SnapFlow Adopts Silverlight 4 - Keynotes at PDC09
In a previous post I covered SnapFlow, a tool that allows for a non-developers to easily define and deploy workflow applications. In short, SnapFlow leverages Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to define and power those workflows which, in turn, run in the cloud. The underlying workflows are defined by XML and this allows one to easily store a workflow definition (and resulting state) into a database store (like SQL Server). SQL Server allows you to natively store, query, and process XML.
Up until now, the SnapFlow tool has been a Silverlight 2 application. At PDC09 in Los Angeles, during the day 2 keynote (begins at 53:40) by Scott Guthrie, Silverlight 4 beta was announced. During Scott Guthrie’s session, SnapFlow founder Samad Wahedi spoke about the SnapFlow tool and how they are able to support Direct Buy and integration to their LOB systems. (Read more here about the SnapFlow announcement.)
“SnapFlow is the most sophisticated line of business application I’ve seen yet and demonstrates the rich internet applications that can be built with Silverlight ,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president, Microsoft Corp. “SnapFlow’s innovative architecture enables people to design, build and automate the workflow - whether as simple as an expense report process or as complex as order management from a legacy system - without any programming.”
At the heart of Silverlight 4 is ‘full trust’ and ‘offline’ RIA application support which allows for rich integration possibilities directly to and with local applications and other 3rd party LOB systems accessible via the local network. Some of the integration-specific capabilities specifically mentioned during the keynote include local file system access, cross-site networking, hardware device access, COM automation support, and (as you would imagine) Microsoft Office integration.
The ability for SnapFlow to take advantage of these new integration features is very compelling. It will take the SnapFlow tool to new heights, especially for those scenarios that require integration to other applications and systems. SnapFlow is in the process of developing a new Silverlight 4 release and anyone can sign-up for a free 90-day trial offering. The updated tool will be available at a date closely corresponding to Silverlight 4’s general availability. (a date is not available at this time but is expected in the coming months)
Incidentally, other Silverlight 4 capabilities mentioned during the keynote include media enhancements like webcam and microphone support, H.264 output protection, and offline DRM capabilities. Business application support like printing, rich textbox, direct clipboard access, mouse right click and wheel support, implicit styles, native drag-n-drop, improved controls, simple data binding, windowing APIs, notification pop-ups, and HTML support. (Please note that all of this is subject to change.)
Partners Involved
Interknowlogy expertise and talent (led by Tim Huckaby) drove the pilot to upgrade the SnapFlow tool to Silverlight 4 for the PDC09 keynote demo.
SoftSource (led by Shaun McAravey) played an important role and led the port of SnapFlow to the Windows Azure platform for PDC09.
A big THANK YOU to both partners for thier great work ethic and professionalism through the PDC process.
To read more about SnapFlow’s involvement at PDC09 please refer to the following:
SnapFlow Unveiled in PDC09 Keynote
SnapFlow.com Front Page Feature (PDC)
Microsoft Showcases Developer Opportunities for Windows and the Web
Press Kit
Tim Huckaby Blog
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Microsoft In-Person Architect Councils in the West Region (December) ~ 2101: A Cloud Odyssey
The forecast for 2010 is looking very cloudy, with every technology company delivering some type of cloud offering, and analysts estimating that almost everyone will try some form of cloud computing. But from a practical stand point, how should organizations leverage cloud computing effectively? Is it to simply host existing and legacy assets somewhere else, or to create next-generation applications that enable differentiated capabilities? In addition, what role does SOA play in the age of cloud computing? And does this impact the way we manage and interact with data?
Facilitated by Microsoft, the premise of this half-day event is to provide an open forum where architects can meet to discuss technologies and insights with peers. This forum will provide first-hand experiences and best practices intended to help the community to collectively discover and generate knowledge.
Please join us for this opportunity to learn, share and network with your peers and other thought leaders.
Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350831&Culture=en-US
(no referral code necessary)
Event Summary
- Provide a clear and profound understanding of Microsoft's cloud strategy and roadmap, and latest updates on the Windows Azure Platform
- Discuss the state of SOA, and its relevance in the age of cloud computing
- Review case studies and models of cloud usage, and examine approaches to build next-generation capabilities leveraging the cloud
- Explore trade-offs, best practices, and guidance on today's myriad of data storage options
- Explain the differences and patterns of using various data interaction frameworks
Who Should Attend
Technology and business stakeholders, including CTOs, CIOs, VPs, Directors, Program and Product Managers, Architects, Lead Engineers, and IT Managers
Agenda
12:45PM: Introduction and Announcements
01:00PM: Windows Azure Platform - Overview of the Microsoft Cloud
01:30PM: SOA and Cloud Computing
02:00PM: Architecting Solutions Leveraging the Cloud
02:30PM: Making Sense of the Expanding Range of Data Storage Solutions
03:15PM: Best Practices with Data Interaction Frameworks
04:00PM: Groupthink
When & Where
(no referral code necessary for any registration)
Date: December 01, 2009
Location: Irvine, CA
Event ID: 1032350826
Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350826&Culture=en-US
Date: December 2, 2009:
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Event ID: 1032350827
Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350827&Culture=en-US
Date: December 3, 2009
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Event ID: 1032350828
Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350828&Culture=en-US
Date: December 8, 2009
Location: Mountain View, CA
Event ID: 1032350833
Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350833&Culture=en-US
Date: December 9, 2009
Location: San Francisco, CA
Event ID: 1032350830
Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350830&Culture=en-US
Date: December 10, 2009
Location: Seattle, WA
Event ID: 1032350831
Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350831&Culture=en-US
Date: December 15, 2009
Location: Denver, CO
Event ID: 1032350832
Event URL: http://wweventstest.one.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032350832&Culture=en-US
Hosts
David Chou
Architect, Microsoft
http://blogs.msdn.com/dachou
David Chou is a technical architect at Microsoft, focused on collaborating with enterprises and organizations in areas such as cloud computing, SOA, Web, distributed systems, security, etc., and supporting decision makers on defining evolutionary strategies in architecture. Drawing on experiences from his previous jobs at Sun Microsystems and Accenture, David enjoys helping customers create value from using objective and pragmatic approaches to define IT strategies, roadmaps, and solution architectures.
Joe Shirey
Architect, Microsoft
http://www.joeshirey.com
Joe Shirey is a Senior Architect Evangelist for Microsoft based in the Denver area. In this role, Joe works closely with customers and the community to help them understand where Microsoft technologies fit into the architecture of their solutions. Prior to joining Microsoft, Joe was a Vice President at Interlink group where he was responsible for service and delivery for Interlink's Denver market. In the past, Joe was a Microsoft Regional Director, a member of the Microsoft Architect Advisory Board, and sat on the .NET Partner Advisory Council. Joe has more than eighteen years of hands-on technical and functional experience in project management, systems analysis, design, development, and implementation. Joe attained his Microsoft Certified Architect award in 2005.
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December Architect Innovation Cafe Webcast - Securing REST Services with the Access Control Service
Each month through June 2010, we'll bring you a 90-minute Architect focused Webcast on the latest trends/topics and how new technologies can align with your business needs.
Date/Time: December 22, 2009 at 11:00am - 12:30pm PST
Title: Securing REST-Based Services with the Azure Access Control Service
Presenter: Michele Leroux Bustamante
Abstract: The Access Control Service (ACS), part of Windows Azure platform AppFabric, makes it easy to secure REST-based services using a simple set of standard protocols. In addition to enabling secure calls to REST-based services from any client, the ACS uniquely makes it possible to secure calls from client-side script, and enables federation scenarios with REST-based services. This webcast will provide a tour of ACS features and demonstrate scenarios where the ACS can be employed to secure REST-based WCF services and other web resources. You'll learn how to configure ACS, learn how to request a token from the ACS, and learn how applications and services can authorize access based on the ACS token.
