john devadoss' blog

new blog address

jdevados — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:24:46 GMT

New blog address – http://devadoss.net/blog and rss http://devadoss.net/blog/?feed=rss.

my SOA book is now in print – “SOA with .NET and Windows Azure”

jdevados — Fri, 07 May 2010 04:36:00 GMT

‘SOA with .NET and Windows Azure – Realizing Service Orientation with the Microsoft Platform’ is now inprint.

We are doing a launch at TechEd in New Orleans.

patterns & practices Prism 4 - please provide your input.

jdevados — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:26:00 GMT

Blaine posted information on our plans for Prism 4 - key areas that we have gotten feedback include -

Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Integration
Extended Support for Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)
Data Access & Application Services
Design-Time Support

The Prism 4 survey just went live - please take some time to provide your input.

Understanding Service Composition - Part I: Dealing With Workflow Across Services

jdevados — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:32:00 GMT

Understanding Service Composition - Part I: Dealing With Workflow Across Services

In the SOA Magazine this April. This is part of the upcoming book on SOA with .NET and Windows Azure that I have been working on.

Just Released: Enterprise Library 5.0

jdevados — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 09:30:00 GMT

Microsoft Enterprise Library is a popular collection of reusable software components (called application blocks) designed to address common cross-cutting concerns of enterprise application developers (such as logging, validation, data access, exception handling, and more). Entlib is provided as source code, test cases, and documentation that can be used "as is" or extended, and encapsulates the Microsoft recommended and proven practices for .NET application development.

Goals for Enterprise Library

Enterprise Library is intended for use by developers who build complex, enterprise-level applications. Enterprise Library is used when building applications that typically will be deployed widely and need to interoperate with other applications and systems. In addition, they generally have strict security, reliability, and performance requirements. The goals of Enterprise Library are the following:

Consistency. All Enterprise Library application blocks feature consistent design patterns and implementation approaches.

Extensibility. All application blocks include defined extensibility points that allow developers to customize the behavior of the application blocks by adding their own code.

Ease of use. Enterprise Library offers numerous usability improvements, including a configuration tool, powerful programmatic configuration support, intuitive interfaces, a simpler installation procedure that allows you to select only those application blocks you desire, and clear documentation, samples and hands-on labs.

Integration. Enterprise Library application blocks are designed to work well together or individually.

What’s New in v5.0?

This major release of Enterprise Library contains many compelling new features and updates that will make developers more productive. There are no new blocks; instead the team focused on making the existing blocks shine, on testability, maintainability and learnability. The new features include:

– Major architectural refactoring that provides improved testability and maintainability through full support of the dependency injection style of development

– Dependency injection container independence (Unity ships with Enterprise Library, but you can replace Unity with a container of your choice)

– Programmatic configuration support, including a fluent configuration interface and an XSD schema to enable IntelliSense

– Redesign of the configuration tool to provide:

§ A more usable and intuitive look and feel

§ Extensibility improvements through meta-data driven configuration visualizations that replace the requirement to write design time code

§ A wizard framework that can help to simplify complex configuration tasks

– Data accessors for more intuitive processing of data query results

– Asynchronous data access support

– Honoring validation attributes between Validation Application Block attributes and DataAnnotations

– Integration with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) validation mechanisms

– Support for complex configuration scenarios, including additive merge from multiple configuration sources and hierarchical merge

– Optimized cache scavenging

– Better performance when logging

– Support for the .NET 4.0 Framework and integration with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

– Improvements to Unity

§ Streamlined configuration schema

§ A simplified API for static factories and interception

§ The capability to add interface implementation through interception

§ Additional types of lifetime manager

§ Deferred resolution (automatic factories)

– A reduction of the number of assemblies

The detailed list of all changes is included in the Enterprise Library documentation and also online.

Backward Compatibility

The Enterprise Library team tried its utmost to preserve the existing Enterprise Library APIs (v3.1 and higher). However, due to the redesign of the internals and the .NET Framework roadmap moving forward, there are some breaking changes. A full list is available here.

Getting Started

If you are new to Enterprise Library:

− read the Introduction to the Enterprise Library section of the documentation

− read and review examples from the Developer’s Guide

− download, compile and run the source code – study the code and the tests;

− practice the Hands-On Labs (the updated set of labs to be released by the end of April);

− watch the videos;

− see what others say about Enterprise Library

If you already know and love Enterprise Library:

− check out the change log for this release;

− upgrade to v5.0 – to help you with this task, we’ve written the Migration Guide;

− practice the updated Hands-On Labs (the updated set of labs to be released by the end of April);

− watch the videos;

− see what others say about Enterprise Library

Providing Feedback

We would appreciate feedback on any issues found, or any other general comments on this release.

