Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit: Connected Application Foundations using WCF, WF, and Windows CardSpace

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and Windows CardSpace are powerful technologies for services, workflows, and identity management, respectively. This talk introduces developers to all three technologies, describes how they work, and how to write applications that take advantage of their features. Topics covered include: SOA basics, WCF architecture, WCF bindings, hosting WCF services, WCF behaviors, WF architecture, WF activities, WF hosting, WCF and WF integration, CardSpace basics, and integrating CardSpace into web applications.

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Microsoft Unveils Vision and Road Map to Simplify SOA, Bridge Software Plus Services, and Take Composite Applications Mainstream

Attendees gathered at the fifth annual Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference today, where the company shared its vision and road map to simplify the effort required to design, build, deploy and manage composite applications within and across organizations. Microsoft Corp. announced “Oslo,” the code name for the set of technical investments that help customers realize this vision.

This multiyear, multiproduct effort utilizes the company’s top engineering talent to build on the model-driven and service-enabled principles of Microsoft Dynamic IT (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/jun07/06-04TechED07PR.mspx ) and extend the benefits of service-oriented architecture (SOA) beyond the firewall. The “Oslo” technology innovations further Microsoft software-plus-services efforts by providing extensions to the application platform to help developers bridge between on-premise and off-premise projects. As part of a technical road map, Microsoft made available new tools and guidance to help organizations take advantage of “real-world SOA” today, including new SOA resources from Microsoft and a host of industry partners.

“Many customers are challenged to realize the promise of SOA given today’s complexities,” said Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft Business Division. “The combination of our current software-plus-services approach and the new wave of ‘Oslo’ technologies will enable IT to deliver high-impact business solutions.”

Today, applications cannot easily span the boundaries between technologies, between business and IT, and between an organization, its suppliers and its customers. Microsoft’s continued investments in SOA and business-process management (BPM) technologies will help customers better connect across these boundaries using a service-oriented and model-driven approach. As part of “Oslo,” Microsoft will work to deliver a unified platform integrating services and modeling, moving from a world where models describe the application to a world where models are the application.

“It’s time to help developers and IT professionals extend the capabilities of SOA to address the new ‘blended’ world of software plus services and cross-boundary collaboration,” said Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president of the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft. “‘Oslo’ will enable a new class of applications that are connected and streamlined — from design through deployment — reducing complexity, aligning the enterprise and Internet, and simplifying interoperability and management.”

At the conference today, Microsoft also demonstrated an upcoming community technology preview of Microsoft BizTalk Services (http://labs.biztalk.net/default.aspx), featuring additional support for interoperability, Web 2.0 services, identity standards and workflow in the cloud.

Building on the technology available today, the “Oslo” advancements will be delivered through Microsoft server and tools products in five key areas:

• Server. Microsoft BizTalk Server “6” will continue to provide a core foundation for distributed and highly scalable SOA and BPM solutions, and deliver the capability to develop, manage and deploy composite applications.

• Services. BizTalk Services “1” will offer a commercially supported release of Web-based services enabling hosted composite applications that cross organizational boundaries. This release will include advanced messaging, identity and workflow capabilities.

• Framework. The Microsoft .NET Framework “4” release will further enable model-driven development with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).

• Tools. New technology planned for Visual Studio “10” will make significant strides in end-to-end application life-cycle management through new tools for model-driven design of distributed applications.

• Repository. There will also be investments in aligning the metadata repositories across the Server and Tools product sets. Microsoft System Center “5,” Visual Studio “10” and BizTalk Server “6” will utilize a repository technology for managing, versioning and deploying models.


Customers are realizing the benefits of Microsoft’s real-world approach to SOA and vision by employing today’s technology, including BizTalk Server and BizTalk Services, along with the upcoming .NET Framework and Visual Studio. On Feb. 27, 2008, Microsoft will continue the wave of innovation by also launching Windows Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Reinforcing their commitment to SOA, Microsoft, Accenture and Avanade recently announced the Accenture and Avanade Solutions Showcase, located on Microsoft’s corporate campus. This Solutions Showcase highlights the power of SOA while offering customers customized solutions in areas such as the next-generation workplace, infrastructure optimization and business intelligence. The first solution to be developed in conjunction with the new Solutions Showcase, a human resources (HR) solution that helps organizations quickly and efficiently bring on board new employees, was demonstrated during Robert Wahbe’s keynote address at the Microsoft SOA & BPM Conference.

