Architecture @ Microsoft Blog

April Newsletter – Debates on the Cloud

architecture — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:41:00 GMT

April 2010

One of the challenges in adopting a new platform is finding usable design patterns that work for developing effective solutions. The Catch-22 is that design patterns are discovered and not invented. Nevertheless it is important to have some guidance on what design patterns make sense early in the game.

Editor's picks

[Forbes] Dissecting The Cloud

Cloud computing brings up myriad questions.

[Computer World] Managing the cloud

How to manage cloud computing as part of an overall IT strategy.

[CIO] How Not to Build a Cloud

Here are six no-no's for cloud computing planning in your enterprise. From legacy software to outdated metrics, these potential pitfalls deserve careful consideration.

Henrik Kniberg: Kanban vs. Scrum

There's a lot of buzz on Kanban right now in the agile software development community. Since Scrum has become quite mainstream now, a common question is "so what is Kanban, and how does it compare to Scrum?"

Vince Kellen: The CIO is Dead! Long Live the CIO!

When viewed as a whole, the CIO community is paranoid and schizophrenic. Not only do we hear multiple conflicting voices in our collective heads, we have a sense that the future we created is out to get us.

[Enterprise Systems] Privileged Access in the Virtualized Data Center

No single solution can prevent all security risks in a virtualized data center, but automation can help.

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March Newsletter – Architecture Modeling and Processes (Issue 23)

architecture — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 23:55:00 GMT

Exploring our space—partly science, partly art—is always a fascinating and complex task. We could take the contextual approach and address a context-specific subject or we could take the introspective approach of analyzing the role that we play. Yet we could take a third approach that is neither context-specific nor introspective, when we review what we produce.

Issue 23 – March 2010

Dear Architect,

Exploring our space—partly science, partly art—is always a fascinating and complex task. We could take the contextual approach and address a context-specific subject, as we did recently ( BI, SOA, and so on), or we could take… [Read the foreword]

Contents

Keeping Architectures Relevant: Using Domain-Driven Design and Emergent Architecture to Manage Complexity and Enable Change Sound advice on how to keep architecture relevant, and not forgotten, after a solution's implementation.	Multiple-Context Systems: A New Frontier in Architecture Identification and illustration of the implications and trade-offs of adaptable solutions for different deployment contexts.
Evaluating Application Architecture, Quantitatively An explanation of ways to confirm that a given approach meets specific criteria before going to the next level.	UML or DSL: Which Bear Is Best? An exploration of the pros and cons of both UML and DSLs showing that they can eventually be combined.
Software Architecture in the Agile Life Cycle A set of techniques and practices for leveraging the agile approach to software architecture.	Modeling in an Agile Context An illustration of how to help the architecture emerge as a consequence of an agile process, instead of a big design up front.
Driving Efficiency and Innovation by Consistently Managing Complexity and Change A detailed description of the four pillars of holistic enterprise architecture that will help ensure success.	Videos Don’t forget to review the 10-minute videos that we’ve made as companion material.

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Windows Azure Design Patterns (Webcast)

architecture — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:10:38 GMT

This webcast attacks the problem through a set of application scenario contexts, Azure features and solution examples. It is unique in its approach and the fact that it includes the use of features from all components of the Windows Azure Platform including the Windows Azure OS, Windows Azure AppFabric and SQL Azure. In this webcast you will learn about the components of the Windows Azure Platform that can be used to solve specific business problems.

Presenter: Bill Zack (Architect Evangelist, Microsoft)

When: March 26, 2010 at 1:00pm – 2:00pm EST

Register now: https://swrt.worktankseattle.com/webcast/4241/preview.aspx

February Newsletter – Virtualization Call for Papers

architecture — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:22:00 GMT

We are calling for papers on Virtualization for the 24th Architecture Journal. If you are interested in participating, submit your proposal by Thursday, March 11 end of day.

Virtualization Call for Papers

February 2010

VIRTUALIZATION PRACTICES AND TECHNIQUES

Call for Papers

We are calling for papers on Virtualization for the 24th Architecture Journal. If you are interested in participating, submit your proposal by Thursday, March 11 end of day.