Event ID: 1032435379
Link to Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032435379&Culture=en-US
SPEAKER BIO
Michele Leroux Bustamante
Michele Leroux Bustamante brings a well-rounded skill set to the IDesign, including expertise not just in architecture and technology but also in interoperability, management, and operations. Michele is not only an IDesign Chief Architect, she is also Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, Microsoft MVP for Connected Systems and a BEA Technical Director. In addition, Michele is a member of the board of directors for the International Association of Software Architects (IASA). With over 15 years of experience designing enterprise systems, prior to IDesign Michele has held senior executive positions at several corporations. She has assembled and organized software development teams from the ground up, implemented processes for all aspects of the software development lifecycle, and facilitated many successful large-scale enterprise application deployments, including capital fund raising, sales, and business development efforts. Michele specializes in training, mentoring and high-end architecture consulting services focusing on Web services, scalable and secure architecture design for .NET, federated security scenarios, web services, interoperability and globalization architecture. She participates in Software Design Reviews for products in the Microsoft roadmap, including WCF and CardSpace. During the Beta 1 phase Michele participated in prototyping elements of the CardSpace technology for the product team. Michele has been advisor to University of California, San Diego Extension since 1994, establishing several successful certificate programs. Michele is a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA); a frequent conference presenter at major technology conferences such as Tech Ed, PDC, SD and Dev Connections. Michele is the conference chair for SD's Web Services/SOA and Web Development tracks; and she regularly publishes in several technology journals. Michele's latest book is Learning WCF (O'Reilly, 2007). Visit her book blog at www.thatindigogirl.com or her main blog at www.dasblonde.net..
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WEBCAST Architect Council | Innovation is the Name of the Game
ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Innovation is the Name of the Game
Architects: Adverse times are also best times for innovation! Choosing the right battles to fight, and reinventing ourselves with less resources are par for the course today. However, not all innovation needs to be revolutionary or transformative. In fact, in the current economic crisis, opportunities for innovation can be found in aspects of our core competencies, and implemented as incremental and iterative changes.
For this series of Architect Council live webcasts on August 24 and 25, we will discuss two of the many ways architects can innovate by recognizing the impact to architects, and learning how to effectively leverage cloud computing beyond just another place to host existing assets.
DAY 1 – August 24, 2009 at Noon PST
Role of the Architect in Turbulent Times -- Event ID: 1032423112
Miha Kralj – Architect, Microsoft
With faltering economies and the resulting shift of priorities - architects must be ready for change in their role. Innovative new technologies such as Cloud Based Computing, Software as a Service and Virtualization open up new and exciting opportunities for architects to show value in their organizations. In this session we will discuss how the role of the architect has changed, introduce new architectural patterns, and show how to "do more with less".
Link to Register: ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Innovation is the Name of the Game Day 1 Live Meeting
DAY 2 – August 25, 2009 at Noon PST
A Closer Look at an Internet Service Bus -- Event ID: 1032423113
Clemens Vasters – Program Manager .NET Online Services, Microsoft
Look under the hood of the Microsoft .NET Services service bus - the protocols we use- and how to use the services from non-Microsoft platforms and languages. Learn which part of the messages and requests the Building Block service inspects, which parts are not inspected, and how you can verify this. Also, learn how to work through NAT and Firewall limitations. Lastly, hear about architecture on the Data Center side that enables "Internet scale”.
Link to Register: ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Innovation is the Name of the Game Day 2 Live Meeting
SPEAKER BIOS
Miha Kralj
As a senior architect on the Microsoft Platform Architecture Team, Miha Kralj is responsible for leading architectural communities, helping the architectural profession to mature and grow, and coordinating activities within professional architectural organizations and bodies. Miha is a Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). He was also a founding member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) chapters in Slovenia and Yugoslavia.
Clemens Vasters
Clemens Vasters is a Principal Technical Lead in the .NET Services team, working in an architect role on the 'Service Bus' feature area and acting – more behind the scenes – as the architect for the Billing feature area and as the architect/lead developer for the internal Provisioning infrastructure of .NET Services. Before joining Microsoft some 3 years ago, Clemens spoke at many conferences, taught technology, and helped companies with software architecture in over 35 countries.
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Silverlight 3 FireStarter | Thursday, September 17th, 2009 - Live Meeting Available
This summer, Mithun Dhar is at it again with a Silverlight 3 FireStarter event to take place in Redmond, WA on September 17th, and you can attend the event via Live Meeting.
There are some terrific speakers lined-up. Scott Guthrie will keynote the event followed by presentations from Tim Heuer, Brad Abrams, Karl Shifflett and others. For this particular FireStarter, we will focus on three areas:
- We’ll give you a “latest and greatest” overview of the recent Silverlight 3 release
- We’ll catch you up with what’s happening in the world of Expression 3, and
- We’ll give you a run down on .NET RIA Services, associated Toolkits, and more.
Mithun has blogged about the event specifics, and he also covers the registration process. Hope to see you there in person or virtually.
