WebORB Blog

Expanding our Web Universe

kathleen@themidnightcoders.com (Kathleen Erickson) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:43:00 +0000

In addition to finding us on our website and blog, you can now find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. We'd love to have you join our fan pages. To join and show support for us, please go to:

Leave a comment and let us know where we can find you too!

RIA Integration for .NET and Java Using WebORB Community Edition

kathleen@themidnightcoders.com (Kathleen Erickson) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 15:57:00 +0000

Coders seeking to connect their clients built in Flex, Flash, Ajax and Silverlight to .NET, Java, PHP and Rails often have questions about WebORB Community Edition, such as: What is it? Where can I find it? How does it stack up against Enterprise Edition? What are the limitations? How is it licensed? This post will hopefully answer these questions and make it easier for coders to find Community Edition.

What is Community Edition?

Community Edition is a free version of WebORB for .NET and WebORB for Java (WebORB for PHP and WebORB for Rails are free open-source products) that allows you to not only connect your clients built in Flex, Flash, AJAX and Silverlight to either .NET or Java backends, but it also supports most of the functionality you find in Enterprise Edition, such as streaming media, data management, real-time messaging and developer productivity tools.

What are the Limitations with Community Edition?

Community Edition does not support clustering or running in an environment where there are multiple licensed WebORB products. (You'd want Enterprise Edition for those use cases.) Also, if you have a .NET environment, IIS is required to run Community Edition.

Is Community Edition the product I download from your website?

Yes and no. The product you download from our website is the Enterprise Edition running in "development mode". Development mode is FREE, but limits IP connections to the WebORB server to 5 IP addresses and requires IIS if it is WebORB for .NET. When you activate your Community Edition license key through the licensing tab in the WebORB console, the activation process configures WebORB to run as Community Edition, removing the 5 IP address limitation, but restricting deployment to one server.

How is Community Edition licensed?

We allow one free Community Edition license per company, which is appropriate for running a single instance of WebORB for .NET or WebORB for Java on one server running up to 8 processor cores with unlimited IP connections.

Where can I find Community Edition?

You can apply for a free Community Edition license here: http://tinyurl.com/yk7xoy6 All we ask is that you help us a little bit with spreading the word about WebORB, which is why we ask for some publishable information from you.

Was this post helpful? Please post any additional questions you might have regarding Community Edition to this blog.

WebORB Updates & New Release

kathleen@themidnightcoders.com (Kathleen Erickson) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:28:00 +0000

We just announced in our Midnight Coders Monthly Newsletter that we will be releasing Version 4 of WebORB for .NET and WebORB for Java at the end of the month. These will be beta releases and will include many new productivity features that will help developers code faster, easier and reduce overall project cost (bosses and customers will be happy about that).

The following is what is new in version 4.0 for WebORB for .NET and WebORB for Java.

integration with Data Modeler in Flash Builder v.4
pluggable user-defined code generators
updated code generator for Cairngorm and PureMVC
new code generators for Mate and Swiz frameworks
all code generators support auto-creation of Flex Builder project files
support for .NET RIA Services (experimental feature) (WebORB for .NET only)
pluggable user-defined service browsers for the Management Console
service browser for XML/SOAP web services
service browser for WCF services
support for AMF behavior for WCF services
support for client/server property renaming via .NET attributes and Java annotations
improved code generation to support multiple namespaces and class hierarchies
support for IExternalizable (WebORB for Java only)

Version 4 Beta will be available end of month. Customers that have purchased WebORB Enterprise Edition will need to contact their account manager to receive a new license key for version 4. (Must have an active support plan.)

AMF vs. Web Services Wins Again!

kathleen@themidnightcoders.com (Kathleen Erickson) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:40:00 +0000

We've updated our AMF vs Web Services benchmark test and posted it on our website. If you are interested in giving this a try in your own environment, client and server source code is provided. Just go to this link:

http://bit.ly/bYEGNK

Have fun!

