What is Silverlight?

Silverlight is a new cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework for building and delivering the next generation of media experiences and Rich Interactive Applications(RIA) for the web. It runs in all popular browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera. The plugin required to run Silverlight is very small in size hence gets installed very quickly.

It is combination of different technolgoies into a single development platform that allows you to select tools and the programming language you want to use. Silverlight integrates seamlessly with your existing Javascript and ASP.NET AJAX code to complement functionality which you have already created.

Silverlight aims to compete with Adobe Flash and the presentation components of Ajax. It also competes with Sun Microsystems' JavaFX, which was launched a few days after Silverlight.

Currently there are 2 major versions of Silverlight:

Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 2.0( previously referred to as version 1.1).

Silverlight 1.0 :

Silverlight 1.0 consists of the core presentation framework, which is responsible for UI, interactivity and user input, basic UI controls, graphics and animation, media playback, DRM support, and DOM integration.

Main features of Silverlight 1.0 :

1. Built-in codec support for playing VC-1 and WMV video, and MP3 and WMA audio within a browser.


2. Silverlight supports the ability to progressively download and play media content from any web-server.


3. Silverlight also optionally supports built-in media streaming.


4. Silverlight enables you to create rich UI and animations, and blend vector graphics with HTML to create compelling content experiences.


5. Silverlight makes it easy to build rich video player interactive experiences.

Silverlight 2.0 :

Silverlight 2.0 includes a version of the .NET Framework, with the full Common Language Runtime as .NET Framework 3.0; so it can execute any .NET language including VB.NET and C# code. Unlike the CLR included with .NET Framework, multiple instances of the CoreCLR included in Silverlight can be hosted in one process. With this, the XAML layout markup file (.xaml file) can be augmented by code-behind code, written in any .NET language, which contains the programming logic.

This version ships with more than 30 UI controls(including TextBox, CheckBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, and Calendar controls), for two-way databinding support, automated layout management (by means of StackPanel, Grid etc) as well as data-manipulation controls, such as DataGrid and ListBox. UI controls are skinnable using a template-based approach.

Main features of Silverlight 2.0 :

1. A built-in CLR engine that delivers a super high performance execution environment for the browser. Silverlight uses the same core CLR engine that we ship with the full .NET Framework.


2. Silverlight includes a rich framework library of built-in classes that you can use to develop browser-based applications.


3. Silverlight includes support for a WPF UI programming model. The Silverlight 1.1 Alpha enables you to program your UI with managed code/event handlers, and supports the ability to define and use encapsulated UI controls.


4. Silverlight provides a managed HTML DOM API that enables you to program the HTML of a browser using any .NET language.


5. Silverlight doesn't require ASP.NET to be used on the backend web-server (meaning you could use Silverlight with with PHP on Linux if you wanted to).


6. Silverlight 2 includes Deep Zoom, a technology derived from Microsoft Live Labs Seadragon. It allows users to zoom into, or out of, an image (or a collage of images), with smooth transitions, using the mouse wheel. The images can scale from 2 or 3 megapixels in resolution into the gigapixel range, but the user need not wait for it to be downloaded entirely; rather, Silverlight downloads only the parts in view, optimized for the zoom level being viewed.


7. Silverlight 2 also allows limited filesystem access to Silverlight applications. It can use the operating system's native file dialog box to browse to any file (to which the user has access).

How Silverlight would change the Web:

1. Highest Quality Video Experience : prepare to see some of the best quality videos you have seen in your life, all embedded in highly graphical websites. The same research and technology that was used for VC-1, the codec that powers BluRay and HD DVD, is used by Microsoft today with its streaming media technologies.


2. Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser : Finally build web applications that work on any browser, and on any operating system. At release, Silverlight will work with Mac as well as Windows!  The Mono project has also already promised support for Linux!.


3. Developers and Graphic Designers can play together! : Developers familiar with Visual Studio, Microsoft.net will be able to develop amazing Silverlight applications very quickly, and they will work on Mac's and Windows. Developers will finally be able to strictly focus on the back end of the application core, while leaving the visuals to the Graphic Design team using the power of XAML.


4. Cheaper : Silverlight is now the most inexpensive way to stream video files over the internet at the best quality possible. Licensing is dead simple, all you need is IIS in Windows Server, and you’re done.


5. Support for 3rd Party Languages : Using the power of the new Dynamic Language Runtime, developers will now be able to use Ruby, Python, and EcmaScript! This means a Ruby developer can develop Silverlight applications, and leverage the .net Framework!


6. Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser Remote Debugging : If you are in the need to debug an application running on a Mac, no problem! You can now set breakpoints, step into/over code, have immediate windows, and all that other good stuff that Visual Studio provides.