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Startups Cootendy and Overcast Media Adopt Silverlight
Two very interesting startups in the Seattle area have adopted Silverlight, Cootendy’s WaresDinner site for foodies and Overcast Media’s new overcast player.
WaresDinner offers exotic dinner party experience kits containing fair trade wares. They establish a fair trade US market for World artists through a dinner party kit featuring the tableware and culinary traditions of the artist’s country. Customers buy an “experience kit” containing all the components needed to create an exotic culinary experience, including hand-made table linens, menus, shopping list, wine pairing advice, indigenous music, invitations, country and artist profiles, and on-line support and suppliers. Since the consumer acquires collectible table ware, Cootendy’s goal is to make the investment and dinner experience lasting. Bringing people together to share both the cooking and the experience of new cuisines, capitalizes on the demand for unique culinary experiences, the expanding global market for ethnic items, and the desire to support a socially conscious business.
Overcast Media is enabling a new shared entertainment experience through the interplay of user-generated content and professional digital media. They allow any user to augment media, like television shows and movies, with audio commentary, Web links, and ‘pop-up video’ style text and graphics. This is fondly called “overcasting”. Overcasts can be shared on the Web and are distributed independently from the video. Recently, they have developed a Silverlight player to generate and play user-generated overcast content.
Worth noting, Overcast Media has developed a patent-pending ‘Relative Timeline Technology’ that enables an “author once, sync everywhere” media playback capability. The technology normalizes for file format and timing variances found across video sources. Overcasting provides incentive for viewers to become deeply involved in a show’s community and gives them a reason to watch a show (or portion) more than once. This translates to increased advertising opportunities and better audience data by drawing users to online content.
IdentityMine is a design and development partner that assisted Overcast Media in building the Silverlight player for overcasting.
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John L. Scott Real Estate Enables Online Social Networking with Live Services and Silverlight
John L. Scott Real Estate (JLS) is delivering a unique social networking solution, called JLSconnect, that makes it easier for buyers to shop for a home and it will help JLS agents win new business and keep customers. By building this new solution using Microsoft software and a Software+Services approach, John L. Scott was able to deliver unique customer value quickly and cost-effectively. The company has easily repackaged existing Web functionality, combined it with new capabilities provided by Microsoft Live Services, and delivered it all through a user experience powered by Silverlight and optimized for the task at hand: collaborating with family, friends, and a John L. Scott agent when shopping for a home.
In previous posts [1][2][3], I’ve talked about real examples of S+S and how this new and emerging pattern of computing is helping businesses to meet demands, to support customers in new ways, and to differentiate themselves from the competition.
A History of Innovation
The JLS Web site receives more than one million visitors and produces more than nine million listing views each month, and was one of the first real estate sites to use the Microsoft Virtual Earth service to provide rich online mapping capabilities.
“We’re an early adopter of new technology because it enables us to meet new customer needs,” says Pat Giles, Vice President of Marketing and IT at John L. Scott. “Fifteen years ago, potential home buyers first found an agent, who then used a printed copy of the Multiple Listing Service book to help them find a home. Today, the average home buyer goes online to look at homes before ever talking with an agent. Given that customers today expect to be able to go to our Web site and get all the information they need, the challenge we face is ‘How do we exceed those expectations?’”
This leads the discussion to what John L. Scott Real Estate is doing with JLSconnect, a new offering that facilitates social networking during the home shopping process.
Ideas around JLSconnect began in mid-2008 when John L. Scott began looking at how to improve online collaboration when buyers are searching for a home. “Purchasing a home is a social, collaborative event that often involves more than two people,” says Giles. “For example, the main person an agent is working with may want to share properties and get input from his or her spouse, other family members, and so on. Given that 44 percent of buyers already use social networking tools, and that online behavior in general is continuing to move that way, we knew that we had to support the trend.” Additionally, JLS wanted to do so in a way that would make their Web site ‘stickier’ and capture buyers earlier in the home-search process, thereby benefiting their agents.
JLSconnect uses a Silverlight client to combine existing Web site features and several Live Services into an integrated collaboration experience.
The Solution
John L. Scott is leveraging Microsoft cloud services to encourage buyers to collaborate directly with friends, family, and agents on the company’s main Web site, which provides increased convenience for all parties while helping the company and its agents further differentiate themselves from the competition. JLSconnect, uses a software-plus-services approach in which software running on user desktops integrates with centralized, Web-based services hosted by John L. Scott and Microsoft to provide entirely new capabilities through a combination of existing, familiar tools.
