beware maxBufferSize, maxReceivedMessageSize, and maxStringCotentLength when adding service reference in VS2008

when you add a service reference in VS2008, you end up with a entry in your applications app.config file. this element contains binding elements for each service you add.

BEWARE: the default value for three critical attributes, maxBufferSize, maxReceivedMessageSize, and maxStringCotentLength, is set considerably low (64KB). we have hit this problem more than once now with deployed software, and unfortunately the only way to correct it is to adjust these values in app.config and re-distribute the software. so if you think there is even the slightest chance that your service will be returning more than 64KB in data, be sure to adjust these values after you add the service reference.

Mix08 day 1 notes

Key Note Addresses

- ray ozzie spends 30 minutes describing something we've all heard before and unfortunately have to hear more about once again, aka "cloud computing"

- msft still without a legitimate strategy to transform desktop monopoly to a web one

o connected pcs/devices

o web presence

o business apps

o virtualized servers/horizontal apps is key

- scott guthrie recounts his blog postings

- dean hachamovitch (ie8 general manager) reads too much from his script

o ie8 key focus on standard compliance and interopability (as opposed to ie7's focus on security)

§ w3c spec itself is vague and open to interpretation with regard to standards

§ css 2.1 support

§ poked fun at ie7's differences from firefox and safari

o looks more or less like ie7

o ie7 "compatability mode" controlled by developers

o html5

§ back button can work as expected with ajax

§ smooth experience when connectivity is lost

o integrated developer tools similar to firebug or webdevelopmenthelper (script debugging, css inspection)

o "activities" allow in-place right-click actions on selected text (i.e. select address, right-click, view map); very cool

o subscribe to "webslices" (slices of web pages); richer content/simpler implementation than rss

o ie8 beta 1 released

- scott guthrie returns to discuss silverlight 2.0 beta 1 release

- media and advertising

o adaptive streaming

o windows media services 2008 – scalable media hosting and delivery

o bandwidth savings: iis 7 bitrate throttling allows you to specify distinct bitrates for different downloads, so you deliver initial burst, then slower follow up

o jon harris discussed rich advertising: tracking with atlas admanager, iis7 playlists to force ads before video, ad overlays with xaml

o ari paparo from doubleclick discussed doubleclick/silverlight integration vs template

o perkins miller from nbc described silverlight for 2008 Olympics (2200 live hours plus broadcast coverage)

- wpf features

o almost full wpf control library

o sockets support

o protected isolated storage

- controls shipped with OPEN source and test code; you can modify and resell

- roy ben-yoseph and eric hoffman from aol described aol’s next mail client in silverlight 2.0

Lou Carbone, UX Guru – Experience Management

- effect vs. function: manage how users feel as opposed to what you are doing for them (fedex, airlines, rotorooter, etc.)

- think about the details! users remember how they felt more than they remember what they did

Nathan Buggia, MSFT, Live Search – SEO

- 30% of all traffic to web sites is from search engines

- html tips

o <title> and <h1> tags are the 2 most heavily weighted; <h1> is actually SUPER important on live.com since it’s used to parse organization of content

o semantic html is impt (i.e. <h1>title</h1> more easily read by robots <span class=’header’>title</span>);

o make text in href tags meaningful (i.e. not ‘click here’)

o <meta>: keywords is unused, description is used for snippet

o fqdn is important (i.e. x.y.com is higher than y.com/x) since rank is aggregated at fqdn, not at folder level (although google does consider folders)

o use RIA for spice within html pages, or at the very least have distinct urls for desired search rankings

- google is only search engine of the big 3 (google/yahoo/live) that will follow javascript redirects; need to use 301 redirect if you care

- yahoo site explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) : see inbound links to your page

- prefer hyphen to underscores, since search engines are likely to interpret “_” as part of word, not as word delineators

- casing matters (since 50% of since run apache). links and links distributed to other sites need to always use the same case.

- link to the root, not to a specific page (i.e. http://www.blogger.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://y.com/items not http://y.com/items/default.aspx).

- http codes

o 304 – conditional get (useful for letting engines know your page hasn’t changed to save you bandwidth)

o 503 – down for maintenance

o 302 – temporary redirect (BAD! since “temporary” is ambiguous; always use 301)

- links and tools

o http://seomoz.org/

o blogs.msdn.com/webmaster

o upcoming adcenter – msft competitor to google analytics

Silverlight 2.0, Mike Harsh, Program Manager, MSFT

- support for almost everything in WPF, plus some new controls

o MutliScaleImage – tool recursively splices a large image into 256x256 tiles, and the MutliScaleImage control automatically renders necessary tiles based on where on image the user zooms

- UserControl support!

- Local storage

o up to 1MB; if you want more, user must approve via prompt

o cross-browser “cookies on steroids”

- HTML DOM Interop

o make calls into the DOM and call javascript functions like alert()

o add items to browser’s history list

- OpenFileDialog support

web service response caching: CacheDuration property doesn't work

if you want to cache the results from a web service call on the server, you’d think you just set the CacheDuration property the way you can with aspx pages (i.e. [WebMethod(CacheDuration=5)] and everything would be happy. turns out... no.

• web service output is NEVER cached for http-post web service requests, so you have to use http-get, which is disabled by default for web services and enabling it is not a recommended practice. great.
• browsers can stipulate “no-cache” in their request header, and the server will ignore its own cache for these requests. so even once you get http-get caching working, Firefox requests force the server to ignore its cache.
  

why this isn’t configurable on the server, i have no idea, but the short of it is: if you want real control over web service output caching, don’t use CacheDuration (i.e. write it yourself using Context.Cache, Application[] variables, or static variables). Context.Cache is a very cool class; you can specify an absolute expiration date, or dependencies on the cached content, so that the item is cleared from the cache when a dependency changes, or a sliding expiration date, like “5 seconds from last access”—