We're Evolving and Want Your Input

kathleen@themidnightcoders.com (Kathleen Erickson) — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:54:00 +0000

Hi All,

It has been far too long that I've posted on this blog, so I'm shifting gears and putting on my Marketing Hat to see what we can do together to foster greater community amongst users of our products and services. Some of the things we'd like to have your feedback on are:

Forum Activity - with nearly 4000 members, we're still wondering if the Yahoo discussion forum is helpful or if we should we use some other forum to foster greater participation from the community.
Contributions from the Community - Your contributions are valued tremendously. These contributions come in the form of documentation, examples, tutorials, translations, webinars, and workshops.
Hackatons (thanks MaTias Barletta for that idea) - this could be great fun and a great way to promote charitable community projects.
Beta Software - Do you like to beta test and what would be your expectations as a beta tester?
Word on the Street - Your blog, Twitter and website links back to our site are very much appreciated. When you do these things make sure we know.
Anything Else you think we should consider to foster better community.

Last but certainly not least, we'd like to understand what motivates (or would motivate) you to blog, twitter and contribute otherwise to fostering a better community. Please reach out to me via 214.550.0177 or email kathleen@themidnightcoders.com. Your time and input would be very much appreciated!

Cheers,
Kathleen Erickson

New WEBINAR SERIES for July and August

kathleen@themidnightcoders.com (Kathleen Erickson) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:42:00 +0000

We've got all new topics for July and August, so be sure to check out our Midnight Coders Monthly Newsletter (will be out later this week) for information on this series and more including new Tips and Tricks for connecting AIR clients with .NET services.

July Webinar Schedule

July 13th - 3pm(CST)
Real-Time Messaging and Streaming with Flex and .NET
To Register: http://bit.ly/3kyYC

July 20th - 3pm (CST)
Introduction to Stress Testing of Flex Applications
To Register: http://bit.ly/zVmjm

July 27th - 3pm (CST)
Integrating AIR and .NET
To Register: http://bit.ly/t4cs0

August Webinar Schedule

August 3rd - 3pm (CST)
Publish/Subscribe with Flex and Java
To Register: http://bit.ly/4c0mrc

WebORB examples are now part of Tour de Flex!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:51:00 +0000

Tour de Flex is an awesome application showcasing a lot of great Flex examples. Tour de Flex is available both as a browser-based application and as an AIR installation. We were offered to add a few WebORB examples to the collection and now you can see WebORB for .NET and WebORB for PHP in action directly from Tour de Flex. (the examples are available under the 'Flex Data Access' node). I would like to thank Adobe and especially Greg Wilson for all his help. Thank you, Greg, it would be impossible without you.

Introduction to WebORB for PHP (webinar recording)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:13:00 +0000

We conducted an online webinar yesterday to provide an overview of WebORB for PHP. The webinar was recorded and now the recording is available online. You can access it at the URL below. I highly recommend watching the video as it reviews some of the key configuration elements as well as core product features.

Introduction to WebORB for PHP

WebORB for PHP v3.6 is released

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:58:00 +0000

We released a new version of WebORB for PHP today. The release introduces several new features. A complete list is below:

Feature: Support for AJAX clients. WebORB for PHP includes a JavaScript library that provides very elegant and easy-to-use APIs to access PHP services from JavaScript.
Feature: Support for SOAP Web Services. All supported client types (Flash, Flex, AJAX and Silverlight) can now invoke web services via WebORB. The product functions as a proxy between a rich client and the target web service.
Feature: Drupal integration. WebORB for PHP includes a Drupal module enabling integration between Drupal and WebORB. Once integrated, WebORB enables all supported client types to invoke Drupal services.
Improvement: Performance enhancements. There's a major improvement in performance. WebORB 3.6 has been optimized for speed and should deliver 2x better performance than the previous releases.
Bug fix: Fixed polling support on MacOSX
Bug fix: Fixed problems with UTF8/non-ascii character encoding.

You can download the release from the company website.

From UI Mockups to Flex in seconds

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Tue, 26 May 2009 05:13:00 +0000

If you are not familiar with Balsamiq Mockups, you should definitely check it out: http://www.balsamiq.com/. It is a web-based AND desktop application where you can create mockups and wireframes to model the user interface for your applications. We worked together with Balsamiq to create a feature which allows you to generate a Flex application based on a mockup. The generated application consists of the client-side MXML/ActionScript as well as server-side code. The client code and MXML renders the same components you used in a mockup, while the server sode provides all the data from the controls in the mockup to the corresponding controls in the Flex application. The integration between Flex and the backend is done with WebORB. The generated code includes support for Java, .NET and PHP.

