J.D. Meier's Blog : Releases

New Release: Hands-on Labs for Unity 1.2

J.D. Meier — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:20:02 GMT

Hands-on Labs for Unity 1.2 are now available.

What is Unity
Unity is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection container with optional support for instance and type interception. It facilitates building loosely-coupled applications and provides developers with the following advantages:

Simplified object creation, especially for hierarchical object structures and dependencies.
Abstraction of requirements; this allows developers to specify dependencies at run time or in configuration and simplify management of crosscutting concerns.
Increased flexibility by deferring component configuration to the container.
Service location capability; this allows clients to store or cache the container.
Instance and type interception (via an extension introduced in Unity Application Block 1.2—October 2008).

What's in this Release
Use this set of Hands-on Labs as a guide to learn about how to use Unity dependency injection container and how to leverage its capabilities in various application contexts (including ASP.NET). It covers the following topics:

setting up the container
configuring injection through API and files
resolving generics and decorator chains
using array injection
integrating with ASP.NET
using child containers.

New Release: Hands-on Labs for Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.1

J.D. Meier — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 05:13:21 GMT

Hands-on Labs for Microsoft patterns & practices Enterprise Library 4.1 are now available.

What is Enterprise Library
Microsoft Enterprise Library is a collection of reusable software components ("application blocks") designed to address common cross-cutting concerns for enterprise application development (such as logging, validation, data access, exception handling, and more). Entlib is provided as source code, test cases, and documentation that can be used "as is" or extended, and encapsulates the Microsoft recommended and proven practices for .NET application development.

What's in this Release
Use this set of Hands-on Labs as a guide to learn about the application blocks included with Enterprise Library 4.1 and practice how to leverage their capabilities in various application contexts.

There are also updates of the hands-on labs for the following blocks:

Caching Application Block
Cryptography Application Block
Data Access Application Block
Exception Handling Application Block
Logging Application Block
Security Application Block

New Release: Visual Basic Quickstarts for Prism v2 (WPF and Silverlight)

J.D. Meier — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:26:53 GMT

Visual Basic QuickStarts and How-to Topics for patterns & practices PrismV2 (Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight) are now available.

What is PRISM
The Composite Client Application Guidance is designed to help you more easily build modular Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight client line of business applications.

Included in this Release
The release includes QuickStarts, the Composite Application Library (only provided in C#), and documentation. The documentation includes:

Visual Basic Content for Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight - February 2009.chm: The QuickStarts, Hands-On Labs, and How-to Topics in Visual Basic.
Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight - February 2009.chm: Complete documentation in C#.
Composite Application Library Reference February 2009.chm: Library reference API.

New Release: Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight v2.0 (PRISM)

J.D. Meier — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:58:16 GMT

Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight v2.0 (PRISM) is now available.

Goals of the Release
Providing guidance on building modular and composite Silverlight applications.
Simplifying the composition of the user interface.
Providing guidance and light tooling on reusing code between Silverlight and WPF.

Key Scenarios

You're building a application that presents information from multiple sources through an integrated user interface.
You're developing, testing, and deploying modules independently of the other modules.
Your application will add more views and more functionality over the coming years.
You must be able to change the application quickly and safely to meet emergent business requirements.
Your application is being developed by multiple collaborating teams.
Your application targets both WPF and Silverlight, and you want to share as much code as possible between the two platforms.

What's in This Release

Composite Application Library
Reference Implementation (Stock Traders application in WPF and Silverlight)
Quick starts (9)
How-Tos (26) and
Documentation of UI patterns and client architectures.

Key Links

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New Release: patterns & practices WCF Security Guide

J.D. Meier — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:47:07 GMT

Today we released our patterns & practices Improving Web Service security: Scenarios and Implementation Guidance for WCF on MSDN. Using end-to-end application scenarios, this guide shows you how to design and implement authentication and authorization in WCF. You'll learn how to improve the security of your WCF services through prescriptive guidance including guidelines, a Q&A, practices at a glance, and step-by-step how to articles. The guide is the result of a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, WCF team members, and industry experts.

