Florin Lazar - Consistency Checkpoint : Indigo

Our Own Forum is Now Live! Please Join Us at the "Transactions Programming Forum"

florinlazar — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:34:00 GMT

I'm really happy to announce that our own forum, dedicated to transactions in Windows and .Net is now live at http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=388&SiteID=1

The RSS feed for the forum is http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/rss.aspx?ForumID=388&Mode=0&SiteID=1

I hope that by having a forum that is dedicated to Transactions technologies we can build a better channel for our customers to get quick and accurate answers to their questions. We encourage everyone in the community to participate in this forum.

I look forward to us working together to make this forum a valuable resource for Transactions discussions.

Windows Communication Foundation (Indigo) Home Page

florinlazar — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 00:32:00 GMT

Windows Communication Foundation (Indigo) has its own page now at http://windowscommunication.net/

Windows Communication Foundation ("Indigo") Forum

florinlazar — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:37:00 GMT

Indigo has its own forum now:
http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=118
The forum is one more way in which you can interact with the Indigo team and its community.
See you there!

Why and When to use transactions?

florinlazar — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 11:07:00 GMT

Many people ask - do I need transactions? Why do I need them? When to use them?

The answer is simple: use them all the time, unless you have a very good reason not to (for instance, don't use atomic transactions for "long running activities" between businesses). The default should always be yes. You are in doubt? - use transactions.

Why are transactions beneficial? They help you deal with crashes, failures, data consistency, error handling, they help you write simpler code etc. And the list of benefits will continue to grow with time.

Don't think in terms of transactions only when you talk to two or more databases. Starting with technologies like LTM, transactions are made available to be used for any multi-action operation. "X = A+B; Y = C*D;" can be transactional or atomic, as some prefer to name it, and can be seen as a single unit of work.

That is also why support for transactions is available almost everywhere. In database systems, in COM+, in ASP.NET, in .Net Framework with System.Transactions and EntepriseServices, in Indigo, in Biztalk etc

You might be saying now: "but my friend X doesn't use transactions - why it is important that I use them?". It is mostly a problem on the education side. The industry didn't talk a lot about transactions and their usage until recently. The original scope of transactions was limited to database scenarios. But technologies around transactions evolved and continue to evolve, in terms on capabilities, ease of use, flexibility, performance etc.

We used to talk about composable objects (as in OOP). We currently talk a lot about composable web services (as in SOA). The technologies are already here to start talking about composable atomic units of work.

How about the future? One avenue is STM or "software transactional memory". Maybe another one is transactional support at hardware level.

Transactions Sessions at PDC 2005

florinlazar — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 20:31:00 GMT

If you are at PDC this year, don't forget to attend the sessions related to transactions. An easy way to find these sessions is to go to http://commnet1.microsoftpdc.com/content/sessions.aspx and search by Keyword="transaction".

I especially recommend the session called "FUN320 - Windows Vista & "Longhorn" Server: Improving Reliability Using System.Transactions and the Transactional NTFS and Registry". Jim Johnson, our architect for transactions is presenting this session together with Dana Groff, the program manager in Core File Services focusing on transaction technologies.

Here is the full list:

FUN320 Windows Vista & "Longhorn" Server: Improving Reliability Using System.Transactions and the Transactional NTFS and Registry

Day/Time: Thursday, September 15 5:15 PM- 6:30 PM Room: 406 AB

Speaker(s): Dana Groff, Jim Johnson

Session Type(s): Breakout

Session Level(s): 300

Track(s): Fundamentals

You can build significantly more reliable applications by using the expanded and enhanced classes in the System.Transactions namespace. This session covers how to use new transaction-oriented programming techniques for application stability and robustness. Learn about the new systems in Windows Vista and "Longhorn" Server for supporting Transacted Files (TxF) and Transacted Registry (TxR) operations in both native and managed code.

