Lamont Harrington's Blog

A lot of exciting things came out of day #1 at the PDC.  I’m sure you’ve already started to see/hear about the great technology that we are unveiling.  During the keynote, I saw laptops being pulled out and I’m quite sure there are tons of blogging going on in the blogosphere

Today, Ray Ozzie kicked off the 2008 PDC with a keynote that basically laid the foundation of our software plus services strategy and highlighted the key investments we've been making over the last few years in bringing our cloud platform to fruition.  In his talk, he focused on the landscape as we see it in 3 tiers:

• Experience Tier – The experience tier focuses on the end-user and their user experiences with the desktop/mobile device
• Enterprise Tier – The enterprise tier focuses on people interaction with enterprise systems and system-to-system interaction within the enterprise
• Web Tier – The web tier focuses on leveraging the web as the backbone for next generation computing.  Our cloud computing initiative is focused on leveraging the web through providing scalable hosting services for applications services.

Windows Strata becomes Windows Azure

During the keynote, Ray made the "formal" announcement of the name of our new cloud platform.  For those of you who knew this as codename "Windows Strata", the platform has now been officially branded as Windows Azure.

Windows Azure provides a hypervisor-based model for providing secure and scalable hosting services.  It separates the application/service being hosted from the underlying operating system.  It is also important to note that Azure is not only for managing server infrastructure, but also web services as well and provides an end-to-end approach for accomplishing this.  At the heart of Azure is a "Fabric controller" which dynamically manages resources within the data center to preserve the health of services/applications that are deployed to the Azure Platform.

Windows Azure will provide support for both managed (.NET) and unmanaged code which essentially allows you to host non-.NET applications within this cloud fabric.  From a developer perspective, developers will be able to take advantage of this platform locally, through the Azure SDK and supporting tools for Visual Studio, that'll provide facilities to support the development/debugging of cloud-based applications.  Through a "publish" operation in Visual Studio, developers will be able to publish their solution to the Azure services Developer Portal.

The Azure Services Platform consists of the following platform technologies:

• Windows Live Services
• Microsoft .NET Services
• Microsoft SQL Services
• Microsoft SharePoint Services (this is not to be confused with WSS)
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services

The Azure platform should also not be confused as a replacement of our one-premise offerings, but rather a complementary, cloud-based equivalent.  our on-premise offerings as a part of our strategy include:

• SQL Server 2008
• BizTalk Server
• SharePoint Server
• Dynamics CRM
• Windows Server
• Systems Center

The platform will provide capabilities that allow developers to model the services deployed on the platform.  Service modeling consists of:

• Roles and Groups (e.g. who has access to the services that are being published and what operations/actions they can perform
• Channels and Endpoints (e.g. defining how the services will be exposed and over what transport protocols)
• Interfaces
• Configuration Settings

During the keynote, there were partner demonstrations of solutions that are already taking advantage of the Azure Services Platform.  Jonathan Greensted, CEO of Sentient, gave a demonstration of a solution that his company has been working on called, Bluehoo.com (http://m.bluehoo.com) that integrates cloud-based services with mobile devices.  You can download and starting playing with the solution from http://m.bluehoo.com.  In addition, Shawn Davison, VP of RedPrairie, a Supply-chain manufacturing solutions firm, demoed a "one button" product recall orchestration running on Windows Azure and leveraging .NET services like workflow.

Bob Muglia came on stage and discussed our roadmap leading into 2009+.  He focused on the theme of the "5th generation computing".  In his discussion, he highlighted where we've been and where we're going

• 1970s - Monolithic
• 1980s - Client-server
• 1990s - Web
• Today - SOA
• 2009+ - Services

Bob’s “evolutionary” discussion provided additional context to what Ray covered in his keynote and further solidified our messaging around the Windows Azure platform and the investments that we’ll be making from now, until we ship.

What's in Microsoft .NET Services?
.NET Services (formerly known as BizTalk Services) are a set of Microsoft hosted, scalable, developer-oriented services that provide key building blocks upon which developers can create cloud-based or cloud-aware applications.  Essentially, it breaks down into the following 3 components:

• A full end-to-end service bus solution – Makes it easy to connect disparate applications over the internet
• Facilities that support Identity/Access Control – Provides an easy way to control web applications and services using standards-based identity providers, including enterprise directory services such as Active Directory and web-based identity stores such as Windows Live ID
• Workflow Services – Provides a highly scalable host for running workflows in the cloud. 

