Alik Levin's
Solution Engineering for Performance & Security
Identify ASP.NET, Web Services, And WCF Performance Issues By Examining IIS Logs
Simple examination of IIS logs can reveal potential performance issues related to ASP.NET web...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 11/02/2007
Composite Application Block (CAB) Programming Essentials - Crucial For CAB Performance
Rich Newman posted awesome guides for Composite Application Block (CAB) programming: Table of...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/29/2007
Security Tools From Microsoft ACE Team
Mark covers arsenal of security tools available from Microsoft ACE team. The tools are: Threat...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/25/2007
XSSDetect Public Beta now Available!
XSSDetect public beta is now available for download on MSDN. Overview XSSDetect is a static code...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/24/2007
Tester Center Launched On MSDN
Test Center launched on MSDN The Microsoft Tester Center showcases the test discipline as an...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/24/2007
Examining WCF Diagnostic Traces Using Service Trace Viewer Tool (SvcTraceViewer.exe)
Service Trace Viewer Tool (SvcTraceViewer.exe) tool comes with Microsoft® Windows® Software...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/23/2007
Customize Community Server Skin With CSS Overrides And Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar helps me customizing my Community Server Skin via CSS overrides...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/20/2007
Improve Web Application Performance By Reducing Number Of Http Requests - Fiddler To The Rescue
Making Fewer HTTP Requests is #1 rule for improving performance for Web Applications according to...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/17/2007
How To: Create a “Hello World” WCF Service Using Visual Studio And IIS 6.0
JD Meier walks through the creation of simple WCF services to be hosted in IIS 6.0. Summary of Steps...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/16/2007
IIS 7 Great Finds - How To Setup IIS7 On Vista, Bulk Web Site Creation, ASP.NET Pipeline Integration With IIS7
I started to get used to new version of IIS7 without installing early builds of Windows Server 2008...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/06/2007
AJAX Security - Client Side Validation Is For Usability Only, Not For Security
“As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 10/03/2007
Mark Curphey Joins MS ACE Team
What a win for MS! Curphey and SourceClear Turn Blue!.
Author: Alik Levin Date: 09/18/2007
Authentication And Identity Flow When ASP Page Consumes ASP.NET Web Service
"Classic" ASP has application isolation that is different from ASP.NET. Here is one of the real...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 09/05/2007
Memi Is Blogging On Architecture And More...
Memi, my comrade, finally decided to share his architecture insights via his new and shiny blog....
Author: Alik Levin Date: 09/03/2007
TechEd 2007 Barcelona- I Will Be Giving Web Security Session
This session discusses common coding anti-patterns which usually lead to security vulnerabilities....
Author: Alik Levin Date: 09/02/2007
patterns & practices Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications - Final Cut
Final release - patterns & practices Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications. It is...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 08/29/2007
Why I Blog - Looking Back
In Why I Blog post I set my blogging goals, now it is time to review where I am standing: Journaling...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 08/16/2007
Improve ASP.NET Performance By Disabling ViewState And Setting Session As ReadOnly
During recent engagement we tried to improve performance of some web page. Original response time...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 08/16/2007
Use Performance Counters Templates To Streamline Performance Analysis
I create perf counters sets up front. That way I could start collecting and measuring proper metrics...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 08/15/2007
Web Services Over SSL - Is It Really That Slow Like They Say?
My answer is "no". I am working on solution where there is no Windows Active Directory Domain so we...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 08/01/2007
Man-In-The-Middle-Attack: Protecting Http Traffic With SSL Might Be Not Enough - Consider Protecting SQL Traffic Too
Think configuring SSL for your web site is enough to protect against prying eyes? Here is how the...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 07/30/2007
WCF Security In Intranet Scenario : Thoughts On Cons and Pros
I am researching on best practices with WCF security in terms of "YOU SHOUD" vs "YOU CAN". While it...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 07/26/2007
How To Stay Up-To-Date: 15 Minutes, 150 Posts Scanned, 3 Gems Found
I set some time box to scan blogosphere to get updated on what is going on. Here is my technique to...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 07/23/2007
Use Sysinternals DebugView To Diagnose The Application
"Unspecified error", "Catastrophic failure", "Object reference not set to an instance of an object"...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 07/16/2007
Ubuntu And Apache Web Server Join My Lab Network
I have my lab network, my playground Active Directory Domain( more on it here - How I Setup Lab...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 07/09/2007
Typed DataSet - Potential Performance And Security Risk
Are you using Typed DataSet as DTO (data transfer object)? Are you building distributed systems...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 07/06/2007
T-Shooting Kerberos
I was delivering "Authentication Explained" session for Security User Group. First off - thanks for...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 07/04/2007
Performance Testing Objectives Document Template
Concise performance testing objectives document helps me staying focused, save time by creating...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 06/20/2007
Serviceability - Human Factor
There is a lot of buzz around overloaded "service" word - SOA, SaaS, Web Services, and more. There...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 06/06/2007
Visual Studio 2005 As General Code Search Tool
Visual Studio 2005 has powerful search capabilities. One of my favorites is "Find in Files". Just...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 06/05/2007
Security Educational Workshop - Authentication Explained
I just finished building another security workshop that covers authentication and identity...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/31/2007
SOA, Strong Authentication, Standard Authorization - Cool Solution
reposted from here I've previously blogged about SOA Security Inside Enterprise walls This time I...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/30/2007
How I Setup Lab Domain Using VPC 2007
To quickly set lab environment I use VPC 2007 (free download). It really saves me lots of time. For...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/29/2007
Object Oriented File Management
This post is about manual file management. I came across How To Research Efficiently and I decided...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/28/2007
Creating a Parameterized Query In Visual Studio
Creating parameterized queries is one of the major countermeasures to SQL Injection attacks (not the...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/28/2007
patterns&practices Releases Beta 1 Of VS TFS Guide To Codeplex
Go straight to the web site here - https://www.codeplex.com/TFSGuide and Download the Team...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/23/2007
Threat Model Your Strategic Planning
I am not marketing guy, nor strategic one – I really do not know why I started to read this post -...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/23/2007
Generate Documents Out Of Mail Items Directly From Outlook 2007
Information is all over – emails, blogs, notes, posts. While I consolidate incoming information in...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/21/2007
Blogging And Content Reuse
In my next post I will show how I generate documents out of the content aggregated from RSS feeds...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/19/2007
AOP, Pipelines, Interceptors, and HttpModlues
My favorite design patterns is Provider design pattern (abstract factory – GoF definition). I like...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/18/2007
Back Up, Back Up, Back Up
I learned that shi[f]t happens (adopted from here) - I changed several computers and few hard drives...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/15/2007
VSTS Guidance Resources On Codeplex
patterns&practices VSTS Guidance https://www.codeplex.com/VSTSGuidance Guidance Index Index...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/14/2007
How to Use Outlook 2007 RSS To Effectively Aggregate And Distill Information
I used couple of RSS readers but lately I switched to my Outlook 2007 to meet WEB 2.0 era. Here is...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/13/2007
ARCast With Ron Jacobs - Defending the Application
Eliaz Tobias from our DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) group was hosting Ron Jacobs lately...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/12/2007
Recurring Security Engineering Anti-Patterns I Witness
I witness pretty often the following antipatterns for security engineering: Initial architecture...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/10/2007
Late Threat Modeling
I always suggest conducting Threat Modeling even in advanced dev cycle stages, although it might...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/09/2007
Why I Blog
I blog for the following reasons Journaling I journal what I do. It is about simple reuse. Kind of...
Author: Alik Levin Date: 05/08/2007