Hope is not an Architecture

Architect Journal WPF Reader - Beta available!

2007-11-30T04:01:13Z

I've always been a fan of the high quality articles available in the Architect Journal.

Of course you've always been able to subscribe or view articles online but now there is a better way to read, search and share articles. Simon Guest and co. have just released a beta version of the Architect Journal reader.

It's based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and automatcally syncs up new content from the web site. Great for offline viewing too. I likey!

Adelaide Bank - Enterprise Architecture and Motion

2007-11-05T00:48:00Z

We were fortunate enough to have Glenn Smyth, Chief Architect of Adelaide Bank present at the Canberra Architect Council last week.

Many folks that have been around the traps in Canberra for a number of years will know Glenn from his days at ATO and also DEWR. He is a great presenter and a colourful character.

I think Glenn did a great job of describing the Enterprise Architecture Framework that he is champoining at the bank. He decribed the approach to capability modelling that is being used to ensure that the services being built are the "right services", something which is often challenging in SOA.

The capability modelling work is drawn from much of the work that has come out of Microsoft for the last number of years. Formerly known as Motion and now officially named MSBA, Microsoft Business Architecture (I gotta admit I like the name "Motion" better).

You can find a copy of Glenns slides here which includes some notes and references (approx 3 Mb in size).

ARCast in OZ - TFS for mainframe COBOL ... oh and .NET too

2007-10-17T18:05:54Z

Ron Jacobs of ARCast fame just sent me an email to let me know that the ARCast he recorded at TechEd 2007 Australia is now available.

Checkout his ARCast from downunder (2.5 mins into the video) which has an interesting interview with an organisation I've done some work with.

The interesting thing is that this is a large organisation and like many large orgs have several different application platforms - a real mixed environment. These guys are using TFS to support their software development lifecycle across .NET but also their other development environments, including use of TFS for their Cobol devs on the mainframe, for IBM WebSphere artifacts (using an Eclipse plugin) as well as their Seibel environment!

If that wasn't enough, they also have developers working in different cities and using TFS across their WAN which is performing very well. Niiiiiice!

Don't ask me who the organisation is, I've been sworn to secrecy ;-)

Good job Justin, Michael!

Public Sector and Forms

2007-08-27T08:37:09Z

The two go hand in hand don't they?

How many different forms do people need to fill out for the requirements of different government departments? It seems that every department has a process and a bunch of forms that require automation. It'd be fair to say that Forms in the Public Sector are a recurring IT pattern in projects.

Now with the release of the dubiously named OBA RAP for E-Forms processing in the Public Sector at least forms sound somewhat sexy ...?..... right?

The OBA RAP for E-forms is a reference architectures that leverages Microsoft Office as an "application platform" or what is now termed an OBA - an Office Business Application.

The reference solution framework is generic and can be adapted to enable end-to-end processing of a number of electronic forms in the Public Sector.

The solution was built using a number of technologies from the 2007 Office System and .NET 3.0 platforms. Among those technologies include:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Microsoft Office InfoPath Forms Services
Windows Workflow Foundation
Windows Communication Foundation
Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

Also included as a part of the RAP are a number of supplementary materials including a click through demo, videos, technical and business presentations, and architecture whitepapers.

Interop Milestone: Infocards and User Centric Identity

2007-08-03T05:25:59Z

Great to see the recent news of the public interop session that was held at the Catalyst conference. This is testament to the continuing maturation of the Identity Metasystem.

The interop session was sponsored by the Burton Group with some great participation across the industry. The session included

7 Identity Selectors (Cardspace included of course!)
12 Identity Providers
25 Relying Parties

Bob Blakley has a more detailed write up at the Burton Group Identity Blog

Some of the participants

A quote from Bobs write up

"The interop clearly showed that Microsoft's decision to open the information card specifications, combined with the identity community's enthusiasm for user-centric identity technologies, has resulted in a truly open environment with lots of innovation and a variety of commercial and open-source providers."

MOSS interop

2007-07-29T12:38:46Z

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) had some great ways to consume services, aggregate information and compose applications from a variety of sources. The article Resources for interoperability with SharePoint Server 2007 sets it out nicely.

SOA Workshop for Architects - Webcast series

2007-07-26T02:42:32Z

Webcast series that discusses SOA and the Microsoft platform pieces that can make SOA real. Great to see that User Experience is seen as a important enabler of a successful SOA strategy.

SOA Workshop for Architects: Messaging & Communications

SOA Workshop for Architects: Business Process & Workflow

SOA Workshop for Architects: Tools & Modeling

SOA Workshop for Architects: User Experience

SOA Workshop for Architects: SOA Overview

SOA Workshop for Architects: Federated Data

SOA Workshop for Architects: Identity and Access

SOA Workshop for Architects: Governance and Management

Greg Willis is blogging

2007-07-23T13:09:23Z

Greg Willis (aka Gravity man) recently joined our team and it's great to see that he has got his blog up and running so quickly.

Greg, if you are seeking advice on blogging habits such as frequency of posts, you should know to look elsewhere :-)

"SOA seems to have come and gone quicker than a $50 hooker"

2007-07-23T10:30:42Z

Murls wrote an interesting comment on my last post about Dr. Don Fergusons presentation at the last architect council.

