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• Getting Better Time Formats

  Orcas introduced a new DateTimeOffset class that is easier to use for representing absolute times than the original DateTime class. However, if you run svcutil on a contract that contains a DateTimeOffset, you'll get an ugly generated structure because DateTimeOffset isn’t recognized as a natively supported type by the system. A new class is generated by svcutil to match the schema for DateTimeOffset in the metadata. namespace System { using System.Runtime.Serialization; [DebuggerStepThroughAttribute()] [GeneratedCodeAttribute( "System.Runtime.Serialization" , "3.0.0.0" )] [DataContractAttribute(Name= "DateTimeOffset" , Namespace= "http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System" )] public partial struct DateTimeOffset : IExtensibleDataObject { private ExtensionDataObject extensionDataField; private DateTime DateTimeField; private short OffsetMinutesField; public ExtensionDataObject ExtensionData { get { return this .extensionDataField; } set { this .extensionDataField = value ; } } [DataMemberAttribute(IsRequired= true )] public DateTime DateTime { get { return this .DateTimeField; } set { this .DateTimeField = value ; } } [DataMemberAttribute(IsRequired= true )] public short OffsetMinutes { get { return this .OffsetMinutesField; } set { this .OffsetMinutesField = value ; } } } } There's a new option on svcutil, /targetClientVersion:Version35, that can be used to indicate that code generation should use new features in Orcas. As far as I know, there are three places where this option makes a difference. DateTimeOffset is automatically added as a known type when referenced Asynchronous methods are generated using the Orcas event-based asynchronous model Additional LINQ types are supported during schema import for XmlSerializer Next time: Read Only Data Members Read More... Posted Thursday, September 04, 2008 8:00 AM from Nicholas Allen's Indigo Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: Indigo, Service Model, Proxies, Serialization, Orcas

• JSON Service Speed

  I've been playing with the DataContractJsonSerializer that comes with Orcas recently to produce some JSON-based services. DataContractJsonSerializer works just like any other XmlObjectSerializer, except of course that the serialization output looks nothing like XML when written out. {"content1":"this is content","content2":"this is more content","version":1} If you attempt to push the serialized output through an XML reader or writer and examine it though, that works too through some simple but seemingly magical transformations that happen behind the scenes. < root type ="object" > < content1 > this is content </ content1 > < content2 > this is more content </ content2 > < version type ="number" > 1 </ version > </ root > This transformation trick is one that we've used elsewhere as well to give the appearance of a consistent and highly-structured set of data formats while not actually incurring the costs of that structure. That led me to start trying to observe when the simpler structure of JSON actually provides a performance advantage over the standard DataContractSerializer. I've found that while JSON wins in terms of size, it doesn't always win in terms of serialization speed. Here were the observations that I made. DataContractJsonSerializer tended to be faster for small and simple workloads. When the number of types was small and the types didn't have very many members, DataContractJsonSerializer could beat DataContractSerializer by 25%. This was most often true when the bulk of the object data was string content. On the other hand, DataContractSerializer caught up and then started winning as the types got more complicated. I also noticed that there were some primitive types, such as floating-point numbers, where DataContractSerializer always had a significant advantage. DataContractSerializer could turn a 25% loss into a 25% win just by changing several of the fields of a small type to doubles. This shows that performance is a very hard thing to predict without taking measurements. I would have expected DataContractJsonSerializer to consistently win given the simpler and smaller output format but I was able to find several data contracts taken from popular services for which that wasn't true. Next time: Timeout Error Messages Read More... Posted Monday, June 30, 2008 8:00 AM from Nicholas Allen's Indigo Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: Indigo, Serialization, Orcas

• Serializing XML to XML

  How should I represent raw XML content in a contract? It seems like it would be really easy to have within the large blob of XML that makes up a message, a small blob of XML. However, it's more challenging to deal with that situation than you might expect because that small blob of XML has to be handled unlike everything else. With most contracts you can chew along the message and place each of the resulting bits in its proper place. When trying to preserve the raw XML though, you have to know when not to chew. In your contract you should use XMLSerializer formatted fields to turn off most of the unnecessary thinking regarding the XML content. Then, XmlSerializer knows about special handling for XmlElement and XmlAttribute to complete the mapping between pieces in the message and fields in your type. These two types work under the covers with XmlSerializer even though they don't implement the standard contract for serialization. With Orcas, you can also use the new XElement type that is defined by XLinq. XLinq doesn't have any deep integration with XmlSerializer but XElement directly implements the IXmlSerializable contract to make things work. Next time: Mapping Client Certificates Read More... Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008 8:00 AM from Nicholas Allen's Indigo Blog | 0 Comments Filed under: Indigo, Answers, Serialization, Orcas