Download the patterns & practices WCF Security guide (CodePlex)
Read the patterns & practices WCF Security Guide online (MSDN)

Key Scenarios
Here's the key scenarios:

A development team that wants to adopt WCF.
A software architect or developer looking to get the most out of WCF, with regard to designing their application security.
Interested parties investigating the use of WCF but don’t know how well it would work for their deployment scenarios and constraints.
Individuals tasked with learning WCF security.
Authentication, authorization, and communication design for your services
Solution patterns for common distributed application scenarios using WCF
Principles, patterns, and practices for improving key security aspects in services

Contents at a Glance

Part I: Security Fundamentals for Web Services
Part II: Fundamentals of WCF Security
Part III: Intranet Application Scenarios
Part IV: Internet Application Scenarios

Chapters

Foreword by Nicholas Allen
Foreword by Rockford Lhotka
Chapter 1: Security Fundamentals for Web Services
Chapter 2: Threats and Countermeasures for Web Services
Chapter 3: Security Design Guidelines for Web Services
Chapter 4: WCF Security Fundamentals
Chapter 5: Authentication, Authorization, and Identities in WCF
Chapter 6: Impersonation and Delegation in WCF
Chapter 7: Message and Transport Security
Chapter 8: Bindings
Chapter 9: Intranet - Web to Remote WCF Using Transport Security (Original Caller, TCP)
Chapter 10: Intranet - Web to Remote WCF Using Transport Security (Trusted Subsystem, HTTP)
Chapter 11: Intranet - Web to Remote WCF Using Transport Security (Trusted Subsystem, TCP)
Chapter 12: Intranet - Windows Forms to Remote WCF Using Transport Security (Original Caller, TCP)
Chapter 13: Internet - WCF and ASMX Client to Remote WCF Using Transport Security (Trusted Subsystem, HTTP)
Chapter 14: Internet - Web to Remote WCF Using Transport Security (Trusted Subsystem, TCP)
Chapter 15: Internet – Windows Forms Client to Remote WCF Using Message Security (Original Caller, HTTP)

Our Team

J.D. Meier
Carlos Farre
Jason Taylor
Prashant Bansode
Steve Gregersen
Madhu Sundararajan
Rob Boucher

Contributors / Reviewers

External Contributors / Reviewers: Andy Eunson; Anil John; Anu Rajendra; Brandon Bohling; Chaitanya Bijwe; Daniel Root; David P. Romig, Sr.; Dennis Rea; Kevin Lam; Michele Leroux Bustamante; Parameswaran Vaideeswaran; Rockford Lhotka; Rudolph Araujo; Santosh Bejugam
Microsoft Contributors / Reviewers: Alik Levin; Brandon Blazer; Brent Schmaltz; Curt Smith; David Bradley; Dmitri Ossipov; Jan Alexander; Jason Hogg; Jason Pang; John Steer; Marc Goodner; Mark Fussell; Martin Gudgin; Martin Petersen-Frey; Mike de Libero; Mohammad Al-Sabt; Nobuyuki Akama; Ralph Squillace; Richard Lewis; Rick Saling; Rohit Sharma; Scott Mason; Sidd Shenoy; Sidney Higa; Stuart Kwan; Suwat Chitphakdibodin; T.R. Vishwanath; Todd Kutzke; Todd West; Vijay Gajjala; Vittorio Bertocci; Wenlong Dong; Yann Christensen; Yavor Georgiev

Application Architecture Guide 2.0 Final Release

J.D. Meier — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:10:12 GMT

We released our final release of the patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide 2.0 on Codeplex. It's the "Microsoft playbook for application architecture." This is our guide to help solution architects and developers make the most of the Microsoft platform. It's a distillation of many lessons learned. It’s principle-based and pattern-oriented to provide a durable, evolvable backdrop for application architecture. It's a collaborative effort among product team members, field, industry experts, MVPs, and customers.

