Architects Rule! : Interop

Interop: from Java/RMI over SOAP to WS-* demo on Open Source !!

pdestoop — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:43:00 GMT

Interesting message from Robert Wahbe, MS Corporate VP Connected Systems Division:

"A decade ago, Microsoft competed in a world in which promises of interoperability were tightly associated with Java and J2EE middleware products such as IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic. Last week at TechEd, Bob Muglia conclusively demonstrated how much Microsoft’s ten-year investment in XML and Web Services changed the terms of that competition.

Given this key milestone I thought it was appropriate to take a moment to recognize these accomplishments, put this all into a context that we sometimes forget, and thank the people involved who put in enormous effort to advantage our platform.

Rather than just follow Java, we set out in 1997 to create a better and more open interoperability technology. Specifically, we defined two goals to be achieved in two stages: First, move the industry off Java as the default interoperability mechanism and move it onto open, platform-neutral, standard protocols. Second, get a critical mass of vendors and standards orgs to agree on a new middleware protocol architecture based on those protocols and compatible with Microsoft’s product direction.

The first stage created XML and SOAP. XML is a completely extensible, open, transparent, vendor-neutral text syntax while SOAP is an XML-based, extensible message format and the basis of XML Web Services. We demonstrated that Microsoft could work productively with other vendors to drive interoperability through technology-motivated, open standards, in contrast to proprietary technologies such as Java RMI. Perhaps as importantly, XML Web Services drove a technological advance into interoperability by replacing DCOM’s and Java’s Remote Procedure Call assumptions with an explicitly message-based approach. We achieved our first milestone in 2003, when the SOAP protocol became a W3C recommendation. In the years since, SOAP has grown in usage to become a basic interoperability protocol across the industry. The message-based orientation we drove is also at the core of the REST approach, yielding a compatible path from REST for simple, ad hoc message exchanges to SOAP and Web Services for extensibility and advanced features in a standard way.

But interoperability needed to go beyond basic message exchange to appeal to IT managers and provide an open-protocol alternative to J2EE. Interoperability protocols needed sophisticated security, addressing, transaction and reliable massaging protocol components. So Microsoft began the second stage, working with an expanded cast of industry vendors, and created the WS-STAR (WS Secure, Transacted, Addressed, Reliable) protocol and associated metadata architecture. These simultaneously reflected the best collaborative practices of the Web Services Standards and Partners team and the best engineering knowledge of the WCF team – meaning that the protocols and our implementation are very compatible. We achieved our second milestone this year, when the WS-STAR protocols became official recommendations of the W3C and OASIS standards organizations and multiple middleware vendors (IBM, Oracle and SAP) announced plans to support these standards in their products.

While tenured vendors such as IBM, SAP and Oracle will often demonstrate interoperability with us, because we compete with them, there is always a certain amount of ambivalence and mixed messaging in these demonstrations. Consequently we’ve been looking for a way we irrefutably prove to customers and vendors that WS-STAR is complete and viable. So we thought what could be a more direct demonstration of the breadth of acceptance of the WS-STAR protocols than to also have the leading open-source middleware project embrace them? And what if we made all of this available to customers in the form of a reference application that could be used by customers to clear away any FUD on WS-STAR from our competitors?

This is exactly what Bob Muglia demonstrated in his keynote speech at TechEd: The Apache Axis2 open source application platform now has a complete WS-STAR implementation and it is fully interoperable with WCF.

Greg Leake did an incredible job both in building the demo app and in showing it off. Watch the video here.

While much remains to be done to secure and build on the XML, SOAP and WS-STAR, proving that these protocols and this architecture works in field use by real vendors and then by real customers, and helping the industry to operate at the semantic level made possible by these protocols, we have now demonstrated completion of both ten-year milestones and constructed the base on which we and the industry will build future connected systems. It is a remarkable accomplishment.

Tags van Technorati: Interop

Guidance and sample for secure, scalable, available and interoperable WebServices using .NET platform...Oslo approaching

pdestoop — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:26:00 GMT

StockTrader 2.0 and Configuration Service 2.0 now live on MSDN!

.NET StockTrader 2.0 and Configuration Services 2.0 Home Page

Executive Summary

Last May, we released the .NET StockTrader 1.0 as guidance for building service-oriented, enterprise-ready applications using .NET. We’ve just updated it with new features to show expanded capabilities of what you can do with .NET in the enterprise built upon the recently released Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. This latest release provides guidance for developers and IT Pros on how to easily build services with .NET 3.5 and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), provides scale out virtualization of services across clustered nodes, centralized configuration management of distributed composite applications, and provides these capabilities via easily re-usable shared libraries (~2 lines of code needed for developers to implement).