What's in SQL Services?
SQL Data services extend the capabilities of SQL Server to the cloud as web-based services, which enable you to store your data in a highly-scalable and internet-facing distributed database service infrastructure.  It contains the following key components:

• Database
• Data Sync
• Reporting
• Data Mining
• ETL
• Reference Data

What about Microsoft Online?
Our Microsoft Online Strategy still remains intact and will take advantage of the new Windows Azure platform as it evolves.  The Microsoft Online platform is geared at addressing many customer challenges we've heard, including:

• Best in class collaboration
• Staying up-to-date with software versions/patches/updates
• Lower, predictable costs
• Scarce IT resources
• High Security
• High Availability

NOTE: It is important to note that the current version of Microsoft Online IS NOT built on the Windows Azure platform.  Over time, it will take advantage of our investments in Windows Azure.

Can customers host Windows Azure within their own data centers?
This question was asked several times within today’s breakout sessions.  The answer to this is that as the features/capabilities of Windows Azure evolve, we (Microsoft) will take a look at the capability stack and identify key features of Windows Azure and roll it into our enterprise server products.  There is still significant value within our enterprise server platform and overtime, those products will benefit from the rich investments being made in Windows Azure.

When are we going to ship Windows Azure?
Answer: When it’s ready.   

Essentially, we’re targeting some time in calendar year 2009, however, we’re largely basing our release on when our customers think that it’s ready to be released, and not a moment sooner.  We will follow a similar process that we’ve followed with CTP services we’ve already released and will be doing frequent updates.  However, the final ship date was not disclosed.

Are there any resources available to learn more about Windows Azure?
You can find more information about the Azure Services Platform, including whitepapers, SDK and tool downloads, datasheets, and a link to sign-up for a test/dev account to the Windows Azure cloud platform at the Azure Services Platform website.

That about sums up day #1.  I hope you find this recap helpful.

The Patterns & Practices Team have recently released v1.0 of the web services security guide (in PDF format) that shows how to make the most out of WCF.  With end-to-end application scenarios, it shows you how to design and implement authentication and authorization in WCF. Learn how to improve the security of your WCF services through prescriptive guidance including guidelines, Q&A, practices at a glance, and step-by-step how tos. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, WCF team members, and industry experts.

The guide has been released on CodePlex and is available for download.

Few sample .NET applications have had more impact on the .NET development community than the Terrarium sample application that was released during the version 1.0 release cycle of the .NET Framework.  This solution created a community of .NET enthusiasts that far exceeded the expectations of the .NET Framework team.  It showcased a "production-level" end-to-end reference solution that highlighted key features of the .NET Framework and showcased the power and creativity .NET can bring to software development.  I recalled that for many months I inquired as to when the source code for this application was going to be released, because, as you may recall, only the binaries were made available.  Sure you could decompile the executable and supporting libraries, or use great tools like Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector, but there's nothing like having the Visual Studio projects openly released for all to see!!

Well, Terrarium is BACK!!   The project was resurrected by the Windows SDK Team and MVP Bil Simser has volunteered to coordinate development efforts for the project.

Head on over to CodePlex and be a part of the effort! For all you .NET Framework "old heads" like myself who looked at Terrarium as an amazing solution to dissect, learn from, and foster new ideas around the creation of solution architectures, I emplore you to check out the project. 

Thanks Windows SDK Team for evolving the solution and thanks Bil for stepping up to take on coordination for the effort.

Fun times (especially for me) are ahead!   Especially with the introduction of WPF, WCF, WF, LINQ, Silverlight and an assortment of other technology goodies, this solution is sure to continue to evolve into something that we'll all continue to be proud to showcase as a premier .NET solution.

The Patterns & Practices team has recently released the Composite Application Guidance for WPF which provides guidance for "componetizing" the development of enterprise-class WPF applications across multiple development teams, with each team owning a piece of the application, and then seamlessly integrating these pieces into one homogenous application.