Get full details...

IT Architect Resources: Editor's Choice

Claims-Based Architectures This chapter, from "A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control", shows you how to evaluate UX, performance implications, and other aspects of claims-based architectures.	Architectural Validation inside Visual Studio 2010 (webcast) New tools come together to help understand existing code bases, maintaining the proper control and visibility of software systems.
[SEI] Reviewing Architecture Documentation This paper is intended to assist stakeholders in reviewing architecture documentation for gaps and weaknesses.	[infoQ] Managing Legacy Systems In this on demand session, Amit Uttam and Derek Longmuir discuss typical vs phased approaches.
Top 25 Most Dangerous Coding Errors A new study describes the top 25 programming errors that can open up security holes in software.	[ESJ] 7 Deadly Sins of DB Design How to avoid the worst problems.

Issue 22 on BI

Visual Studio 2010 RC

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Code Visualization and Architecture with Visual Studio 2010

architecture — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:55:23 GMT

Come learn how the new code visualization, UML, and Architectural Validation tools inside Visual Studio 2010 come together to help you understand existing code bases, model domain specific problem domains, and maintain the proper control and visibility of those software systems.

Date: February 25, 2010
Event Start Time: 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (UTC - 8 hours)
Duration: 1 hour

Presenter: Cameron Skinner (Product Unit Manager, Microsoft).

Cameron Skinner joined Microsoft in 2005 and is currently a product unit manager on the Visual Studio team. He is responsible for overseeing the Visualization and Architecture capabilities found in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Prior to Microsoft, Mr. Skinner was the CTO and chief architect of application development tools for Embarcadero Technologies. Earlier in his career, he served as CTO for Advanced Software Technologies. In his limited spare time, Mr. Skinner enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, Crossfit, and playing his acoustic bass.

[Network World] Microsoft juices Visual Studio with secure coding tools

architecture — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:00:00 GMT

At the Black Hat Conference taking place in Washington, D.C., Microsoft said it will deepen ties between its Visual Studio development tools and the secure applications development processes first developed inside the company and now available to outsiders.

Read the full story…

January Newsletter – Cloud Computing and the New Decade

architecture — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

We have left the century’s introductory decade behind us. Will the Cloud be massively adopted during the 2010s? Let's take a look what industry experts have to say.

Cloud Computing

January 2010

Cloud Computing and the New Decade

Dear Architect,

Greetings and happy New Year. We have left the century’s introductory decade behind us. The decade, as you may painfully remember, started with the popping of the dot-com bubble. This unfortunate financial event didn’t show us that Internet was the wrong place for investment, but did help us realize that business needs must always precede technology usage.

We, as a community, were still meditating on those findings when the promise of SOA erupted. The next few years we saw how that promise was coming to fruition -- still understanding that even creative solutions sometimes come at the expense of some new dilemmas (governance, federated identity, etc.) Frederick Brooks Jr. would have reminded us again that there is "no silver bullet." I'm one of those who think that SOA has been a success; if not a complete success, it is certainly hard to believe that SOA is dead.

We were still busy planning our business services when the "service" concept reappeared in another form and with yet another acronym: SaaS. Software delivered as a service brought another turn to an ASP screw originally envisioned for application hosting only.
The SaaS challenge is twofold. For consumers, the challenge lays in how to deal with privacy and reliability. Providers, however, must determine how to tackle multi-tenancy in order to maximize infrastructure usage.

In the meantime, other trends emerged. Virtualization, for instance, emerged as a solution for compatibility and efficiency. In another example, green computing appeared -- partially out of a necessity for energy cost reduction and partially to address additional regulations requiring lower CO2 footprint thresholds.
All these trends together molded into what may gradually become the paradigm in the 2010s: cloud computing. We have seen increasing numbers of platform vendors taking positions in this new arena.

Originally announced back in late 2008, Microsoft just released its own cloud offering called the Windows Azure Platform. However, is Microsoft now proposing to move all the IT portfolio to the cloud? Certainly not. Some lessons have been learned from the dot-com crash and our SOA experiences. Radical moves (particularly when we lose our business sense) don't seem to be destined to succeed. Therefore, Microsoft’s approach combines software as a service with traditional, on-premise deployed applications and services.

