Architects Rule! : SOA

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

Harvard Business positioning SOA in Business Terms

pdestoop — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:05:00 GMT

Ever wondered about how to position SOA in business terms?

Hereunder the intro of an Harvard Business Review article about this:

"If your company embraced the reengineering revolution and is now hitting a wall, look beyond business processes to the new frontier of efficiency: the activities that make up those processes. Advances in IT--especially a relatively recent one called service-oriented architecture--are making it possible to design and deploy business activities as Lego-like software components, which can help transform your business into a highly productive plug-and-play operation. SOA enables discrete activities to be accessed via the internet and to be easily updated, shared, bought, and sold--both within your organization and externally. Most companies have thought of SOA merely as an easier, less expensive way to maintain the software that supports existing operations. By failing to revisit their organizational designs before applying SOA, however, these businesses are missing an opportunity to replace proprietary processes and activities with standardized, fungible ones. That's the nuanced argument made by Merrifield, of Microsoft; Calhoun, of Accelare; and Stevens, of Synaptus. To guide you through the intricacies of revisiting your operations, they outline an approach called a business capabilities analysis. Their method involves diagramming your company's work activities, describing the capabilities that support them, valuing and assessing the performance of both, and creating a heat map that helps identify the priorities for an improvement program. The authors share real-world examples of companies that have reaped rewards from this self-analysis and subsequent SOA implementation. They also acknowledge the barriers to applying SOA, including the gulf between CEOs and their IT departments. The leaders who overcome such obstacles, say the authors, will pioneer the next great leap in corporate productivity."

Ever wondered about the process about how to determine which aspects of your business operations will best benefit from SOA technology ?

The same article suggests the following 5 step process:

1. Describe your operations in terms of desired outcomes.
Resist any temptation to describe your operations in terms of the work people do (“We send customers invoices requesting on-time payment”) or how they do it (“We check orders against our invoices”). This leads to a long list of operations that sound different but that all mean the same thing.
Instead, describe operations in terms of desired outcomes—such as “Collect customer payment.”
2. Identify the activities supporting your desired outcomes.
Example:
To support the desired outcome “Generate demand,” managers at a financial services firm listed three activities: “Manage partner relationships,” “Market services,” and “Sell services.”
3. Identify the capabilities supporting each of your activities.
Example:
At the financial services firm, capabilities for “Sell services” were: “Manage orders,” “Manage sales,” “Manage immediately filled sales,” “Configure service pricing,” “Manage contracts,” “Qualify prospects,” and “Conduct business intelligence.”
4. Identify activities most critical to your company’s success.
Your most critical activities are those that differentiate your firm from competitors, strongly influence whether customers buy from you and remain loyal, or drive a key performance measure (such as manufacturing cost, product quality, or time to market). Grade current performance on each critical activity’s supporting capabilities.
5. Design a more efficient operating model.
Identify activities that lend themselves to a plug-and-play approach. For example, analyze whether seemingly similar activities in different areas really are the same (in which case they could be automated for use by multiple areas. Place each activity in one or more of the following categories:
Primary: Keep in-house and designate as a top priority for improvement.
Shared: Share with other divisions.
Shifted: Transfer to customers, suppliers, or operational specialists.
Automated: Use SOA to automate any of the above through Web-based services.

Example:
Insurer Harvard Pilgrim Health Care’s critical activities included identifying subscribers at high risk or in the early stages of developing chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. Spotting these people early would enable the company to enroll them in preventive care or disease-management programs before their conditions grew serious. But that required sophisticated datamining and -analysis technology that could comb through claims and other information. Recognizing it lacked this technology and expertise, the insurer moved those activities to an outside specialist.
Harvard Pilgrim also outsourced noncore activities (such as pharmacy-benefits management) so it could focus its resources on improving activities that afforded a strategic advantage (including creating new offerings and selling to large groups).
Almost bankrupt in 2000, Harvard Pilgrim is now solidly in the black. It has a host of loyal customers. And it has repeatedly received top awards or rankings for its service quality and customer satisfaction.
Read the full Harvard Business Review article here: http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/item_detail.jhtml;jsessionid=DZ1125C2YK2DEAKRGWDSELQBKE0YIISW?id=R0806D&referral=7855

