Web Services Description Language (WDSL), originally developed by IBM, Microsoft, and others, is an XML format for technical description of Web services. In this tutorial, Mike Olson and Uche Ogbuji introduce WSDL4Py, an open-source Python library for WSDL 1.1 hosted by IBM developerWork’s open-source zone. Usage of the library is explained, as well as discussion of its development.
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Crystal Reports has enjoyed a long association with Microsoft and has shipped with Visual Basic (and subsequently Visual Studio) as the default report writer since 1993. Developers have traditionally had a love-hate relationship with Crystal Reports; they loved the functionality it provided and the free run-time license, but they hated having to upgrade to the latest version to get the features they required. Another complaint was that reports could not be created or modified programmatically; they could be created only through the user interface (UI) with either the developer UI with Visual Studio or the consumer UI with the Crystal Reports retail package.
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Seasoned Microsoft Office users may be familiar with both templates and styles; in Office, they’re a key to increased productivity. However, many Office users never touch them. In OOo, styles and templates are even more important than in Office, and wise users will become familiar with both the concepts and the details of using them.
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As weird as it might sound, you are reading a book that was born almost accidentally. When we began to work on this material, we weren’t even thinking of writing a book. Our initial, quite unpretentious goal was to define a list of guidelines for internal use in Code Architects, the software company we founded in 2002.
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Foxit PDF IFilter is an application designed to help users to index a large amount of PDF documents and then quickly find text within these documents. The PDF documents can not only be files, but also email attachments or database records.

Foxit PDF IFilter supports PDF 1.7 specification and can be used in many Microsoft search engines, such as Windows Indexing Service, MSN Desktop Search, Internet Information Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Site Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server and all other products based on Microsoft Search technology. With Foxit PDF IFilter, all these search engines can find PDF files with ease.
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The .NET framework was designed to be the “lingua franca” for Windows development, with the expectation that it will set a new standard for building integrated software for Windows. However, it is inevitable that there is a time lag before .NET is fully adopted and existing applications are recoded. In particular, there is a large body of legacy code that will likely never be rewritten in .NET. To address this situation, Microsoft provides attributes, assembly, and marshaling. At the Numerical Algorithms Group (where I work), our particular interest in using these techniques is to utilize numerical software developed in C from within the .NET environment. Because C# is the premier .NET language, the examples I present here are in C#. While I use an example of data types that are current in the NAG C Library, the techniques I present are general enough for calling unmanaged code written in C from C# directly.
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As the desire to deliver rich web content and functionality has increased over the last decade, Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies have become increasingly powerful. Unfortunately, many of these technologies have been out of reach for many client application developers because of the non-trivial learning curve involved. In addition, with the number of RIA technologies available, where do you even begin? In many cases, there was not a “one size fits all” solution, so RIA development would involve a mix of HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash, and perhaps a little AJAX thrown in (just to name a few possibilities).
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The Microsoft .NET software platform integrates various aspects of software development. In .NET applications can be written in a variety of programming languages and can be either stand-alone or web-based. A lab module for CS 453 Electronic Commerce Technologies was developed that instructs students on how to develop complex e-commerce websites using the programming language C# within the Microsoft .NET framework. This project and thesis provided insight into the power of C# and the .NET framework. Student evaluations were constructive and positive overall. There were many good suggestions for expansion of the C# lab module.
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