Architecture

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Anil John — Mon, 09 May 2005 18:03:00 GMT

This blog is moving!

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Presentation on Instrumenting .NET Code & Defense-in-Depth

Anil John — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:08:00 GMT

I just got back from the CMAP .NET User Group meeting during which I did 2 short presentations. At CMAP's December meetings we have a "10 Tips & Tricks for the Holidays" presentation format in which members do short 10-15 minute presentations on various topics. This year's topics ranged from my stuff to a demo of how to use client side script in ASP.NET. My topics were "Instrumenting .NET Code with Log4Net" and "Applying Defense-in-Depth to protecting admin sections of web sites".

During the instrumenting & logging presentation I mentioned that K. Scott Allen has a great write-up on Diagnostics and Logging in ASP.NET and that people should check it out to get a background on the "Why?" regarding instrumenting applications. Then I went into a short description of what Log4Net brought to the table and compared it to the PAG's Exception Management Block and the Logging Block. In addition, I also had an earlier blog entry about incorporating logging into a web application.

My Defense-in-Depth short presentation was an expansion of an earlier blog entry that I had made on this topic.

Web services Contract-First Design & Development

Anil John — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 21:51:00 GMT

Lot's of buzz around it, and I am going to add to this, as this is very important to me in the InterOp space.

Christian Weyer and crew have released the latest version of thinktecture's free Contract-First VS.NET Add-in. Pure goodness! Check it and take the walk-through!

Interop, Interop, Interop.....

Anil John — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:51:00 GMT

Now this shows maturity in the industry!

Microsoft has invited Sun, IBM, BEA and the Open Source folks to talk about what it would take to make all of the various vendor technologies work together in the customer environment. It would appear that a majority of them, with the notable exception of IBM and the Open Source guys, have accepted!

They are going to kick off a series of about 40 webcasts in January. Find out more about it and pre-register.

Very, Very Cool!

Messaging Patterns in Service Oriented Architecture, Part 2

Anil John — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:42:00 GMT

Part 2 of this series is out. Delve into the contract patterns that illustrate the behavioral specifications required to maintain smooth communications between service provider and service consumer.

Part 1 of the series can be found here.

Patterns and Practices Summit 2004 Report

Anil John — Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:08:00 GMT

I was fortunate enough to spend the last three days at the Patterns & Practices Summit which was held at the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, VA.

In a word, Awesome!

We had a great lineup of speakers such as:

Jim Newkirk (Father of NUnit) on Test Driven Development
Ron Jacobs (Shadowfax Guy) on Patterns for SOA
Chris Kinsman on Designing for Security and Perf and Scalability
Fernando Guerrero on Data Access
Ted Neward on Platform Interoperability and Instrumenting Applications
Billy Hollis on Smart Client Architecture
Rocky Lhotka on the Middle Tier
Tom Hollander on the upcoming Enterprise Library
Keith Pleas on putting it all together.
and more...

On top of all of those there were also various keynotes, the most memorable of which was by Sandy Khaund on where the PAG is going. I would also be remiss if I did not mention that the man who helped to coordinate this from the local side was none other than our own Developer Community Champion, Geoff Snowman. Excellent job all around.

Beyond the pure technical knowledge that was imparted, it was also a chance to connect in person with people who I had, in some cases, "met" only online. The other great thing was the ability to leverage their knowledge. Chris Kinsman helped me solve a configuration issue that I had been having with Log4Net and Jim Newkirk was a great source of information on some things I am currently looking at regarding Unit Testing, Daily Builds and more. Tom Hollander as ever was patient in taking some of the "feedback" I have regarding some of the deployment scenarios for the Enterprise Library :-)

All in all, a great, great event and I have to give big kudos to both Sandy and Keith for putting this together!

EDRA/Shadowfax Architecture Seminar: Washington, DC, Wednesday, September 15th

Anil John — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 18:24:00 GMT

The Enterprise Development Reference Architecture is our reference architecture for creating a service-oriented architecture. Previously codenamed Shadowfax, it provides code and documentation on Microsoft’s recommendations for the architecture of enterprise-ready systems. This is Microsoft's most complete guidance to date on what a service-oriented architecture should really look like.

You can get more information online here.

