Questions for Dave Sussman. This mail contains the questions submitted in 

advance of today's author session with Dave Sussman. Thanks Dave!



---------------------------------------------------------------------------



karl@i...



I have taken the Ibuyspy sample website and built a full E-Commerce site 

with it. I love using .NET and how easy it is to integrate with SQL Server 

and XML. The link to the site we have designed is:

http://157.238.144.214/default.aspx 

However, I am having trouble hooking the E-Commerce site into the UPS XML 

Server. All the samples of code I have found are for the old CGI website. 

Could you point me in the right direction for more information on the .NET 

way to do it?



---------------------------------------------------------------------------



zafar_eqbal@y...



I want to Access Oracle Database and I find connectivity difficult thru 

Oracle ODBC driver. How I can Use Oracle Database in ASP to read & write 

Data.

Basically I am an Oracle Programmer developing Health software for 

ministry of health Saudi Arabia. I have already developed the programs 

using Forms 6i. Now as I find hosting it difficult it on Internet so 

trying to use ASP JavaScript.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------



John.Mandia@x...



Quick Question regarding your book Professional ASP.NET.  Will there be 

any overlap between the articles on ASPTODAY and the book itself?



And are there many differences between beta1 and beta2?

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------



jbsf@u...



Suppose I have a logon process and, therefore, is easy to know, any time, 

who is logged in? But, if the user has logged off or her/his session has 

expired, how can I effectively know that, in ASP NET way, in such a way 

that the "who_is_NOW_actually_logged.aspx" page is immediately updated?



---------------------------------------------------------------------------



peteehli@a...



On page 254 of "C# Programming the Public Beta" it states that there are 

problems with modifying data using the pre-release version of ADO.NET. Are 

these problems fixed with the second beta? Also do your examples in the 

book work from pg. 254 to the end of the chapter, I assume they don?t by 

the comment in the book. Thanks you



---------------------------------------------------------------------------



jbsf@u...



I have a service running on top of W2K server (not a WebService, but a 

flat NT's service), in the same box of my Web server (IIS 5). At one 

specific condition this service needs to inform something to ALL users 

connected, but not necessarily logged in, that is, some users are 

unidentified. I imagine showing a pop-up window in all browsers, according 

to the sessions still opened, notifying them about the service's condition 

raised. Is this a usual approach in dot net way or now we have a more 

efficient one?



---------------------------------------------------------------------------



jbsf@u...



Situation: "A web gridcontrol showing a user's shopping cart. The user 

changes the quantity and we need to update it". Very simple, no? Now we'll 

see some interesting solutions proposed by 2 terrific projects.



IbuySpyVsCs:  the quantity is checked against the original value, stored 

in grid's datasource DataKeys[] field. If the quantity has changed it is 

immediately updated. There is no cache for the session. (look at: 

ShoppingCart.cs UpdateShoppingCartDatabase() method).

 

Duwamish7: the cart, entirely, is cached for the session, the quantity is 

updated, in a row by row basis, from the grid to the cached cart. The 

database is not updated, but this is irrelevant for the present matter. 

(look at: ShoppingCart.cs btnUpdate_Click event; Cart.cs UpdateItems() 

method and PageBase.cs ShoppingCart property).



Same situation, different solutions. Both fill the bill, undoubtedly. We 

have GC, Beta1, Beta2, multi layer objects, web servers farm, etc. Any 

comments? 





---------------------------------------------------------------------------



agsantiago@s...



When would be a good time to develop production type corporate web 

applications using asp.net? Will Beta 2 be safe platform to deploy 

corporate web applications?

OK, answers inline



> -----Original Message-----

> From: Steve Farncombe [mailto:stevef@w...]

> Sent: 30 May 2001 14:54

> To: ASP+

> Subject: [aspx] Questions for Dave Sussman

> 

> 

> Questions for Dave Sussman. This mail contains the questions 

> submitted in 

> advance of today's author session with Dave Sussman. Thanks Dave!

> 

> --------------------------------------------------------------

> -------------

> 

> karl@i...

> 

> I have taken the Ibuyspy sample website and built a full 

> E-Commerce site 

> with it. I love using .NET and how easy it is to integrate 

> with SQL Server 

> and XML. The link to the site we have designed is:

> http://157.238.144.214/default.aspx 

> However, I am having trouble hooking the E-Commerce site into 

> the UPS XML 

> Server. All the samples of code I have found are for the old 

> CGI website. 

> Could you point me in the right direction for more 

> information on the .NET 

> way to do it?

 

I'm not familiar with the UPS XML stuff (and couldn't download it to test as

the download requires a USA address). However, I'm assuming it returns the

tracking data in XML format - probably as the entire Web request. In this

case you could do something like this:



	HttpWebRequest wReq = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("url goes

here");

	HttpWebResponse myResponse = (HttpWebResponse)wReq.GetResponse();

	Stream myStream = myResponse.GetResponseStream();



This creates a WebRequest to a URL, and  then extracts the the response into

a Stream object. You could then pass this to some of the XML processing

objects to extract the actual content. I've not included that code here,

because some of the XML classes have changed since beta 1, and due to NDA

restrictions I'm not allowed to post beta 2 code until beta 2 is released.

However, the beta 2 documentation will contain good examples of this.





> --------------------------------------------------------------

> -------------

> 

> zafar_eqbal@y...

> 

> I want to Access Oracle Database and I find connectivity 

> difficult thru 

> Oracle ODBC driver. How I can Use Oracle Database in ASP to 

> read & write Data.

> Basically I am an Oracle Programmer developing Health software for 

> ministry of health Saudi Arabia. I have already developed the 

> programs 

> using Forms 6i. Now as I find hosting it difficult it on Internet so 

> trying to use ASP JavaScript.



