SOA Anti-patterns

I have found (again) the list of SOA antipatterns !!! Check them out bellow:

SOA Anti-patterns

SOA, So What?

I found this presentation on how to sell the business SOA focusing on BPM.

Abstract: Talk to a business person about SOA, and you’ll get a blank stare. Find out how Business and IT can speak the same language through business process management and get all their goals met! Technologists know that Service-oriented architecture (SOA) promises to give organizations a way to mix and match services for more agility – by relying less on packaged apps and more on reusable services. But you may be scratching your head on how to sell this premise to business people who just see another technology acronym with huge dollar signs attached. Start speaking their language and show them how business process management (BPM) allows everyone to solve real, quantifiable business problems via an SOA strategy. Attend this event and see how leading companies start with BPM in order to sell the SOA vision – so they can get business people to be more specific in what they need out of their systems in order to obtain measurable efficiencies and improvements. Come hear John Rymer of Forrester Research, describe a successful strategy for bridging the IT and Business gap.

SOA, So What?

What Makes Code "Good"?

This is an excellent explanation (and simple) on what code should look like. (This is a much better explanation than code should not be smelly).

Espresso Fueled Agile Development : Undocumented WCSF Feature: Global Exception Handling

Espresso Fueled Agile Development : Undocumented WCSF Feature: Global Exception Handling

Julian Dominguez : WCSF: Add View (with Presenter) fix

Julian Dominguez : WCSF: Add View (with Presenter) fix: "because it’s linked directly to the WebClientFactoryPackage in the solution, and one with a public token, which is the one that comes with the Library, and the one that the destination solution references"

Cape Clear Download Center

If you havent done already so, and you are interested in SOA check out the download area of CapeClear
at http://www.capeclear.com/download/portal.php. A wealth of information

Aptana: The Web IDE

I am amazed on how Aptana has grown. For all you don't know Aptana is a Web IDE with full support for javascript.

More info here Aptana: The Web IDE and dont forget to check out the demo using the javacript Yahoo api or Dojo or ... :)

YouTube - Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

I found this video which explains Web 2.0, very interesting and well done.
Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Web Service Software Factory Videos Section

There is a new video section on the codeplex space for the Web Service Software Factory. On the first video it demonstrates with a few slides the Web service domain model.

WS-BPEL 2.0 has reached Committee Specification status

WS-BPEL 2.0 has reached Committee Specification status, you can find a link to the document at Loosely Coupled thinking

John Evdemon posted on November a comparison of WS-BPEL and WF. Well as long as you are not tempted to use 75% of the WF features you will be fine.

An export tool and / or validator similar to the accesibity one for Asp.Net will help to keep your workflows interoperable.

Cannot Find Server (404) or Get Plain Text for WCF .svc Files From IIS?

I have been going mad today trying to run some services hosted in IIS, until i have found that the IIS metadata was corrupted in the machine i was using.

You can find all the info and how to fix it on Wenlong Dong's Blog

Using XML-based Web Services to Enhance Information Interoperability in the Department of Defense

Talking about conferences I have found the white paper "Using XML-based Web Services to Enhance Information Interoperability in the Department of Defense" which I was presented by Robert D. Cherinka on the 2000s Amsterdam's Wrox Conference.

It seems not so long ago when I was there learning about Asp+ !!

Configuration Editor Tool (SvcConfigEditor.exe)

I have tinkering on and off with WCF for nearly two years, I still remember when Ingo Rammer gave us a small peak at how we will create our DataContracts on DevWeek 2005.

WCF is great but you have lots of settings to remember, the Service Software Factory it has done a great job on layering your architecture, but I have found that the Configuration Editor Tool will be the swiss army tool that will be used from Infrastructure guys to Developers and forgetful people like me.

Web Services Testing, SOA Development: SOAtest - Parasoft

I have been looking at Parasoft's SOA testing tool, and it looks very promising it includes:

• WS* Standards compliance testing and validation.


• Performance testing including stats from Windows Perfmon, SNMP, and JMX Monitors.


• Test Management support and integrations to Mercury Test Director, Rational TestManager and more.


• Scriptless Web Services testing.


• WS-Security, SAML, Username Token, X.509, XML Encryption, and XML Signature support.


• UDDI support: query verification, validation, and load testing.


• Automatic test creation from WSDL, WSIL, UDDI, HTTP Traffic, and BPEL deployment artifacts.


• Asynchronous Testing: JMS, Parlay (X), SCP, WS-Addressing support.


• Complete test workflow from simple single service through complex scenarios and multiple service endpoints.


• WSDL schema and semantic verification and compliance to WS-I Basic Profile 1.1.


• Data-driven testing through data sources (Excel, CSV, Database Queries, etc).


• MIME/DIME Attachment support.


• Windows Perfmon, SNMP, and JMX Monitors.


