Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

re: Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

John Cavnar-Johnson — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 20:07:00 GMT

I really like the looks of "Whitehorse", but it seems to missing one really important facet of distributed enterprise systems: it doesn't really support designing the messages that the systems send and receive. Sure, it allows you to specify RPC-like web methods, but it doesn't encourage message-based systems. I would love to see "Whitehorse" extended with a tool for modeling messages and message exchanges. This could tie-in nicely with the support that Indigo has message-based programming (and raise the profile of those Indigo concepts to their appropriate architectural level, instead of the "low-level", "only appropriate to hard-core bitheads" reputation that they now have).

re: Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

Keith Short — Fri, 13 Feb 2004 21:20:00 GMT

This is an excellent point John. Two comments:

First, for Whitehorse shipping at Whidbey, we could not rely on Indigo being available and therefore are restricted to Web Service technology available today and in the Whidbey timeframe. But your point about higher levels of abstraction is well taken. Indeed it is a principle of Whitehorse to promote higher levels of abstraction as you'll see if you follow the links in my posting. When we support Indigo with Whitehorse, I think it's pretty sure that the tools will be extended to support contracts (message schemas and interaction patterns) in some way.

Second, we are working on some additional features for the Service Designer at Whidbey that allows a focus on the "contract first" development approach that will present a better experience that includes designing message schemas as part of defining the wsdl for a service endpoint.

Modelling

Michael Platt's WebLog — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 21:20:00 GMT

re: Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

Richard Gilyead — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 15:00:00 GMT

Keith, I worked with IEF at American Express in 1980's with Richard Veryard. I have also had a short sojourn since with Select Business Solutions as VP CBD tools. I will be interested to see how Whitehorse copes with the model versioning issues we discussed re IEF. Service versioning and backward compatibility could be a big headache for WS-based systems. Also worth mentioning the CBDiForum website (http://www.cbdiforum.com)- lots of good stuff there.

re: Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

Keith short — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 20:13:00 GMT

Richard, I agree with your comments re CBDiForum - I've always found David Sprott's and Lawrence Wilkes' comments knowledgeable and incisive. Of course I know them well, but I'm trying to be objective :-)

On versioning, our current thoughts are to avoid the fine granularity of models we had in the IEF. Our approach is more "artifact oriented" - a model is an artifact - in which model structure can vary internally between versions as long as a public "contract" - the externally accessible meta data from the artifact is versioned or remains the same (much lie a .Net Assembly). Versioning of Services once deployed is probably best done in a similar way, much like an interface is today. However, I've seen customers do this in diffrerent ways for deployed services. Either keeping the endpoiint the same and varying logic behind the contract, or introducing a new endpoint to contain new versions of the behavior offered.

re: Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

Richard Gilyead — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 13:37:00 GMT

Sounds interesting - I need to understand how Contracts and Services will be modelled. UML2 seems weak in that area. Have you got thoughts on how to represent these concepts? Also how they can be integrated with business processes via BPMN?

re: Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

Pascal Recchia — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 17:54:00 GMT

I'm very happy when I see the comments posted by John Cavnar-Johnson or Richard Gilyead.
I put these same questions to myself about contract designer but about orchestration designer, too. And unfortunately, I did not find answers. What relief to find this blog.

My feelings (My fears) were that Whitehorse forgot the functional (logical ?) view to focus on deployement and a static view as the last version of Biztalk.

And as UML seems be inapt to design a SOA, it must find the rigth tool. Currently we use often sequence diagram (some times activity diagram).

Keith, Can you give more details about the additional features for the Service Designer ? And their availability (Whidbey Beta 1)?

re: Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

Keith Short — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 20:32:00 GMT

Pascal, like I said above, the best place for some more details on the Service Designer is the paper on MSDN: http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/enterprise/enterpriseroadmap/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvsent/html/vsent_soadover.asp

Our current plan is to make some functionality avaible at Whidbey Beta 1.

re: Model Based Software Development Tools from Microsoft

Pascal Recchia — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 02:05:00 GMT

I have already read this paper. Currently, I try to understand where Whitehorse is positionned compared to the 4+1 approach : logical view (Functional requirement), Process view, Implementation view, Deploiement view. Whitehorse aims only implementation view and deploiement view. For the others views, it must wait for tiers products based on Whitehorse SDK ?

I'm agree with you about UML, I encourage you in your project and I would be happy if I find the modeling tool for which I wait for a long time.

Thanks.

Whitehorse

Akira's Blogs — Tue, 04 May 2004 11:52:00 GMT

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Akira's Blogs — Tue, 04 May 2004 16:22:00 GMT

Whitehorse

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