You can read more about the integration in the Balsamiq blog post pre-announcing the integration:

http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/05/25/newfont/

There's also a page on our site dedicated to the project:

http://www.themidnightcoders.com/develop-ria/balsamiqapp

I am very excited about this integration as it makes it super simple to go from a mockup to a fully functional Flex-remoting application!

Midnight Coders Launches Free Webinar Series

kathleen@themidnightcoders.com (Kathleen Erickson) — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:55:00 +0000

This is good news for developers around the world who are interested in getting started with our products and services. We will launch our first of many free webinar events on May 18th from 3-4pm (Central). This event is an Introduction to WebORB Messaging SDK. Attendees will learn:

* How to install Messaging SDK
* How to use publish/subscribe API in Flex applications
* How to use publish/subscribe API in AIR applications
* How to use publish/subscribe API in .NET applications
* How to integrate Flex and .NET using Messaging SDK
* About the Messaging SDK features and benefits

To register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/907481963

Future webinars include:

June 1st – Introduction to WebORB PDF Generator
To Register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/712611978

June 8th – Getting started with WebORB for PHP
To Register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/223302378

June 29th – Getting started with WebORB for .NET
To Register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/855841554

Running WebORB for Java in Google App Engine

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:44:00 +0000

Google has recently added support for Java applications to the Google App Engine, which is their cloud environment for running web-based applications. We decided to try out WebORB for Java and ran into a few problems. Most of the problems were related to the usage of the classes which are not on the approved JRE Class White List. There is also a bug related to their Servlet API specification that prevented normal execution of WebORB. However, we found a way to work around all the major issues and I am happy to report that WebORB for Java now can be deployed into Google App Engine to provide connectivity for Flex, Flash, Silverlight and AJAX clients with the deployed Java objects.

We also have a sample WebORB deployment in our AppEngine account which you can see at the following URL (check out the Examples tab as well as the Service Browser under management):

http://weborbdemo.appspot.com/

We're working on a new build of the product with all the fixes we have made. Until then, there is a patch build of WebORB for Google App Engine available for download.

The ZIP file contains both management console and examples. However, if you do not care about that, then use just the contents of the WEB-INF folder and extract the files into the WEB-INF directory of your Google App Engine application.

We also plan to make a few changes in the product to support Google's persistence mechanism. Once it is done, then all the features that require File IO (code generation, data management, etc) will also be supported.

Happy coding!

Free WebORB webinar tonight

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:13:00 +0000

I will be doing an online presentation for the Pennsylvania Flex User Group tonight at 6pm Eastern time. I will be talking about Flex client/server integration focusing on WebORB, AppPuncher and PDF Generator. Since it is an online webinar, anyone can attend and you're cordially invited. You can register for the webinar at the following address:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/603107563

See you tonight!

Deploying WebORB into a Java container

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:17:00 +0000

WebORB for Java can be integrated into any Java container which implements the Servlet API 2.3 and above. We just updated the documentation with the steps to deploy WebORB into most popular containers and the information has been posted to the user guide on the website.

If you are not familiar with the process, WebORB can be deployed either as a self-contained web application in the form of a WAR file created by the installer. Alternatively, the product can be integrated into an existing web application.

See the "Deployment" section of the WebORB user guide at the following URL for more details:

http://www.themidnightcoders.com/fileadmin/docs/java/guide/index.htm?t=30

Last but not least, we have added Sun's GlassFish Server to the list of officially supported containers. The product has been tested on both version 2.1 as well as v3 Prelude.

Java method invocation from Silverlight

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:53:00 +0000

WebORB for Java, .NET and PHP include a very powerful remoting Silverlight component. The component implements a binary protocol (AMF) for handling remoting invocations of server-side components from Silverlight.

