Inside The Lab : .NET Framework 3.5

More and more Interop…NET FX 3.5 SP1 Beta Bits Live!

gregleak@microsoft.com — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:16:00 GMT

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen Microsoft announce several Interop-related work that the company is doing, including BizTalk R3 with expanded interop with new Web Services registry capabilities with support for UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) version 3.0 and LOB applications, Microsoft BizTalk RFID Mobile - a light weight application that works on mobile RFID devices, and will enable delivery of relevant information from these devices to central business process systems, Interop news from partners, like SAP and TIBCO, and last, but not least the .NET StockTrader 2.0/Config Service 2.0. This also only just a few examples of Interop work that’s been going on at Microsoft.

Let’s face it. Interop is very important in the industry and Windows Communication Foundation makes it easier for developers to create seamless Web Service-based applications. Today, Microsoft released Service Pack 1 (SP1) betas for Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5. This is very exciting for me because the SP1 for the .NET FX 3.5 delivers WCF improvements that give developers more control over the way they access data and services, including:

Interoperable object references
Enable WCF Service template in Visual Web Developer Express sku
Hosting Wizard for Visual Studio WCF Service projects in IIS
Enable Event Logging in Partial trust

These are only a few of the new features for WCF in the .NET FX 3.5 Beta bits. This is really important also for the investment of SOA applications which enables customers and developers to create more interoperable apps. As we see more companies involved in developing SOA apps like SAP and TIBCO as well as our own technology investments in developing more interoperable features in our products, we see the importance and need of SOA in the enterprise industry.

Also, go to Scott’s blog, ScottGu’s blog, to get more details.

What is Configuration Services 2.0?

gregleak@microsoft.com — Thu, 01 May 2008 22:36:00 GMT

Last week, I presented at different types of user group sessions including the .NET Connected Systems Group in NYC and the Scalability Group in Boston. I showed a new feature of my StockTrader app, Configuration Services 2.0, which makes it easier to build services easier with .NET Framework 3.5 and WCF, and you may have read more here, Microsoft Continues Its Work On Oslo -- SOA for Windows.

Here are a few of the main objectives of the Configuration Services 2.0 and this will all be posted in the white paper on MSDN on the .NET StockTrader site:

1. Make it easier to build services with .NET 3.5 and WCF

o Includes template bindings, security examples, interoperability examples with Java

o Manages host process, endpoints, connections between services automatically

o Designed for high-performance

2. Provide centralized configuration management of service nodes

o Move host and application-specific settings from config files to a repository approach

o Provide Web-based management UI

o Provide way to automatically update settings without host restarts

3. Provide these capabilities via easily re-usable shared libraries

o Easy for customers to implement in their own applications and services

o Provides base classes, uses .NET reflection

o ~20 lines of code and not much time investment for customer to implement!

You can also call this something like a distributed “Service Network” and is one of the first examples of a general purpose Service Network built using .NET managed code. These code libraries can be leveraged as part of your SOA projects to develop new composite application that mix/match services across both .NET and Java. The Service Network should be able to automatically detect 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 should auto-detect that more resources are available for use. You can read more about Service Network on Steven Martin’s blog.

Below is also a diagram that might make more sense. Let me know what you think and would love your thoughts on this.

A Little Introduction of Myself and My Work

ladinh — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:43:00 GMT

I work in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft, but spend most of my time in my lab developing new enterprise software and samples that focus on interoperability, scalability and performance. I’ve been at Microsoft for about 15 years and have held a few positions in the company, but working in my lab has been one of the most satisfying. I’m truly a developer at heart. I really do hope this blog becomes more of a forum where I can hear other developers’ thoughts on my applications as well as other insights on developing code.

One application that I developed last year and continue to work on is the .NET StockTrader, http://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader. 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.

You might think I would have a team to help me with developing my app, but it’s only me and my benchmark and networking expert, Jody. Jody has worked with me for years now, and got his start at National Software Testing Laboratories outside of Philadelphia. Let’s just say that we have a long history working together and definitely have seen some long nights in testing, tuning, fixing, and re-tuning various applications, but always learning new ways to really leverage the .NET Framework in scalable and interoperable enterprise scenarios—and publishing these findings so hopefully customers can use them.

Stay tuned because I have some interesting findings and updates that I’d love to share in the upcoming weeks. But for now, check out, http://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader, for additional materials including to download the sample app to test yourself.