Included in the guidance package is a reference implementation of WPF application, CFI Stock Trader, that models this guidance, reusable library code (called the Composite Application Library), documentation, quick start tutorials and hands-on labs.

You can download the bits here or to learn more about what the guidance entails, head on over to the developer center on MSDN.

I can't wait to try this stuff out!

Windows Communication Foundation Security Guidance

The intial release of the WCF Security Guidance from the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team has been released to Codeplex.  The guidance contains how-to video and articles that describe common security practices when designing, developing, and deploying services built on WCF.  The guidance content consists of the following:

How-To Videos:

• Host WCF in a Windows Service
• Impersonate the Original Caller in WCF calling from a Windows Form
• Using basicHttpBinding with Certificate Authentication from Windows Forms
• Use netTcpBinding with Windows Authentication and Message Security
• Use SQL Role Provider with Username Authentication in WCF calling from Windows Form
• Use WsHttpBinding with Certificate Authentication with Message Security
• Use WsHttpBinding with Windows Authentication and Message Security

How-To Articles:

• Create and Install Temporary Certificates in WCF for Message Security During Development
• Create and Install Temporary Certificates in WCF for Transport Security During Development
• Impersonate the Original Caller in WCF Calling from a Web Application
• Impersonate the Original Caller in WCF Calling from Windows Forms
• Use netTcpBinding with Windows Authentication and Transport security in WCF from Windows Forms
• Use SQL Role Provider with Username Authentication in WCF calling from Windows Forms
• Use SQL Role Provider with Windows Authentication in WCF calling from Windows Forms
• Use Username Authentication with the SQL Server Membership Provider and Message Security in WCF from Windows Forms
• Use wsHttpBinding with Windows Authentication and Message Security in WCF from Windows Forms
• Use wsHttpBinding with Windows Authentication and Transport Security in WCF Calling from Windows Forms

Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition

For Visual Studio 2008

This deliverable is available on MSDN at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/servicefactory

About the Deliverable

The Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition (also known as the Service Factory) is an integrated collection of resources designed to help our customers quickly and consistently build WCF and ASMX Web services that adhere to well-known architecture and design patterns. These resources consist of models with code generation in the form of tools integrated with Visual Studio and patterns and architecture topics in the form of written guidance.

The Service Factory contains automation and guidance integrated into Visual Studio 2008 for building Web services. The core of the automation components is a Web services domain model. This domain model contains elements such as service contracts, operations, messages, and data contracts. This domain model manifests itself in the form of three integrated domain-specific languages (DSLs) that are used to model services: Service Contract Model, Data Contract Model, and the Host Model. The Service Contract Model is illustrated in the following screenshot.

To learn more about the Service Factory, please visit its official home on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/servicefactory.

Community (http://www.codeplex.com/servicefactory)

The community site contains hands-on labs for both using and extending the Service Factory, discussions with customers and field, known issues, and roadmap information. In the near future the site will include presentations, demonstration videos, and community contributions.

Web Client Software Factory 2.0

February 2008 Release

Resources

• MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/webclientfactory
• Community site: http://www/codeplex.com/websf

About the Deliverable

The Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) provides a set of guidance for architects and developers building enterprise Web applications. The factory includes samples, reusable code and a guidance package which automates key development tasks from within Visual Studio.

Using the Web Client Software Factory assets, developers can create Composite Web applications composed of independently developed and deployed modules. These modules are dynamically brought together at runtime into a common shell. Additionally the factory includes support for ASP.NET AJAX thus providing users with a richer and more responsive user experience.

New In This Release

The February 2008 release of the Web Client Software Factory has the following improvements to the June 2007 release.

• Full support for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5
• Added ASP.NET AJAX extenders for Context Sensitive Autocomplete, AJAX Validation, and Real Time Search that can be used in existing ASP.NET sites and ASP.NET sites built using the Composite Web Application Block.
• Added UI Composition capability through extending our dependency injection mechanism to support Pages, User Controls and Master Pages.
• Added Dependency Injection on ASMX Web Services and JSON services.
• Added a new set of Quickstarts and How-To topics on MVP, Modularity and the new AJAX extenders
• Added a new Order Entry Reference application that demonstrates all of the new functionality.