There is a new article on our site that describes an example of integrating Silverlight with Java. The example demonstrates an invocation of a POJO, however, the same approach can be used to invoke EJBs, Spring Beans or any other custom service type hosted in WebORB for Java. You can access the article at the link below:

Java object invocation from Silverlight

In my next blog post, I plan to describe our Silverlight to .NET integration. It may not be obvious, but our integration approach offers a variety of benefits over the standard SOAP/REST-based integration built into Silverlight.

WebORB for Java v. 3.0.2 is released

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:04:00 +0000

It is a stepping stone, but a very important one.. There is a new release of WebORB for Java available for download - version 3.0.2. We focused primarily on bug fixes and managed to get a few features in there as well. Below is a brief list of the changes:

Problems with installer on Mac OSX have been fixed
Fixed bugs in WebORB Data Management synchronization
Fixed WebORB deployment for WebSphere versions 6 and 7
Fixed WebORB deployment for Tomcat 6
Corrected Messaging API documentation for publishing messages
Added polling support for WDMF synchronization when RTMP connection fails
Added support for Enterprise Edition licensing and activation

In the coming weeks and months I will be focusing more on improving the documentation and writing a few articles to make it easier to get started with the product and use its more advanced features.

Also, what do you think of the new product logo? :)

RIA AppPuncher 1.0.1 is available

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:50:00 +0000

Our new client/server debugging utility for RIA applications - RIA AppPuncher - has been a great success. A lot of people have downloaded the application and provided fantastic feedback. We have already started working on the requested features. Some of the users have experienced startup errors that prevented AppPuncher from working properly. The most common errors are shown below:

For Windows users:

Could not find the man class: com.tmc.rtb.ui.Application. Program will exit.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError

For Mac OSX users:

Existing application in any way other than File > Exit does not restore proxy settings.

Today we released a patch build of RIA AppPuncher - version 1.0.1. The build fixes all the errors listed above. It also includes the following features and bug fixes:

Added support for AMF0
All views can now render Gzip compressed content
Fetched XML content is now rendered in a structured view
Methods re-invoked from AppPuncher UI now use different icon
Uninstaller now deletes all the files added by the installer
Selecting a session in the treeview select the corresponding session tab
When a session is cleared contents of the request/response panels is cleared too

Please download the new release and make sure to let us know how you like it and what we could do better or differently.

Diagnosing AppPuncher start-up errors

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:20:00 +0000

If you are experiencing an error launching AppPuncher on Windows, we would like to ask you to help us diagnosing it. There are two errors some users have reported:

Could not find the man class: com.tmc.rtb.ui.Application. Program will exit.
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError

Please do the following to help us with troubleshooting:

Open a command prompt window and change to /Program Files/AppPuncher
Run the following command: java -jar lib/AppPuncher.jar
Send us the output you get. Please use puncherbeta@themidnightcoders.com

Thank you for your help!

Generating PDF documents from Flex

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks ago we released a fantastic addition to our family of products - WebORB PDF Generator. I have not had a chance to describe the product in this blog, so consider this an introduction. This post will focus primarily on Flex, though the product supports all major rich client types including Silverlight, Flash and AJAX.

Creating a PDF document from Flex using WebORB PDF Generator could not be simpler. The product generates documents using templates. In case of Flex, a template can be created using Flex Builder. Simply create an MXML component (you can use Canvas as the parent class). Lay out basic components to create a template. To generate a PDF document document from the template, create an instance of the MXML component and call the PDF Generator service using our API. Here's an example of a very basic template:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<mx:Canvas xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" width="400" height="300">
  <mx:Label text="DataGird with server-side data:" x="10" y="10"/>
  <mx:DataGrid id="customersGrid" left="10" right="10" fontSize="10"
      bottom="10" top="30"
      dataProvider="{'method:Weborb.Examples.DataBinding.getCustomers()'}" > 
      <mx:columns>
          <mx:DataGridColumn dataField="COMPANYNAME" headerText="Company" />
          <mx:DataGridColumn dataField="CONTACTNAME" headerText="Name"/>
          <mx:DataGridColumn dataField="PHONE" headerText="Phone Number" />
      </mx:columns>
  </mx:DataGrid>    
</mx:Canvas>

The template uses the DataGrid component to render a table in PDF document created from it. Notice the dataProvider attribute of the DataGrid component:

dataProvider="{'method:Weborb.Examples.DataBinding.getCustomers()'}"

The dataProvider references a method which will be invoked by the PDF Generator service and the returned data will go into the PDF document.