What's in the box?

· .NET StockTrader 2.0 is a Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 implementation of IBM’s primary benchmark application and capacity planning tool for WebSphere 6.1, called Trade 6.1. The .NET StockTrader is a service-oriented, composite application built using .NET Windows Communication Foundation and C#, and is developed entirely in .NET. It operates against both SQL Server and Oracle 11G databases, and precisely mirrors the IBM Java Enterprise implementation, providing functional and behavioral equivalence for all configurations tested (transaction integrity, distributed transaction calls, database queries, Web services XML formats, operational flow, and user-presented HTML pages and data structures). Hence, it represents an excellent opportunity to investigate and compare the relative performance of .NET Framework and IBM WebSphere for an application server workload that typifies many corporate and Internet-based applications.

· The application implements Advanced Web Service security with message-level security, and provides a step-by-step tutorial for reconfiguring middle tier services to support both custom username and custom certificate client credentials. It also incorporates interoperability over the Advanced Web Service (WS-*) protocols, interoperating with an Order Processing service alternately hosted in Java or PHP, based on open-source products from WSO2 and Apache Axis2/C.

· The download kit also includes a new Capacity Planner tool, which is a multi-agent benchmarking tool created in .NET and WCF (source code provided) such that customers can easily test performance of both the Trade workload and the WSTest Web Services workload (WSTest is a Web Services benchmark created by Sun Microsystems; and both .NET/WCF and Java/WebSphere implementations are included in the kit). The tool can be used to compare .NET performance directly to IBM WebSphere performance, as well as to other java-based application server products.

· Configuration Service 2.0 provides a reusable set of code libraries that can be leveraged as part of your SOA projects to develop new composite applications that mix/match services across both .NET and Java. You can take advantage of the Configuration Service with your existing services and apps, enabling them to easily scale out by automatically detecting when you’ve added new computing nodes to the network and take advantage of scaling out with greater power (without requiring complex setup or configuration – it auto-detects that more resources are available for use). The Configuration Service also allows you to setup and manage application-specific configuration data, and change this data without having to worry about physically re-deploying configuration files or restarting host processes across clustered nodes. It is designed to make composite applications more resilient to failure, since service client requests automatically get redirected access to new nodes in a service domain.

This release of guidance is an important effort in helping customers develop service-oriented, composite applications that can scale to meet the most demanding needs of the enterprise. Also, this guidance includes some early investigations of work that could help shape future server product investments being made by CSD as part of our Oslo product roadmap. We’re releasing some early guidance to collect feedback and ideas that will be driven back into the product teams to shape future product direction.

Key Messages

.NET is a proven foundation for mission critical applications- StockTrader and Configuration Service 2.0 demonstrate how Windows and .NET deliver impressive performance, scalability and security relative to other options in the market.
Complete, seamless connections between front and back-end technologies - One of the key benefits of .NET is the breadth of options and features for developers and IT Pros utilizing the same tools and software. On the front end, WPF, ASP.NET and Silverlight provide rich user experiences that are able to work in concert with the robust and scalable services and workflow infrastructure provided by WCF, WF and other components of the .NET Framework.
Simplified Interoperability - We know your infrastructure is a mixed environment. With the .NET Framework, these technologies can ‘just work’ together in a dynamic environment with little up-front investment or new development.
Simplified management - The .NET Framework only continues to get more capable for building scalable applications, as demonstrated by the recent release of .NET 3.5 and Windows Server 2008. We’re making deep engineering investments to continue to help reduce the time it takes to perform basic development and management tasks, helping IT pros and professional developers make their application infrastructures more dynamic and flexible. This means that you can focus on adding more features and functionality to your applications spending less time writing lines and lines of code and debugging.

