Beat Schwegler's 2 Cents : Web Services

TechEd Europe, I'm coming...

beatsch — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:28:00 GMT

After Tech·Ed Israel and Tech·Ed US, Europe will be my third TechEd this year and I'm really looking forward to it! Being part of the content team, I'm especially proud about the great speaker line-up and the quality content. Everyone involved in events like this knows how much energy and passion is required to compile a great track. And so was it for Emmanuel and myself: Over the last 5 months, we put a lot of effort into our two tracks, the ARC and the CTS track. (If you wonder why there is no session with a CTS prefix, here is the answer: "We decided to reduce the amount of tracks to 5 (ARC, DEV, MBS, OFF, SQL). Therefore the CTS track is now embedded within the DEV track. However all CTS sessions are part of the BPI (Business Process Integration) virtual track.").
As you can imagine, we're really looking forward to see the result of our work...

If you can't go to Barcelona check out the amazing Virtualside. This is just a great idea, I love it...

If you're lucky and will go to Barcelona here are a couple of things you shouldn't miss:

The ARC booth
Whether you have a specific question or just want to have a chat with another Architect, this is the place where Architects meet! BTW, this is also the place where you find more information about the great p&p stuff such as the Enterprise Library or the Service Factory. Come and visit us...
Participate in the Iron Architect Contest
Who comes up with the best/most elegant/most innovative/smartest/... solution for the given problem and wants to win an amazing price? Come to the ARC booth and pick up the 'ingredients' for the Iron Architect showdown. The showdown will be live on Friday Fri Nov 10 15:15 (ARCWD06 Iron Architect Finals).
Don Smith's and my session "Proven Practices for Implementing Services"
DEV308 Thu Nov 9 10:45 - 12:00 Room 113
This session will take a closer look at some of the issues developers and architects encounter while implementing services using ASMX and Windows Foundation Classes (WFC). We'll discuss common challenges around contracts and messages and elaborate on how to decouple the service internals from its service interfaces without adding too much complexity to the overall service design. At the end of this session, we're going to demonstrate how to implement such services by leveraging the ASMX and WCF Service Factory from the patterns and practices team.
My session "Abstract Concepts: Architecting Applications for a Service-Oriented World"
ARC 206 Fri Nov 10 13:30 - 14:45 Room 112
Many people still believe that service-oriented systems are just a Web of applications connected through Web services, where as the real power of service-orientation lies in the definition of a conceptual service model that defines the contract and interaction of the services. Given the fact that few projects count as 'grass root' projects, this session covers how to build new applications and also about architectural re-factoring to move an existing application into the service-oriented space.
Iron Architect Finals
ARCWD06 Fri Nov 10 15:15 - 16:30 Room 130
Come and be a member of the audience and help decide the winner of the first annual Iron Architect showdown. Contestants have been given their ingredients, now it's time to see them perform in front of a live audience. All members of the audience will participate in voting for the winner. Come and be part of history and make your vote count!

Last but not least, don't forget your swimsuit as there are rumors that it it's still possible to take a swim in the Mediterranean...

http://tempuri.org needs to be updated soon...

beatsch — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 18:33:00 GMT

I'm really looking forward to see the following lines on http://tempuri.org:

[ServiceContract(Namespace = http://microsoft.com/webservices/")]
public interface IMyWebService{
}

Service-Oriented Modeling for Connected Systems – Part 1

beatsch — Mon, 08 May 2006 11:05:00 GMT

Due my intense travel I completely forgot to blog that the first part of Arvindra and my paper on “Service-Oriented Modeling” got published on the Architecture Journal…

In this paper we introduce a three part model that helps you to map business capabilities to service oriented implementation artifacts by using a so called service model.

The more I work with this model the more I realize how important this separation of concerns really is. Especially defining the conceptional service model allows you to decouple contracts from technology restrictions. If you’re interested in that topic and plan to attend TechEd Israel or TechEd US, my session “Architecting for a Service-Oriented World” might be of interest for you.

From Batman to Service BAT

beatsch — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:48:00 GMT

I’m really happy to announce that the Service BAT workspace went public yesterday! What started as project Batman resulted into a full blown effort called Service BAT! Edward Bakker wrote a great blog entry about this new guidance and tooling experience for the service development domain!

Thank you guys @ p&p! I really like that stuff…

Great articles about the tools for architects

beatsch — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:11:00 GMT

Just in case you haven’t already seen it: Bill Gibson published a series of great articles about the tools for architects in Visual Studio 2005 Team System. You find his technotes here.
Thanks Bill!

Melted Cheese #2

beatsch — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:22:00 GMT

Thanks to Maarten, the second installment of the Melted Cheese Effect has been published.

Project Batman

beatsch — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 15:17:00 GMT

If you’re wondering why I was so quiet just have a look here…
I’m currently working with the corresponding tooling and I can tell you its mind-blowing ;-)

The three part model is going to the PDC

beatsch — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 03:54:00 GMT

I’ve just came back from a podcasting session with Ron Jacobs. We recorded some podcasts about the “three part model” that Arvindra and I presented at TechEd Europe. If you’re interested in this stuff, come and join us @ the PDC pre-conference session “Patterns and Practices for Designing Service Oriented Applications — An Illustrated Example”.