Suppose the MXML component's name is MyTemplate.mxml. To create a PDF document using that template from Flex, use the following code:

var pdfGenerator:PDFGenerator = new PDFGenerator( this );
var template:MyTemplate = new MyTemplate();
pdfGenerator.generatePDF( template );

PDF Generator creates a document and returns the document URL to the Flex client. The default implementation opens the URL in a new window. This behavior can be overridden with a responder object:

var myResponder:PDFResponder = new PDFResponder( gotURL, gotError );

pdfGenerator.generatePDF( template, myResponder );

See the PDF document created for the template shown above.

You can use the following Flex components to create templates:

DataGrid - will be used to display tabular data
List - displays linear (single column) lists
HRule, VRule - display vertical or horizontal lines (you can select widht, height, color, etc)
TextInput, TextArea - can be used to create PDF Forms in your PDF document
Image - will render a bitmap image in the document
any charting component - will render chart in the PDF
our own FlashContent component - will render Flash content in the resulting PDF document
TabNavigator or Accordion - to create PDF documents with different layouts for each page

We have put together an example demonstrating all the supported Flex components in various sample templates.

See full PDF Generaotr documentation for Flex clients. Product page is available at the following URL: http://www.themidnightcoders.com/products/pdf-generator/overview.html

WebORB for Java v.3.0.1

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:38:00 +0000

We just released a new maintenance build of WebORB for Java with the following bug fixes:

Fixed a problem with packaging of the WebORB WAR file which prevented deployments into WebSphere and other Java EE servers
Fixed a problem in Silverlight examples (previous version was using the Beta 2 compilation of Silverlight client)
Fixed a probem in the WDMF XSLT templates described in this thread.
Fixed a problem in request parsing when AS3 Flash client sends an invocation with more than one argument using the NetConnection class

The new release is available for immediate download.

AppPuncher - Client/server debugging system for Flex, Flash and Silverlight

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:24:00 +0000

Whenever you develop an RIA using Flex, Flash, AJAX or Silverlight, odds are you would need to inspect client/server traffic, understand what goes on the wire and diagnose communication problems. Additionally, any online application must be thoroughly tested to understand its concurrency limits and server capacity. We have received a lot of requests from our customers and the users of WebORB to help out with either load testing of their applications or diagnose client/server communication issues. We engaged in several consulting projects to assist customers with QA and that's how the idea for AppPuncher was born. Today I am happy to announce that AppPuncher Debugger Edition is available for download.

So what is AppPuncher? In short, it is a QA system for RIAs. It can help you debug client/server traffic. It can do stress testing and regression testing. It can record and replay all the requests a client is issuing and report any discrepancies in server responses. The product is available in several editions. (The Debugger Edition is available now). See the AppPuncher feature comparison chart.

What can the Debugger Edition do?

The product will run next to your RIA browser-based client and register itself as a proxy server. Internet Explorer and Google Chrome should automatically recognize the proxy and will route all the client requests through AppPuncher. Firefox requires AppPuncher Firefox extension.

When you start AppPuncher, you can choose the type of test you would like to run (it is limited to the 'Debugging Session' for now, but soon you will be able to use the product to run all supported types of tests). The start screen looks as shown below:

AppPuncher also starts one debugging session by default:

Structured or Sequencial View Types

Once the browser makes any request, AppPuncher will visualize it in two formats:

Structure View - displays all requests in a tree hierarchy ordered by the site they are sent to.
Sequence View - all requests are shown in the same order they are sent.