Press Coverage

SD Times - From the Editors: Microsoft could democratize SOA

By Alan Zeichick

May 15, 2008

http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32145

SD Times - Microsoft opens 'Oslo' skunk works

By David Worthington

April 29, 2008

http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32106

InformationWeek - Microsoft continues its work on Oslo, SOA for Windows

By Charlie Babcock

April 24, 2008

http://www.informationweek.com/TechSearch/Search.jhtml?site_id=InformationWeek&personality=category&queryText=Burley+Kawasaki&search=Go

ZDNet - Microsoft’s Oslo connections begin to bud

By Joe McKendrick

April 29th, 2008

http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=1098

Redmond Magazine - Microsoft To Release SOA Tool Paving the Path to Oslo

By Jeffrey Schwartz

April 22, 2008

(Reposted in ENT News, Redmond Developer News and Redmond Channel Partner)

http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=9793

Blogs:

Windows Network - http://windows_network.windowsboot.com/2008/04/30/microsoft-opens-oslo-skunk-works/

Bad Boys Computer Weblog - http://badboyscomputers.wordpress.com/2008/04/30/web-services-2/

WinBeta - http://www.winbeta.org/comments.php?shownews=15604

IT Business Edge - http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/mia/?p=366

Call to Action

download the integrated setup program which installs both the StockTrader 2.0 and Configuration Services 2.0 code, plus full documentation, as well as a complete step-by-step tutorial for getting started.
Tune into Greg Leake’s blog to learn more about the newest developments as additional updates are released, and visit the online forum to provide feedback.

Q&A

Q. What is the .NET StockTrader application?

The .NET StockTrader is an end-to-end sample application for .NET Enterprise Application Server technologies. It is a distributed service-oriented application based on the .NET Framework, and illustrates many of the .NET enterprise development technologies for building highly scalable, rich "enterprise-connected" applications. It is also designed as a benchmark kit to illustrate alternative tuning options within .NET and their relative performance.

Q. What is the .NET StockTrader 2.0 and how is it different from previous versions?

The .NET StockTrader 2.0 is the latest version, updated on Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. The application also has updated Configuration Services as well as better clustering/failover, WAS hosting of TCP-based services, and server monitoring.

Q. What are the Configuration Services and how does this help customers?

Configuration Service 2.0 allows developers to more easily build applications that are easier to deploy, manage and scale in distributed environments, helping IT pros and professional developers make their application infrastructures more dynamic and flexible. This means that you can focus on adding more features and functionality to your applications spending less time writing lines and lines of code and debugging. Configuration Service 2.0 provides a reusable set of code libraries that can be leveraged as part of your SOA projects to develop new composite applications that mix/match services across both .NET and Java. You can take advantage of the Configuration Service with your existing services and apps, enabling them to easily scale out by automatically detecting when you’ve added new computing nodes to the network and take advantage of scaling out with greater power (without requiring complex setup or configuration – it auto-detects that more resources are available for use). The Configuration Service also allows you to setup and manage application-specific configuration data, and change this data without having to worry about physically re-deploying configuration files or restarting host processes across clustered nodes. It is designed to make composite applications more resilient to failure, since service client requests automatically get redirected access to new nodes in a service domain.

Q. Do you have customers who are implementing these new applications?

The .NET StockTrader 2.0 is currently a sample application and targeted for developers to test for themselves at, http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/bb499684.aspx, and do not have current details on shipping it as a complete product.

Q. When will you be releasing these sample applications as full complete products in the future?

This guidance includes some early investigations of work that could help shape future server product investments being made by CSD as part of our Oslo product roadmap. We’re releasing some early guidance releases to collect feedback and ideas that will be driven back into the product teams to shape future product direction.

Q. Why are you investing so much in the .NET StockTrader? Isn’t it just a sample app?

The .NET Framework only continues to get more capable for building scalable applications, as demonstrated by the recent release of .NET Framework 3.5 and Windows Server 2008. We’re making deep engineering investments to continue to help reduce the time it takes to perform basic development and management tasks, helping IT pros and professional developers make their application infrastructures more dynamic and flexible. This means that you can focus on adding more features and functionality to your applications spending less time writing lines and lines of code and debugging. The .NET StockTrader is a great proof point in this since it leverages the new features in the current .NET Framework platform.

Q. What benchmarks did you publish in February (2008)?

We published two new application server benchmark tests on MSDN, based on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with .NET Framework 3.5. Tests show faster throughput compared to IBM WebSphere 6.1 on Red Hat Linux, specifically with scalability and performance in mission-critical enterprise scenarios. StockTrader 2.0 shows 117% better throughput of Windows Server using the IBM-designed Trade 6.1 benchmark; and Sun Microsystems’ WSTest web services benchmark demonstrates 94% better throughput on Windows Server on processing Web Service requests. More information and results can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader.

Q. Aren’t these benchmarks driven by Microsoft? How are we sure that the benchmarks was tested fairly since this is vendor driven?