FUN323 Microsoft Research: Future Possibilities in Concurrency

Day/Time: Friday, September 16 8:30 AM- 9:45 AM Room: 406 AB

Speaker(s): Tim Harris

Session Type(s): Breakout

Session Level(s): 300

Track(s): Fundamentals

Learn about the investment Microsoft Research is making in future languages and tools to help write software that will gain the maximum benefit from tomorrow's multi-processor/multi-core hardware. In this session, we start by introducing some of the tools and techniques we've developed for tracking down and preventing bugs in multi-threaded software. We then turn to the language features that we're prototyping in research: our work on transactional memory is developing a programming model where data can be shared directly between threads without needing to worry about locking or low-level deadlocks; our work on synchronization is leading to a unified abstraction for co-ordination between threads and between processes. We'll demo some of our prototype systems, showing how these techniques can lead to software which is not only easier to develop, but which can scale from uniprocessors up to highly parallel systems.

Distributed Atomic Transactions - Wishful Thinking?

Day/Time: Tuesday, September 13 9:00 PM- 10:00 PM Room: 511 C

Session Type(s): Birds of a Feather

Session Level(s): 300

Web Services, via SOAP, is the preferred choice of doing wide-reaching distributed communications today. However, one of the few factors that has hindered its adoption in the enterprise today is its lack of ability to handle transactions between remote un-trusted (independent) boundaries. There are two schools of thought today with regards to transactions --- The Atomic Way or The Compensating Way which pretty much takes out the atomicity of ACID. Indigo supports WS-AT via Microsoft DTC. Will this be widely adopted in the enterprise collaboration space? Or are we living in Fool's Paradise?

COM307 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Writing Reliable and Transacted Distributed Applications

Day/Time: Wednesday, September 14 3:15 PM- 4:30 PM Room: 403 AB

Speaker(s): Shy Cohen

Session Type(s): Breakout

Session Level(s): 300

Track(s): Communications

What do you do when your network connection breaks half-way through a request? How do you synchronize state changes across different Web services? How do you overcome a system crash without losing important messages? Windows Communications Foundation (formerly codename "Indigo") provides simple and powerful reliability mechanisms that allow you to easily address these types of network and application issues. Take an in-depth look at reliable sessions, queues, and distributed transactions, and how these technologies are used to achieve reliable, transacted communication.

COM202 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): A Lap around the Windows Communications Foundation

Day/Time: Tuesday, September 13 1:00 PM- 2:15 PM Room: Halls C & D (Petree Hall)

Speaker(s): Omri Gazitt

Session Type(s): Breakout

Session Level(s): 200

Track(s): Communications

Windows Communications Foundation (formerly codename "Indigo") is Microsoft's new platform technology for building distributed applications, bringing the best of ASP.NET Web services, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, WSE, and System.Messaging into one unified framework. This session introduces the core concepts in the Windows Communications Foundation programming model-addresses, bindings, contracts, and behaviors-and presents the Windows Communications Foundation feature set through the lens of these concepts. This session covers security, reliable messaging, transactions, queues, hosting, transports, interop/integration, and more. If you have never seen an introduction to Windows Communication Framework, this session is for you.

The slides from these sessions are currently available at http://commnet.microsoftpdc.com/content/downloads.aspx

WS Specs for Transactions Updated

florinlazar — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 03:43:00 GMT

The WS specifications related to Transactions (WS-Coordination, WS-AtomicTransaction and WS-BusinessActivity) have just been updated. They are available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/webservices/understanding/specs/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnglobspec/html/wsatspecindex.asp.

Indigo Transaction Samples

florinlazar — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:43:00 GMT

Some transaction related sample code using Indigo is shown at http://winfx.msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/indigo_samples/html/1a9842a3-e84d-427c-b6ac-6999cbbc2612.asp

Assuming that you already have the latest released WinFX build installed ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CE888B4C-CCBD-452F-9D90-F4B7190CCA24&displaylang=en ), you should also install the MSDTC hotfix from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=32187993-4736-4A06-97C7-1282B67E3137&displaylang=en so that you can use the new WS-AtomicTransaction protocol. Andy shows the necessary steps to install it at http://blogs.msdn.com/distilled/archive/2005/06/23/431821.aspx

Indigo and Avalon Beta1 RC Available for Download

florinlazar — Tue, 24 May 2005 01:03:00 GMT

"Indigo" and "Avalon" Beta1 RC are available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B789BC8D-4F25-4823-B6AA-C5EDF432D0C1&displaylang=en. More info can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn and http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices.