What's going to happen with all these during the 2010s? Let's take a look what industry experts have to say.

Sincerely,
Diego Dagum
Editor-in-chief

IT Architecture in 2010: Editor's Choice

[ZDNet] The decade in tech: Top 5 stories of the 00s (video)

From the Google IPO, to the rise of social networking, it's been an important decade for tech innovation, Two IT content editors talk about the five most important tech events of the decade and what they mean for the technology industry going forward.

[The Economist] Cloud Computing in the Times Ahead

An interview to Brian Boruff, CSC's vice president of Cloud Computing and Software Services. CSC is a Gold Certified MS Partner.

[Redmond Magazine] Microsoft, Google Debate Cloud Future

Google Vice President of Research Alfred Spector and Microsoft Architect Evangelist Bill Zack debated their views on how data will be stored and shared in the future.

Finally Released: Windows Azure platform, Microsoft's Own Cloud

Windows Azure is now commercially available. Usage during the month of January 2010 will be at no charge. Customers to be charged from February 1st, 2010.

[Information Week] The Top 10 CIO Issues For 2010

For CIOs, 2010 will require new emphases on customers, revenue, external information, and a passion for rapid change.

[Datamation] It's Time for IT Managers to Adopt Cloud Computing

The author of this opinion column considers that those who don’t make the move in 2010, will not only be left behind, but will risk losing their jobs as well.

[IT Business Edge] Fully Clouded by 2012?

The author predicts that virtualization and cloud computing will bring an end to IT infrastructure at small and mid-sized organizations, who would outsource these resources to regional dedicated data centers.

[Ars Technica] Microsoft and HP pump $250 million into cloud computing

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard announced a three-year partnership to simplify IT environments through a wide range of converged hardware, software, and professional services solutions. The goal is to deliver the "next generation computing platform" by leading the adoption of cloud computing.

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[Tech Dispenser] ASP.NET 4.0 to Offer Search Engine Optimization Helpers

architecture — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 10:35:00 GMT

Microsoft's software development platform features tools to assist Web app builders in drawing more traffic to their sites.

Read full story…

Software Development Trends and Other Predictions for 2010

architecture — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:58:00 GMT

J.D. Meier, program manager with MS Patterns and Practices team, summarizes key trends to watch for 2010.

When doing that, J.D. declared “putting it together is a time-consuming exercise, but it’s one of the most important things I do for the year. It helps me see the bigger map. With the bigger map, I have a simpler way to understand what’s going on, anticipate what to expect, respond more effectively, and most importantly – make better bets on where to spend my time.”

Read full J.D. Meier’s post…

December Newsletter - Taking Business Intelligence beyond the Business Analyst (Issue 22)

architecture — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:39:00 GMT

In this, the 22nd issue of The Architecture Journal, you’ll get our coverage on business-intelligence (BI) aspects of which architects like you and me need to be aware today.

Issue 22

December 2009

Taking Business Intelligence beyond the Business Analyst

Letter from the Editor

Dear Architect,

In this, the 22nd issue of The Architecture Journal, you’ll get our coverage on business-intelligence (BI) aspects of which architects like you and me need to be aware today.

As we did in previous issues, so as to guarantee accuracy, relevance, and quality, we set up a board of subject-matter experts to analyze the problem space— harvesting today’s main topic concerns.

The articles that you are about to read were chosen based on those concerns. Let’s take a look at them:

-Enterprise BI strategy—Dinesh Kumar (Microsoft) introduces the notion of business infrastructure, which—together with capability models that are described in previous issues of The Architecture Journal—help organizations not only gain business insight, but act upon it, too.
Also, Sundararajan PA et al. (Infosys) propose a semantic enterprise data model for interoperability—adaptable for evolution through its life cycle.
-Embedding business insights into our applications—Traditionally, the final output of BI is considered to be scorecards and reports that are used as strategic decision support. Using implementation examples, Razvan Grigoroiu (Epicor) tells us how to put these outcomes within the reach of line-of-business (LOB) applications.
-Infrastructure and performance—Charles Fichter (Microsoft) explains the design principles for supporting a global data-warehouse architecture, with effectiveness and performance in mind.
-End-user and self-service BI—BI projects typically fall short in allowing users who have basic experience to handle how results are exposed, without any dependence on IT specialists. Ken Withee (Hitachi Consulting) shows multiple ways to tackle this issue by using facilities that are already available throughout the Microsoft platform.

