David Sackstein's Blog

Mapping MediaElement onto a Sphere with WPF by David Sackstein

In my previous post I created a 3D cube, mapped a MediaElement onto each of its faces and animated the camera around the cube. In this post, I will replace the 3D cube with a sphere and wrap the video onto the surface of the sphere. I omit the camera animation for simplicity, but you can add it back, of course. You can download the source code here . In order to create the sphere mesh I made use of Charles Petzold’s elegant SphereMeshGenerator. In Chapter 6 of his book (3D Programming for Windows...

Animating the Position of a 3D Camera in WPF by David Sackstein

In this post we will use Point3DAnimationUsingPath from the previous post to rotate the viewpoint around a 3D cube while playing a video on all six of its faces. You can download the complete source, with the Point3DAnimationUsingPath class from here . "Look at me! Look at me now!" said the cat. "With a cup and a cake On the top of my hat! I can hold up TWO books! I can hold up the fish! And a litte toy ship! And some milk on a dish! And look! I can hop up and down on the ball! But...

A Custom Animation Class - Point3DAnimationUsingPath by David Sackstein

For 2D graphics WPF provides three classes for animating points: PointAnimation (for linear interpolation), PointAnimationUsingKeyFrames and PointAnimationUsingPath. For 3D graphics WPF provides only two: Point3DAnimation (for linear interpolation) and Point3DAnimationUsingKeyFrames. There is no built in class for animating points over a path in three dimensions. In this post I will show you a custom animation class that I wrote to partially fill that gap. In the next post I will put it to use in...

Instrumentation Tip for ASMX Web Services by David Sackstein

This post describes a simple way to trace all method invocations on an ASMX Web Service. The source code for the demo can be downloaded here . Problem I am currently adding some features to a customer’s application that exposes its core functionality as an ASMX Web Service. About every mistake in the book was made in the design of this product, so I was having a rough time understanding the API of the service, never mind the implementation. For a start, the methods are not strongly typed, mostly...

Instrumentation Tip for ASP.NET by David Sackstein

The System.Diagnostics namespace provides a simple and extensible model for tracing. This post is about leveraging that model in ASP.NET (Web Applications, ASMX Web Services, Http Modules and Http Handlers). Problem The System.Diagnostics classes, Trace and Debug, simplify instrumentation by placing it's configuration outside your code, in one centralized place. That place can be an initialization method or a configuration file. Use of a configuration file allows you to change instrumentation...

WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 4 by David Sackstein

In this post we will run the demo developed in the previous posts in the series and analyze the results. The last sections contain conclusions and suggestions for further reading. The other posts in this series are: WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Overview WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 1 (Tools) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 2 (Service Code) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 3 (Client Code) You can download the source code for the series from here . Run the Demo ...

WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 3 by David Sackstein

In this post we will develop the client side of a WCF service that is capable of participating in the client transaction. Other posts in this series are: WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Overview WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 1 (Tools) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 2 (Service Code) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 4 (Analysis) You can download the source code for the series from here . In Parts 1 and 2 we implemented some tracing tools and the service code. Here we...

WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 2 by David Sackstein

In this post we will develop a WCF service that is capable of participating in a client transaction. The other posts in this series are: WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Overview WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 1 (Tools) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 3 (Client Code) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 4 (Analysis) You can download the source code for the series from here . The Service Contract The contract, implementation and hosting code for the service are defined in...

WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo - Part 1 by David Sackstein

In this post we will prepare two tools that will help us trace WCF’s transaction support in our demo. Both tools can be found in the Common class library in the source code . The other posts in this series are: WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Overview (Tools) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 2 (Service Code) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 3 (Client Code) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 4 (Analysis) You can download the source code for the series from here . The first...

WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Overview by David Sackstein

In the next four posts, we will be building a barebones project to demonstrate WCF’s support for Transactions. The other posts in this series are: WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 1 (Tools) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 2 (Service Code) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 3 (Client Code) WCF Transactions – Barebones Demo – Part 4 (Analysis) You can download the source code for the series from here . The demo focuses on the usage of these properties: TransactionScopeRequired...

WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones – Part 4 by David Sackstein

This post presents a barebones yet complete demonstration of security policies suitable for the Internet scenario. Other posts in this series: WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones (Overview) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 1 (Intranet) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 2 (Anonymous) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 3 (Business-to-Business) Source code for all scenarios can be downloaded here . Scenario: Internet This scenario occurs when you want to provide a service to authenticated...

WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones – Part 3 by David Sackstein

This post presents a barebones yet complete demonstration of security policies suitable for the Business-to-Business scenario. Other posts in this series: WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones (Overview) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 1 (Intranet) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 2 (Anonymous) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 4 (Internet) Source code for all scenarios can be downloaded here . Scenario: Business-to-Business This scenario occurs when you want to setup communication...

WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 2 by David Sackstein

This post presents a barebones yet complete demonstration of security policies suitable for the Anonymous scenario. Other posts in this series: WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones (Overview) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 1 (Intranet) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 3 (Business-to-Business) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 4 (Internet) Source code for all scenarios can be downloaded here . Scenario: Anonymous This scenario occurs when you provide an internet-facing service...

WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones - Part 1 by David Sackstein

This post presents a barebones yet complete demonstration of security policies suitable for the Intranet scenario. Other posts in this series: WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones (Overview) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones Part 2 (Anonymous) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones Part 3 (Business-to-Business) WCF Security Scenarios – Barebones Part 4 (Internet) Source code for all scenarios can be downloaded here . Scenario: Intranet They key characteristics of this scenario are: Interoperability: Not...

WCF Security Scenarios - Barebones by David Sackstein

You can download the source code for these posts here . In his book, “ Programming WCF Services ”, Juval Lowy does a superb job of explaining the principles of WCF Security and simplifies the subject by discussing 4 typical security scenarios. I implemented those scenarios as demos for my latest class in WCF and I would like share them with you in this and the next few posts. Why should you read on? These demos are concise yet complete. My approach has been to use configuration files only - no code...