What do you want to know about transactions?

florinlazar — Sun, 08 May 2005 00:02:00 GMT

Please don't hesitate to send me your suggestions or questions or topics you would like to be discussed in this blog. You can post a comment to this post or use http://blogs.msdn.com/florinlazar/contact.aspx to let me know. I'll prioritize the list and cover as much as I can.

MSDN Product Feedback Center

florinlazar — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 22:04:00 GMT

You've found a bug in a Microsoft product, and you don't know where to report it? Use MSDN Product Feedback Center http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/default.aspx to submit it. You can collaborate with Microsoft developers, MVPs, and beta testers to identify problems and workarounds, and then track feedback online. You also get notifications of changes and fixes.

MSDN TV: Introduction to Indigo

florinlazar — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 05:30:00 GMT

My team is "live" on TV again. Steve is giving a quick "how-to" write an Indigo service and client on MSDN TV:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20050407INDIGOSS/manifest.xml

Another preview for Indigo

florinlazar — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 10:28:00 GMT

March 2005 Indigo CTP is now available to download for MSDN Subscribers at http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/default.aspx

This should also be available to the broad public soon.

For more information, go to the Longhorn developer center ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/ ) and the Indigo page ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/pillars/Indigo/default.aspx ), which will be updated with new information throughout the week.

I encourage everyone to send me the feedback you might have on the transactions features available in this CTP. You can post a comment to this post, or if you prefer, use http://blogs.msdn.com/florinlazar/contact.aspx to send me a private message. Thanks!

Don Box about System.Transactions

florinlazar — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 02:10:00 GMT

This is about an old article posted in MSDN Magazine but I want to make sure you didn't miss the paragraphs about System.Transactions that Don put together in "A Guide to Developing and Running Connected Systems with Indigo":

“Indigo also provides significant support for transactional programming. Indigo-enabled versions of Windows support a service-based transaction manager that may be accessed via the System.Transactions framework or the WS-AtomicTransactions protocol. The new System.Transactions framework makes transactional programming simple and efficient throughout the platform (it supports SQL Server™, ADO.NET, MSMQ, distributed transaction coordinator (DTC), etc). System.Transactions supports both an explicit programming model based on the ITransaction interface as well as an implicit programming model in which transactions are automatically managed by Indigo. Both models are available to Indigo-based apps.

System.Transactions provides a new in-memory transaction manager that allows volatile transactions (that is, transactions that do not involve durable resources) to commit or roll back efficiently without incurring any disk I/O. To support durability, the in-memory transaction manager will transparently promote volatile transactions to durable transactions by coordinating through a disk-based transaction manager like the DTC the moment a durable resource manager enlists itself with a transaction.

System.Transactions defines a simple managed interface for writing both volatile and durable resource managers. System.Transactions also supports any resource manager that can speak either OLE transactions or the broadly adopted WS-AtomicTransaction protocol. To enable efficient transacted access to the file system, the Longhorn version of System.Transactions directly supports both the Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM) and the Transactional NTFS (TxNTFS).”

On the Road to Indigo

florinlazar — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 01:13:00 GMT

Richard Turner takes us on the road to Indigo: http://blogs.msdn.com/richturner666/. You'll find there Q&A about Indigo, guidelines on writing your apps today to be prepared for an easy migration to Indigo tomorrow and a lot more.

Windows Server Roadmap

florinlazar — Sat, 29 May 2004 06:35:00 GMT

Bob Muglia presents the Windows Server roadmap: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/muglia_winserver.asp. He also mentions Indigo twice.