Tuesday, March 21, 2006
DIX, SXIP and SAML
I am currently working on getting a better grip on why DIX should matter at all, particularly with SAML around. Granted, DOX offers a few neat features, but I cannot see why SAML should not be able to support most of them either by profiling SAML 2 or adding a few details. My fear is that the DIX folks will re-invent SAML, only this time within the IETF.

I have created a page on my wiki (that contains only this blog entry so far) where I will collect some thoughts and ideas.

Tags: DIX, SXIP, SAML

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Tuesday, March 21, 2006 6:19:45 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Monday, March 20, 2006
Getting PHP to work under IIS
I've spent almost half a night getting PHP to install on my Windows 2003 Server under IIS. Granted: towards the end I was simply too tired to recognize that I DID change a crucial setting (cgi.force_redirect = 0), but forgot to uncomment the line ...

Well, in the end it worked, but I was a little surprised to see that ISAPI support for PHP is quite limited; at least I could not - tired as I was - figure out how to make the dl() function work in an ISAPI configured IIS server. Since the basic installation script for my application (MediaWiki) really wanted to load extensions (MySQL for that matter), I was ultimately convinced that I had to walk the CGI way...

Now THAT is also quite interesting, since other than the ISAPI filter, the CGI implementation of PHP refused to cooperate. In the end, there were three steeting that made it work (and pretty smoothly, so far):

  1. Set the cgi.force_redirect = 0. Be smart and DO NOT forget to uncomment it.
  2. Set the  cgi.rfc2616_headers = 1 
  3. If you still experience problems with the CGI Application e.g. by getting an error like 
     The specified CGI application misbehaved by not
     returning a complete set of HTTP headers.
    try to increase the CGI timeout setting in the IIS Metabase (using the Metabase Explorer from the IIS resource kit). You can fint it under LM\W3SVC, the default is 300 msec, I was quite successful with 1000 msec.
Tags: PHP, IIS, Windows, ISAPI, CGI

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Monday, March 20, 2006 10:10:56 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Stanford

Today I got the confirmation that I am now enrolled in the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) as a NDO student for Management Science and Engineering. This is quite exciting for me – it is the first time since 1997 that I am affiliated with a university and the very first time that I am actually enrolled in a U.S. university.

The program is delivered through online courses, which allows me to participate even though I am continuing to work. After four 4 credit courses I will be awarded a professional certificate from Stanford. At the same time these credits can also be applied to advanced graduate degrees, such as a masters degree in Management Science and Engineering. It was this flexibility the really convinced me to give this a try.

At this time, I am scheduled to take one course per quarter. You can actually access my web site now also through http://www.stanford.edu/people/beuchelt/. I am looking forward to this new challenge and post my experience here.

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Monday, March 20, 2006 9:15:01 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Friday, March 17, 2006
VMWare tools for Solaris
Uncovered by Pat Patterson:

VMware Tools for Solaris 10 host OS

This will allow you to get all the fancy integration for Solaris 10, that until now only Windows and Linux host OSes can offer.

Tags: VMWare, Solaris

Friday, March 17, 2006 7:18:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Sniffing SSL & TLS
As far as I am concerned, Ethereal is one of the nicest gifts to the open source community. It is a fully blown network protocol analyzer which can be extended to accomodate virtually any protocol you can come up with.

One of the things that have been bugging me however, was that Ethereal was - for the longest time - not able to interpret SSL and TLS protected traffic in a meaningful way (yes, you could see the SSL traffic, but it was encrypted and therefore useless).

There has been a plugin/patch for Ethereal now available for some time, and it seems that it is finally in a useful state. Paolo Abeni has been working on this and the code can be obtained here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ssl-decrypt

Tags: Ethereal, SSL, Decryption

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Friday, March 17, 2006 3:57:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Preparing the Holodeck ..
And now for somthing completely different:

The Japanese AIST has created the first truly three-dimensional pictures ever. Is this the beginning of the Holodeck? ;-)

Wednesday, March 01, 2006 9:56:16 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [1]  | 
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Eliptic Curve Cryptography hits the market
As far as I am concerned, this has been long due: ECC will now be included in the Sun Web Server, starting with Web Server 7.0. This should help drive adoption of ECC to a new level.



Tuesday, February 14, 2006 12:37:50 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Friday, February 10, 2006
Information on Project Tango
I you would like to understand better what Sun Microsystems is doing in the context of Web Services interoperability, particularly with Microsoft's upcoming Windows Communication Foundataion (formerly Codename Indigo), please take a look at Harold's article.
 
 
He has a very good graphic up there:
 
 
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Friday, February 10, 2006 12:34:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Monday, February 06, 2006
XML 2005 Conference Proceedings
The paper and the slidedeck for the XML 2005 conference are now (already for some time) publicly available. Please find my paper and my slides on GSS-SAML on the conference web site.
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Monday, February 06, 2006 12:24:48 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
NetBeans 5.0 is Out
Well, this is actually already old news, but I really feel that I should write at least a few paragraphs about this.
 
I have been using NetBeans 5.0 since its earlierst public EA/Beta releases, simply because its new and added feature set (see here) makes it so compelling. While other Java IDEs like e.g. Eclipse offer sometime similar features, it is often enough quite cumbersome to install these features as ad(d)-ons (ever tried to make Eclipse produce a useful web service?). Also, web service consumption in NetBeans becomes as trivial, as it is in Visual Studio.
 
I have been a very long-time and dedicated fan of Microsoft's Visual Studio product family. I would also argue that it is still the best general purpose product on the market. However, NetBeans 5.0 is coming very close and the incremental benefit from moving from NetBeans 4.1 to 5.0 was significantly higher than moving from the (stable) Visual Studio 2003 to the (frequently crashing) Visual Studio 2005.
 
Continuing:

I just wanted to add that NetBeans 5.0 is - in fact - the first beta/EA product that I used to write some production software. I was working outlining some web application for a baby stitting coop: the idea is that mothers sit their children for each other not for money, but collect 'points' they can use against future sits. With 30+ members of such a coop, accounting can get quite .. hmm .. interesting. My little web application is based on the open source Ozone OO database and uses servelets and JSPs.

Writing this software from scratch in NB 5 was quite easy and straightforward. It does not use web services (yet), but a future version will. If you are interested in the code, please let me know.

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Monday, February 06, 2006 11:26:55 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
I am back


Well, I am finally back.

No, I did not take an extended Christmas/Hannukah/Holiday vacation, but had to dubious pleasure to undergo some neck surgery on December 21. Surgery, hospital, and pain by itself do not create a lot of good feelings with me, but neck surgery is really quite bad: you cannot turn your head, you have severe problems swallowing, you have to sleep upright ... the list goes on and on.

For the past couple of days I have been able to walk around all day and most of the incoveniencing limitations put on me post-OR are now lifted. Stay tuned ...
Wednesday, January 11, 2006 2:49:48 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 

Copyright by Gerald Beuchelt.