Layer 7 Switching + Load Balancing = Layer 7 Load Balancing

                                                                       Image Courtesy : devcentral.com
Oh this is amazing. Read about it today from http://devcentral.f5.com/weblogs/macvittie/archive/2008/08/12/3529.aspx.
Nicely Explained indeed.

 Layer 7 load balancing implies that i can absolutely have customised servers with modified kernels and network configuration which are best at spitting out the data that they are supposed to like Static components (css/js/images/static html) or ASP/PHP(Web handlers/severs) or large blobs (Videos for instance) . All these will definitely have varied filesystem network needs, and Layer 7 load balancing allows to group these types and provide them effectively.

Debugging Kerberos Authentication

Have you guys ever had problems configuring/debugging Kerberos Authentication and scratched your heads and gone all wild figuring out - I did everything right. Why can I still not Sign IN???

Very recently i had got messed up in a similar situation till i came across this tool by Brian Murphy. The features this tool boasts of are

• Supports IIS 6.0 as well as IIS 7.0 (useKernelMode / useAppPoolCredentials)
• Allows adding backend servers of type UNC, HTTP, LDAP, OLAP, SQL, SSAS, and RDP
• Allows chaining of multiple hops (versus only a single backend)
• Performs duplicate SPN check against all trusted domains.
• /Set/SPNs.aspx - Allows adding and removing of ServicePrincipalNames
• /Set/Delegation.aspx - Allows changing Trust for Delegation settings.
• /Set/Providers.aspx - Allows correcting of inadequate NTAuthenticationProviders settings.
• /Report.aspx - Gives a picture of what is right and what is wrong.
• /Wizard.aspx - A set of wizard steps that supports adding more tiers to /Report.aspx.
• /Test.aspx - Allows double-hop tests for webServer-to-Sql or webServer-to-fileServer or webServer-to-webServer

You can find more about the tool at
http://blogs.iis.net/brian-murphy-booth/archive/2007/03/09/delegconfig-delegation-configuration-reporting-tool.aspx

It is also published on IIS.NET and can be downloaded at
http://www.iis.net/community/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1887

So free yourself of Kerberos authentication woes now!.

Accessing OData fom Windows Phone 7 - Latest Client Libraries do not have support for LINQ

I had been trying to get OData access to a source using Windows Phone 7 and repeatedly faced roadblocks while following a lot of examples on the web till i realised the difference between the CTP and the Latest production version between the OData client libraries.

A lot of the examples on the web to demonstrate the use of OData using Windows phone 7 target the CTP release of the OData client Libraries which had support for LINQ.

The same is detailed in the blog post by Chris Koenig at
http://chriskoenig.net/2010/10/30/odata-v2-and-windows-phone-7/

Additionally the WCF Data Services Team blog clearly states the major differences at
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astoriateam/archive/2010/10/28/data-services-client-for-win-phone-7-now-available.aspx

LINQ is not supported presently in the client libraries. Period. So beware of the examples out there which target the CTP version.

I have found out a neat sample which actually uses the newest version effectively and have tested it out. You would find it at.

http://phonetocloud.info/2011/03/03/introducing-the-odata-client-library-for-windows-phone-part-3/

Silverlight 5 Beta and WsHttpBinding

Silverlight 5 still supports only the basicHttpBinding and NetTcpBinding for your WCF services.
GO to the link below to find the differences between basicHttpBinding and wsHttpBinding.
http://www.codeproject.com/kb/WCF/httpbinding.aspx.

However the Silverlight 5 release is still in Beta and more may be expected in the final RTM. Let us keep our fingers crossed. There is a talk for support of WS Trust in this version although i havent tried it yet. Will update the post once i test it out completely.

Aptana Studio (Getting autocomplete to work with popular Javascript libraries)

I have been using Aptana Studio lately for my PHP projects. Created on Eclipse as the base, I actually found it pretty good to start with. It has support for other languages too such as Ruby and Python(Aptana RadRails and Aptana Pydev respectively) . Take a look at the great number of Javascript libraries that it supports as well (providing great autocomplete features).

I initially could not get Autocomplete support for Jquery after installing the add on. A little bit of digging in got it working. To enable it go to

Window->Preferences->Aptana(Right column)->Editors->Javascript->CodeAssist

You will see check boxes against all the JS libraries you have installed support for. By default they will be unselected. Check them and you are ready to GO!

A Jquery Treeview Plugin

Take a look at this amazing small Jquery Treeview plugin . 7.4K , uncompressed mind you!

http://jquery.bassistance.de/treeview/demo/

Search Engine Optimization

Are you making a Website ? Sure you do want it to come up on Google Search. The google bots are crawling around all the time .

Image via Wikipedia

The quickest way to get listed in Google is to submit your site at the URL
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Do also add your sitemap to google using the Webmaster Tools.
Now the more important part- SEO .

Follow the Search Gods guidelines
Webmaster Guidelines
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769 and reap benefits.