Tags van Technorati: SOA

Comparing Megavendors IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP in SaaS

pdestoop — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:08:00 GMT

Shift in application architecture over the years

A critical shift in the concept of an "application" is well under way. Once end users stopped creating their own monolithic applications, applications became vendor-constructed monoliths — mass-market-focused bundles of black-box or opaque functionality delivered on a vendor-specified release schedule. With the advent of new technical capabilities — such as integrated service environments (ISEs), BPMSs and road transport informatics (RTIs) — new architectural models (for example, SOA and electronic design automation) and overarching concepts (such as agility), the application is being recast. The black box of monolithic business logic is being cracked open, exposing access to smaller components/services (for example, SOA-based), each able to participate in a larger "composition" of application logic using BPM and ISE/service-oriented development of applications (SODA) process-centric concepts and driven by needs unanticipated by the original creator/vendor. Vendor-mandated and -delivered design is being replaced with organic design principles driven by end-user enterprises that are incorporating business process platforms (BPPs) and ISE/SODA, often blending cross-vendor functionality into new, one-off system designs. Finally, the traditional vendor construction-release cycle is being augmented with a user-driven approach to continuous improvement, driving change based on system-level and application-level feedback derived from monitoring and performance information offered by business activity monitoring (BAM), RTI, business process automation (BPA) and BPM. The overarching shift is one of increased agility for end users and a de-emphasis on the traditional, predefined application as an entity in its own right.

Source: Gartner ITxpo08

Technorati Tags: SOA, SaaS

S+S Architecture Site on MSDN

pdestoop — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:30:00 GMT

A new section released on the MSDN Architecture center a section dedicated to Software + Services (S+S).

We realized that depending on whether you are a large enterprise, an ISV, a hosting company or trying to establish yourself as a trusted marketplace for software services, you will have a different perspective on S+S. This site's intent is to cater for these different perspectives, by offering 4 sub sections:

how to build S+S
how to run S+S
how to consume S+S
how to monetize S+S

Note that it is the v1 release of the site so we are very open to feedback, gaps, suggestions etc. the only request is that you be constructive (if you don’t like it, please offer a suggestion, if you think things are missing, please provide us with of as detailed as possible description of what you are missing etc.)

Technorati Tags: S+S

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

Metadata for an Enterprise SOA

pdestoop — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:18:00 GMT

If an organization wishes to maximize reuse and make sure that all their services are well behaved and operational, then information will need to be stored and maintained such that all services are well known and capable of being managed. Since we want to manage the entire lifecycle of services in a SOA this information must be captured and maintained for services under development as well as services that are deployed.
For a collection of services to be well known and manageable, information must be maintained which describes in a consistent way the functionality of each service, the service owner, interested parties, dependencies, configuration, the services categorization according to a business taxonomy and finally a description of proper behavior. Enter Metadata for an Enterprise SOA.

In this article find out what this is all about in a very simple, clear and well structured way.

Technorati Tags: SOA, Governance

SOA and BPM: you can't have the one without the other?

pdestoop — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:46:00 GMT

SOA is about obtaining better enterprise agility and....so is BPM...
SOA is about interconnecting "stovepiped" applications and...so is BPM...
SOA has business aspects and technological aspects and...so has BPM...

Articles about SOA usually contain info about BPM as if it was a part of SOA: having exposed business services does not provide agility per se, agility is obtained by composing these business services into meaningful and flexible end-to-end business processes.

So, clearly, SOA and BPM have many overlaps and intersections and many organizations currently have initiatives around SOA and BPM but...these are usually separate initiatives: BPM in the realm of business and SOA in the realm of IT.
Obviously this is not a good thing and to get the best business value out of both SOA AND BPM, especially for large strategic initiatives, the two initiatives should be combined.

Gartner has a great article that explains this very clearly - definitively worth a read! (this article was on the CD of the last SOA/BPM conference in Redmond - it is public info)

Technorati Tags: SOA, BPM

SOA nirvana not yet reached by most enterprises

pdestoop — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 23:15:00 GMT

Still struggling with SOA in your enterprise? Don't worry (too) much, you are in good company! Indeed, for most companies SOA has not yet lived up to its promises according to a recent study reported in a Computerworld article:

Only 37% of companies using service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology have seen it result in a positive return on investment, , according to a report released Monday by Nucleus Research Inc.

David O'Connell, an analyst at Wellesley, Mass.-based Nucleus, said that while corporate SOA projects could provide strong ROI for companies, most efforts today "seem to get stranded in little local pockets" of organizations.

"SOA is rather narrowly adopted, [and] it tends to be adopted on as-needed basis," O'Connell said. "It is easy to get ROI on SOA when you have a small handful of services for a narrowly defined set of projects. When you want to go enterprisewide, that is a large jump up. People are not getting over that hump."

