Mathew Nolton Blog

I AM IN THE MOOD TO RANT.

<cite from=“Duncan's Blog” I took the test Chris has been talking about, ended up as an ENTJ as well... I didn't read the descriptions before or after... but I think I get the general idea.</cite>

I finally purchased my own copy of MSDN Universal. I purchased it on eBay for a most excellent price.

Started using Web Service Studio on GotDotNet. I am impressed with this tool. We are implementing a security scheme based on WS-Security and therefore we are turning off HTTP Post and HTTP Get so that SOAP security is not bypassed. This means that Browser based testing is not possible.

Jan Tielens in his blog brought up an approach http://weblogs.asp.net/jan/posts/27835.aspx he used to create SoapExceptions. The code/concept is similar to something I wrote here where I am working. However, we added a twist that I thought was kindof interesting and worth sharing. Specifically, our web services are basically a service facade into an underlying business tier. This is nothing new to anyone. We also make it a point to say that all exceptions emanating from our business tier are derived from ApplicationException and defined also within our tier. This means that we have total control of the definition of all of our exceptions. Again, a relatively common practice and probably nothing new to many of you.

A coworker and I just got into a most excellent discussion about the need for a Logging ApplicationBlock similar to the ExceptionManager Block except that it would log types other then Exceptions. This would enable me to log something and based upon my filters in my configuration file, it would show up in 1, many, an email to an administrator or if we deem it not worthy - no logs. It sounds like a fun exercise and something that will come in handy.

The other day I posted asking anyone for any additional information regarding the syntax of the policy file that you can create with IBM WSTK Version 3.3 to sign, encrypt, add a username Token, etc. to a SoapHeader on an outgoing Soap from a java client so that you can interoperate with .Net following the WS-Security specification put together by Microsoft, IBM and Verisign. Didn't get any. That's ok.

Recently I had to determine if a user exists in a particular group in a particular domain. Since I am not using ActiveDirectory/LDAP I couldn't use the System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher (which limited my options a great deal).