Christian Nagel's Blog

InfoPath

I just had a discussion with a customer asking what's the role of InfoPath.

InfoPath 2003 is a really cool product to create forms accessing XML Web Services. Forms can be created automatically by referencing a XML schema, a database, or a web service. Forms are stored in an XML format and can be easily distributed.

However, custom validation is done by using JavaScript. InfoPath shouldn't be used to create a complex UI. This is the role of Windows Forms.

Update: Rufus Ruse mentioned the InfoPath SDK. With the InfoPath SDK it is possible to get rendering in IE for non-InfoPath end-users.

Christian

CLR and Phoenix

Andrew Stopford mentions that there's not a lot new in the CLR for 2.0, and asks "Maybe the Phoneix stuff will be added on later?".

The slides on the research web site mention a release date of Mid-2005 for Phoenix - so I guess this is too late for Whidbey.

However, we also get cool new CLR features with 2.0: generics are part of the CLR. See Jason Clark's MSDN Mag article.

Btw, Phoenix is "a next-generation framework for Microsoft compiler and software engineering tools (managed, mixed code and unmanaged)".

Christian

Welcome, Frank!

Frank Eller joins the blog community!

Frank is MVP, member of the CodeWise community, author of German books such as Visual C#. Grundlagen, Programmiertechniken, Windows-Anwendungen.

I'm meeting Frank in Vienna, .NET User Group Austria, and in Los Angeles, PDC!

Christian

Welcome, Hannes!

Hannes Preishuber joined with blogging at http://weblogs.asp.net.

Hannes is one of the German INETA Speakers, and will speak in October for a user group in Berlin.

Christian

Web Services - Secure, Reliable, Transacted

A really good article about Web Services and the Service-oriented Architecture at MSDN!

Christian

Upcoming ASP.NET and ADO.NET 2.0 books

Al and Dave (two friends of mine, and INETA Europe speakers) will have new .NET 2.0 books ready for PDC.

A First Look at ASP.NET v 2.0

A First Look at ADO.NET and System Xml v 2.0

Christian

Christian Weyer in Graz and Klagenfurt

Christian Weyer is speaking for .NET user groups in Graz and Klagenfurt.

These events are sponsored by INETA!

More INETA Europe speaking engagements are here.

Christian

Web Services Atomic Transactions (WS-AtomicTransaction)

The spec for WS-Transaction was updated.

The Web Services Transaction Framework consists of

• WS-Coordination
• WS-AtomicTransaction
• WS-BusinessActivity

With WS-AtomicTransaction three protocols are defined:

• Completion Protocol
• Volatile Two-Phase Commit Protocol
• Durable Two-Phase Commit Protocol

Thanks to Don Box for the link!

Christian

Visual Basic .NET Significantly Outperforms Visual Basic 6.0

We already knew this, but here is a benchmark document from Doculabs.

Christian

Creating Plug-ins with Reflection

Today Peter Koen was giving a presentation how to create plug-ins using .NET Reflection for the .NET User Group Austria. Peter demonstrated reflection, using interfaces, and attributes.

Peter will give the same presentation at the BASTA! conference in Germany.

All the samples are available for download. 

Usually Peter is a graphic guy as can be seen with his web site http://www.kema.at.

Christian