In addition, this release of WCSF has the following community issues and fixes:

• 42 Workitems closed including the top-voted items on CodePlex
• Add ASP.NET AJAX Support (97 votes)
• Web Client Software Factory Support for Enterprise Library 3.1 (62 votes)
• Services through configuration (32 votes)
• Support for using the Validation Application Block (16 votes)
• Recipe support for Visual Basic .NET (20 votes)
• Added Presenter support for Master Pages (11 votes)

Our Architecture Strategy Team has recently unveiled a great solution geared at simplifying the task of building Office Business Applications (OBA) using the Microsoft Office System platform. 

The solution, called the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit,  surfaces the underlying composition capabilities of the 2007 Office System and provides a prescriptive application composition experience for Information Workers to build OBA solutions. 

You can head over to the Architecture Center on MSDN to get more information about the solution and download the bits.  Right now, only the binaries are available, but the plan is to release the source code by mid-March.

Microsoft recently announced an experimental developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques, and patterns, called Microsot Live Labs Volta.

Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. It enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.

You architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without requiring tailoring of the application.

You can download a technology preview of Volta from the Live Labs website.

The final release of the Microsoft Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Guidance for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 is now on MSDN.  The Microsoft ESB Guidance provides architectural guidance, patterns, practices, frameworks, reusable components and samples for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 to simplify the development of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform and to allow Microsoft customers to extend their own messaging and integration solutions.

Some of the core capabilities provided by the ESB Guidance include:

• Policy driven mediation:
  • Itinerary-based service invocation that supports lightweight service composition at the time of message publication. The Itinerary mechanism dynamically resolves service endpoints and mediation requirements, and routes messages using any resolver that ships with the Guidance. This approach allows developers to implement loosely coupled patterns such as VETO/VETRO.
  • Provides dynamic resolution of endpoints and maps using the Microsoft ESB Guidance Resolver and Adapter Provider Framework. This supports dynamic resolution of endpoints and transformation requirements, as well as providing custom configuration to services, effectively decoupling the consumer from the services. 
  • Exception Management Framework for unified exception handling, mediation and reporting.
• Connecting systems: 
  • Performs namespace normalization of messages.
  • Provides IBM JMS/WMQ connectivity.
  • Supports messaging patterns that enable dynamic service aggregation, message routing, message validation, and message transformation.
  • Incorporates service registry and repository integration using UDDI and WS-MetadataExchange.
• Management and monitoring:
  • Includes the ESB Management Portal that provides:
    • Exception mediation and fault management.
    • Message repair and resubmission.
    • Exception notification and alert engine enabling user/group subscriptions.
    • BizTalk endpoint and registry integration, management, and publication.  Support auto publication from the BizTalk Administration Console
    • Reporting and analytics for exceptions, alerts, subscriptions and registrations.
    • Basic auditing on message saves, edits and resubmits
• SOA governance:
  • Provides integrated SOA governance solutions developed by AmberPoint and SOA Software.

Microsoft recently released the initial version of Software + Services Blueprints.  These blueprints are a series of source code and guidance packages designed to provide an architectural bridge between vision and implementation by making it easier to build S+S applications.

The blueprints serve as a good starting point for designing an developing S+S solutions through source code, architectural guidance, and step-by-step workflow on software construction.  Each S+S Blueprint is focused on the following core areas:

• Media/Community
• eCommerce
• Office Business Applications (OBA)
• Mobility

with future S+S application areas being planned.  A CodePlex Project Site has been created and will serve as the "hub" for all information, code, and documentation around this great solution offering.

We've officially launched a new website dedicated to providing invaluable information around building Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM) solutions using the Microsoft platform.  As a part of this site, we've released our latest roadmap and product strategy around the next generation of Microsoft SOA-based technologies, codenamed "Oslo", to included updated messaging and workflow technologies in BizTalk Server and other products starting in 2009.

The "Olso" vision will leverage the next version of BizTalk Server as it's primary delivery vehicle for delivering a superior SOA infrastructure, but that's not all.  "Olso" will also feature updates to the Visual Studio development environment and the System Center line of systems management products as well as provide the appropriate infrastructure support to support business-to-business composite applications.