This might a good point to backup slightly and to talk about the Azure Services Platform, of which Live Services is one of a growing number of building block components contained therein.
Live Services is highlighted in red as one of the major components of the cloud platform. The other components are out of scope to this post, so (for now) I will concentrate on the Live Services and those constituent building blocks used in JLSconnect.
The solution uses Microsoft Silverlight to enrich the collaboration experience provided by the company’s existing Web site, pulling together preexisting Web site features—the ability for individuals to log in and save “favorite” properties—with new functionality that makes it possible for people to easily share and exchange comments on those properties with others.
The Live Services that JLSconnect takes advantage of include:
• Windows Live ID, a hosted cloud service which provides single sign-on capabilities across the company’s Web site and growing ecosystem of Live Services by allowing users to login to the John L. Scott Web site using the same online ID that they use for Messenger and other Live services.
• Windows Live Contacts, a service that contains ‘contacts’ for every user identified by a Live ID. Live Contacts offers a foundation to social networking activities because it all starts with the ability to identify and track friends and family, namely—your contacts.
• Windows Live Messenger, a client and hosted chat service, which users can launch from within the Silverlight client to chat with others (your Live Contacts) in real time.
• Windows Live Presence, a service which enables users to see which of their Messenger contacts are online and available to chat.
• Microsoft Virtual Earth, a service which enables users to easily visualize the locations of their favorite properties in a rich online map.
“A software-plus-services approach helped us to take existing features of our Web site, add collaboration and single sign-on capabilities to cloud services, and deliver all that functionality through a new and exciting user experience,” says Giles.
Work on the project began in June 2008, when John L. Scott began speaking with a local Microsoft field evangelist about how it could allow users to sign in to the company’s Web site—and thus take advantage of existing features like favorites lists—using a Windows Live ID rather than a separate user name and password. “As we started to educate ourselves on the possibilities, we realized that also integrating with Windows Live Messenger would be fairly easy—and that it would give us a lot bigger return in terms of business value,” says Giles.
Development and Architecture
Having minimal hands-on experience with some of the technologies it wanted to use, JLS enlisted the aid of SharpLogic and nsquared Solutions, Microsoft Certified Partners with proven expertise in Silverlight and Live services. “By assembling a team consisting of both our own developers and Microsoft partners, we were able to accelerate solution development and quickly bring our own people up-to-speed,” says Giles. “We now have new technology skills that we can apply to other projects as well.”
After a few meetings to discuss the envisioned solution, the project team began development. A designer used Microsoft Expression Design software to come up with a compelling user experience, while developers used Microsoft Expression Blend and the Visual Studio 2008 Professional development system to build the Silverlight client in which that user experience would reside. Other developers began working on what would need to happen behind the scenes—such as which new Web services John L. Scott would need to expose, and how to associate Windows Live IDs with existing Web site user names and passwords.
“By using the Expression and Visual Studio 2008 tools, both of which are based on Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), the team’s designer and developers were able to easily share projects, code, and UI designs—the end result being an improved ability to deliver the desired user experience,” says Giles.
The following high-level architecture diagram depicts the major building block components of the application and how the software-plus-services vision from Microsoft comes into play:
The high-level architecture of JLSconnect and how it enables S+S.
The JLSconnect experience is powered by Silverlight 2.0, which enables it to provide interactivity to the HTML markup. The Silverlight application uses the Live Presence service to show which other users are online, the Live Messenger client running on user desktops for online chat, and the Messenger service hosted by Microsoft to deliver those messages. Web services at the John L. Scott data center that the Silverlight client calls are based on .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
Compelling User Experience
With its new collaboration solution, John L. Scott is providing increased customer value during the process of shopping for a home. Users can log in to the realtor’s Web site using their Windows Live ID, save homes they like to their favorites, and then easily share those favorites with others. Users can also see others’ favorites that they have been invited to view, and can post and view comments on individual properties in both their own and others’ favorites lists. Users can see which of their contacts are online through integration with Windows Live Presence and can initiate a Windows Live Messenger session to collaborate with them at any time.