Web Services Security Patterns

beatsch — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 11:46:00 GMT

Are you interested in Web Services security? If the answer is yes, you have to get the CTP of the Web Services Security Patterns from the following GotDotNet workspace: http://practices.gotdotnet.com/projects/sopatterns

This is great stuff guys! Thanks

TechEd - What a great week...

beatsch — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 15:40:00 GMT

TechEd Europe was a blast and I’m really proud that I was part of it! As a track owner for the ARC & CTS tracks, planning for TechEd started already in January. It looks like we made the right decisions: Both tracks were extremely well received! In addition, our 1 day pre-conference was also a great success: more than 350 people spend one day with us and learned about service orientation in the context of the three part model (Business, SOA and Technology).

Finally, I like to thank to all the speakers who made this TechEd such a success for architecture and connected systems! You guys rule!

Melted Cheese Effect...

beatsch — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 15:27:00 GMT

You can find the first installment of a series of article about services and contracts here. Well done Maarten! Stay tuned for more articles and tools from Maarten, Christian and myself.

TechEd Europe: Your input is required

beatsch — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 10:56:00 GMT

All our tracks will host a panel. This allows you to have your question answered by an impressive group of experts. We are running the following two panels in the ARC and CTS.

PNL002 Software Factories: How and When?
Steve Cook , Eric Lee , Ted Neward , Maarten Mullender , Gareth Jones , Imran Ali
Fri Jul 8 13:45 - 14:30
Software Factories is a Microsoft strategic initiative that proposes to make it faster, easier and cheaper to build software. A software factory is like a starter kit on steroids. It provides a set of reusable assets that support and automate tasks for a specific type of deliverable. The goals of a factory are to offload menial work, so that developers can spend more time on creative activities, and to reduce risk and effort by providing guidance representing known good practices. This panel will discuss how these ideas can be put into practice, when realistic implementations of software factories will be available.

PNL003 WS-I_M_REALLY_CONFUSED
Rafal Lukawiecki , Christian Weyer , Steve Swartz , Michele Leroux Bustamante , Omri Gazitt
Wed Jul 6 13:45 - 14:30
Web Services are a great success and Microsoft together with most other vendors are betting on it to make interoperability a problem of the past. But, isn’t it quite easy to feel lost in the near to endless number of Web Services related specifications? WS-X replaces WS-Y but is not compatible with WS-Z. This panel won’t only elaborate the different driving forces behind specifications but is also looking forward to give answers to your questions and concerns! Be prepared to get rid of your confusions around WS-* specifications. We count on you…

If you already have a topic you would like the panel to talk about, why not post it as a comment to this entry (or send me a private message)? This would allow us to build a nice story around some of the questions.

Virtual Indigo Track @ TechEd Europe

beatsch — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 03:26:00 GMT

I'm really happy about the massive Indigo coverage we're going to have at TechEd Europe. Since this content is brand new, the presenters agreed on doing a lot of extra work! Thanks guys, I owe you all a beer...

Introducing "Indigo" - The Unified Framework for Building Connected Systems, Ari Bixhorn
Implementing "Indigo" Endpoints – Addresses, Bindings, and Contracts, Steve Swartz & Christian Weyer
Implementing "Indigo" Endpoints – Secure, Reliable, Transacted Messaging, Steve Swartz & Ingo Rammer
"Indigo" Under the Hood, Steve Swartz & Clemens Vasters
Implications of "Indigo" and Service Orientation for Architects and Architecture, Steve Swartz & Clemens Vasters
The Day "Indigo" Met the "Tiger", Ted Neward
BizTalk Server 2004 and "Indigo", Morten Abrahamsen

TechEd Europe is the best way to get a full dose of Indigo ;-)

About common sense and service contracts...

beatsch — Sat, 04 Jun 2005 05:45:00 GMT

I’m currently thinking a lot about guidance and best practices around service contracts. There exist many ways to end up with a contract. But are there some metrics that are going to tell you whether your contract is a good contract? Can we relay on a common sense when designing contracts? Let’s take the following incident I had in Paris the last week:

After a nice dinner we decided to go to the hotel bar. Our customers wanted to order a cognac and asked the barkeeper for his recommendation. He showed them the only cognac bottle they had. From our perspective, the barkeeper had enough information to provide us with the requested service. However, this wasn’t the case! When he served the cognacs, we instantly started laughing: The cognac was served in a lemonade glass. As if this wouldn’t be enough, it was served “on the rocks”! We couldn’t believe it, although we have to admit that we haven’t explicitly requested a cognac served in a cognac glass without ice. We just thought that this is common sense when ordering a cognac in bar in Paris. But who is going to guarantee you that the service is provided with the same assumptions? While confronting the barkeeper with our expectations, he confessed that he isn’t a barkeeper but the receptionist…

While designing a contract, we have to decide whether we want to address a certain artifact in a semantic or syntactic way: We have to decide, whether we have to make that artifact explicit. Do we share the same common sense and context or do we explicitly have to exchange that information prior to our business interaction? At the end it’s all about coupling…

Web Services Competency Workshop in a Box

beatsch — Wed, 25 May 2005 09:43:00 GMT

Eliaz just uploaded the latest version of my Web Service Competency Workshop. You can download ~20MB of slides and demos from here. The content consists of two parts: The first one discusses architecture and concepts where the second one is dedicated to implementation and technology:

Update on SOA and Web Services
The grey area between service and object-oriented design
Web Services and attachments
Web Services versioning and extensibility concepts
Best practices for Web Services interoperability
Understanding asmx 1.x
asmx 1.x performance aspects
What’s new in asmx 2.0
Web Service enhancements 2.0 (WSE 2.0)