To report a bug, use online Issue Tracker. Other feedback or questions can be posted on the Enterprise Library Codeplex forum. Internal DL: entlib

We are looking for success stories. If you have a customer who adopts Enterprise Library 5.0 and would like to share their story either internally or even as a public case study, please let the Enterprise Library producer (gmelnik) know. Also, if you are adopting Enterprise Library on your Microsoft project, please let us know – share your experience, join our advisory board, help us drive the next great release of the Enterprise Library.

Parallel Patterns

jdevados — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:54:00 GMT

We have been spending some cycles, getting feedback since the PDC Workshop, on what we can do to help our customers understand the opportunities and challenges afforded by parallelism and some of the new features of Visual Studio 2010.

Ade has created a Parallel Patterns CodePlex site - and will be posting content there and asking for feedback. Please take a look at the draft outline for the book peruse some early samples.

We want your feedback. How can we help you exploit the good work in Visual Studio 2010 with respect to parallel patterns? Please let us know.

Claims-based Identity and Access Control

jdevados — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:00:00 GMT

Imagine a world where you don't have to worry about authentication. Imagine instead that all requests to your application already include the information you need to make access control decisions and to personalize the application for the user.

In this world, your applications can trust another system component to securely provide user information, such as the user's name or e-mail address, a manager's e-mail address, or even a purchasing authorization limit. The user's information always arrives in the same simple format, regardless of the authentication mechanism, whether it's Microsoft® Windows® integrated authentication, forms-based authentication in a Web browser, an X.509 client certificate, or something more exotic. Even if someone in charge of your company's security policy changes how users authenticate, you still get the information, and it's always in the same format.

This is the utopia of claims-based identity that A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control describes. As you'll see, claims provide an innovative approach for building applications that authenticate and authorize users.

Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 - Beta

jdevados — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:49:00 GMT

Enterprise Library 5 and Unity 2 Beta are now available for evaluation. This is a major release for us in patterns & practices – and with the exception of Visual Studio integration, is now feature complete.

We are very excited about the enhancements we’ve made to the architecture and the configuration experience, both of Enterprise Library and Unity.

The team has put a lot of effort into the testing of this release – but, this is work in progress; more platform, performance, and accessibility testing as well as end-to-end scenario testing is in progress, before the final release..

Very shortly, we will be providing a migration guide that will help you to migrate from previous versions of Enterprise Library to version 5.0. We will also be updating the hands-on-labs as well for this version.

If you are new to Enterprise Library, consider reading the new Developer Guide - and please let us know your feedback.

For more on this Beta – and as always, the definitive place for information – please see http://blogs.msdn.com/agile/archive/2010/02/08/enterprise-library-5-0-beta1-and-unity-2-0-beta1-are-released.aspx.

Claims-based Identity and Access Control - bridging applications to the cloud.

jdevados — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:30:00 GMT

As an application designer or developer, imagine a world where you don't have to worry about authentication. Imagine instead that all requests to your application already include the information you need to make access control decisions and to personalize the application for the user.

This is the world of claims-based identity that A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control describes. As you'll see, claims provide an innovative approach for building applications that authenticate and authorize users. The guidance can be downloaded here.

A quick walk through of the various sections -

"An Introduction to Claims" explains what a claim is and gives general rules on what makes a good claim and how to incorporate them in your application. It's probably a good idea that you read this chapter before you go on to the scenarios.

"Claims-Based Architectures" shows you how to use claims with browser-based applications and smart client–based applications. In particular, the chapter focuses on how to implement single sign-on for your users, whether they are on an intranet or an extranet. This chapter is optional. You don't need to read it before you go on to the scenarios.

"Claims-Based Single Sign-On for the Web" shows you how to implement single-sign on within a corporate intranet. Although this may be something that you can also implement with Windows integrated authentication, it is the first stop on the way to implementing more complex scenarios. It includes a section for Windows Azure™ that shows you how to move the claims-based application to the cloud.

"Federated Identity for Web Applications" shows you how you can give your business partners access to your applications while maintaining the integrity of your corporate directory and theirs. In other words, your partners' employees can use their corporate credentials to gain access to your applications.

"Federated Identity for Web Services" shows you how to use the claims-based approach with Web services, where a partner uses a smart client rather than a browser.

"Federated Identity with Multiple Partners" is a variation of the previous scenario that shows you how to federate with partners who have no issuer of their own as well as those who do. It demonstrates how to use the ASP.NET MVC framework to create a claims-aware application.

Agile Development at patterns & practices

jdevados — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:02:00 GMT

we, in the patterns & practices team, have been using agile development techniques for a number of years. The Agile Development showcase on the patterns & practices developer center lists a number of the resources that we use.