“We’re making it extremely easy for someone to find a property they like, share it with others, and get feedback—without having to cut and paste or share the same user name and password,” says Giles. “Not only does this provide increased convenience, but it can help buyers to make faster decisions—potentially enabling them to find the right house and make an offer on it before someone else does. And although the solution is optimized for buyers, it’s useful to sellers as well, in that they can use it to keep an eye on other homes that are on the market.”
By building on top of Live services, John L. Scott is delivering its new capabilities through tools with which users are already familiar. “Lots of Web sites have built their own instant messaging clients, but many of them are quite primitive and/or have major latency problems,” says Giles. “By integrating with Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live ID, we’re avoiding all those issues while enabling customers to use tools that they already know and trust.”
Bring Back Customers
For John L. Scott, the company’s main motivation for developing its new solution is an increased ability to attract customers to its Web site—and keep them coming back. “To successfully compete, we need to delight users instead of delivering the same mundane stuff as everyone else—and Microsoft software helps us do that,” says Giles. “Our new collaboration tool helps us to capture buyers earlier in the process, creates ‘stickiness’ on our Web site, and promotes customer loyalty—with a built-in social marketing aspect that drives friends and family to our Web site as well.”
John L. Scott also expects its new solution to help the company attract and retain agents. “We compete for three types of customers: buyers, sellers, and agents—and the reality is that we have a solution that people want,” says Giles. “I anticipate that some people with agents who work for other real estate companies will take advantage of our tools and invite their own agents to our site, and some of those agents may realize that working for JLS enables them to offer tools that their own companies can’t match. Other Web sites will probably copy us, but by that time we’ll have figured out yet another way to offer unique customer value.”
Low Development Costs and Rapid Time-to-Market
With a software-plus-services approach based on Microsoft software and services, JLS was able to deliver its unique customer solution and begin realizing the corresponding business benefits with minimal investment and effort. “A software-plus-services approach enabled us to focus on the user experience, letting services ‘in the cloud’ do all the ‘heavy lifting’ with respect to security, reliable messaging, and so on,” says Giles. “In fact, we probably wouldn’t have taken on delivering such a rich solution if we had to develop it entirely from scratch. Many companies today are avoiding all software development, whereas our philosophy is to spend wisely, continue to innovate, and take advantage of the opportunity to pull further ahead of the competition.”
Increased Visibility as an Industry Leader
John L. Scott’s new JLSconnect solution further reinforces the company’s position and visibility as an industry leader, and a visionary in the use of technology to connect with customers in new and innovative ways. What makes this so interesting is that John L. Scott is composing four ‘cloud’ building block services—Live ID, Live Contacts, Live Presence, Live Messenger, and Virtual Earth—into its on-premises powered Web site, all powered by a Silverlight interface to glue the experience together. JLS is the first real estate company to embrace social networking in such a way. They’re targeting their Gen X and Gen Y agents with this solution to begin the process of reinventing how consumers and agents can collaborate around the home buying experience. It represents the most advanced thinking to date in the real estate industry.
To see a short interview on JLSconnect with Pat Giles, please hit the play button below:
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Architect Council (Webcasts): Pragmatic Patterns for Architects
“Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc. We’ve all heard this type of proclamation before, as many look to the “next big things” in technology to exact sweeping changes and solve many issues; truth is, technologies and tools aren’t as instrumental in influencing progress, as the design and discipline in applying them to specific issues. When used appropriately, technologies and tools can be powerful enablers that bring about change.
One of the things we hear a lot working with the community is a desire for more guidance about how to use the technology instead of just talking about features and functions. To address this, our team has put together a series of live webcasts on June 9-11 which will focus on guidance and patterns for some of today’s hottest topics.
DAY 1 – June 9, 2009 at Noon PST
Patterns for Moving to the Cloud
Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner
Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should be moving to the cloud? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? In this session, learn architectural patterns and factors for moving to the cloud. Based on real-world projects, the session explores building block services, patterns for exposing applications, and challenges involving identity, data federation, and management. This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.
DAY 2 – June 10, 2009 at Noon PST
Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism
David Hill
Prism provides guidance, via design patterns, to help you build robust, flexible and modular Silverlight and WPF applications. These patterns support unit testing, separation of concerns, loose coupling and the ability to share application logic between Silverlight and WPF applications. Prism includes source code for the library itself, extensive documentation, and a sample application that shows how the patterns work together in a real-world application. It also includes a Visual Studio add-in to help you easily share code between WPF and Silverlight. This session provides an overview of Prism, and shows how you can use Prism to design and build composite Silverlight applications.
