SAAS Labs and Slides from Architecture Workshop

For anyone who wanted to take the SAAS concept further after attending the Strategic Architects Forum check out this blog entry from Fred Chong. From the entry

• Lab 1 is all about extending data model. We show you how you can implement the "shared database shared schema" data architecture using SQL Server 2005. Data models are extended using the name-value pair pattern. Furthermore, this lab also shows you the kinds of meta data you need to factor into your design to describe the persisted data model extensions and the customized business entity view that is seen by the users.

• Lab 2 uses Windows Workflow Foundation to demonstrate how a simple templatized designer can be implemented to enable workflow and business rules modifications.

• Lab 3 can be very insightful to those who have been thinking about using Web services standards to secure their SaaS applications. In this lab, we used the Windows Communications Framework (WCF) to implement a security token service that issues SAML tokens to authenticated clients. We also show how authorization policies can be inserted as signed identity claims inside the SAML tokens.

• Lab 4 intends to show ISV the tenant provisioning tasks for on-boarding customers. This lab is based on the Litware HR tenant provisioning scenario and therefore we have greatly simplified the task list to exclude provisioning real world OSS/BSS components such as the billing infrastructure. Neverthless, the lab is still very valuable for getting to know the kinds of application platform provisioning that has to happen (such as creating IIS virtual directory and tenant specific database rows and views).

Visit the site and it has the links to download the slides and labs.