A Connected World through Software Architecture - Harry Pavithran : WCF

What is Oslo - BizTalk Future or BizTalk V.Next?

harishpa — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 09:08:00 GMT

Oslo - the latest is the next generation SOA and BPM technologies that will let Microsoft lead the way the SOA maturity space. Consist of five areas:

.NET Framework 4.0 and evolution of WCF and WF into a model driven development that allows easier services enabled processes

The next version of BizTalk Server 6 which will now build on top of WCF and WF - for example the messaging layer will be based on WCF messages not XML messages

Hosted Services - examples of early beta versions can be found in labs.BizTalk.net and this is just will get more mature and enterprise ready

Tools that manages lifecycle support and model driven design of service enabled composite applications that will be incorporated in VS 10

Metadata repository like the one in MSE but fully integrated into the next generation of System Center so deployment, versioning and managing these services become easier.

Managed Services Engine - View Release

harishpa — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:38:06 GMT

The Microsoft SOA solutions team recently released the Managed Services Engine - View Release which should help nicely to fill some voids in the total SOA solution story in terms of services, repository, provisioning and governance.

This announcement coincides with the announcement around Oslo in the SOA Business Process Conference occurring in Redmond this week.

I had some issued installing :

if you are installing this on Vista with SQLExpress like I do remember to open up a command window with admin access and type (thanks Chris)

Msiexec /i MSE6.msi SQLSERVER=.\SQLEXPRESS

And there you go!!

if you get this error

One of other issues I have seen

Your SQL Server may need to allow for CLR integration - by doing this (thanks again Chris)

EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options' , '1';
go
reconfigure;
go
EXEC sp_configure 'clr enabled' , '1'
go
reconfigure;
-- Turn advanced options back off
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options' , '0';
go

Lastly - go to your config file for the catalog services.exe and update the config file to add .\SQLEXPRESS (from .)

            <WCFCatalogSvcConfig xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://services.microsoft.com/2006-07/ServicePlatform/MSE6">
            <DebugMode>true</DebugMode>
            <DBConnString>Initial Catalog=MSE6DB;Data Source=.\SQLEXPRESS;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;Integrated Security=SSPI</DBConnString>
            <baseAddress>http://localhost:8090/ServiceCatalog</baseAddress>
            <serviceEndpoints>

So what does the new MSE do - what value does this add - and here is my take..

1) No more tight coupling of services - and you don't have to install a huge ESB infrastructure solution to just solve this problem. It does this by implementing a messenger-broker-dispatcher pattern out of the box

2) Supports contract first design in WCF by allowing development teams to work while the MSE engine takes care of stubbing out the request and response while implementation occurs

3) Service Catalog and versioning - actually have a service repository that can now store various versions of the same service and all the services in your organization in one place... it only allows for the WSDL of the latest version to be published while retaining metadata of

all the old service versions

4) Leveraging POX or plain old XML based legacy interfaces that may not be WS-* compliant and quickly re-using them!!

5) Service Policy Enforcement via XAML based interface and role based view of services - for example - architect, developers, administrators all get their own views in the mmc based tool

more later...

Technorati Tags: MSE , SOA , Microsoft SOA solutions

MOSS 2007 as a consumer for service oriented architecture (SOA) base architecture

harishpa — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:26:00 GMT

I recently spent some time with a customer that was looking at future state architecture for some thier current state frameworks. It made sense for thier situation for me to recommend a services factory approach to take an intial cut to their road to an SOA based future. Then came the question if its all SOA and XML based contracts - would it make sense then to use the built-in XML Web Part that can consume XML and use XSL to convert to HTML to display the information for consuming the SOA layer? The picture shown is a logical architecture diagram for this view. I also recommend the Enterprise Library and some key MOSS 2007 capablities to perhaps take some custom code out of the equation.