This particular piece of architectural guidance is a very big deal for us; we really believe that it defines the future of application development. It’s the culmination of the work Pat Helland has been doing for the last couple of years. Pat is one of Microsoft’s “big thinkers” on architecture. Among other things, he created the architecture for Microsoft Transaction Server, laying out most of the concepts of a modern application server for the first time. Recently, he’s been focused on the concept of message passing as a basis for building heterogeneous systems.

Locally, we have a seminar next week that will cover many of these concepts. It’s being presented by one of our local regional directors, Vishwas Lele of AIS, and the title is Understanding Service-Oriented Architecture. It will start with an overview of the SOA concept, and then drill down in detail into the Shadowfax architecture.

This seminar will be in the DC Office on Wednesday, September 15th, at 9:00 AM. Registration is here.

[.NET Banana]

I do SO wish that I could go to this one, especially because of the topic in question as well as the presenter. Vishwas Lele, who is one of our local RDs, was one of my fellow presenters at DevDays 2004 and did a great job. I am sure he will do a bang up job here as well. Unfortunately I have a prior commitment :-(

Data on the Outside vs. Data on the Inside - An Examination of the Impact of SOA on Data

Anil John — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 19:21:00 GMT

New article by Pat Helland explores Service Oriented Architecture, and the differences between data inside and data outside the service boundary. Additionally, he examines the strengths and weaknesses of objects, SQL, and XML as different representations of data, and compares and contrasts these models.

Architecture Webcasts for week of July 12

Anil John — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 10:57:00 GMT

Interoperability and Integration using Web Services - An Industry Perspective - Level 200
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=31082
July 12, 2004, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Simon Guest, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Are you writing applications using IBM WebSphere or BEA WebLogic? Are you wondering if and how you can interoperate with Microsoft® .NET using Web services? In this webcast, Simon Guest will summarize his previous webcast with an overview of some of the best practices, recommendations and strategies for achieving interoperability using Web Services. In addition, Simon will be joined by three industry architects - John Evdemon, Drew Gude and Mauro Regio - to discuss how Web services interoperability is becoming a reality in the public sector, manufacturing and healthcare verticals.

Application Decomposition for SOA Based Systems - Level 300
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=31084
July 13, 2004, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Paddy Srinivasan, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

This webcast will deal with the concept of decomposing applications to enable architecting better service oriented applications. Integrating software applications is the new mantra of the Web services world but in order to achieve this, business services and boundaries should be clearly identified and broken down into autonomous entities. Decomposition of applications based on business logic is critical in maximizing the benefits of a service orientation. This webcast will use a supply chain system as the example for illustrating the concept. It will also look into some of the design patterns and Microsoft technologies that are applicable.

patterns & practices Live: Test Driven Development - Level 200
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=31155
July 15, 2004, 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Pacific Time
Jim Newkirk, Development Lead, Microsoft Corporation

In Kent Beck's book titled Test-Driven Development, by Example he defines Test-Driven Development (TDD) as driving software development with automated tests. He goes further by stating that TDD is governed by two simple rules: write new code only if an automated test has failed and eliminate duplication. The implications of these two simple rules can be a profound change to the way that software is written. Most of the literature to date has bundled TDD along with Extreme Programming (XP). However, the benefits of using TDD are not limited to XP, and can be realized in any programming methodology. This webcast will provide an introduction into TDD, demonstrating how it works and what benefits it provides when used with Microsoft® .NET. The examples shown will use Visual C#® and NUnit.

Integration Patterns from the PAG

Anil John — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 22:41:00 GMT

Building on the application patterns presented in Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET, this guide applies patterns to solve integration problems within the enterprise.

The design concepts in this guide include implementations on the Microsoft platform that use BizTalk Server 2004, Host Integration Server 2004, ASP.NET, Visual Studio, Visio 2003 and the .NET Framework.

The scenario is an online bill payment application in the banking industry. To meet the needs of this scenario, the team used a pattern-based approach to build and validate a baseline architecture. Because a well-designed architecture must be traceable to the needs of the business, the guide also includes a set of artifacts that trace from high-level business processes down to code.

Online @
Integration Patterns

Should be available for download as PDF soon.

UPDATE: PDF is now available