Applications of .NET to Scientific Computing

1
Applications of .NET to Scientific Computing

• James Kovacs
• Lead Senior Systems Analyst
• Quadrus Development Inc.
• March 22, 2005

2
Agenda

• Introductions
• Benefits of .NET
• .NET Framework Overview
• Windows Forms
• ASP.NET
• Web Services

3
About Quadrus

• Formed in 1993
• Close-knit group of highly skilled software
  professionals
• Solution Areas
• Software Development complete end-to end or
  co-development services for custom applications
  and EAI
• Project Management methodology adoption,
  project oversight
• Training Mentoring public and private course
  offerings, PM and technical mentoring
• Business Intelligence data warehouses,
  analytics, reporting

4
About James Kovacs

• Lead Senior Systems Analyst (Quadrus)
• Masters in Physical Chemistry (Harvard)
• Catalysis of hydrocarbons on metal surfaces
• Required custom data acquisition and analysis
  software
• http//www.jameskovacs.com
• JamesK_at_Quadrus.com

5
Benefits of .NET

• Ease of use
• Choice of development language
• Greatly improved stability and security
• Common development framework

6
Ease of Use

• Object-oriented model
• Everything is an object
• Namespace and Framework structure
• Easier to comprehend and use
• Naming scheme of namespaces reflects the
  underlying functionality
• Tremendous amount of available functionality
• .NET Framework contains thousands of classes and
  methods
• Wide variety of 3rd-party components available

7
Language Choice

• Everyone has their favourite language
• .NET supports a wide variety of languages to
  encourage adoption and interoperation
• Microsoft developed/supported
• C
• VB.NET
• C with Managed Extensions
• J
• JScript.NET
• 3rd-party developed/supported
• Cobol
• PHP
• Perl
• Many others

8
Stability and Security

• Garbage collector manages memory
• No more memory leaks
• Strongly versioned assemblies
• Eliminates DLL Hell
• Verifiably type-safe code
• Eliminates buffer overruns, indexing out of array
  bounds, bad pointer arithmetic, use of
  uninitialized data, unsafe casts

9
Common Development Framework

• Windows application
• Windows Forms
• Web application
• ASP.NET
• Server application
• Web Services
• Windows Services
• Mobile devices
• ASP.NET
• Compact Framework

10
.NET Framework Overview
11
Common Language Runtime
Base Class Library Support
Class Loader
12
Common Language Runtime (CLR)

• Common Type System (CTS)
• Defines a set of primitive types
• Enables cross-language integration and type
  safety
• Common Language Specification (CLS)
• Defines a set of programmatically-verifiable
  rules
• Controls interoperation of types in different
  programming languages
• CLS-Compliant Code

13
Garbage Collector

• Compacting, generational GC
• Frees developer from managing memory
• Eliminates memory leaks

14
JIT Compiler
Compilation
Metadata
Source Code
Code (MSIL)
At installation or the first time each method is
called
15
.NET Performance

• .NET comparable to native C/C for
• Integer and floating point math
• Access to locals, parameters, and instance fields
• Flow of control
• Method calls
• Areas for improvement
• 64-bit arithmetic
• Complex inlining cases
• Analysis time cap

16
.NET Performance Advice

• Correct and slow is better than fast and wrong
• Know the cost of the features you use
• Easy to use expensive operations/features
• Always measure before (and after) tuning
• Dont be afraid to throw away improvements

17
Windows Forms

• Rapid application development (RAD)
• Rich interface and user controls
• ActiveX support
• Accessibility
• Licensing
• Printing
• Deployment scenarios
• MSI
• No touch deployment

18
ASP.NET

• Supports all .NET languages
• Browser-compliant controls
• JavaScript, DHTML
• Rich set of server controls
• DataGrid
• Validators
• Session management
• In-proc, state server, or SQL Server
• Compilation
• Caching

19
Web Services using ASMX

• ASMX
• WebMethod
• WebService
• SOAP
• Universal Description, Discovery and Integration
  (UDDI)
• Web Services Description Language (WSDL)
• XML serialization

20
Web Services using WSE v2.0

• Web Services Enhancements
• Supports advanced XML Web service specifications
• WS-Addressing
• WS-Policy
• WS-Security
• Supports various message exchange patterns
• Request/response, publish/subscribe, one way,
  etc.
• Microsoft.Web.Services2.dll

21
Web Services Architecture
Applications Application Structure
Connected Applications
Business Processes

Management
Security WS-Security WS-Trust WS-Federation
Reliability WS-RM
Transactions WS-Coordination WS-Transactions
Metadata WSDL, WS-Policy
Foundation
Messaging (SOAP, WS-Addressing)
XML
Transport
UDP TCP HTTP
22
Microsoft Corporation

• BizTalk Server 2004
• CLR Hosts
• Office 2003
• Visual Studio .NET
• Content Management Server 2002
• MSN
• Music
• Search (Beta)
• Operations Manager 2005

• Project Server 2003
• SharePoint Portal Server 2003
• SQL Server 2000
• Notification Services
• Reporting Services
• SQL Server 2005
• Windows Server 2003

23
Questions

• http//www.jameskovacs.com
• JamesK_at_Quadrus.com

24
References

• Performance
• http//blogs.msdn.com/ricom/
• http//blogs.msdn.com/ricom/archive/2005/02/22/378
  335.aspx
• http//msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url
  /library/en-us/dndotnet/html/fastmanagedcode.asp