This is going to be an exciting ride in the world of SOA, and Microsoft will be right there in the mix!

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I'd been working on the Office Business Application (OBA) Reference Architecture Pack for Public Sector, which focuses on providing prescriptive architecture guidance for building e-Forms solutions within Public Sector.  I've gotten numerous inquiries since that post as to when the bits would be available for download.  Well, I'm happy to announce that they are now available on our Connect website.  If you are new to Microsoft Connect, read the Microsoft Connect Introduction to learn how Microsoft Connect works and how to enroll.  Included in the download are hands-on-labs and a fully functional Virtual Machine that has all the necessary bits to run the solution.  Because the RAP is being bundled as a Virtual Machine image you will need either Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005, which are both free, to run the solution.

Also be forewarned that the Virtual Machine is fairly large in size (weighing in at a ~31 GB), so please plan accordingly when you decide to download as it'll take a minute

I welcome you to download the solution and give us some feedback on what you think.  This release marks the first phase of many exciting things that will come out of this RAP.  To get more information on what's going in Public Sector, you can visit the Public Sector Industry Center on MSDN.

We've made some updates to the BizTalk Server Roadmap that will hopefully shed some light on what the plans are for the product with the pending R2 release as well as future versions of the product.  BizTalk Server 2006 R2 will feature a number of updates over the initial 2006 release including rich integration with Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation through the WCF Adapter SDK and new Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) interceptors for WCF and WF which will enable you to leverage BAM functionality in non-BizTalk applications, updated support for the 2007 Office System (which includes an update adapter for SharePoint Server), and comprehensive RFID support.

In addition to all the new capabilities introduced in BizTalk Server 2006 R2, the roadmap also provides a "sneak peak" in to the future strategy of BizTalk Server and the investments that are being made.  Head on over to the roadmap and check it out.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've had the opportunity to work on a number cool solutions in recent months.  One solution that I've been privileged to work on and help deliver is the Office Business Application Reference Architecture Pack for Public Sector (wow, say that 5 times fast!) and it has just been released to MSDN.  This reference architecture provides prescriptive architecture and guidance for addressing a major business problem within today's Public Sector organizations, that being the processing of electronic forms. It illustrates how an OBA (Office Business Application) can be built to automate and optimize forms processing.  The reference solution framework showcased in the RAP is generic and can be adapted to enable end-to-end processing of a number of electronic forms in the Public Sector.

This OBA 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.  The RAP is being bundled as a Virtual Machine image, which will include the working application and source code and will be made available from our Microsoft Connect website.  You will be able to download the Virtual Machine image from there and can use either Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005, which are both free, to run the solution.

This version of the RAP only marks phase I of a multi-phased approach for delivering OBA capabilities to address E-forms processing.  In future releases we'll be introducing more advanced capabilities, including:

• Personalized citizen portals
• Live Collaboration and Communication (Citizen to Organization, Organization to Citizen)
• E-Forms analytics and activity monitoring
• Advanced Office client integration for information workers
• Rich Internet Application (RIA) capabilities via Silverlight
• Integration of information cards using Windows CardSpace

So keep your browsers tuned into the many exciting things that'll be coming out of Public Sector.

Wow, October 18, 2005?  That was the date of my last post!  Well certainly a lot has happened since then!  I've had brief "blog post cameos" on my team's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector, but I think it's about time I get back to my roots and start posting.  For those of you who've followed my blog, even back when I was on DotnetJunkies.com, you know that I joined Microsoft back in 2005 as a Technology Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center.  During my time there, I've had the opportunity to architect some of the coolest solutions on our platform.  The desire to further evangelize our platform in delivering robust solutions has landed me as an Architect Evangelist within our Public Sector Developer & Platform Evangelism team where I now work with customers to help them realize the potential of our platform in delivering compelling solutions that tackle many of the business problems that plague organizations today.  Still staying true to my SharePoint roots, I've been doing a lot of work helping customers architect Office Business Applications in efforts to exploit the power and flexibility of the 2007 Office System platform for delivering compelling business solutions.  In addition, I've also been focusing on helping customer deliver solutions using our take on SaaS (Software as a Service) methodologies with our S+S (Software+Services)</