As a side topic, outside the cover theme, this issue features an article by MVP Jesus Rodriguez (Tellago) on lightweight SOA implementations, and their patterns and principles.

The reader will also find more valuable BI input in side columns, as well as our second companion series of short videos, which are available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb380180.aspx.

I’d like to finish by thanking the team of subject matter experts who helped me complete this challenge. First, I want to thank guest editor Matt Valentine for giving me direction in the makeup of this issue. Also, for its guidance and suggestions to give final shape to Matt’s ideas, I’d like to thank the editorial board that we put together this time.

Enjoy the issue! Remember that you may send any feedback to archjrnl@microsoft.com.

Diego Dagum
Editor-in-Chief

Contents

Thinking Global BI: Data-Warehouse Principles for Supporting Enterprise-Enabled Business-Intelligence Applications

By Charles Fichter (Microsoft).
Design principles to support a global data-warehouse (DW) architecture.

BI-to-LOB Integration: Closing the Cycle

By Razvan Grigoroiu (Epicor).
A discussion of the necessity of architecting BI solutions that focus on actionable data and information flow back to LOB applications.

Increasing Productivity by Empowering Business Users with Self-Serve BI

By Ken Withee (Hitachi Consulting).
A look at the latest wave of Microsoft tools and technologies that enable end-user self-serve BI.

Business Insight = Business Infrastructure = Business-Intelligence Platform

By Dinesh Kumar (Microsoft).
A prescriptive approach to planning and delivering BI services through the business-infrastructure and business-capability models.

Semantic Enterprise Optimizer and Coexistence of Data Models

By P.A. Sundararajan, Anupama Nithyanand, and S.V. Subrahmanya (Infosys Technologies).
Proposal of a semantic ontology–driven enterprise data–model architecture for interoperability, integration, and adaptability for evolution.

Lightweight SOAs: Exploring Patterns and Principles of a New Generation of SOA Solutions

By Jesus Rodriguez and Don Demsak (Tellago).
An exploration of how to address common challenges of traditional SOAs by using more scalable, interoperable, and agile alternatives.

Videos

Design and planning, embedding BI in line-of-business applications, high availability, dual partitioning and more...

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Find more architecture resources

TechEd 2010

Architecture track call for content.

MSDN Mag, December

Resources for developers.

TechNet Mag, December

Resources for IT pros.

[Ars Technica] Windows Server 2008 R2 More a Brand New OS than an “R2”

architecture — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:51:00 GMT

Windows Server 2008 R2 may sound a lot like its predecessor, but in many substantial ways it's a brand new product, despite the simple "R2" tacked on the end. Ars takes a detailed look at all the new stuff that's hidden under that "R2" moniker.

Read full coverage…

[Information Week] MS as a Player in Open Government

architecture — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 07:57:00 GMT

The software vendor is using Sharepoint, Bing, SQL, Azure, and other tools to seize a chunk of the open government market.

Read full story…

Tech*Ed North America 2010 - Architecture Track Call for Content

architecture — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:47:00 GMT

We have begun the planning for Tech·Ed North America 2010, which takes place in New Orleans from June 7-10, 2010, and the first step is to request Breakout Session topic ideas from experts like yourself. We hope you will consider submitting one or more session ideas before the January 15 deadline.

Breakout Sessions are the primary way Tech·Ed attendees receive Microsoft content. These sessions are lecture-style presentations held in rooms seating anywhere from 200-1,200 people. Breakouts are 75-minutes in length and speakers use PowerPoint slides and demos; leaving 10-15 minutes at the end to answer questions. These sessions are recorded and available at Tech·Ed Online to all paid attendees from the 10 Tech·Ed conferences held around the world during the 12 months following Tech·Ed North America.