In ASP.NET you can access Oracle through ADO.NET and the managed provider

for OleDb (which can talk to any conventional OLE-DB data source). The

ADO.NET objects you use will depend upon what you are doing. If you need

read only access (just for displaying data) then a DataReader is the most

efficient object to use. If you need to manipulate or update the data, then

a DataSet is required, and use of this should work fine with Oracle. This

topic is really huge, and cannot be explained here. For immediate

information I'd recommend you check out GotDotNet and resources linked from

it (http://www.gotdotnet.com). If you want to wait for more comprehensive

details of ADO.NET, then Professional ASP.NET will be available some time

soon.



> 

> --------------------------------------------------------------

> -------------

> 

> John.Mandia@x...

> 

> Quick Question regarding your book Professional ASP.NET.  

> Will there be 

> any overlap between the articles on ASPTODAY and the book itself?

> 

> And are there many differences between beta1 and beta2?



With regard to article overlap, it's entirely possible, but Professional

ASP.NET is being written from the ground up (and we're all too busy at the

moment to write ASPToday articles - or read them come to think of it). So

even if there is some overlap, it's likely to be covered in a different way,

and certainly more extensively in the book.



Changes between beta 1 and beta 2 is an often asked question. The simple

answer is yes there are, and how many depends on what areas (some have more

than others). Unfortunately I'm not really allowed to comment much (NDAs and

all that), but there's a chance you'll have to do some recoding.



  

> --------------------------------------------------------------

> -------------

> 

> jbsf@u...

> 

> Suppose I have a logon process and, therefore, is easy to 

> know, any time, 

> who is logged in? But, if the user has logged off or her/his 

> session has 

> expired, how can I effectively know that, in ASP NET way, in 

> such a way 

> that the "who_is_NOW_actually_logged.aspx" page is 

> immediately updated?



ASP.NET doesn't explicitly store this information globally. If you need this

information your best bet is to track this manually (such as in a database).

The security features of ASP.NET allow for the easy plug-in of your own

authentication module (see ibuyspy and the ibuyspy portal for examples), so

you can easily add users to a table as they log in, and then remove them

when they log out.







> 

> --------------------------------------------------------------

> -------------

> 

> peteehli@a...

> 

> On page 254 of "C# Programming the Public Beta" it states 

> that there are 

> problems with modifying data using the pre-release version of 

> ADO.NET. Are 

> these problems fixed with the second beta? Also do your 

> examples in the 

> book work from pg. 254 to the end of the chapter, I assume 

> they dont by the comment in the book. Thanks you





I wasn't involved in the C# book, but I can say that any problems with

updating data have been fixed for beta 2. I did some Visual Basic samples on

beta 1 that used the Update method and they worked fine, but there are a

number of reasons why mine might have worked and the C# book ones didn't.

It's probably only the Modifying Data examples that don't work - the XML

ones should be fine. 







> --------------------------------------------------------------

> -------------

> 

> jbsf@u...

> 

> I have a service running on top of W2K server (not a 

> WebService, but a 

> flat NT's service), in the same box of my Web server (IIS 5). At one 

> specific condition this service needs to inform something to 

> ALL users 

> connected, but not necessarily logged in, that is, some users are 

> unidentified. I imagine showing a pop-up window in all 

> browsers, according 

> to the sessions still opened, notifying them about the 

> service's condition 

> raised. Is this a usual approach in dot net way or now we have a more 

> efficient one?#





The real problem here is that this is a push scenario, which .NET doesn't

address directly. Once the browser has content it is disconnected from the

server until it requests more content, so you can't push content to the

browser. The only way of doing this is to have client side code that can

receive from the browser. The problem with this solution is the overhead on

both the server and the client. In the disconnected Web application world,

you would generally check the service status upon each request, and that's

probably the method I'd use.







> 

> --------------------------------------------------------------

> -------------

> 

> jbsf@u...

> 

> Situation: "A web gridcontrol showing a user's shopping cart. 

> The user 

> changes the quantity and we need to update it". Very simple, 

> no? Now we'll 

> see some interesting solutions proposed by 2 terrific projects.

> 

> IbuySpyVsCs:  the quantity is checked against the original 

> value, stored 

> in grid's datasource DataKeys[] field. If the quantity has 

> changed it is 

> immediately updated. There is no cache for the session. (look at: 

> ShoppingCart.cs UpdateShoppingCartDatabase() method).

>  

> Duwamish7: the cart, entirely, is cached for the session, the 

> quantity is 

> updated, in a row by row basis, from the grid to the cached cart. The 

> database is not updated, but this is irrelevant for the 

> present matter. 

> (look at: ShoppingCart.cs btnUpdate_Click event; Cart.cs 

> UpdateItems() 

> method and PageBase.cs ShoppingCart property).

> 

> Same situation, different solutions. Both fill the bill, 

> undoubtedly. We  have GC, Beta1, Beta2, multi layer objects, web servers

farm, 

> etc. Any comments? 





It's one of those lifestyle choice things, with no simple answer. Database

access is always one of the most expensive things to do, so minimising that

will generally give greater scalability. On the flip side, caching requires

more server side resources. There's a trade-off of how much content is

cached over how often the cart is updated. Without performance testing

you've no idea which method is best for your application.







> --------------------------------------------------------------

> -------------

> 

> agsantiago@s...

> 

> When would be a good time to develop production type corporate web 

> applications using asp.net? Will Beta 2 be safe platform to deploy 

> corporate web applications?

> 



Beta 2 is an ideal time, as that's what Microsoft is planning to do. There

no changes planned between beta 2 and final release, although remember it is

still a beta so changes are possible. I think that Microsoft is planning to

convert some of its public sites to .NET once beta 2 is released, so if it's

good enough for them...







Dave