC methods. Can use the same interface to implement both server and client. MathService changed to illustrate use of interface.
• Default for XML-RPC request and response XML documents is now no explicit encoding, i.e. implicitly UTF-8. Previously the encoding was explicitly specified as UTF-8.
• Added Encoding property to XmlRpcClientProtocol to set explicit encoding on XML-RPC request and response XML documents.
• Added Proxy property to XmlRpcClientProtocol.
• Fixed UserAgent property of XmlRpcClientProtocol.
• Fixed parsing of double type to be culture independent.
• Fault response XML document now generated in same way as ordinary response, i.e. will be in same format and encoding.

[Via Brad Wilson, The .NET Guy]

PocketSOAP 1.4 Beta is out.  Slurp it while it’s hot.

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TSClient offers a Gnome2 interface for invoking rdesktop, an RDP (Terminal Services) client for XWindows.  It offers a fairly pretty interface that works a lot like Windows’ Remote Desktop dialog. [via freshmeat]

Clemens Vasters:

After toying around with various RSS/RDF feeds over the past few days (I am doing something in that area, but I am not yet ready to say what), my conclusion was that regular expressions are the only way to parse them. It really seems that RSS != XML. Sad.

Sometimes well formed XML does not exactly mean usable XML.

The Register: Via has ultra small PC mobo – now, where do you put it?

How true.

Will Cox:

I’m worth a million in prizes