Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007
MS.Services: A .NET AJAX Data provider
Category: .NET
MSServices is a server-side data processing application for HTTP (AJAX Data provider). It can execute Database SPs, MSMQ, Assemblies, IronPython script and generates JSON, Web Service, Text, Excel or RSS file through HTTP. The system has authentication/authorization, caching, compression and logging support.
This allowed you to access URLs such as http://localhost/Web/Northwind.GetCustomerOrders.ws?CustomerID=ALFKI from your Ajax applications.
4.4 rating from 39 votes
I hate to sound negative but why did Microsoft go and reinvent this? The first line of the project description even highlights the “another wheel” nature of the project; “This project is another way to create SOA applications through HTTP.”
I’m sorry, I’m not trying to offend the chaps who made this but it seems crazy to reinvent when PHP, Ruby on Rails and even other MS technologies can already pretty much do this. ASP.NET can do this. A URL with a backend and instead of outputting HTML it outputs RSS or Excel or JSON etc.
I just think Microsoft should be working with the other projects, not making new projects. Anyway.
i totally agree with Paul M. Watson. ms has just reinvented json callbacks.
This was made by Mert Sakarya, not Microsoft. Notice the developer’s initials.
And if you’ve got SQL Server, why aren’t you using XML services to start with?
Did you guys even look at the project? Look at how quickly you could expose existing data as a web service in a variety of formats without any coding at all… How is that reinventing the wheel? Name another project that does this as easily!
P.S. Don’t say ColdFusion 8. I would agree, because I already know how rocking it will be ;)
I think the project MS.Services had some reviews on the site.
First of all, I would like to tell you that, the project has nothing to do with Microsoft. The MS stands for “M”ert “S”akarya. Sorry for the confusion. ;)
It is written with Microsoft technologies and uses many features of Enterprise Library of Pattern and Practices Team of Microsoft.
I know it currently lacks documentation and a nice installer, but if you have VS2005 and SQL Express installed, you should easily run the samples. By running the “EntLibConfig.exe” in the “Setup” folder under install directory, you can edit the config “web.config” file, and expose methods to the world very easily without writing a single line of code. If you have any problems, just feel free to mail me at mertsakarya@hotmail.com
If you want authentication/authorization, just write a simple dll that, implements MemberShipProvider of ASP.Net and point to that dll in your config file.
Currently I am working on Flex, OpenLaszlo, REST and XMLRPC support for the project, after that I’ll dig in to the documentation.
I would also like to note that, we are using this product in real live environment for providing data, on six load-balanced web servers. If you need to scale-out, it is very easy with this project (because almost no state is required). What I did was, I stored the configuration data on database, and point the configuration source to a database, so all the servers were checking on the same resource. By just modifying the configuration on my desktop, all the changes are published to the real servers.
As I’ve mentioned the product relies on Enterprise Library, so I found an MSN logger for “EntLib”, which IMs me when an exception occurs, there is also a SMS for logging.
Sorry, for the long reply…
Anybody tried on this new data provider? Is it good to use? Any Demo?
Pohee, I am using it on a live web server(s). If you need any information please mail me.
There is a live demo in the installer. But you need SQL Express 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 to run it.
I have been using this application for 1 year. It’s very easy to create SOA applications through HTTP.
I am only writing database SPs and opening it to world by this application. I can provide security by authentication and authorization support and validate parameters with .NET code, database SPs and .NET Validators.
By the way, I wrote an AJAXGrid(http://www.codeplex.com/YBAJAXGrid) and it takes datasource from a URL etc(http://localhost/test.json) and displays it
to user. So, I can display a resultset to user only writing SPs.
I agree It needs to some documentation or maybe some videos.
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