Key Links

Application Architecture Guide 2.0 - http://www.codeplex.com/AppArchGuide
Application Architecture Knowledge Base – http://www.codeplex.com/AppArch

Key Changes Since Beta 2

Added a foreword by Scott Guthrie.
Incorporated feedback from internal and external reviewers.
Tuned and pruned the recommendations across the entire guide.

Architecture Meta Frame (AMF)
The Architecture Meta Frame integrates context, application types, architecture styles, and an architecture frame to help map out the application architecture space.

The Architecture Meta Frame serves as a durable, evolvable backdrop for the guidance in the patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide 2.0.

Key Scenarios for the Guide

Choose the right architecture for your application.
Choose the right technologies.
Make more effective choices for key engineering decisions.
Map appropriate strategies and patterns.
Map relevant patterns & practices solution assets.

Key Features of the Guide

Canonical Application Frame. Describes at a meta-level, the tiers and layers that an architect should consider. Each tier/layer is described in terms of its focus, function, capabilities, common design patterns and technologies.
Application Types. Canonical application archetypes to illustrate common application types. Each archetype is described in terms of the target scenarios, technologies, patterns and infrastructure it contains. Each archetype will be mapped to the canonical app frame. They are illustrative of common app types and not comprehensive or definitive.
Architecture Frame. A common set of categories for hot spots for key engineering decisions.
Quality Attributes. A set of qualities/abilities that shape your application architecture: performance, security, scalability, manageability, deployment, communication, etc.
Principles, patterns and practices. Using the frames as backdrops, the guide overlays relevant principles, patterns, and practices.
Technologies and capabilities. A description and overview of the Microsoft application development platform and the main technologies and capabilities within it.

Team
Here's the team that brought you this guide:

Core Dev Team: J.D. Meier , Alex Homer, David Hill, Jason Taylor , Prashant Bansode , Lonnie Wall, Rob Boucher Jr, Akshay Bogawat
Test Team - Rohit Sharma, Praveen Rangarajan
Edit Team - Dennis Rea.

Contributors / Reviewers
One of our themes throughout the guide was "Stand on the shoulders of giants." We leveraged a lot of experts inside and outside of Microsoft:

External Contributors/Reviewers - Adwait Ullal; Andy Eunson; Brian Sletten; Christian Weyer; David Guimbellot; David Ing; David Weller; Derek Greer; Eduardo Jezierski; Evan Hoff; Gajapathi Kannan; Jeremy D. Miller; John Kordyback; Keith Pleas; Kent Corley; Mark Baker; Paul Ballard; Peter Oehlert; Norman Headlam; Ryan Plant; Sam Gentile; Sidney G Pinney; Ted Neward; Udi Dahan
Microsoft Contributors / Reviewers - Ade Miller; Amit Chopra; Anna Liu; Anoop Gupta; Bob Brumfield; Brad Abrams; Brian Cawelti; Bhushan Nene; Burley Kawasaki; Carl Perry; Chris Keyser; Chris Tavares; Clint Edmonson; Dan Reagan; David Hill; Denny Dayton; Diego Dagum; Dmitri Martynov; Dmitri Ossipov; Don Smith; Dragos Manolescu; Elisa Flasko; Eric Fleck; Erwin van der Valk; Faisal Mohamood; Francis Cheung; Gary Lewis; Glenn Block; Gregory Leake; Ian Ellison-Taylor; Ilia Fortunov; J.R. Arredondo; John deVadoss; Joseph Hofstader; Koby Avital; Loke Uei Tan; Luke Nyswonger; Manish Prabhu; Meghan Perez; Mehran Nikoo; Michael Puleio; Mike Francis; Mike Walker; Mubarak Elamin; Nick Malik; Nobuyuki Akama; Ofer Ashkenazi; Pablo Castro; Pat Helland; Phil Haack; Reed Robison; Rob Tiffany; Ryno Rijnsburger; Scott Hanselman; Seema Ramchandani; Serena Yeoh; Simon Calvert; Srinath Vasireddy; Tom Hollander; Wojtek Kozaczynski

Pocket Guide Series for Application Architecture

J.D. Meier — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 06:57:01 GMT

Our Application Architecture Pocket Guides are available from our Application Architecture KB. Our pocket guides are based on our Application Architecture Guide 2.0. We prioritized an initial set of pocket guides based on customer demand for focused content on specific topics.

