We have an intranet system that schedules routine tasks. We also have Fogbugz for bug tracking. When an urgent bug comes in, we track that task in the bugtracker. However, I need to write back to both the Intranet and our CMS. I'm thinking Biztalk as the middle piece, but am not sure the best way to go about it. Database adapter? Web services?
I know I can use the CMS adapter for Microsoft CMS. I'd love to hear your experiences with Fogbugz.
I'm guessing that watching the database for changes would be the best way to do it. That way, you could post any changes you saw happen in the FogBugz database through other Biztalk adapters.
Please keep us updated with what you decide to do - I'd be interested to hear about it.
Version 6 of the FogBugz API is pretty well documented at http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/docs/60/topics/advanced/API.html. The API is implemented as an ASP page that accepts GET or POST params and returns XML after a user has been authenticated.
So, we can use the HTTP Send Adapter to POST requests to the FogBugz system, either updating bug records or retrieving information. The response from the API call is basic Xml that will be returned in the response body that can be read by BizTalk as necessary.
Be aware that the HTTP Send Adapter can only POST data - it cannot use the GET verb (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa561642.aspx)
Isn't FogBugz based on a SQL Server Database? Or do you use a hosted alternative?
If it's using a SQL Server you're controlling I'd just tie up two send ports to the process that read and handles the "FixBugMessage". One send port that uses the CMS Adapter and writes to the CMS and another that just uses the SQL Adapter and via an Stored Procedure writes to the FogBugz database.
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I'm designing a database monitoring application. Basically, the database will be hosted in the cloud and record-level access to it will be provided via custom written clients for Windows, iOS, Android etc. The basic scenario can be implemented via web services (ASP.NET WebAPI). For example, the client will make a GET request to the web service to fetch an entry. However, one of the requirements is that the client should automatically refresh UI, in case another user (using a different instance of the client) updates the same record AND the auto-refresh needs to happen under a second of record being updated - so that info is always up-to-date.
Polling could be an option but the active clients could number in hundreds of thousands, so I'm looking for a more robust and lightweight (on server) solution. I'm versed in .NET and C++/Windows and I could roll-out a complete solution in C++/Windows using IO Completion Ports but feel like that would be an overkill and require too much development time. Looked into ASP.NET WebAPI but not being able to send out notifications is its limitation. Are there any frameworks/technologies in Windows ecosystem that can address this scenario and scale easily as well? Any good options outside windows ecosystem e.g. node.js?
You did not specify a database that can be used so if you are able to use MSSQL Server, you may want to lookup SQL Dependency feature. IF configured and used correctly, you will be notified if there are any changes in the database.
Pair this with SignalR or any real-time front-end framework of your choice and you'll have real-time updates as you described.
One catch though is that SQL Dependency only tells you that something changed. Whatever it was, you are responsible to track which record it is. That adds an extra layer of difficulty but is much better than polling.
You may want to search through the sqldependency tag here at SO to go from here to where you want your app to be.
My first thought was to have webservice call that "stays alive" or the html5 protocol called WebSockets. You can maintain lots of connections but hundreds of thousands seems too large. Therefore the webservice needs to have a way to contact the clients with stateless connections. So build a webservice in the client that the webservices server can communicate with. This may be an issue due to firewall issues.
If firewalls are not an issue then you may not need a webservice in the client. You can instead implement a server socket on the client.
For mobile clients, if implementing a server socket is not a possibility then use push notifications. Perhaps look at https://stackoverflow.com/a/6676586/4350148 for a similar issue.
Finally you may want to consider a content delivery network.
One last point is that hopefully you don't need to contact all 100000 users within 1 second. I am assuming that with so many users you have quite a few servers.
Take a look at Maximum concurrent Socket.IO connections regarding the max number of open websocket connections;
Also consider whether your estimate of on the order of 100000 of simultaneous users is accurate.
How to work when internet connection down in a asp.net application ?
Means Users are working on application and suddenly internet connection down then user should still be able to add/edit/ delete operation on data, but when internet connection is up then
all changes should be done at server. Is that possible, Is there any example available to achieve this?
Thanks.
HTML5 has some offline capabilities. http://www.html5rocks.com/en/features/offline
But do you really have a business case for this? It will get complicated when you need to try and update stale data etc.
This requires use of JavaScript to store local data http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Working-with-HTML5-local-b0cbe2ef and it needs to check whether the server can be reached before doing a proper postback, or more likely just use AJAX to communicate between the JavaScript application and the server.
There are several applications like this such as Google Mail, and such solutions are more JavaScript based than ASP.NET and you need to avoid relying on the web forms mechanisms and use .NET for building the initial page, dealing with AJAX requests and managing the application data and persistence. See How to write an offline version of an AJAX/ASP.NET web application
I'm developing a software system which receives information (which is saved to a database) and when any information is received (new insert in a specific table) an alert should be seen in the screen in the information center, so proper action can be taken.