The benchmarks were created by IBM and Sun Microsystems, respectively, and publicly published by these vendors for benchmarking analysis. IBM developed, tested and published the Trade 6.1 Java implementation. Furthermore, the benchmarks include full disclosure of all source code for .NET (and Java for WSTest 1.5 as well as all precise tuning details and test script flow. We encourage customers to download the benchmark kits themselves to perform their own testing and comparative analysis. The applications also offer excellent guidelines, for both platforms, on building high performance server-based applications. Everything customers need (or other vendors) to replicate and verify the results by performing their own analysis on equipment of their choosing is included.

Q. What benchmark tests did you use?

The paper presents the benchmark results of two key application server workloads and two key benchmarks used in the industry:

Trade 6.1 Application Server Benchmark created by IBM. This benchmark serves as IBM’s primary capacity planning tool for WebSphere, and as their primary performance sample application for Java Enterprise applications. The workload is based on an end-to-end transaction-oriented application for a stock-trading business scenario. The benchmarks detail throughput results for the IBM implementation vs. the functionally equivalent of the .NET Framework 3.5 implementation.

WSTest Web Services 1.5 Benchmark, created by Sun Microsystems. This benchmark tests an application server’s performance as a Web Service Host, measuring the platforms ability to process Web Service operations involving HTTP/SOAP requests, isolating the networking stack, Web server integration, and XML serialization engines within the application server. More info can be found at, http://msdn.microsoft.com/wstest.

Q. What were the results with the Trade 6.1 Benchmark?

Specifically with scalability and performance in mission-critical enterprise scenarios, the .NET Framework 3.5 and Windows Server 2008 shows up to 117% better throughput than IBM WebSphere 6.1/Red Hat Linux. Other tested configurations show similar results, for example message-based order processing via transactional messaging queuing shows the .NET Framework 3.5 and Windows Server 2008 outperforming WebSphere 6.1/Red Hat Linux by 72% in terms of transactions per second. Additionally, the remote service layer tests show Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 with 93% better performance under peak concurrent user loads.

Q. What were the results with the WSTest?

Windows Server 2008 with the .NET Framework 3.5 significantly outperforms IBM WebSphere 6.1 running on Red Hat Linux Advanced Platform 5, by up to 94% (in terms of Web Service requests process per second).

Q. Since both benchmarks implement Web Services, is there interoperability between the .NET and WebSphere/Java implementations?

Yes, the .NET StockTrader Windows Communication Foundation services can seamlessly invoke the middle tier Java/WebSphere services, as well as the Java Server Pages application can seamlessly invoke and use the backend .NET services, with no code changes to either published application. The front end .NET StockTrader ASP.NET Web application can be mixed and matched with either the .NET middle tier, or the Java/WebSphere middle tier, and the Trade 6.1 front-end JSP application can seamlessly work with either the WebSphere/EJB middle tier, or the .NET middle tier. The .NET StockTrader download on MSDN also includes a Windows Presentation Foundation smart client that can seamlessly work with either .NET or WebSphere middle tier services.

Likewise, the WSTest benchmark can be driven by either Java clients or .NET clients based on Windows Communication Foundation, since both platforms support the latest industry standard Web Services specifications. Both benchmarks highlight seamless interoperability between middle tier services, and between front-end to middle tier interactions in mixed .NET/Java environments.

Contacts/Resources

· Application Platform Field Portal - http://AppPlat

· Microsoft’s SOA Home Page – http://www.microsoft.com/soa

· Microsoft’s BPM Home Page – http://www.microsoft.com/bpm

· Microsoft’s .NET Framework Home Page - http://www.microsoft.com/net/

· Microsoft’s Windows Server Home Page - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/default.aspx

Microsoft’s Case Study Home Page – http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies

Microsoft and interop? Microsoft Office 2007 will support ODF!

pdestoop — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:41:00 GMT

Microsoft Corp. is offering customers greater choice and more flexibility among document formats, as well as creating additional opportunities for developer and competitors, by expanding the range of document formats supported in its flagship Office productivity suite.

The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel and Office PowerPoint. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-21ExpandedFormatsPR.mspx

The Next Step in Openness and Interoperability

pdestoop — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:22:00 GMT

This morning, Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia, Brad Smith and Steve Ballmer are announcing important changes to our technology and business practices that will enhance the interoperability of our products and expand the technical information we share with developers, partners, customers, and competitors.

The changes we’re announcing today are outlined in four interoperability principles that apply to our high-volume business products – Windows Vista (and the .NET Framework), Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint Server 2007 – and future versions of these products. The four principles are:

1) Ensuring open connections

2) Data portability

3) Enhanced support for industry standards

4) Open engagement with the industry.