Pocket Guides
Here’s the Pocket Guides available so far:

You can browse the list of pocket guides on the Pocket Guide Index page.

Web Application Architecture Pocket Guide

J.D. Meier — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:46:31 GMT

We posted our Web Application Architecture Pocket Guide to our Application Architecture Guidance KB. This is in response to customers who expressed interest in more modular guides as a supplement to our Application Architecture Guide 2.0.

Chapters At a Glance
Here’s the chapters at a glance:

Ch 01 – Web Application Architecture
Ch 02 - Design Guidelines
Ch 03 - Presentation Layer Guidelines
Ch 04 - Business Layer Guidelines
Ch 05 - Data Access Layer Guidelines
Ch 06 - Service Layer Guidelines
Ch 07 - Communication Guidelines
Ch 08 - Deployment Patterns

Download

Download the Web Application Architecture Pocket Guide.

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Mobile Application Architecture Pocket Guide

J.D. Meier — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:41:00 GMT

We posted our Mobile Application Architecture Pocket Guide to our Application Architecture Guidance KB. This is in response to customers who expressed interest in more modular guides as a supplement to our Application Architecture Guide 2.0.

Chapters At a Glance
Here’s the chapters at a glance:

Ch 01 – Mobile Application Architecture
Ch 02 – Architecture and Design Guidelines
Ch 03 - Presentation Layer Guidelines
Ch 04 - Business Layer Guidelines
Ch 05 - Data Access Layer Guidelines
Ch 06 - Service Layer Guidelines
Ch 07 - Communication Guidelines
Ch 08 - Deployment Patterns

Download

Download the Mobile Application Architecture Pocket Guide.

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RIA Architecture Pocket Guide

J.D. Meier — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:34:26 GMT

We posted our RIA Architecture Pocket Guide to our Application Architecture Guidance KB. This is in response to customers who expressed interest in more modular guides as a supplement to our Application Architecture Guide 2.0.

Chapters At a Glance
Here’s the chapters at a glance:

Ch 01 - RIA Architecture
Ch 02 - Design Guidelines
Ch 03 - Presentation Layer Guidelines
Ch 04 - Business Layer Guidelines
Ch 05 - Data Access Layer Guidelines
Ch 06 - Service Layer Guidelines
Ch 07 - Communication Guidelines
Ch 08 - Deployment Patterns

Download

Download the RIA Architecture Pocket Guide.

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Rich Client Application Architecture Pocket Guide

J.D. Meier — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:26:22 GMT

We posted our Rich Client Application Architecture Pocket Guide to our Application Architecture Guidance KB. This is in response to customers who expressed interest in more modular guides as a supplement to our Application Architecture Guide 2.0.

Chapters At a Glance
Here’s the chapters at a glance:

Ch 01 - Rich Client Application Architecture
Ch 02 - Architecture and Design Guidelines
Ch 03 - Presentation Layer Guidelines
Ch 04 - Business Layer Guidelines
Ch 05 - Data Access Layer Guidelines
Ch 06 - Service Layer Guidelines
Ch 07 - Communication Guidelines
Ch 08 - Deployment Patterns

Download

Download the Rich Client Architecture Pocket Guide.

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Service Architecture Pocket Guide

J.D. Meier — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:05:56 GMT

We posted our Service Architecture Pocket Guide to our Application Architecture Guidance KB. This is in response to customers who expressed interest in more modular guides as a supplement to our Application Architecture Guide 2.0.

Chapters At a Glance
Here’s the chapters at a glance:

Ch 01 - Service Architecture
Ch 02 - Designing Services
Ch 03 - Service Layer Guidelines
Ch 04 - Communication Guidelines
Service Layer Checklist

Download

Download the Service Architecture Pocket Guide.