Tech·Ed is navigated by the attendees using Tracks. Each Track represents a group of Microsoft products, technologies and/or solutions. Please keep our Track framework and focus in mind as you develop ideas for Breakout Sessions.

The sessions for the architecture track should help attendees make better architecture choices, whether it’s researching and evaluating new technology and platforms, choosing or creating patterns, guidelines and practices, or influencing and educating the business team.

The audience in the architecture sessions at Tech Ed is a mix of practicing architects, as well as developers and IT professionals who have a substantial architectural focus in addition to their primary roles.

Steps for Call for Content submissions:

Go to: https://northamerica.msteched.com/CFT
Enter RSVP Access Code: RSVP10-ARC
Complete all the fields and submit the topic/s you’re interested in presenting
When returning to the Call for Content site, use the e-mail alias and password you entered when creating your Call for Content profile to review or edit your submission, or to submit another topic.

Deadline for Submissions: January 15, 2010

[Information Week] Microsoft Azure Supports Federated ID

architecture — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:00:00 GMT

A federated identity can be used to provide a single sign on to multiple applications, both in the enterprise and in the cloud. Microsoft has adopted a "claims-based architecture" in its approach to managing the identities of users in its Azure cloud.

At its Professional Developers Conference in L.A. recently, it announced a Microsoft Identity Platform that invokes the architecture to establish a federated identity for users. A federated identity can be used to provide a single sign on to multiple applications, both in the enterprise and in the cloud.

A federated identity of some type is going to be necessity if there is any prospect of hybrid cloud computing coming into vogue. IT departments that ship part of their workload off to the public cloud will need to be able to allow end users of applications to follow them into the cloud and use them there as well.

Read full story…
Windows Identity Foundation overview (on-demand session from PDC09)

[Network World] Microsoft Begins Paving Path for IT, Cloud Integration

architecture — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:47:00 GMT

Microsoft launched at PDC a serious effort to build IT into its cloud plans by introducing technologies that help connect existing corporate networks and cloud services to make them look like a single infrastructure.

"Azure is looking at the second wave," says Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner. "That wave is what happens after raw infrastructure. When companies start moving real systems to the cloud and those systems are hybrid and they have to connect back in significant ways to legacy environments. It's a big challenge and a big opportunity for Microsoft."

To attack the opportunity, Microsoft introduced projects called Sydney, AppFabric, Next Generation Active Directory, System Center "Cloud", and updates to the .Net Framework that provide bridges between corporate networks and cloud services. While a small portion of the software is available now, the majority will hit beta cycles in 2010.

Read full story…

November Newsletter - Modeling and SDLC Call for Papers

architecture — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:34:46 GMT

For the 23rd issue of the Architecture Journal, we’re looking for interesting, thought-provoking and insightful articles about Architecture Modeling and its role inside a broader Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Modeling and Processes

November 2009

Architecture Modeling and Processes

Call for Papers

Dear Architect,

We’re calling for papers for the 23rd issue of the Architecture Journal.

After extensive coverage of the latest trends that are associated with BI (to be released next month), SOA, the economic downturn, and “green computing,” it’s time to focus again on our bread and butter: the core activities that we perform independently of the trend or aspect with which we’re dealing.

For this edition of the Architecture Journal, then, we’re looking for interesting, thought-provoking, and insightful articles about Architecture Modeling and its role inside a broader Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Some suggestions for architecture modeling and SDLC include (but are not limited to):

•	Architecture-modeling: Requirements gathering, architecture envisioning and evolution, and validation; documentation and guidelines; and methods for evaluating current and future architectures.
•	Software-Development Life Cycle (SDLC): Interaction with stakeholders above, across, and below the architectural level; incremental iterations and agile processes; requirements traceability and application life-cycle management (ALM); and model-based testing.

If you’d like to share your wisdom and experience in architecture modeling and processes with the architecture community, this is your chance. To submit your proposal, please send us the following content no later than December 11, 2009:

•	An abstract of between two and four paragraphs.
•	A short list (2-3 items) of reader's takeaways from business and technical perspectives. This determines the relevance of your value proposition.
•	A short bio (1-2 paragraphs).
•	A list of previously published articles, if any.