• Detailed Report generation in HTML, XML and Text formats.


• Real-Time graphs and charts.


• Protocol Support

Definitely worth having a look at the flash demo.

Integrating WCF and WF

Graham Elliott describes how to integrate WF and WCF. WF does not have a WCF specific activity so you are forced to use basicHttpBinding.

He also describes on how to integrate using a code activity, which allows you to use all the WCF features but not limited in problems.

Other alternative is to decouple the service interface by using an adaptor, this is demonstrated by Roman Kiss at Code Project

Service Station: The Service Factory for WCF -- MSDN Magazine, February 2007

More info on the Service Factory, Aaron Skonnard takes you throug step by step on how to use the Service Factory in his article for MSDN Magazine

Don Smith : Service Factory: Contracts

Don Smith released in his blog a series of blogcasts last April describing the Service Factory. Its never to late to have a look.

Part1 is an Introduction , Part2 Service Contracts and Part 3 Entity Translation

WCF News and Announcements : Just Released: Web Service Software Factory for WCF

The guys over at patterns & practices have just released (in December) the second version of the Web Service Software Factory. This new release has everything the first one had with the addition of loads of new stuff specifically for building WCF Web services using VS 2005. Some of the many new features help you apply message-level security, construct services from WSDL/XSD, perform design-time code/config analysis, apply message validation, and migrate from ASMX services. If you're building WCF Web services, you definitely want to check this out. http://msdn.com/servicefactory

Next one is planned for Nov 2007. To get more info check it out in CodePlex

Commonwealth Bank of Australia CommSee Solution (Case Study)

Commonwealth Bank of Australia CommSee Solution: An interesting look at a case study, in this case the CommSee application at the CBA. Part 1 focuses on the overall backend architecture for the application; Part 2 focuses on the front end: a Smart client Windows Forms application and Part 3 focuses on the infrastructure and development/test process.

Workflow in Application Integration

Workflow in Application Integration

Kevin Francis on the 7th edition of the Architecture Journal talks about workfow in applicaton integration

Cockburn on Crystal and Agility

Info Q has interviewed the great Alistair Cockburn, who talks about agile processes and Crystal a familily of methodologies which allows you to be agile in any environment (eg: you wouldnt use XP in any project or Scrum etc)

In-process Interoperability

InfoQ: In-process Interoperability Ted Neward has written an article on the different options of interop JVM and the CLR. Definitely things have advance since I had to research onto this 2 years ago. Worth having a look.

In-process Interoperability

InfoQ: In-process Interoperability Ted Neward has written an article on the different options of interop JVM and the CLR. Definitely things have advance since I had to research onto this 2 years ago. Worth having a look.

COM Surrogate has stopped working: Vista

Do you have an error "COM Surrogate has stopped working" any time you select an avi / mpeg file in Vista?

This error is caused when Vista is trying to build a thumbnail, and you don't have the right codecs for that file.

To fix this you can either download the latest ffdshow code pack
or disable thumbnails in explorer.

ARCast.net - SOA and Workflow with Udi Dahan

On my way home last Friday i listened to the podcast of UDI Dahan on Windows Workflow and SOA.

He explains why workflow fits very well on a pub/subs scenario. Also gives a valid reason on when to use workflow instead of coding (which is an ongoing debate i have with the rest of my development team).

In my opinion WF provides you with a valid framework architecture for an orchestration service. This can later on be scaled up BizTalk if required.

You can listen to the podcast in Arcast.Net

The Stack is the new Os debate

The other day I had the opportunity to be part of a small debate, on how the OS debates are moving towards to the stack. (LAMP, .NET, WAMP...). During the debate I argued that you don’t have to stick with a specific stack if you architect your layers correctly.

Even if you prefer a particular Stack, you should always develop in a way that you are not dependent to any layer (easier said than done i know). Now the most “easy” part to replace could be the OS, being Java, Php and .Net (with mono) platform independent. The web server could also be easy to replace. .Net (not mono) now can also be hosted in a different web server than IIS.

The database with a good persistence framework can also be considered an easy option to replace. Obviously, never having (or trying to not have) any business logic buried on your database.

Probably the most significant element when you choose a stack will be the framework / development language (.Net, J2EE, Php, Ruby on Rails). This can be definitely the most difficult one to replace, but a SOA will allow you also to interchange the elements of the traditional Business Logic, not tying you to a particular framework.

The presentation layer through composites applications should present those service consumers, enforcing the decoupling of the user interface and business logic layer.

Custom ASP.NET AJAX Control Extender

Joe Stagner shows you how to create a control extender to add client behaviour to a standard web control. This could be translated to AOP on Ajax, how good is that. Now you can add / extend your current applications without the fear of breking anything.

In this example, the TextBox control is extended to provide immediate feedback on the strength of the password entered by the user. (Note is Vb.Net)

You can view it at the ASP.NET site