I'm writing an application with ASPNET MVC, SQL Server 2008 Express, SQL Agent free for that version of SQL Server, Entity Framework 4, Visual Studio 2010, etc.
Right now, I've set the database and a SQL job that monitors the table each minute, if there is a new records an email is sent to same addresses. My problem is...What then? Which would be the best architecture to follow?
A couple of option I thought about are:
1) In the job connect to a web service and that web service an the web service can open a popup
2) The web page could be pooling the database table to know if there are new records
Is there any way to make push to the web page instead of the page pooling the database server?
I know maybe windows application would fit better here, but right now I must stick with ASPNET MVC as I already started and don't want to create another application.
Thanks! Daniel
Is there any way to make push to the web page instead of the page pooling the database server?
HTML5 WebSockets. Draft, pretty new, specification is still subject to change, to all browsers implement it. You will need a WebSocket Server. If you go that route make sure you read this guy's blog. He is behind Laharsub which is a must try server.
I'm pretty sure you are able to use Silverlight to push data down to the client. Here is a pretty good overview that I read a while back. HTML5 might be a better way to go. But with such limited support it's almost not worth it at this point. Granted the Silverlight application might be out of reach to, but it's still a possibility.
I would suggest that you look into (complex) event processing, or stream processing -- at least to get the feeling for architecture of these systems.
The idea is to capture a stream of events before they reach database, route them (process) within the event processor and put them in the DB from there -- treating the DB as only one of event destinations (subscribers).
Take a look at Streambase, ruleCore, and many others.
These were all developed for the type of scenario you described.
Try to see the problem from the other angle. Develop a web client that reads the database every minute and compare to last pull ...
I have a book lending system written with ASP.NET, VB.NET and LINQ to SQL. I want the web app to send the e-mail reminder about the due date to the borrower before the book is over-due. Should I write a desktop app to check the due date or there's another way around to send e-mail reminder?
Thank you for any suggestion.
Write a service or a console app that is run with Windows scheduled tasks, then have that consult the database for due dates, and send out emails accordingly.
Don't use desktop interaction.
Scheduled service. If your LINQ backend is a decent database (like SQL Server), you can schedule a task with the SQL Server Agent and have it fire off emails when necessary. That could be accomplished via script, or a CLR SQL assembly (effectively, a .net assembly that plugs into the SQL server).
Depending on how much traffic the site sees, you could make use of HTTP Cache like how StackOverflow does. You can read about it in this blog post. Although the blog appears to be down right now, so here's the Google cache.
If you write a windows desktop app then it will not run if you don't login in. You can write a windows service and install it in the server and it can send out reminder emails.
I think a windows service is suitable for this task. Take a look at that question about using timer with a windows service.
A great little starter tutorial i have bookmarked for windows services here
I would check out Quartz.NET an open source job scheduler for the .NET platform. You can use it to perform scheduled tasks inside of a Windows service. For example, you could schedule a task to run every morning and have it query your database and then send out an email if the due date of a book is within the range.
I'm building a public website which has its own domain name with pop/smtp mail services. I'm considering giving users the option to update their data via email - something similar to the functionality found in Flickr or Blogger where you email posts to a special email address. The email data is then processed and stored in the underlying database for the website.
I'm using ASP.NET and SQL Server and using a shared hosting service. Any ideas how one would implement this, or if it's even possible using shared hosting?
Thanks
For starters you need to have hosting that allows you to create a catch-all mailbox.
Secondly you need a good POP3 or IMAP library, which is not included AFAIK in the .NET stack.
Then you would write a Command Line application or a Service that regularly checks the mailbox, pulls messages, inserts content in db based on the "To" address (which is unique for each user), and then deletes the email from the mailbox.
It's feasible and sounds like fun. Just make sure you have all you need before you start!
If the data is somewhat "critical", or at least moderately important, do NOT use their username as the "change-data-address". Example: You might be tempted to create an address like username#domain.com, but instead use username-randomnumer#domain.com where you give them the random number if the visit the web-page. That way people can not update other peoples data just by knowing their username.
E-mails can be trivially forged. I would only do this if you can process PGP / SMime certificates in your application.
Other than that, I see no reason why not!
use a dotnet popclient to read the incoming emails, parse them for whatever you are expecting and insert the data into the database.
see codeproject website for simple popclient implementation
you would have to decided on the email content yourself, eg data only, payload of sql statements, etc
You could also identify the user based on sender address. This is how Tripit (and probably others) does it. This only requires one e-mail address on your end.
I have done something similar, using Lumisoft's IMAP client and scheduling a task in my app that checks every x minutes the configured mail address for updates. For scheduling I recommend quartz.net. No launching external processes or anything.