Managed World

I have posted a new video to the Developer Meet Server Show on Channel 9. This video discusses common MSI Installer Issues you might run into if deploying an application onto Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. From the description of the video:

"In this video, we chat with Robert Flaming about application compatibility issues around Windows Installer for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Mark Taylor, from our first Application Compatibility video, sits in as well to fire off some important questions (well, questions that are perhaps more educated than I would ask)."

Enjoy!

What is Windows Process Activation Service? Windows Process Activation Service, also referred to as WAS, is a new component in IIS 7.0 that manages application pool configuration and worker processes instead of the WWW process. This enables the same configuration for both HTTP and non-HTTP sites to be used. Thanks to this separation (and in combination with the new modular architecture of IIS 7.0), you can even host non-HTTP sites without the WWW Service even being installed in the first place.

How does Windows Process Activation Service work? Taken directly from the documentation:

“The WAS process model generalizes the IIS 6.0 process model for the HTTP server by removing the dependency on HTTP. This allows WCF services to use both HTTP and non-HTTP protocols, such as Net.TCP, in a hosting environment that supports message-based activation and offers the ability to host a large number of applications on a given machine."

What scenarios does this enable? Since WAS is not specific to HTTP sites, you can use WAS to host non-HTTP sites as well. But what do we mean by “non-HTTP sites?” Well, simply put, WAS can be used to host sites built on technologies like Windows Communication Foundation, for example. If you are using WCF with WAS, are you limited to listening over HTTP? Not at all. In fact, that is the beauty and power of WAS. You can be hosting a WCF service within WAS that is using a netTcpBinding, netMsmqBinding, etc. As an extension to this, since WAS supports both HTTP and non-HTTP sites, this also means that you can be hosting a service that exposes itself over both HTTP and NET.TCP as well.

Well, at least I found it funny. A coworker brought this to my attention today. I thought it was pretty clever and enjoyed it. Then again, I've known for a while how great Windows Server 2008 is :). Here's an excerpt:

Once I was almost famous. For years, my friends and I were on the front lines: we were the Windows Server 2003 servers that powered Microsoft.com, one of the hottest Web sites in the world. Then, early last summer, everything changed. Quietly, without warning, the new kids took over. Windows Server 2008. Yes, I know, the product’s not even done yet. These were Beta 3 servers, for Pete’s sake. Long way from prime time. But there they were, humming away. No problems. All of ‘em on Windows Server 2008. Except me. The last Windows Server 2003 left at Microsoft.com.

Enjoy!

Hello everyone, and welcome back after our winter break hiatus. We have a lot of cool features to cover in the coming weeks that will especially show off the power of Windows Server 2008 as an application server. So, this week we will kick off the new year by taking a short little peek at the new management API coming in IIS7.

What is new in IIS7 Administration? IIS7 provides a comprehensive managed-code API that allows complete manipulation of the XML configuration files and convenience access to server objects. IIS7 includes Microsoft.Web.Administration, which is a new management API for the web server that enables editing configuration through complete manipulation of the XML configuration files and also provides convenience objects to manage the server, its properties and state. The configuration editing aspect of the API provides programmatic access to read and write configuration properties in the IIS configuration file hierarchy and specific configuration files. The object management aspect of this API provides a series of top-level administration objects for direct management of the server (i.e. sites, application pools, worker processes, etc.).

The management classes reside in the Microsoft.Web.Administration namespace. The classes provide a weakly-typed interface to access configuration sections and convenience objects with properties and methods representing attributes of the configuration (like the path of a virtual directory) or actions to take on the object (like recycling an application pool).

Resources

• How To Use Microsoft.Web.Administration

As part of the "Developer Meet Server" show on Channel 9, I have started a new series of videos on the topic of application compatibility for Windows Server 2008. I will be releasing one video interview per week all the way until launch, so make sure to keep an eye open!

in this first video, we discuss a bunch of topics in this video that are very pertinent to the topic of Application Compatibility on Windows Server 2008, from Session 0 Isolation to IIS 7 to Mandatory Integrity Control, among many others (I will give any of you five geek points if you can work in "Session 0 Isolation" or "Mandatory Integrity Control" into your next dinner party conversation!).

So, make sure to go check it out.

In my previous post, I talked about why I personally love C++/CLI as a solution for managed and native interop. With the launch of Visual Studio 2008, and the include of the new marshalling library, there is on part of the equation missing, I believe. On the C# side of the interop equation, you have http://www.pinvoke.net. When I'm wanting to interop with a given Windows API, there is a very (very) good chance that the wrappers have already been posted onto pinvoke.net.

While the marshal_as<> construct of the marshalling library in VC++ 2008 is quite extensible through the use of templates, there is no community site for me to go to in order to retrieve an existing piece of the interop puzzle. That is, until now.

With the help of Kate Gregory, there is now a new website for those C++/CLI users out there: http://www.marshal-as.net. If that link doesn't work for you, give it a day or two as this is a new website and DNS is still propagating for it.

I have already sent Kate a couple of samples that I had done for my own interop work with Visual C++ 2008 (have I mentioned yet how easy my life is now that I'm using C++/CLI in Visual C++ 2008?). You should pop over and check it out. If you have your own samples that you want to submit, feel free to use the contact form (the email icon) at the website and email your sample to the website.

Enjoy!