“The Solutions Showcase illustrates the benefits of bringing together the technology skills and industry expertise of Accenture, Avanade and Microsoft in a single location,” said Paul


Daugherty, chief architect for Accenture. “Our customers are always looking to extract more value from their application development investments and can benefit from this joint innovation as they develop mission critical-solutions on the Microsoft platform.”

Customers and partners can visit the new Microsoft SOA and Business Process Solution Center at http://www.microsoft.com/soa for additional information and resources, including patterns and practices based on the most successful customer implementations.

Microsoft Launches .NET StockTrader, Provides Securities Industry With Guidance for Building Scalable Trading Solutions on Microsoft Platform

Today at the 2007 Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) Technology Management Conference & Exhibit, Microsoft Corp. announced the release of its .NET StockTrader, an end-to-end sample application based on an online stock trading scenario, along with a technical white paper that provides guidance for developers seeking to create high-performance, scalable and interoperable financial services solutions on the Microsoft® platform.

The .NET StockTrader provides a blueprint for how companies can advance their business through Microsoft’s application platform technologies, including Windows® Communication Foundation (WCF), to create service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions. Because performance and agility are a key concern when building mission-critical applications, .NET StockTrader also includes instructions for performance testing across distributed environments.

“More than ever, securities firms are demanding that their applications leverage existing IT investments, adhere to service-oriented architecture principles, be created in a common development environment, and present an interface that is familiar and easy to use,” said Stevan Vidich, technical architect for capital markets solutions in the U.S. Financial Services Group at Microsoft. “.NET StockTrader addresses those concerns. It was designed to showcase how to implement SOA on Windows Server® and the .NET Framework 3.0.”

.NET StockTrader also illustrates full interoperability with Java-based enterprise systems. In particular, StockTrader can transparently interconnect with IBM Corp.’s Trade Performance Benchmark Sample for Websphere Application Server V6.1. Financial services developers can use StockTrader as a model for building .NET systems that interconnect with IBM’s WebSphere Application Server. Support for Web services standards in WCF provides interoperability, addressing a key requirement in the securities industry. Technologies illustrated by .NET StockTrader application include the following:

• High-performance ASP.NET Web applications based on a logical n-tier, service-oriented enterprise design pattern

• High-performance WCF services, reconfigurable without code change

• Support for different network transports and message encoding formats using WCF

• Loosely coupled message-driven services using WCF and Microsoft Message Queuing

• Distributed transaction services

• Core performance tuning parameters for WCF and .NET to achieve high throughput

• Simple, adaptive load-balanced server clusters for scalability and failover purposes


A complete technical overview of the .NET StockTrader application and more information is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader.

About Microsoft in Financial Services

Microsoft’s Financial Services Group provides software that helps financial firms transform the customer, employee and operations experience so they can maximize opportunities for increased market share and profitability. Microsoft software helps empower people and IT staff within financial firms — and across key focus areas such as advisor platforms, channel renewal, insurance value chain, enterprise risk management and compliance, and payments. Through a combination of Microsoft- and partner-provided solutions, customers enable their employees to turn data into insight, transform ideas into action and turn change into opportunity.

More information about Microsoft’s Financial Services Group can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/financialservices.

Video: SOA From Theory To Practice; Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Channel 9 has their latest video on their site, this one deals with SOA and more specifically Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

From the site: "Ok... I'm going to say something we are not supposed to say... Ready? Here it is... Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). We are not supposed to say this because Microsoft didn't invent the term (ok I'm only partially kidding here). In spite of the fact that we didn't invent the idea, there is some goodness in the idea and for that reason I decided to chat with Izak Cohen and Eliaz Tobias from Microsoft Israel about their thoughts on ESB and SOA."

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