Murls writes " .... To me it seems like I have seen so much come and go over the years and SOA seems to have come and gone faster than a $50 hooker. And my belief is confirmed through a set of slides that are just as relevant as the hooker. Here is an interesting thought...

(Q) what is the difference between the human body and the IT Industry?
(A) We know whats going on inside the human body. And we didnt create it!

Not sure if I'm intimate enough with the subject matter to comment on the $50 hooker analogy ;->

Certainly I agree, as would anyone who has been in the (IT) industry for some time, that we have seen our fair share of fads … waves of supposed innovation that have washed away without fulfilling the early promises. I too, am starting to tire of everything being “SOA” but there is still some interesting stuff going on, some of which Don outlined in his talk (along with the visual cues from his slides). i.e. I thought his talk was more engaging than just his slides :-)

One of the interesting topics he talked to folks about was some early work going on at BizTalk Labs. This includes some discussion on the Internet Service Bus (okay I can do without that name too).

The aim of the project is to offer some of the services of a services bus (connection between end points, publish-subscribe) on the internet as a software service. The channel 9 video on the topic describes a scenario of an IRC chat program where clients can subscribe to an IRC channel (the IRC chat scenario starts at about 10 minutes into the video). A second scenario based on a Wall Street trading app (at about 16 minutes into the video) aims to highlight de-coupling the end points and connect via the service bus.

Early days, but the potential for this is interesting to contemplate and something that would have seemed some way off 5 or more years ago. We have come along way with web services et al (and some service orientation techniques).

Back to the question that Murls asked us to consider ..... I think the question and answer could be:

(Q) what is the difference between the human body and the IT industry?
(A) We don't know what's going on inside the IT firewall of most complex organisations and we did create it! Is SOA an attempt to help us simplify and understand some of this complexity?

Canberra Architect Council - Dr. Don Ferguson

2007-07-02T13:40:21Z

Last week we were fortunate to have Dr. Don Ferguson in Australia.

Don is a Microsoft Technical fellow and fairly new to Microsoft after many years at big blue.

During this time he visited Canberra and presented at the Canberra Architect Council and shared some interesting thoughts on SOA, ESBs, Web Services and Web 2.0.

Don was also the keynote speaker at the Australian Architect Forum that was held in Sydney and Melbourne.

You can find a copy of Don's Slides here (approx 5.5 Mb in size).

Architect Journal 10 - Composite Applications

2007-03-07T04:23:00Z

The latest issue of the Architect Journal has some great articles including some interesting ones on composite applications.

Building Composite Applications using ..... what?

2007-02-23T06:33:38Z

Wikipedia defines composite applications as "... a perspective of software engineering that defines an application built by combining multiple services. A composite application consists of functionality drawn from several different sources ..."

What the composite "container" might be could, vary from a portal approach, to a richer smart client perhaps built in WinForms or perhaps Java client technology.

What many folks don't know is that Office 2007 makes a great platform (yes I said PLATFORM!) that provides rich services for composition of presentation, logic and data.

There is now a book available about composite applications and how they can be developed using the 2007 Microsoft Office System. This is a good reference that provides an overview of the technologies available in the 2007 Microsoft Office System, and gives several examples from various industries of how to build Office Business Applications.

Check it out at http://msdn2.Microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb220803.aspx

Next meeting of the Canberra VSTS User Group

2007-02-22T04:34:21Z

Hi there, it’s that time of the month again.

The next breakfast meeting has a changed date of Tuesday 27^th Feb at 8:00am to 9:30am.

We had to move because the SharePoint user group were meeting at the same time – oops.

Thank you to all for registering and attending last month’s Canberra VSTS User Group. The feedback has all been excellent.

WHEN:

This Tuesday 27^th Feb.

8:00AM to 9:30AM

WHERE:

Microsoft Canberra

Level 2

44 Sydney Ave, Barton

Map: http://local.live.com/?v=2&sp=Point.93fcn8xdtnk1_Microsoft%20Canberra

TOPICS:

Working with Work Items (or herding cats) – Mitch Denny
TFS tools to make your life easier and the API – Grant Holliday

REGISTRATION:

Registration is essential for catering! Please email Grant.Holliday@readify.net

Register for the first Canberra VSTS user group meeting!

2007-01-11T04:25:00Z

The inaugural meeting is on Wednesday 24^th January at 8:00am to 9:30am

WHERE:

Microsoft Canberra
Level 2, 44 Sydney Ave
Barton ACT

The topics for the first meeting are

· Migrating from VSS to TFS (Andrew Lynes based on experiences at DEWR)
· Source Code Control – Approaches to branching, shelving etc (Sean Ferguson ATO / AFP experiences)

Registration is essential! Please email Grant.Holliday@readify.net

Thanks to Grant Holliday for taking on the task of managing registrations for the group!

Comm Bank Case Study published

2007-01-08T07:21:26Z

Just returned from annual leave and in catching up, I see that the CommSee case study has been published on MSDN!

This is a meaty, 63 page technical case study that examines the solution architecture, technical project details, and best practices employed to get CommSee successfully rolled out to 30,000 users.

Great to see a case study that goes to some depth!

A couple of months back I posted links to other CommSee interviews and resources that may be of interest.