7. The best development environment on the planet : Visual Studio is an award winning development platform! As it continues to constantly evolve, so will Silverlight!


8. Silverlight offers copy protection : Have you noticed how easy it is to download YouTube videos to your computer, and save them for later viewing ? Silverlight will finally have the features enabling content providers complete control over their rich media content! Streaming television, new indie broadcast stations, all will now be possible!


9. Extreme Speed :There is a dramatic improvement in speed for AJAX-enabled websites that begin to use Silverlight, leveraging the Microsoft .net framework.

Getting Started With SilverLight :

In order to create Silverlight applications with following :

Runtime :

Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 : The runtime required to view Silverlight applications created with .NET Microsoft.

Developer Tools :

Microsoft Visual Studio 8.0 : The next generation development tool.

Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 : The add-on to create Silverlight applications with Visual Studio 2008. This install will also install the Silverlight Developer Runtime and the Silverlight SDK. This add-on works with all versions of Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, including Visual Web Developer.

Designer Tools :

Download the Expression designer tools to start designing Silverlight application.

Expression Blend 2.5

The latest offering from Microsoft to create Silverlight content is Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview.

Software Development Kit:

Microsoft Silverlight Software Development Kit: Download this SDK to create Silverlight Web experiences that target Silverlight 2.0. The SDK contains documentation, tools, Silverlight ASP.NET controls and the libraries needed to build Silverlight applications.

Eclipse Tools for Silverlight :

An Open Source, feature-rich and professional RIA application development environment for Microsoft Silverlight in Eclipse.

Telerik :

Telerik is a corporation founded in 2002 that offers ASP.NET UI components, content management systems, and most recently Windows Forms and AJAX.

Telerik is a software publisher of ASP.NET AJAX, Windows Forms, Silverlight, and WPF controls and components, as well as .NET ORM, CMS, ASP.NET MVC, web testing, code analysis and refactoring, and reporting tools.

History

The company started in 2002 and released in the same year "RadEditor" and "RadMenu," the first two products in its "RadControls for ASP.NET." line of Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools. During the next 6 years, the suite grew to over 30 ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX components. Telerik also offers desktop components (WPF and WinForms), a reporting tool, a CMS solution, an ORM, extensions for ASP.NET MVC, testing software, and most recently a software refactoring tool named JustCode, which they launched at Microsoft's 2009

RDBMS

RDBMS stands for Relational Database Management System.

RDBMS is the basis for SQL, and for all modern database systems like MS SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft Access.

The data in RDBMS is stored in database objects called tables.

A table is a collections of related data entries and it consists of columns and rows.

What Can SQL do?

SQL can execute queries against a database
SQL can retrieve data from a database
SQL can insert records in a database
SQL can update records in a database
SQL can delete records from a database
SQL can create new databases
SQL can create new tables in a database
SQL can create stored procedures in a database
SQL can create views in a database
SQL can set permissions on tables, procedures, and views

What is SQL?

SQL stands for Structured Query Language
SQL lets you access and manipulate databases
SQL is an ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard

What are Web Services? & How Does it Work?

What are Web Services?

Web services are application components
Web services communicate using open protocols
Web services are self-contained and self-describing
Web services can be discovered using UDDI
Web services can be used by other applications
XML is the basis for Web services


How Does it Work?

The basic Web services platform is XML + HTTP.

XML provides a language which can be used between different platforms and programming languages and still express complex messages and functions.

The HTTP protocol is the most used Internet protocol.

Web services platform elements:

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)
WSDL (Web Services Description Language)


Interoperability has Highest Priority

When all major platforms could access the Web using Web browsers, different platforms could interact. For these platforms to work together, Web-applications were developed.

Web-applications are simple applications that run on the web. These are built around the Web browser standards and can be used by any browser on any platform.

Web Services take Web-applications to the Next Level

By using Web services, your application can publish its function or message to the rest of the world.

Web services use XML to code and to decode data, and SOAP to transport it (using open protocols).

With Web services, your accounting department's Win 2k server's billing system can connect with your IT supplier's UNIX server.

Web Services have Two Types of Uses

Reusable application-components.

There are things applications need very often. So why make these over and over again?

Web services can offer application-components like: currency conversion, weather reports, or even language translation as services.

Connect existing software.

Web services can help to solve the interoperability problem by giving different applications a way to link their data.

With Web services you can exchange data between different applications and different platforms.

What is UDDI?

UDDI is a directory service where companies can register and search for Web services.