Structure view:

Sequence View:

AMF Request/Response Visualization

The example above shows requests for static files - images, JavaScript and flash content. Additionally, AppPuncher will detect remoting requests and display information related to the method invocations as shown below:

Once you select a node in either Structure or Sequence View, the contents of the request and response will show up in the panels on the right. If you select a remoting method as shown above (the selected method is getCustomers from an invocation of the Weborb.Examples.DataBinding class), the Request and Response panels will display the following:

Request/Response Multiple View Type Support

Notice both request and response can be displayed in different views. A view can be selected using the View drop-down list:

Visualization Optimizations

Views can be selected independently for requests and responses, but it is also possible to automatically select the same view type by clicking the "Correlate Response and Request Views" checkbox located above the Request panel. When the check box is selected and you change the view for Request, the Response panel will automatically select the same view type:

AMF Requests and Responses displayed in AppPuncher can be compressed to show just the data from the request body (method arguments) as well as response body (return value) by selecting the "Body Only" checkbox located under Request and Response panels:

Debugging Remoting Requests

Once an invocation is captured by AppPuncher, it can be repeated with altered argument values. Double click an argument value in the Request panel (make sure you use the AMF view) and click the Invoke button to make a new invocation with modified arguments list:

The new invocation will show up in the AppPuncher list and can be inspected using the same Request and Response panels.

Request/Response Search and Filtering

In any debuging session it may be important to find a specific request. AppPuncher has a powerful search and filtering mechanism. Search is dynamic and will locate all matching requests as you type a search query.

Filtering allows display of requests and responses of specific content-types. In addition to well-known content types, AppPuncher automatically adds any new ones to the list of filters.

We are working hard on adding new features to AppPuncher. The plan is to release the remaining editions (Regression, Stress and Ultimate in the next couple of months). We would love to hear your feedback on using the product. Download your copy today and please let us know how you like it and what we could do better.

Inter-process communication using AMF

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:05:00 +0000

One of the new features we added in the recent releases of WebORB for Java and .NET is the support for inter-process invocations via AMF. The feature lets you invoke Java, PHP or .NET code from any other process running in Java, PHP or .NET. It does not matter what process type is running on the other end, all combinations of the above are supported. For instance, you can have a .NET process invoking methods in Java object or EJB or PHP class. The only requirement is that the server-side class/service is running in a WebORB enabled application.

In this blog post I will describe how to put together a .NET application that makes an invocation of a remote class. For the simplicity sake, I will use a .NET class on the server-side, however, if you want to integrate with PHP or Java, the only difference will be in the endpoint URL.

A link to the full source code listing is available at the bottom of this blog post.

1. Create Visual Studio project

Make sure you have the latest version of WebORB for .NET installed. At the time of writing this blog post, it is 3.6.0.1. Create a Console Application project in Visual Studio. Add a reference to weborb.dll. The file is located in /Inetpub/wwwroot/weborb30/bin

2. Add invocation code

The API for AMF invocations is available in the Weborb.Client namespace. Make sure to import that namespace.

Create an instance of Weborb.Client.WeborbClient class. The constructor takes a URL to the server-side instance of WebORB. If you're using the default installation of the product, the URL is "http://localhost/weborb30/weborb.aspx".

Next, create an instance of the Weborb.Client.Responder class. The responder object contains references to the delegate functions - one when an invocation response is available, and the other to process errors. The generic parameter for the Responder class is the type of the return value you expect to get. The implementation supports the traditional WebORB type adaptation system. For instance, if the remote method returns an instance of System.Data.DataTable, you can specify T to be a collection of complex types. WebORB will automatically transform the data table into a collection of the given type as you will see below in the example.

Once a responder is ready, you can proceed to the invocation. The Invoke method on the WeborbClient class executes a remoting call. The method accepts the following arguments: name of the class containing the remote method, name of the method to invoke, array of arguments (or null if none) and the responder object. See below:

In the example above, the code calls the getCustomers method on the Weborb.Examples.DataBinding class. The method returns an instance of System.Data.DataTable. As you can see from the code above, it instructs WebORB to convert the return type to List, where every instance of CustomerVO will represent a row from the response.

With the implementation shown above, there will be only two 'columns' represented by the instances of the CustomerVO class. If more columns from the response are needed, just add additional properties to the class definition.

Finally, the code for the GotCustomers and GotError methods referenced in the Responder object above is shown below:

Before you run the code, it is recommended to open up the management console and verify the invocation of the backend method using the Test Drive feature. The console is available at the same URL you used in the code above: http://localhost/weborb30/weborb.aspx

Select the Management tab and navigate to weborb.dll > Weborb > Examples > Data Binding. Expand the node, select the getCustomers method and click Invoke on the right side of the interface. The console will send an invocation request and display method return value.