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Application Architecture Visios Now Available

Application Architecture Visios Now Available

J.D. Meier — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:53:55 GMT

We added our Application Architecture Diagrams (Visios) to our Application Architecture Knowledge Base (KB) on CodePlex. You can download the Visios and customize for your own presentations or documents.

Application Architecture Figures
Here’s the figures available:

Architecture Meta Frame (AMF)
User, Business, and System Perspectives
Agile Architecture Method
Layered Architecture
Layered Architecture with Services Layer
Layered Architecture with Multi-Clients / Multi-Channel
Web Application Archetype
Mobile Application Archetype
Rich Internet Application (RIA) Archetype
Rich Client Archetype
Service Archetype

Architecture Meta Frame (AMF)

User, Business, System Perspectives

Agile Architecture Method

Layered Architecture

Layered Architecture with Services Layer

Layered Architecture with Multi-Client / Multi-Channel

Web Application Archetype

Mobile Application Archetype

Rich Internet Application (RIA) Archetype

Rich Client Archetype

Service Archetype

Architecture Meta Frame Cheat Sheet

J.D. Meier — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:47:51 GMT

We posted our Architecture Meta Frame Cheat Sheet to CodePlex as part of our Application Architecture Knowledge Base. The Architecture Meta Frame (AMF) is a lens to help you quickly navigate the application architecture space. You can think of it as bringing together some of the important factors that shape applications. You can also use it as a way to help find hot spots for focusing your architecture efforts.

Architecture Meta Frame (AMF)
The Architecture Meta Frame integrates context, application types, architecture styles, and an architecture frame to help map out the application architecture space.

The Architecture Meta Frame serves as a durable, evolvable backdrop for the guidance in the patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide 2.0.

Key Features of the Architecture Meta Frame
Here’s a summary of the Architecture Meta Frame:

Scenarios. Application scenarios tie architecture solutions to the real world scenarios that impact your application design.
Quality Attributes. Quality attributes represent cross-cutting concerns that apply across application types, and should be considered regardless of architecture style. Security, performance, maintainability, and reusability are examples of quality attributes.
Requirements and Constraints. Requirements and constraints narrow the range of possible solutions for your application architecture problems.
Application Types. Application types categorize the major application technology stacks on the Microsoft platform. Examples of application types include Mobile, Rich Internet Application (RIA), Services Application, and Web Application.
Architecture Styles. An architectural style is a collection of principles that shapes the design of your application. Many of these styles overlap and can be used in combination. Architectural styles tend to be tied both to the application type as well as to the point in time in which the application was developed.
Architecture Frame. The architecture frame is a collection of hot spots you can use to analyze your application architecture. This helps you turn core features such as caching, data access, validation, and workflow into actions.

You can read more about the Architecture Meta Frame in Cheat Sheet – Architecture Meta Frame (AMF) on CodePlex.

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patterns & practices Reference Application Architecture Cheat Sheet

J.D. Meier — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:06:44 GMT

We posted our patterns & practices Reference Application Architecture Cheat Sheet on CodePlex. It’s an overview of a layered architecture, including an brief explanation of each layer and the relevant components.

Layered Architecture at a Glance
Here’s a figure that shows the layers and components:

Layers
Here’s a brief summary of the layers:

Presentation Layer - Presentation layer components implement the functionality required to allow users to interact with the application.
Business Layer - Business layer components implement the core functionality of the system, and encapsulate the relevant business logic.
Data Layer - Data layer components provide access to data that is hosted within the boundaries of the system, and data exposed by other back-end systems.
Services Layer - Services layer components provide other clients and applications with a way to access business logic in the application, and make use of the functionality of the application by passing messages to and from it over a communication channel.

Components
Here’s a listing of the key components for each layer:

Presentation Layer Components

User Interface (UI) components
UI process components

Business Layer Components

Application facade
Business components
Business workflows
Business entity components

Data Layer Components

Data access components
Data helper and utility components
Service agents

Services Layer Components

Service Interfaces
Message Contracts

You can read more about the components in our Cheat Sheet – Reference Application Architecture.

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