Technorati Tags: SOA

Forrester Publishes Application Server Platforms Report, Q3 2007

pdestoop — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:20:00 GMT

Summary

On July 11th, Forrester released its Application Server Platforms Wave. Forrester defines an application server platform as “infrastructure software for building Web and composite applications and, increasingly, applications based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) design principles”. Forrester evaluated 9 vendors in the assessment – BEA Systems, IBM, Magic Software, Microsoft, Oracle, Pegasystems, Red Hat’s JBoss Division, SAP and Sun Microsystems – each offering application life-cycle coverage and a cohesive product or suite of products. Forrester evaluated these nine vendors in five different scenarios – Application Server Platforms, Conventional Platforms for Web Applications, Conventional Platforms for SOA Applications, Java/J2EE and Java EE Platforms, and Independent SOA Platforms – with Microsoft placing as a leader in every evaluation, save the Java-specific scenario.

Check out the full report at MS PressPass

Key MS messages about this report findings:

Forrester found Microsoft to be a Leader in each of the five analyses, falling short of only Oracle in advanced feature criteria like business event management and real-time. Application server platforms are one of the most strategic investments of all application platforms, and Microsoft is pleased that Forrester deemed it a clear market leader, especially when you consider Forrester’s evaluation does not consider the new capabilities Microsoft will ship in the next eight months via Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and .NET Framework 3.5.
The recent release of the .NET Framework 3.0 (with WCF) and BizTalk Server 2006 deliver a robust and industry-leading SOA platform to customers today. Microsoft will expand this capability when Microsoft ships BizTalk Server 2006 R2 in September and the next version of the .NET Framework in early 2008. Microsoft is committed to extend its market position of delivering the broadest, best integrated and most affordable platform for executing your SOA workloads.
The Microsoft Application Platform is a portfolio of technology capabilities, core products, and best practice guidance focused on helping IT and development department’s partner with the business to maximize opportunity. The core products of the Microsoft Application Platform – SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006 – can help you drive the right business efficiencies, customer connections and value-added services to: prioritize for the best ROI, advance the speed of information, and enable people at all levels to make the decisions that drive business success.

Technorati Tags: SOA, ALM

Biztalk enhanced support for SOA, ESB, BPM, WF

pdestoop — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:48:00 GMT

Microsoft announced that BizTalk Server 2006 R2 will ship in September.

In the B2B area it offers key new features like:

RFID
EDI support (i.e. much improved)
Availability Statement 2 (AS2) support
Prebuilt integration with SharePoint Server
Broader Enterprise SSO

In the area of SOA, BPM, Workflow, ESB it also includes significant new offerings like:

ESB Guidance: prescriptive guidance and pre-built reference architectures for Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) functionality – using BizTalk Server and WCF to simplify and accelerate the development of service-oriented architectures.
BPM & WF: through the Microsoft Business Process Alliance (BPA), Microsoft is providing support for a powerful set of end-to-end tools for automating and optimizing business processes. This includes partner solutions for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 in the areas of business process modeling and analysis, business rules management, human-centric workflow, and process simulation. See here for more info about the BPA alliance.

Going further in this area: the roadmap is that the next version of BizTalk Server will be built atop Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation. The goal is to raise the level of abstraction in creating process-centric composite applications by providing support for models and development tools.

Check here for more info about the Biztalk roadmap.

Technorati Tags: SOA, ESB, BPM

ESB Guidance Package

pdestoop — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:52:00 GMT

The Microsoft ESB Guidance provides architectural guidance, patterns, practices, and a set of BizTalk Server and .NET components to simplify the development of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform and to allow Microsoft customers to extend their own messaging and integration solutions.

Check it out at: ESB Guidance Community

Technorati Tags: ESB SOA

Visibility and Control in a Service-Oriented Architecture

pdestoop — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:29:00 GMT

Services alone do not constitute a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Capabilities must be acquired that provide visibility and control into service development and service execution. Without these capabilities, IT offerings will become fragile as the number of services in the data center grows. This article investigates capabilities that provide visibility and control for the services that make up a SOA in a very pragmatic, simple and technology agnostic way.

Check it out at: Visibility and Control in a Service-Oriented Architecture

Technorati Tags: ESB SOA

Enterprise Architecture: 20 year retrospective and links with SOA

pdestoop — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 11:06:00 GMT

IASA is the "International Association of Software Architects" and "Perpectives of the IASA" is their periodical newsletter.

The April issue is entirely devoted to a retrospective on EA (20 years ago John Zachman published a first paper on EA) and also explains the links between EA and SOA.

Defintively worth a read: http://www.iasahome.org/web/home/perspectives