Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity

Introduction to Microsoft® Visual Studio Team System™ (saArchitect Community Workshop)

Reminder of our next iteration of the saArchitect technology community session. After lookign at WCF, we will be introducing Visual Studioi Team System during this session. Please find more details on http://www.saarchitect.net/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=285 and register on http://www.drp.co.za/default.asp?id=training/content_trainingschedule for the event. Note that seats are limited to 10 attendees.

WinFX .NET 3 BETA2 – After the last CTP shocker, all I can say is WOW!

saArchitect Community Event: WCF #1

We completed the first community event, focused on Windows Community Foundation (WCF), where we discussed the early adoption findings and created a prototype covering the following features:

•       Hosting of services

•       One way calls

•       Duplex calls

•       Transactions

•       Session management

•       Reliable messaging

The next saA community event on 2006/07/08 will introduce VSTS/TFS and on 2006/07/29 we will again look at WCF, this time looking at BizTalk and WCF, as well as InfoCard.

We are also looking forward to the release of our second book, which includes a “WCF In Easy Steps” chapter. As was the case today, these sessions are not based on step-step labs, nor are they training courses ... they are workshops during which we want to explore the technologies as a team.

Thanks to everyone from the community who attended today, for IT Intellect sponsoring the facilities, Derek for the wealth of snacks he brought along to the event and BB&D/MTU members for preparing and hosting these sessions for the community.

Web version of Team Explorer

Book: “.NET Enterprise Solutions …. Interoperability for the Connoisseur” -- DRAFT 3 shipping

It is now 12:24AM and we are pleased to announce that the DRAFT-3, regarded as the final version by the authors and contributors, is shipping to all reviewers and editors today. We are reaching the end of a mammoth journey and looking forward to the final product.

Thanks for everyone's support, contributions and ongoing encouragement!

DevDays 2006 Johannesburg

Find a few snapshots of DevDays 2006 in Johannesburg at http://dotnet.org.za/photos/willy/category1386.aspx. It includes a snapshot of our WCF poster, which highlights our passion for and focus on the ABC, on WCF and the a glimpse of the book 2 cover.

Thanks to all community leads for their efforts and for the DevDays attendees with whom we had some very interesting chats. What has become apparent is that the topic "what is a software architect"  is a thread that needs to be resumed at saArchitect.   

Get Ready for Exchange & Office 2007 Roadshow

Book: “.NET Enterprise Solutions …. Interoperability for the Connoisseur” Status Update

ISBN: 0 620 34680 9

Hardcover, 385 pages, full colour

We are entering DRAFT-3 consolidation phase, during which we will be DHL’ing a copy of the final DRAFT to our reviewers for comment, critique and constructive criticism q;-) Assuming that no major gremlins are encountered, we are finally looking at completing this immense adventure and sharing our experience, our opinions and our passion with the readers.

WebCast: Windows Communication Foundation - View From Early Adopters Q&A

Let’s review some of the questions we have received to date with the team involved in the research of this technology.

1. Q – How does one change from doc-wrapped to doc-literal?
   A – Specify the message encoding using the SoapDocumentMethod attribute
   [SoapDocumentMethod( "http://www.hi.co.za/auto/updatestate/2005/10/30",
   Use=SoapBindingUse.Literal,
   ParameterStyle=SoapParameterStyle.Wrapped)]
   

2. Q – Is the migration from WCF BETA-1 or earlier, to WCF BETA-2 seamless?
   A – We have realized that the port from BETA-1 to the latest CTP (November) is a real challenge mainly due to the change in namespace and configuration settings, as well as the move away from generics. Ports from post-BETA-1 CTPs to November CTP are likely to be less bumpy flights and we envisage future CTPs/BETAs to inflict less pain.
   

3. Q – A common question is whether WCF will be more performant than its predecessors, i.e. COM+.
   A – Microsoft strategy is obviously to meet or exceed the performance of existing technologies. We must be careful to compare apples with apples. WCF will probably not be quicker than TCP/IP/Sockets communication, because it is a protocol it wraps and uses, whereas WCF will most likely outperform ASMX of today dramatically.
   

4. Q – Is Windows Communication Foundation going to interoperate with my existing applications?
   A – As mentioned, Windows Communication Foundation provides wire-level interoperability with WSE3, System.Messaging, .NET Enterprise Services, and ASMX, ensuring that minimal or no code changes will be required for these technologies to interoperate.
   

5. Q – Will Windows Communication Foundation support coordinated transactions across different platforms?
   A – Although we discourage the use of transaction scopes across services, Windows Communication Foundation will work with MSDTC supporting WS-AtomicTransaction as well as WS-Coordination to enable coordinated transactions across platforms.
   

6. Q – What is WCF's default communication encoding on the wire?
   A –WCF uses SOAP by default represented as text-based XML on the wire for maximum interoperability. When Windows Communication Foundation-based services interact with each other, the default representation can be changed to binary.
   

7. Q – How does WCF scale?
   A – Indigo is scale-invariant:

• Scales down to devices such as printers.
• Scales in meaning that inter-process communication is
  fast.
• Scales up on large systems with high throughput and
  scalability.
• Scales out by adding machines.
• Scales away across organizations and geographies.
  

1. Q – What are the key aspects of WCF?
   A – SOA enablement
         Open Standards Based.
          Indigo puts interoperability in the spotlight. Eg.:

1. Well-known omnipresent HTTP protocol.

2. Communication and messaging format is in XML.

3. SOAP and WS-Addressing for messaging.

4. Metadata is described by WSDL, WS-Policy and WS-Metadata Exchange standards.

5. Security based on WS-Security, WS-Trust and WS-Federation standards.

6. Reliability realized through WS-Reliable Messaging.

7. Transactions established using WS-Transactions and WS-Coordination.

That’s all we have time for in this session. Thanks team for an exciting session … we thank you for your attention.

WebCast: Windows Communication Foundation - View From Early Adopters

Thanks for attending our webcast tonight. We are herewith posting the demo base code we used and the demo script used to build the demonstration.

Please peruse and give us a shout if you have any problems.

saArchitect Community Developer Readiness Schedule for VSTS and WCF

http://www.drp.co.za/default.asp?id=training/content_trainingschedule now presents a more user friendly DRP schedule, which includes the 1-day introductory community workshop sessions as outlined in http://dotnet.org.za/willy/archive/2006/05/29/52756.aspx and http://dotnet.org.za/willy/archive/2006/05/29/52754.aspx.

The contact details for registration are at the bottom of the schedule page.