Robotics: Writing and Testing VPL Services for Serial Communication

.NET RIA Services relies heavily on metadata annotations for expressing intent beyond what can be inferrd via convention. For example, validation rules on entities and members can be declared as annotations, which then enable a variety of consumption scenarios. We also have metadata for describing model aspects in DAL-agnostic fashion, and hints for automatic UI-generation. What we have today is just a first step.

There are many ways to test WCF services, but the socket-based approach is flexible and very useful for security and performance testing. We show you show you how to test a WCF service using a network socket based approach.James McCaffreyMSDN Magazine February 2010

To better understand how SOA patterns can be applied to Windows Azure deployments, we walk you through a scenario in which a bank moves its services to the cloud.Thomas Erl, Arman Kurtagic, Herbjörn WilhelmsenMSDN Magazine January 2010

Many early adopters cloud platforms have questions about security. We review some of the cryptography services and providers in Windows Azure along with some security implications for applications in the cloud.Jonathan WiggsMSDN Magazine January 2010

Kirk Evans shows how to take advantage of SharePoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to develop solutions with deep integration of external data and services. BCS builds upon its BDC predecessor in the key areas of presentation, connectivity, tooling and lifecycle management.Kirk EvansMSDN Magazine December 2009

In this month's column, James McCaffrey explains exactly what pairwise testing is and provides you with complete C# source code for a production quality pairwise testing tool named QICT.James McCaffreyMSDN Magazine December 2009

This article explains how you can use Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0 to claims-enable Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services and browser-based applications. The focus is on the token issuance functionality in AD FS 2.0. You'll find out how to use AD FS 2.0 as an identity provider; set up an AD FS 2.0 security token service (STS) to interact with WCF; federate AD FS 2.0 with your custom STS or another AD FS 2.0; enable Web single sign-on and federation with WS-Federation and SAML 2.0 protocols; and externalize authentication logic through Visual Studio. You'll come away appreciating how AD FS 2.0 and Windows Identity Foundation make programming identity solutions in Windows less of a chore.Zulfiqar AhmedMSDN Magazine November 2009

This month's column describes how to use WCF for communication between a workflow and a host application in Windows Workflow Foundation 3. This knowledge should help developers with their efforts using WF3 and prepare them for WF4, where WCF is the only abstraction over queues (referred to as "bookmarks" in WF4) that ships with the framework.Matthew MilnerMSDN Magazine November 2009

With the introduction of the Windows Web Services (WWS) API, C++ developers no longer have to think of themselves as second-class citizens in the world of Web Services. In this article, the author explores the features and benefits that the WWS API has to offer.Kenny KerrMSDN Magazine November 2009

Schema- first contract-first modeling of Web Services gives you the ability to model your contracts with an XML-centric mindset. This process keeps you focused on universally acceptable types and the hierarchical data structures that can be represented in XML.Christian Weyer, Buddhike de SilvaMSDN Magazine October 2009