Full source code listing with the Visual Studio project files

WebORB 3.6 for .NET is available

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:05:00 +0000

If you're working with the .NET version of our product, we have some news for you. There is a new release with some important features as well as bug fixes. See below for details:

Support for Silverlight client - Includes client-side component with remoting APIs, code generator integrated into the management console as well as a command line code generation utility. Silverlight integration makes it super simple to invoke methods on remote objects as well as SOAP/REST web services. Btw, Silverlight integration works across all WebORB implementations thus you can connect Silverlight with .NET, Java, PHP and soon ColdFusion components.
Support for server-to-server AMF invocations - Previous release made it possible to do server-to-server (or process-to-process if you will) invocations via RTMP. With 3.6 you can accomplish the same using AMF over HTTP. This should allow cross-platform integration where .NET can invoke Java or native .NET apps can call each other using simple and intuitive API without all the complexities associated with cross process integration.
WebORB Visual Studio templates - Many of you asked for it and we listened. The product installer registers Visual Studio templates with your installation of VisualStudio 2005 and 2008 (whichever you have installed). The templates are available for C# and Visual Basic. There are two types of templates: one to create WebORB-enabled website projects and the other is for WebORB-enables class libraries. We put together a few screencasts demonstrating the templates in action:
Using WebORB Visual Studio templates - Part 1
Using WebORB Visual Studio templates - Part 2
Custom MSMQ queue factories support - When using Producer/Consumer APIs with the messaging destinations connected with MSMQ, you may have a scenario when you need to construct instances of the queue in your own code. WebORB now supports custom queue factories to support this use-case. See the comments in WEB-INF/flex/messaging-config.xml (the <queuefactory> element)
Class mappings between abstract generic collections and concrete implementations - Suppose you have a remoting method that declares an abstract generic argument:

public void processOrders( IList<Order> orders )
{
}

Since the argument is an abstract type, WebORB would need to know what concrete generic implementation should be used for that IList. The new release provides a way to establish mappings between abstract generic types and a concrete implementation. See <abstractclassmappings> section in weborb.config for more details.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug with reference serialization. The error was resulted in a message "Error #2006: The supplied index is out of bounds"
- Fixed a bug with AJAX remoting and Firefox 3
- Fixed a bug with serialization of very large data sets
- Fixed a bug with passing credentials in AJAX invocations

As always, we love to get feedback. Please drop us a line and let us know what we could do better or differently.

We have a new website - come check it out!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:14:00 +0000

The stack of topics I want/need to blog about is experiencing a major overflow, so I'll start in the chronological order.

If you have not been to our website lately, I recommend you check it out: http://www.themidnightcoders.com

We have completely redesigned the site and I am very pleased with the new design. Unlike all previous versions of our site, we now have a CMS system. It is not perfect, but certainly a major step forward from where we were. The new site should make it easier to find information about the products and services we provide. We're also incorporating a commenting system for the pages with technical information (like technotes, articles and screencasts). If you see something we might have missed or should improve, we'd love to hear from you.

Also, just for fun I used the Web Archive to see what the site looked like in the past. Below are the thumbnails of the home page versions going back to 2003 when I launched the company and created the very first version of the site:

Version 1 (2003):

Version 2 (2004):

Version 3(2005):

Version 4(2007):

Version 5 (current)

Wade Arnold says - "WebORB is way cooler than AMFPHP"

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Piller) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:58:00 +0000

Wade Arnold (who currently maintains the AMFPHP project and was hired by Adobe to write ZendAMF) recently gave an interview on The Flex Show. The interview touched upon several interesting points. Among them was when the host of the show asked Wade to compare ZendAMF with AMFPHP and WebORB. In the response Wade said:

"WebORB is WAY cooler than AFMPHP".

I could not agree more with you, Wade. Thank you for your honest answer.

One other thing was mentioned that PDF Generation is not something that WebORB will ever do. This is wrong and very soon we're going to announce some fantastic PDF Generation tools for .NET, Java and PHP. Stay tuned!

You can listen to the interview on the Flex Show site. The interesting part starts at 32 minutes and 17 seconds into the interview