Inside The Lab : .NET and Java Interop

.NET StockTrader 2.0 Demo at TechEd IT Pro

gregleak@microsoft.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 20:00:00 GMT

What a crazy couple of weeks in Orlando! I was at TechEd Developer last week doing a couple of sessions on my app, .NET StockTrader 2.0, and still here this week to do a .NET StockTrader 2.0 demo during Bob Muglia’s keynote at TechEd IT Pro. I will also have our partner, WS02, joining us on stage during the demo to showcase the interoperability on an Apache platform. Part of Bob’s keynote address, the .NET StockTrader and Configuration Service 2.0 will show how a composite application, running across Windows-, IBM WebSphere- and Apache-distributed components, could dynamically virtualized against physical resources on-premises and across the cloud.

New interoperability features demonstrated with WS-* Advanced Web Service Security are below:

· Message level security interoperability with WSO2 open-source based Web Services Application Server (Java)

· Message level security interoperability with WSO2 open-source Web Services Framework for PHP

· Interoperability across three distinct platforms (Microsoft, PHP, Apache Axis2/C) via Advanced WS-* protocols and X.509 certificates on service clients and service hosts.

Also, this demo shows that interoperability is real and ready for customers to leverage today. .NET StockTrader and Configuration Services 2.0 let customers to take advantage of their existing services and applications while enabling them to easily scale out by automatically detecting when you’ve added new computing nodes to the network and take advantage of scaling out with greater power. Real-world IT environments are a mix of technologies and we continue to prioritize to help customers achieve interoperability between systems for the benefit of sharing information across organizational and corporate boundaries.

There’ll also be a TechEd Online Interop panel discussion on Tuesday, June 10 at 2:00-3:00 pm ET with WS02, Sun and TIBCO to discuss how interoperability is important today and the role it plays for customers in the future. The panel will be held in the TEO are by the Microsoft store so if you have free time then, you should come by and watch the panel. It’ll be moderated by Burton analyst, Chris Haddad, and will be discussing the importance of interoperability today in our industry. The panel will also be taped so if you can’t make it, you can also check it online on the Tech·Ed Online Web site.

.NET StockTrader 2.0 and Configuration Services 2.0 Download Available!

gregleak@microsoft.com — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:41:00 GMT

Just wanted to provide everyone an update that the .NET StockTrader 2.0 and Configurations Services 2.0 are both available for download on the MSDN .NET StockTrader site, http://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader!

Know a lot of people were waiting anxiously for this and now it’s finally ready for you to try out. Also, I really do want your feedback on this app so please provide some comments on the developer forum, and we may use this feedback for future .NET StockTrader updates.

Let me know what you think!

.NET StockTrader Benchmarks from Feb

gregleak@microsoft.com — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:29:00 GMT

As I finish up and put the final touches on .NET StockTrader 2.0, I wanted to share some benchmark findings that I did last February during the launch of the new versions of three cornerstone technologies: Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Based on Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5, I released new benchmarks for the .NET StockTrader, which also show that Windows Server and .NET can push perf boundaries against other publicly available apps like IBM’s J2EE StockTrader perf application.

Some of my favorite findings are:

· Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with .NET Framework 3.5 delivers 117% better throughput than IBM WebSphere 6.1 on Red Hat Linux for the Web Application Server test using the IBM-designed Trade 6.1 benchmark as well as delivers 93% better throughput for the remote services test.

· On the Sun Microsystems’ WSTest Web Services benchmark, .NET StockTrader demonstrates 94% better throughput on Windows Server on processing Web Service requests and 86% better throughput performance for the EchoStruct operation.

Check out the full white paper here, http://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader, which has a chart that better explains the high performance that I tested for the .NET StockTrader based on Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5.

The paper on MSDN presents the benchmark results of two key application server workloads:

1. Trade 6.1 Application Server Benchmark created by IBM – This benchmark serves as IBM’s primary capacity planning tool for WebSphere, and as their primary performance sample application for Java Enterprise applications. The benchmarks detail throughput results for the IBM implementation vs. the functionally equivalent of the .NET Framework 3.5 implementation.

2. WSTest Web Services 1.5 Benchmark, created by Sun Microsystems – This benchmark tests an application server’s performance as a Web Service Host, measuring the platforms ability to process Web Service operations involving HTTP/SOAP requests, isolating the networking stack, Web server integration, and XML serialization engines within the application server.

The benchmarks also show that the .NET Framework is a proven foundation for enterprise mission critical applications and the misconceived perception that .NET isn’t scalable for enterprise apps. With Windows Server, the .NET Framework really does deliver impressive performance, scalability and interoperability relative to other options in the market. The .NET StockTrader is also a good proof point of interoperability as well since it has complete, seamless connections between front and back-end technologies. The sample app also illustrates that a developer who uses .NET can now focus on adding more features and functionality to your applications spending less time writing lines and lines of code and debugging.

I’m at my lab right now working on the new benchmarks for .NET StockTrader 2.0, which I hope to have posted on MSDN very, very soon so key an eye out for it!