This class teaches .NET for the insurance industry, in particular how to implement ACORD XML in .NET. It crams an awful lot of stuff into a single week. I compress the framework into a single day, as I do for my Web programming class, and use the extra time for ACORD XML. This class requires more tailoring than the others, so call me at 978-356-6377 and we'll talk about it.

Day 1

Morning:   .NET Framework architecture overview.      MSIL and JIT compilations. Assemblies and versioning, Inheritance and constructors.

Afternoon:  .NET Framework architecture overview, continued     Garbage collection. Structured exception handling.  Interoperation with COM and COM+. Code access security

Day 2

    Morning: ASP.NET Web Forms architecture. Generating and publishing an ASP.NET project in Visual Studio, separation of code from presentation. Examination of Page class. Control-based programming of .ASPX pages. Overview of the page rendering process. Considerations in porting existing ASP code.

    Afternoon: Configuration, Security, and Robustness.      Management and configuration of ASP.NET through XML-based configuration files.  Security of ASP.NET applications. Use of Windows authentication, forms-based authentication, and Passport-based authentication. State management in ASP.NET, setting and reading user cookies. Management of processes in ASP.NET, automatic recycling of processes, limits on resources.

Day 3

    Morning: Basic Web Services     Need for programs (as opposed to humans) to interact over the Web. Need for universal Web-based function calls. Using XML and HTTP as a common denominator. Concept of a Web Service, a .NET object automatically made accessible to client through standard Web protocols. Generating a Web service project, inheriting the system-provided Web Service base class. Connection of incoming protocols to Web Service methods, examination of HTTP GET, HTTP POST, and SOAP. Advertising of the server-side contract in the WSDL file. Writing client applications in each supported protocol. Visual Studio enhancements for Web Services.

    Afternoon: ADO.NET    Distribution of data on the Internet, need for accessing stored in many different formats and residing in many different locations. Need for standardizing access to all data sources regardless of store format or location, and for loose coupling between client and server. Architecture of ADO.NET as a solution to these problems, providing standard interfaces for all data providers regardless of internal structure, similar to OLE DB.   Connection, DataAdapter, and DataSet objects. Simple example using ADO.NET to display results of a query on a Web page using DataGrid control.  More complex example using disconnected DataSet for loosely-coupled editing operations. Requirement of optimistic locking for using database in this manner.  Use of transactions in ADO.NET. Generating and using strongly-typed datasets for easier programming.

Day 4

    Morning: XML     Use of XML as universal wire format for data. Support for XML in .NET. Reading and writing XML documents via XmlDocument class, using XmlReader and XmlWriter for optimizing reading writing operations. Navigating among nodes, modifying their contents. Validating XML documents with a schema.  Transforming documents using XslTransform class. Serializing objects into XML for transfer across wire. Using strongly-typed wrapper classes for access to XML data.

    Afternoon: ACORD XML for Life or P&C Insurance Industry   Examination of ACORD XML standard for your portion of the insurance industry. Background and history of the standard. Demonstration of where to find current specs, developer notes and schemas. Examination of the current DTD and schema. Discussion of element hierarchy and references of elements to each other, with emphasis on required elements.  Explanation of fixed value code lists. Step-by-step walkthrough of agency scenario demonstrating use of objects within the insurance data model. One size never fits all: examination of the various ways of extending the data model.

Day 5

    Morning: Implementation of ACORD Standard in .NET Generating a wrapper class from the schema. Splitting up existing schema into subclasses. Adding useful constructors to the wrapper class. Using document templates. Performance drag of the large wrapper class, methods for dealing with it.

    Afternoon: Plug-and Play Compatibility  Design goals of plug-and-play. Obstacles to plug-and-play. Strategies for determining data transmission requirements -- server push, client pull, third party. Authentication and authorization alternatives. Demonstration of rudimentary self-configuring plug-and-play application from an agency scenario.