Sam Gentile's Blog

This space reserved for a running blog of my week Sunday. This topic will only talk about what is PUBLIC, I can't talk about anything NDA....

Sunday

• 9AM I am in Building 33 in Pluralsight's 2 day pre-conference with my friends Jon Flanders, Matt Milner, Aaron Skonnard. Aaron is presenting a great history and goals ofd CSD. Great to see Jon again!!!
• Great presentation of what's new in Orcas for CSD type people. Good idea for an article :)
• Jon and I had our first "intense" discussion at the break about REST. Jon seems to be falling more on the REST style on things...hmm
• Aaron, when presenting the new Web Programming POX/REST features in 3.5 asked me for comment. I refrained, telling him "that I just gotten it out with Jon." :) Aaron introduced me to the class and my blog talking about a lot of this...
• Jon and I agree that Astoria rocks! Very powerful!!
• It's safe to say the SOAP folks largely ignored the importance of HTTP GET
• Powerful REST style but there's room for both - I can do both with Orcas 3.5 POX/REST or WS-* with same ServiceHost so why should it matter anymore? Its all good :)
• Is it fair to say REST is best for CRUD mostly read Web-site driven services and SOAP for Enterprise services where need Dist Tx, winodws security, Federation?? Maybe... Its not that simple....architectural considerations but surely REST becoming more important
• StarBucks quantity staring to climb high already...
• Need to re-look at UriTemplate class as basis for POX support - URI Templates on top of OperationContract

// GET 

[ServiceContract]
public interface IEvals
{
     [WebGet(UriTemplate="/evals?name={nameFilter}")]
     [OperationContract]
     List<Eval> GetCurrentEvals(string nameFilter);
}

 // POST

[ServiceContract]
public interface IEvals
{
     [WebInvoke(UriTemplate="/evals/add?name={name}")]
     [OperationContract]
     void AddEval(string name, Eval eval /* body */);
}

• New WebHttpBinding - HTTP transport channel, WebMessageEncoder (XML, JSON), Security (HTTPS)
• If I can point to service, get XML great, now get XHTML + point to broswer, now JSON and throw into my AJAX and/or Silverlight app - powerful!
• SyndicationFeed class - RSS/Atom
• What a great time to forget my power cable at the hotel! Duh!
• Great lunch, great desserts, even more Coffee - there is just way too much caffeine around here :)
• After lunch, Workflow Services but my battery is just about done............. Saved! Jon gave me his power cord...

Afternoon

• One of the things most exciting features in Orcas CSD, is (finally) the integration of WCF + WF (something I dealt with a lot in the last year!!) and Workflow Services
• Marjan Kalantar, (http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/ ) wonderful BizTalk Community person wrote me and asked why she wasn't in the blog, so here's her plug!
• A great scenario now is service implementation using workflow (BizTalk has had this obviously)
• Want to orchestrate/coordinate services, people, etc. Want to do this in 3.5
• 3.0 had indirect support - VS2008 and 3.5 have direct support for WCF Services (in WF)
• Two new Activities, Send Message and Receive Message to model WCF messaging
• WorkflowServiceHost, Custom Operation Invoker, New WCF "context" bindings
• I can do Contract First or Workflow First approach
• I need to modify my Neuparts Ordering and Shipping sample demos to use Workflow Services to do Order Processing
• Would like to switch NHibernate to LINQ/EF for the 3.5 version of the demos - would have done so if wasn't constrained to 3.0 for demos
• New project types for Workflow Services under WCF tab
• Don't forget Framework Targeting - 3.5 vs 3.0
• Resharper takes way too long to parse VS2008 projects... I want to start already! Give me back control will ya!
• I'm using Code Style Enforcer these days to enforce the "right" coding standard, just change Juval's...I mean m_ , give me a break....
• WorkflowServiceHost type
• Access WorkflowRuntime via WorkflowRuntimeBehavior
• Can pass XAML stream to one of the overloads to WorkflowServiceHost so I can still keep XOML Workflow model
• BizTalk MVP gathering tonight at

  http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/1/6667/Bellevue/Bellevue/Manzana.html

• Man, more desserts, cookies came in..... is there no end to the coffee and desserts???

• Man, WorkflowServices is so much easier than what I had to do with queues in 3.0 with Jon Flanders

• Of course, can host workflow services in IIS/WAS, creating workflows from the .NET type or XAML

• WorkflowServiceHostFactory

• I love WAS! I really do - makes running Vista worthwhile on this machine :)

• Someone just asked about Workflow Versioning and JIT, I saw this post: http://www.sitechno.com/Blog/WorkflowVersioningOfLongRunningProcessesSucksHereIsMyTakeOnIt.aspx

• Jon coming on for BizTalk Services..... I got really excited about this during the SDR - Internet Service Bus, STS in the Cloud

• Usable but we don't know when its going to be out or the distribution model

• Software as a Service (ex: Salesforce.com, Remend.com, Google documents)

• Man, here we go, Jon's got an ESB slide...he's looking for a definition but won't let me answer :) since we have Neuron

• "Internet Service Bus" - Take the pieces of an ESB and run them in the client

• BizTalk Services presently a CTP of an ISB at http://labs.biztalk.net/

• ISB includes Connectivity Services and Identity Services

• Integration through WCF - its just a binding

• I LOVE Connectivity Services because its like what we had at Groove years ago - a Relay Service that lets you go through Firewalls

• Identity Services implements an STS - can sign in with CardSpace - gets me out of the business of having to write an STS

• 4 DLLs in the SDKs

• Jon keeps using me as an example of one end of "his" relay - he must really like me :)

• Yes, you can do REST-based programming with it

• URI points to BizTalk Services

• sb:// is the scheme

• "I'm using just SOAP here in this demo, not REST. Should make Sam happy" - Jon. Geez :)

• RelayBinding in WCF programming model - RelayMulticast is mega cool - just like our Topic based Pub/Sub even

• ooh, up pops up Windows CardSpace......... that's pretty stupid in a service

• Add UsernameTokenProvider to configuration won't ask me for CardSpace identity anymore, could have pe-defined on the service

• Pub/Sub - simple, very simple compared to our Topic based Pub/Sub

• Only works with IsOneWay = true

• Tool  Microsoft.ServiceModel.Web.Tools - AddIn to VS - "Paste as XML Serializable Type" - wow, how RESTafarian

• Woo, can use URI and via BizTalkServices/REST/RelayedHttp - can just create arbitrary URI and anyone on the web can get to it!!

• Opens up tons of cans of worms for security folks :)

• After Paste As Serializable Type - can be used as REST service and then can use System.Xml for it

• Low-level REST programming model - can you say angle bracket?

• Future? They have announced Workflow in the Sky - how will they charge us? What's the Business Model??

• What about inside the Enterprise?

• Federated Identity support