Show Notes
Strategic Technology Consultation Services This episode of The Modern .NET Show is supported, in part, by RJJ Software's Strategic Technology Consultation Services. If you're an SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) leader wondering why your technology investments aren't delivering, or you're facing critical decisions about AI, modernization, or team productivity, let's talk. Show Notes "And we talk about that contract. We say, "this is your contract. This Open API definition that you have is the contract for your service." And in the end, that's how customers interact with Azure is through APIs. And so it's important to have that contract so that customers know how things work, how to use them, hopefully how to use them easily, right?"— Mike Kistler Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Modern .NET Show; the premier .NET podcast, focusing entirely on the knowledge, tools, and frameworks that all .NET developers should have in their toolbox. I'm your host Jamie Taylor, bringing you conversations with the brightest minds in the .NET ecosystem. Today, we're joined by Mike Kistler to talk about two topics (we usually only tackle one topic per episode, so you're getting a bonus with this episode): Open API and both MCP and the MCP SDK for C#. We started our conversation by focussing on Open API, as this is a passion of Mike's. We talked about what it is, how you've likely already been using it with any ASP .NET Core WebAPIs that you've worked on, and how the latest versions of ASP .NET Core can generate a lot of the Open API specification for you without having to add lots and lots of metadata an attributes. Pro tip: If you've been using the Swagger UI in your applications, you've been using Open API. "And when the LLM decides that it wants to use an MCP tool or access an MCP resource, it doesn't go and do that directly. It comes back to the MCP host and asks the MCP host to call a tool with a particular set of parameters, or to access an MCP resource. And at first, when I saw this in the MCP architecture, I thought, "boy, that's clunky. Why not have the LLM just call these things directly?" And there's a deliberate reason why it was done this way."— Mike Kistler We then pivoted over to talking about MCP (or Model Context Protocol) which is a rapidly evolving standard for creating your own agents and applications which can communicate with or be instructed by, LLMs. We talked about how the MCP standard works, and how the standard is written in such a way that there's always a human in the loop. We also talked about how you can build your own MCP servers using the MCP SDK for C#. It's worth pointing out that both MCP and Open API are evolving standards. While Open API tends to evolve with a much more relaxed pace, the MCP standard (having not even reached a year old when we recorded) uses the date as it's version number. And Mike actually references the latest version of the MCP spec in our conversation, which will give you a clue as to when we recorded it. Before we jump in, a quick reminder: if The Modern .NET Show has become part of your learning journey, please consider supporting us through Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee. Every contribution helps us continue bringing you these in-depth conversations with industry experts. You'll find all the links in the show notes. Anyway, without further ado, let's sit back, open up a terminal, type in `dotnet new podcast` and we'll dive into the core of Modern .NET. Full Show Notes The full show notes, including links to some of the things we discussed and a full transcription of this episode, can be found at: https://dotnetcore.show/season-8/building-the-future-of-apis-mike-kistlers-insights-on-openapi-and-mcp Useful Links: OpenAPI API Blueprint RAML ProducesResponseType attribute Minimal API TypedResults S07E16 - From Code to Cloud in 15 Minutes: Jason Taylor's Expert Insights And The Clean Architecture Template GitHub MCP Server MCP Transports MCP C# SDK Current version
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Show Notes Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Modern .NET Show; the premier .NET podcast, focusing entirely on the knowledge, tools, and frameworks that all .NET developers should have in their toolbox. I'm your host Jamie Taylor, bringing you conversations with the brightest minds in the .NET ecosystem. Today's episode is a little different from the norm. There's no guest; it's just me. And there's a date coming that I'd rather tell you about early than late. So let's sit back, open up a terminal, type in `dotnet new podcast` and we'll dive into the core of Modern .NET. Full Show Notes The full show notes, including links to some of the things we discussed and a full transcription of this episode, can be found at: https://dotnetcore.show/season-9/net-8-and-net-9-end-of-support-what-stops-and-what-does-not/ Useful Links: This series Bridging the Gap: Taking It Upstairs, every episode's business case on one page s09e01 - You Are Not Behind: Why You Are Still On .NET Framework, part 1 of Bridging the Gap s09e02 - You Might Not Need to Upgrade: The Case for Staying Put, part 2 of Bridging the Gap
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Strategic Technology Consultation Services This episode of The Modern .NET Show is supported, in part, by RJJ Software's Strategic Technology Consultation Services. If you're an SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) leader wondering why your technology investments aren't delivering, or you're facing critical decisions about AI, modernization, or team productivity, let's talk. Show Notes "In the agentic world that makes a lot of people really uncomfortable because what ends up happening is the agent has it, the agent has its own ID and then interacts with your data database."— Jerry Nixon Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Modern .NET Show; the premier .NET podcast, focusing entirely on the knowledge, tools, and frameworks that all .NET developers should have in their toolbox. I'm your host Jamie Taylor, bringing you conversations with the brightest minds in the .NET ecosystem. Today, Jerry Nixon returned to the show to talk about SQL MCP Server, something of a new product _and_ the evolution of Data API Builder; which we talked to Jerry about back in episode three of this season (there'll be a link in the show notes). Jerry does a much better job of introducing it than I can, but suffice it to say that SQL MCP Server is an MCP Server which abstracts away intracting with a SQL database... of almost any flavour. SQL Server, CosmosDB, Postgres, you name it. "I mean there is nothing better for any agent than saying "new session." That is how you like create better answers all the time. You might feel like you have this session, you've been training it so long and you've told it so much, it has so much context that now when you ask it, it'll finally have the answer that you're looking for."— Jerry Nixon Along the way, Jerry shared a lot of solid gold nuggets of advice about MCP servers, best practices for interacting with agents and models, and even context management. And, of course, we talk about how simple is almost always the best solution (and how SQL MCP Server might be one of the ways for you to achieve that). Before we jump in, a quick reminder: if The Modern .NET Show has become part of your learning journey, please consider supporting us through Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee. Every contribution helps us continue bringing you these in-depth conversations with industry experts. You'll find all the links in the show notes. So let's sit back, open up a terminal, type in `dotnet new podcast` and we'll dive into the core of Modern .NET. Full Show Notes The full show notes, including links to some of the things we discussed and a full transcription of this episode, can be found at: https://dotnetcore.show/season-8/giving-ai-agents-safe-access-to-your-data-sql-mcp-server-with-jerry-nixon/ Useful Links: Data API Builder & SQL MCP Serverdocumentation Data API Builder on GitHub Book time with Jerry to discuss SQL MCP an your projects Agentic Design Patterns by Antonia Gulli Supporting the show: Leave a rating or review Buy the show a coffee Become a patron Getting in Touch: Via the contact page Joining the Discord Remember to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Podchaser, or wherever you find your podcasts, this will help the show's audience grow. Or you can just share the show with a friend. And don't forget to reach out via our Contact page. We're very interested in your opinion of the show, so please get in touch. You can support the show by making a monthly donation on the show's Patreon page at: https://www.patreon.com/TheDotNetCorePodcast. Music created by Mono Memory Music, licensed to RJJ Software for use in The Modern .NET Show. Editing and post-production services for this episode were provided by MB Podcast Services.