DAY 3 – June 11, 2009 at Noon PST
Patterns for Parallel Computing
David Chou
With recent advances in cloud computing, service-oriented architectures, distributed computing, server virtualization, multi-core processors; we are now seeing parallel computing techniques being implemented across the spectrum. It’s moving towards mainstream applications such as internet-scale web applications, massive data processing, graphics rendering, but the myriad of choices also present a number of questions on when and how to utilize parallel computing. This session explores the architectural patterns and trade-offs between different forms of parallel computing including: approaches for utilizing them to improve application performance, optimizing the use of existing infrastructure, and applying concurrency towards day-to-day enterprise information processing needs.
WEBCAST AGENDA
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11:45 AM (PST) |
Open for Dial-in |
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12:00 PM (PST) |
Day’s Content |
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12:50 PM (PST) |
Q&A |
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01:00 PM (PST) |
Raffle and Close |
REGISTER
To register, please click on the link below for each day:
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Title |
Event ID |
Link to Register | |
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Day 1 6/9/09 |
Patterns for Moving to the Cloud |
1032416875 |
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Day 2 6/10/09 |
Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism |
1032416983 |
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Day 3 6/11/09 |
Patterns for Parallel Computing |
1032416984 |
We will email you with the LIVE MEETING information and log-in detail a few days before the actual event. We will use the email address you provide in the registration. Thanks!
SPEAKER BIOS
Larry Clarkin - SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft
Wade Wegner - SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft
Architect in the Developer & Platform Evangelism division at Microsoft, tasked to collaborate with organizations in the advanced and emergent areas of enterprise architecture, SOA, Web 2.0, and cloud computing, as well as to support decision makers on defining technology adoption strategies. You can reach Wade at his blog http://www.architectingwith.net/ or through twitter at http://twitter.com/wadewegner.
David Hill – PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, Microsoft Patterns & Practices Team
David Chou – ARCHITECT, Microsoft
Architect in the Developer & Platform Evangelism organization at Microsoft, focused on collaborating with enterprises and organizations in many areas such as cloud computing, SOA, Web, RIA, distributed systems, security, etc., and supporting decision makers on defining evolutionary strategies in architecture. Drawing on experiences from his previous jobs at Sun Microsystems and Accenture, David enjoys helping customers create value from using objective and pragmatic approaches to define IT strategies, roadmaps, and solution architectures.
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SnapFlow Prefers Silverlight over Flash for their Workflow Tool
As far back as 2001 Samad Wahedi began to notice the gradual migration of work to the Web. He saw that people were doing more activities online, from banking to social networking, and people needed tools for performing certain tasks. Wahedi and his business partner Gopinath Dhanakodi knew that the traditional way for users to get software tools was through their company’s IT department, which usually involved a long wait.
Wahedi and Dhanakodi decided that there was a business opportunity in creating software tools that the average business user could use to create workflows, which are the key building blocks of most business processes. They reasoned that users should have an easy way to design and automate process workflows “themselves” rather than waiting for the IT department to build a specialized applications. In 2007, Wahedi launched SnapFlow, a Portland, Oregon-based based startup chartered with bringing workflow to the masses. Today, Wahedi is Chief Executive Officer of SnapFlow, and Dhanakodi is Vice President of Engineering. SnapFlow enables important elements Microsoft’s vision around Software-plus-Services (S+S), and they are an important actor in the broader cloud ecosystem.
SnapFlow uses the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) (tutorials) and the Microsoft Silverlight™ browser plug-in to create a Web-based workflow design tool called SnapFlow (see video tour). Business people use SnapFlow (the tool) to build simple or complex workflows online using simple point-and-click and drag-and-drop actions. Users visit the SnapFlow Web site and simply click the “Start a Flow” button to begin building a workflow for any business process, such as hiring a new person or purchasing supplies. Users can transfer completed SnapFlow workflows to a Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 site. They can also integrate forms created with the Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007 information-gathering program.
Traditional methods of creating workflows using business process management solutions can take three to six months; creating workflows with SnapFlow takes minutes or hours. Also, enterprise business process management software costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, making it “nearly impossible to realize a return on your investment [ROI],” Wahedi says. “Building workflows in SnapFlow provides an almost immediate ROI. Plus, nontechnical people can describe processes themselves, in a very visual way, so nothing gets lost in translation in working with technical folks.” Another savings comes from companies not having to pay expensive software engineers to create and modify workflows.