Submissions must be made to archjrnl@microsoft.com (we receive many submissions for each issue, so we encourage you to put time and thought into yours).

After the call for articles has ended, everyone who has submitted an idea will be notified via e-mail as to whether their submission was accepted or not. If it is accepted, your article must follow this schedule:

•	December 18, 2009. Article acceptance is announced.
•	January 8, 2010. First draft (possibly unfinished) is due.
•	January 22, 2010. Final draft is due.*
•	Mid-March, 2010. The issue of the Journal that contains your article is ready and published.

* We recommend that articles be between 2,500 and 3,500 words in length.

For more information, check out this link or contact us at archjrnl@microsoft.com. Good luck!

Sincerely,
Diego Dagum
Editor-in-chief

This Month on Architecture: Editor's Choice

Architecture Modeling in Visual Studio 2010

Create models at different levels of detail, and relate those models to one another, to tests, and to your development plan.
[PDC09] Code Visualization, UML, and DSLs
Get Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2.

[InfoQ] Pimp My Architecture

Dan North discusses an example of rearchitecting an application without rewriting it from scratch, explaining general strategies for a holistic rearchitecture.

[Enterprise Systems] IT at the Crossroads: Time for Change is Now

An economy on the cusp of recovery presents an unprecedented opportunity, particularly when it comes to transforming underperforming IT operations.

Windows Identity Foundation: User Access Got Simpler

This technology enables .NET applications to externalize identity logic, improving development productivity, enhancing application security, and enabling interoperability.
[PDC09] WIF Overview

SOA Manifesto

A collection of individuals (not organizations), among them being industry luminaries such as Grady Booch, David Chappell, Anne Thomas Manes etc., came together to create a set of values and principles, to ensure that the application of Service-oriented architectures continues to create business value for organizations.

[InfoQ] Thoughts on the Generic vs. Specific Tradeoff

Stefan Tilkov compares XML vs HTML, DSM-UML, Internal-External DSL, SOAP-REST, and others, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each solution.

[Java Developer's Journal] Transforming Internet Datacenters

With the explosive growth of cloud computing and other emerging Web-based applications, datacenter workloads have increased exponentially. The business opportunities that are created from the deployment of these new applications are substantial, but the demands they place on the datacenter are daunting.

Microsoft Cloud Services Vision Becomes Reality With Launch of Windows Azure Platform

In his opening keynote address at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft, announced the availability of the Windows Azure platform.
[PDC09] Watch keynote on demand

[Application Development Trends] Machine-Readable Web Still a Ways Off

Despite recent initiatives, the possibility of a machine-readable Web extolled by World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee still faces many obstacles, he admitted during a talk at the International Semantic Web Conference.

On-Premises or in the Cloud, One Consistent Composite Application Experience

Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies that make it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on IIS.
Architectural overview
[PDC09] Sessions on AppFabric

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[eWeek] Microsoft’s Parallel Push Takes Another Step Forward

architecture — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:55:00 GMT

Microsoft is working to deliver parallel programming capabilities to the masses, in the way that perhaps only the software giant can. The company is pursuing data parallelism, a form of parallelization of computing across multiple processors in parallel computing environments.

Read full story…

[eWeek] SugarCRM Brings CRM Play to Windows Azure

architecture — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:16:00 GMT

SugarCRM has announced that it will offer its CRM applications on the Windows Azure to enable its customers and value-added resellers (VARs) to benefit from the real-time scalability, high availability and on-demand infrastructure of the Microsoft cloud platform for Web applications and services.

Read full story…

Asynchronous, Event-Driven Programming with Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx)

architecture — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:33:00 GMT

Rx is a library for composing asynchronous and event-based programs using observable collections.

The “A” in “AJAX” stand for asynchronous, and indeed modern Web-based and Cloud-based applications are fundamentally asynchronous. In fact, Silverlight bans all blocking networking and threading operations. Asynchronous programming in by no means restricted to Web and Cloud scenarios, however. Traditional desktop applications also have to maintain responsiveness in the face of long latency IO operations and other expensive background tasks.