UDDI stands for Universal Description, Discovery and Integration
UDDI is a directory for storing information about web services
UDDI is a directory of web service interfaces described by WSDL
UDDI communicates via SOAP
UDDI is built into the Microsoft .NET platform

What is WSDL?

WSDL is an XML-based language for locating and describing Web services.

WSDL stands for Web Services Description Language
WSDL is based on XML
WSDL is used to describe Web services
WSDL is used to locate Web services
WSDL is a W3C standard

What is SOAP?

SOAP is an XML-based protocol to let applications exchange information over HTTP.

Or more simple: SOAP is a protocol for accessing a Web Service.

SOAP stands for Simple Object Access Protocol
SOAP is a communication protocol
SOAP is a format for sending messages
SOAP is designed to communicate via Internet
SOAP is platform independent
SOAP is language independent
SOAP is based on XML
SOAP is simple and extensible
SOAP allows you to get around firewalls
SOAP is a W3C standard

AJAX Define :

AJAX = Asynchronous JavaScript and XML

AJAX is not a new programming language, but a new technique for creating better, faster, and more interactive web applications.

With AJAX, a JavaScript can communicate directly with the server, with the XMLHttpRequest object. With this object, a JavaScript can trade data with a web server, without reloading the page.

AJAX uses asynchronous data transfer (HTTP requests) between the browser and the web server, allowing web pages to request small bits of information from the server instead of whole pages.

The AJAX technique makes Internet applications smaller, faster and more user-friendly.

AJAX is based on Internet standards

AJAX is based on the following web standards:

JavaScript
XML
HTML
CSS
AJAX applications are browser- and platform-independent.

AJAX is about better Internet-applications

Internet-applications have many benefits over desktop applications; they can reach a larger audience, they are easier to install and support, and easier to develop.

However, Internet-applications are not always as "rich" and user-friendly as traditional desktop applications.

With AJAX, Internet applications can be made richer and more user-friendly

Basic WCF Concept and Terminologies

Windows Communication Foundation was official released with .NET 3.0 a couple of months ago. For those people who're doing connected, distributed systems or are in any way interested in communication aspects of systems, this ought to be a God-send. WCF basically rolled all the different Microsoft messaging formats into one, making it extremely easy to architect the communication layer of simple to complex applications. This tutorial aims to explain the basic concepts behind the common terminology used in WCF development and design.

WCF Programs
WCF programs are basically divided into 3 different types of programs. They are common known as

Clients
Clients are program that consumes the services, they are normally the ones that initiate the messenging to the service. Depending on the designed architecture of your application, it is possible that a service behaves as a client as well.
Services
Services are the programs that offers the services to the consumers. They are the ones that react and process the messages, similar to the backend of the application. They can be viewed as the equivalence of web services in .Net 2.0.

All services have to have endpoints specified in order to work. A good way to remember proper endpoint configurations is ABC. A being Address, B being Binding and C being Contracts.

Address
Address are the expose points of services. Services have to tell the world that where they are via addresses.
Bindings
Bindings will describe to the world on how they will communicate with the world. They contain information such as transport way, how they are encoded, are they reliable etc.
Contracts are of (but not necessary all have to be present) 3 different kinds

Service Contract
Describes what the service does.
Data Contract
Define custom messaging structure.
Message Contract
Define the message format that is passed between services.

Intermediaries
Intermediaries are programs that act as "middle-man", their basic roles can be similar to providing a firewall, routing, gateway etc. They are commonly invisible to the client and services.


Messages
All services and clients communicate via messages, which are made up of one body, and one or more header. All WCF messages are XML formatted and transport neutral. In other words, you can specify different forms of transport (HTTP, MSMQ, Named Pipes etc) for different messages. Within each application, you can specify different messaging transport depending on the communication needs of the system. Basically, messages can be divided into

Simplex
One way messaging. Simplex in short means "fire and forget"
Duplex
Asynchronous two-way messaging. In short this means that once fired, the application will carry on doing its own thing. Upon the return results, it will then handle it.
Request Reply
Synchronous 2 way messaging. This is the common communicate method whereby you'll fire a request, and wait for the response before continuing.


Channels
Before a client and service can talk to each other, they have to go through a channel. Imagine a channel as a pipe, with one end being the input message and the other end with the results of the message. There're different channels that can be stacked onto each other, they are commonly known as Channel Stacks. They can be of these different types:

Reliable Sessions
TCP Transport
Binary Message Encoder
Windows Security
Request Reply
The way in which messages are sent through the pipe (Channel) is known as a Transport and they way at which they are encoded are known as Encodings. Transport can be made up of the following:

HTTP
TCP
MSMQ
Named Pipes

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