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CAUTION content past use-by date. For historical purposes only. Re-direct to Service Oriented Architectures for the Web.

Lecture 1

Overview of .NET, Visual Studio, Service Oriented Architecture for the Web, Web Services, SOAP, REST, WSDL, UDDI.

Lecture Slides

Introduction to ASP.NET PowerPoint 435k
Service Oriented Architectures for the Web PowerPoint 735k

Examples from the lecture notes

• Hello World 30 second web service
• integer and string argument passing - marginally more demanding web services
• PHP SOAP client
  • Or on a different server.... PHP SOAP client
  • source code for the PHP SOAP client

Introduction to the Web and .NET (363k) 84 PowerPoint slides adapted from material written by Mark Sapossnek of Boston University and provided as part of the Microsoft faculty education pack. This includes a lot of good Level 2 backgound material. The first part is excellent revision of stuff that you really should be intimately familiar with. The last bit did rather tend towards selling the Micro$oft vision and required me to make a few adjustments.

Web Forms (zip 1.6M) and Data Access (zip 960k) - more faculty material from Microsoft - don't forget to wear protective clothing and handle with caution.

Lecture 2

Using Visual Studio to create the gang of three; a web service, a windows application that uses a web service and a web application using web forms.

Lecture Slides

Introduction to Web Services using Microsoft Visual Studio PowerPoint 1.9M

Examples from the lecture notes

• Hello World 3 minute web service
• Temperature conversion 5 minute web service
• Temperature converter windows application using the temperature conversion web service, now served from the Unix Apache server vecause the IIS server refused to server .exe. files
• Temperature converter PHP web application using the temperature conversion web service GET protocol
  • CalcTempGETclient.php source code
• Temperature converter PHP web application using the temperature conversion web service SOAP protocol
  • CalcTempSOAPclient.php source code
• useCTajax.html JavaScript example using DOM programming to create an AJAX behaviour accessing the web service
  • useCTajax.html The same application but running from staffweb. Check the error message
• useCT-XMLHttpRequest.html JavaScript example using an XMLHttpRequest object to access the web service
• Desk calculator 10 minute web application with validation
  • turn off client JavaScript to see the server side validation working

Lecture 3

Data binding and database driven web services including XML aggregation, interoperability with PHP and asynchonous JavaScript clients.

Lecture Slides

More Microsoft Visual Studio with Data Binding and Web Services PowerPoint 1.6M

Examples from the lecture notes

• Data binding to GUI components
• SQL Binding to a Data Grid
• Telephone directory as various web services
  • Telephone directory as a data set from SQL Server
  • Telephone directory as an XML document from SQL Server
  • Telephone directory as an XML document from MS Access using OLEDB
  • Telephone directory as an XML document read via a data set from MySQL via PHP service
  • Telephone directory as an XML document read via an XML text reader from MySQL via PHP web service
  • Telephone directory from SQL Server and MySQL via PHP web service merged using XML DOM
  • Telephone directory from SQL Server and MySQL via PHP web service merged using a data set
  • Telephone directory that fails to attach an XML processing instruction
  • Inserting a record into the telephone directory
• Directories merged from SQL Server and MySQL rendered client side with XSLT
• Directories merged from SQL Server and MySQL rendered server side with XSLT
• zip archive containing sources for the above
• Telephone directory web service PHP publishing MySQL
  • source code for this PHP web service
• Telephone directory as a web page from MySQL with XSLT processing instruction (client side)
  • source code for this PHP web page
• Telephone directory web service PHP publishing MySQL and consuming the above MS Access OLEDB service using a REST protocol with HTTP GET
  • source code for this PHP web service
• Telephone directory web page from MySQL and Access with XSLT processing instruction (client side). This merges the two XML DOM objects in a loop, permitting restructuring if the two DOM objects are not a precise match
  • source code for this PHP web page
• Telephone directory web page from MySQL and Access with XSLT processing instruction (client side). This merges the two XML DOM objects using nodeImport(). Although simpler this requires the two DOM objects to have a matching schema.
  • source code for this PHP web page
• Telephone directory web page from MySQL and Access with server side XSLT processing
  • source code for this PHP web page
• Telephone directory web service PHP publishing MySQL and consuming the above SQL Server service using a SOAP transport
  • source code for this PHP web service
• XSLT used in the above examples
• Phonebook portal examples running from Nginx server

ASP.NET the EditPlus way

XML and Database connectivity in ASP.NET using EditPlus to cut code. These examples are stuck somewhere between old fashioned ASP and ASP.NET EditPlus is not the way to leverage the power of ASP.NET but these old examples provide simple illustrations of working with XML and MS Access.

That old fashioned ASP

• asp4php.doc (116k) Quick Introduction to ASP for PHP users
  • HelloWorld.asp
  • InputForm.html
• intensiveASP.doc (578k) Intensive ASP - 60 pages of good stuff

Tutorial Material

• Make sure that you can replicate all of the examples in the Introduction to ASP.NET PowerPoint - obviously!
• How about writing a short essay comparing and contrasting ASP with ASP.NET. What are the advantages claimed by Microsoft for ASP.NET? Are there any disadvantage?
• What is meant by the term service oriented architecture
• Is SAX available in the DOT.NET framework? Why would you need SAX when you have the XmlTextReader?

Good Stuff

• Guide to using ASP.NET and the Microsoft web servers at Greenwich - essential reading
• ASP.NET - The Official Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Site
• Codeplex - Microsoft open source project hosting web site
• AJAX tutorial movies - hosted locally
• otherlinks for .NET - loads of resources and articles about our favourite software house
• Mono - platform independant CLR
• Read all about Amazon web services and life without SOAP from Tim O'Reilly
• Neward and Trenaman consider REST, or The Great and Complete SOAP vs POX Debate

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© k.mcmanus 2004