Another common attribute of interactive applications, whether Web/Cloud or client-based, is that they are event-driven. The user interacts with the application via a GUI that receives event streams asynchronously from the mouse, keyboard, and other inputs.

Rx is a superset of the standard LINQ sequence operators that exposes asynchronous and event-based computations as push-based, observable collections via the new .NET 4.0 interfaces IObservable<T> and IObserver<T>. These are the mathematical dual of the familiar IEnumerable<T> and IEnumerator<T> interfaces for pull-based, enumerable collections in the .NET framework.

The IEnumerable<T> and IEnumerator<T> interfaces allow developers to create reusable abstractions to consume and transform values from a wide range of concrete enumerable collections such as arrays, lists, database tables, and XML documents. Similarly, Rx allows programmers to glue together complex event processing and asynchronous computations using LINQ queries over observable collections such as .NET events and APM-based computations, PFx concurrent Task<T>, the Windows 7 Sensor and Location APIs, SQL StreamInsight temporal event streams , F# first-class events, and async workflows.

Go to Rx portal in DevLabs
S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the Microsoft developer division, on Rx

On-Premises or in the Cloud, One Consistent Composite Application Experience for Developers

architecture — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:54:46 GMT

Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies that make it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on MS web server IIS.

Read full story…
Windows Server AppFabric developer center
Features and capabilities
Architectural Overview

A Data Mashup Infrastructure Available as-a-Service

architecture — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:35:36 GMT

Microsoft Codename "Dallas" is a new service allowing developers and information workers to easily discover, purchase and manage premium data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform. Dallas is an information marketplace that brings data, imagery, and real-time web services from leading commercial data providers and authoritative public data sources together into a single location, under a unified provisioning and billing framework. Additionally, Dallas APIs allow developers and information workers to consume this premium content with virtually any platform, application or business workflow.

Read full story…
[Visual Studio Magazine] Moving to Dallas

Microsoft Cloud Services Vision Becomes Reality With Launch of Windows Azure Platform

architecture — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:29:00 GMT

Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of the Windows Azure platform at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC). In his opening keynote address, Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft, described Windows Azure and SQL Azure as core elements of the company’s cloud services strategy. The company also announced a set of new Windows Azure features, Windows Server capabilities, and marketplace offerings that will make it easier for developers to build profitable businesses from their Microsoft-based solutions.

Read full story…
Watch keynote on demand...
How Visual Studio Magazine covered PDC first day…

SOA Manifesto

architecture — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:06:00 GMT

SOA Manifesto Announcement

Go to the SOA Manifesto site…

Security Guidance: Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) - Version 4.1a

architecture — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:00:00 GMT

As part of its commitment to a more secure and trustworthy computing ecosystem, Microsoft releases the SDL process guidance 4.1a. IT policy makers and software development organizations can leverage this content to enhance and inform their own software security and privacy assurance programs. The Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle Process Guidance 4.1a includes SDL for Agile Development.

Get the guidance…
Get the Security Process Template for Visual Studio…
Get the SDL Threat Modeling Tool…
[ADT] Security Development Lifecycle Gets an Agile Update

Teamprise Acquisition: Enabling ALM Collaboration across Heterogeneous Platforms

architecture — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:28:30 GMT

(Published by S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, in his blog)

Development teams and organizations often have many different platforms and development environments, and interoperability between those heterogeneous environments is a major collaboration challenge.

Teamprise’s Client Suite addresses those interoperability gaps by enabling developers using Eclipse and Eclipse-based IDEs on multiple operating systems, including Windows, Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X to build applications that leverage Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.

I’m happy to announce today that Microsoft has acquired the Teamprise technology.

Microsoft is committed to the future of this technology and will be incorporating these tools into Visual Studio 2010. This will be available as part of the Visual Studio 2010 launch wave.

The acquisition of the Teamprise technology is an important step in our continued commitment to interoperability and our dedication to enabling customers to achieve greater business results, regardless of their current development environment.

Details of the acquisition are available on Microsoft PressPass.

Namaste!