Starting today, we will begin implementing these principles in our product development and documentation process, and in our industry and community outreach. For example, we will begin making more of the application programming interfaces (APIs) and protocols in these products available on our Web site and accessible to developers without requiring a license or fee. We will also expand the functionality of Office 2007 – enabling developers and users to take advantage of additional document formats.

In addition, we are launching an Open Source Interoperability Initiative and we are creating an online Interoperability Forum to foster dialogue with customers, developers, and the open source community.

You can read more about these principles and the steps we’ll take to implement them at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/interoperability/default.mspx

Today’s announcement reflects both the increasing customer requirement for interoperability and the changed legal landscape of the IT industry. We firmly believe that, subject to the review of the European Commission, these steps bring us into compliance with the interoperability portions of the September 2007 judgment of the European Court of First Instance. And as always, we are firmly committed to fulfilling our legal responsibilities everywhere we do business throughout the world.

While these changes will create additional work for some development groups, they will also open the door to new opportunities for Microsoft. Just as our early success with developers and partners was driven by the openness and flexibility of our platform, our ongoing commitment to interoperability will help expand the ecosystem of partners and developers who use our technology to meet the needs of their customers. In the process, we will lay the foundation for long-term growth and success for our company.

Technorati Tags: interop

The BizTalk® Adapter Pack for the masses

pdestoop — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:43:00 GMT

The BizTalk® Adapter Pack provides a single solution to easily and securely connect to Line of Business (LOB) data from any custom-developed .NET application, SQL Server-based business intelligence solution, or an Office Business Application (OBA). The three adapters available in this release are Siebel, SAP and Oracle DB. For clarity for OBA's: the adapter pack works with the BDC to allow you to connect to LOB systems such as SAP, Siebel or straight to Oracle Databases!!!!

The BizTalk Adapter Pack will be generally available on March 1st. It will be sold for $5,000/processor.

Together with the BizTalk Adapter Pack MS also announced the: Office Developer Program. This program provides participants with access to code, support and direct access to the product team for bug fixes and change requests. By working with Office developers directly we will be validate additional Office/SharePoint scenarios.

Key Benefits

· Single infrastructure for connectivity. Whether connecting to LOB systems from custom-developed applications, SQL Server, or rich Office applications, customers can use a consistent approach to connectivity. This enables a simplified approach to interoperability that lowers total cost of ownership and reduces training requirements.

· Simple to learn. Built on top of the WCF programming model, the BizTalk® Adapter Pack is easy for .NET trained developer to begin using and building connected applications. The BizTalk Adapter Pack provides enhanced extensions to WCF that enable dynamic metadata discovery and generation – making it fast and easy to access data in corporate systems.

· Secure and reliable. The BizTalk Adapter Pack tightly integrates with the security models provided by the individual business applications, ensuring that users have access only to data which they are permitted to see.

· Improves real-time visibility to your business data. The BizTalk® Adapter Pack allows customers to access valuable corporate information when and where they can use it most productively, increasing visibility and enabling faster, better informed decision making.

Technorati Tags: OBA

Microsoft's effort around interoperability

pdestoop — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:10:00 GMT

Most enterprises today are wildly heterogeneous and therefore interoperability is a major concern for most enterprises today. To help its customers face those concerns Microsoft has been working on interoperability since years and the latest initiative concerning interoperability is called the "Microsoft Protocol Program". Learn more about the two major parts of that program: Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) and Work Group Server Protocol Program (WSPP) here.

Microsoft announced this week that Blue Lane Technologies was able to successfully observe, evaluate and process a wide variety of key Microsoft protocols such as SMB, SMB2, Kerberos Authentication and Content Indexing at Microsoft’s Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC) facilities. Microsoft’s EEC, established in 2002, hosted Blue Lane, and the companies jointly conducted a series of tests designed to help partners, internal business groups and customers interoperate with Microsoft protocols. “We are very pleased with the openness and cooperation of Microsoft in both inviting us into their labs and subjecting our solution to some of the most rigorous testing offered by any vendor for third-party solutions,” said Allwyn Sequeira, senior vice president at Blue Lane. “Microsoft has clearly demonstrated its strategic interest in improving server security and promoting interoperability with third-party solutions. They are to be commended for this effort, which sets an admirable example for others to follow.” Additional details can be found here.

Technorati Tags: Interop