Broader Market Reach using Software-Plus-Services
Perhaps just as compelling as the capabilities of SnapFlow is the firm’s implementation method—over the Web. Users simply download a free copy of Microsoft Silverlight on their desktop or portable computer. All workflow data and the execution engine are stored in SnapFlow’s hosting infrastructure. Deploying its solution using a software-plus-services approach enables SnapFlow to minimize up-front investment for customers and maximize customer access. Traditionally, when customers want to try out a software program, they have to download and configure the program. It’s a huge time and resource commitment, especially if they need to configure servers first. With software-plus-services, customers can try our software in minutes rather than waiting a couple of weeks. Software-plus-services gives us the ability to reach a broad audience very inexpensively.”
The software-plus-services approach also gives independent software vendors like SnapFlow new possibilities for enriching their applications and broadening delivery models. “The combination of powerful client software, in this case, Silverlight, and a cloud-based service provides a powerful new software development and distribution model,” Wahedi says. “We can develop capabilities without concern for the back-end infrastructure required to run it, because there is infinite processing power in the cloud. But having powerful locally-installed software makes the user experience even better. We are now free to create solutions that take advantage of rich desktop software.” With software-plus-services, SnapFlow gets the richness of the desktop with the reach of the Web.
Silverlight over Flash for Faster Development
When it was time to design the interface that users would employ to design workflows, SnapFlow narrowed its development choices to Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, which Microsoft has just released in 2007. "Adobe Flash is widely used in many business applications, has a big user community, and has a fairly sophisticated feature set," Dhanakodi says. "Silverlight was very new, and we were concerned that we wouldn't find sufficient help in the development community." So SnapFlow committed to Adobe Flash to support the development of the SnapFlow user-interface.
A few weeks into prototype development, Dhanakodi and his team were disappointed with the progress that they had made. The user interface looked clunky, and even simple changes took a long time to implement. Around the same time, SnapFlow consulted SoftSource Consulting, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Portland, to validate its technology and design decisions. SoftSource was an avid proponent of Silverlight and offered to demonstrate the capabilities of that software by replicating SnapFlow’s Flash prototype. A few days later, SoftSource demonstrated how SnapFlow could build its workflow in Silverlight, and the SnapFlow team was impressed. 
“We decided that Silverlight was worth investigating in more detail,” Dhanakodi says. “Within a month, our team had made huge progress using Silverlight. Our team was able to learn the new tools and build a fairly sophisticated prototype without any support.”
Shaun McAravey, Co-Founder and Chief Architect for SoftSource says, “Windows Workflow Foundation and Silverlight are sufficiently approachable technologies that a competent technical team can get up to speed and produce a remarkable product in very little time. SnapFlow really sped up its development using these tools.”
SnapFlow has a more detailed blog post discussing why they chose Silverlight over Flash.
I would like to thank Tim Heuer for his recent blog post on SnapFlow.
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Microsoft .NET Services Whitepapers Released
Microsoft .NET Services whitepapers are now available from the Microsoft download centers. Those whitepapers can be found at the following location:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5057e2b3-c8e5-4b26-a601-ff9621589ce3&DisplayLang=en
Here is a summary of the available whitepapers:
An Introduction to Microsoft .NET Services for Developers. This overview paper introduces Microsoft® .NET Services, each of its building block services, and how they fit together.
A Developer’s Guide to the Microsoft® .NET Access Control Service. This whitepaper shows developers how to use a claims-based identity model and the Microsoft® .NET Access Control Service – part of the Microsoft® .NET Services family – to implement single sign-on, federated identity, and role based access control in Web applications and services.
A Developer’s Guide to the Microsoft® .NET Service Bus. This whitepaper shows developers how to use the .NET Service Bus – part of the Microsoft® .NET Services family – to provide a secure, standards-based messaging fabric to connect applications across the Internet.
A Developer’s Guide to the Microsoft® .NET Workflow Service. This whitepaper provides details about the Microsoft® .NET Workflow Service, its relation to Windows Workflow Foundation, and what developers need to know to begin building workflows for the cloud. It not only explains the current tools and capabilities but also outlines the vision for future releases.
I hope you find these whitepapers useful.
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