I am super excited about the public beta 2 release of Windows Server AppFabric. I am also hoping that you are also (if not more, than almost as) excited about this extremely useful and game changing offering from Microsoft.

However if you are one of those people who are still wondering what’s this ‘Windows Server AppFabric’ and why is it important for you then you have come to the right place. In the last few weeks I have been asked few recurring questions on Windows AppFabric Fabric and it made a perfect sense for me to write a blog post (or perhaps a couple of them) on this topic.

At the moment I am thinking about making this a 3 part series which we will cover following areas:-

1- Try to answer some of the common questions around Windows Server AppFabric

2- Discuss business use cases that require use of Windows Server AppFabric

3- Discuss Windows Server AppFabric Architecture and its extensibility points

In this first post I will solely try to outline the technology side of the story and try to answer following common set of questions:-

Q: What is Windows Server AppFabric:

Let’s see what MSDN has to say:

Windows Server AppFabric is a set of integrated technologies that make it easier to build, scale and manage Web and composite applications that run on IIS.

In a nut shell, AppFabric

- is an ApplicationServer that allows you to build composite (WCF and WF) services that can horizontally scale out.
- offers enterprise scale distributed in-memory caching (that can, again, scale out horizontally)
- makes managing and monitoring services extremely easy through streamlined dashboards (via IIS) and Windows Power Shell Cmdlets

So, the key words are Services, Composite, Scalability, Distributed, In-Memory Caching, and ease of Management.

Q: Why/When should I use AppFabric?

We are not going to talk about business use-case in this post but surely we can discuss AppFabric’s technical features that are extremely useful for developing composite service oriented applications.

You should definitely consider using AppFabric, when among other things, you… :-

- need your services to be scalable i.e the ability to expand from one node to hundreds and thousands nodes

- want to use application level in-memory caching that is highly available, performant and distributed across number of nodes

- want to be able to monitor your hosted services

- want the ability to manage your services using IIS as well as Windows Power Shell Cmdlets

Q: But… hold on…what happened with Oslo, Dublin and Velocity?

As a matter of fact, simply put mathematically, Windows Server AppFabric = Dublin + Velocity.
These days Oslo is more focused on data modelling and you find more details on Oslo here

Q: What are the key features of AppFabric:

Some key features of AppFabric include:-

- Hosting with message based activation i.e. Auto-magic lifecycle management based on incoming messages (more on hosting here)

- Streamlined configuration and monitoring via a centralized IIS Management console and Windows Power Shell Cmdlets (more on management tools here)

- Distributed, high performing, highly available, in-memory application caching (more on caching here)

- Seamless integration with IIS, WCF and WF (more on development here)

Q: How can I develop applications that can leverage AppFabric functionality?
Very simple! Fortunately, one of the good things about AppFabric is that any WCF/WF application/service built using following Visual Studio template leverage AppFabric feature-set.

- WCF Service Application

- WCF Workflow Service Application

- WCF Service

In fact, AppFabric (goes an extra mile and) looks for services created using these templates and applies default configurations for persistence and monitoring.

I believe that’s it for now and in the next post, we will try to cover common use cases where we can run our services on AppFabric add utilize its feature-set to build scalable, composite and robust services and platforms.

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From time to time it happens that i have to present at a conference or host a tech-talk etc. In such scenarios i get, envitably, asked for my shot profile. So i thought it would make sense to blog my profile and consequently pass on the url.

So here it goes:-

Hammad Rajjoub is currently working as an Assistant Vice President with Merrill Lynch Global Services, Singapore.

He is a three times MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) for Connected Systems. His areas of interest include Enterprise Architecture, Distributed Computing, SOA, .NET, Design Patterns and Quantum Computation. He has architected number of successful enterprise scale services/applications using various tools and Technologies. He is a .Net Evangelist and speaks frequently at seminars and knowledge sharing sessions. He is an active member of MSDN groups and shares his experiences with the community. He has hosted number of technical sessions at international IT conferences.

He has written a case study for APress(http://www.apress.com/). He is also a user group leader of .NetWizards and .NetPalm both are INETA (http://www.ineta.org) chartered user groups. He is a member speaker’s bureau for INETA MEA. He has taught at Dept. Of Computer Science, Karachi University and PAF KIET as a visiting faculty member. He is member of IASA (www.iasahome.org International Association of Software Architects), Singapore Chapter. He spends his spare time learning and evangelizing best practices for architecture/design and .net.

For more details visit his blogs at:

http://dotnetwizards.blogspot.com

http://msmvps.com/blogs/hammadrajjoub

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Connected Systems group @ MS Campus Building 43 during MVP Summit 2007. You can see Shy Cohen on my left side, Dennis & John Shu are in the back row towards right side. Marjan is standing behind me.

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I missed this conference due to delay in my visa application. This time I am not sure if my company would release me for this. But for all of you who are involved in financial services industry, this event is a must attend.

Following are the details:

5th Annual Microsoft Financial Services Developer Conference

Now in its 5th year, the Financial Services Developer Conference is the leading event for developers and architects in the financial services industry. This annual event offers the opportunity to gain insight into Microsoft’s latest and upcoming technologies for the banking, insurance and capital markets industries. You will learn best practices for using the best of breed technology to bring you from where you are today to where you want to be tomorrow. Come learn about the latest user experience enhancements in the .NET Framework 3.0 that will ensure that your applications are people ready. Hear how you can take advantage of Microsoft Office 2007 Excel Services and Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Office System to build powerful financial and analytical systems. Gain in-depth knowledge on leveraging Windows Communication Services to route your messages and business logic efficiently. Learn how you can automate your business and human workflow with the easy-to-use tools in Windows Workflow Foundation. These are just some of the technologies that will be covered at this two-day industry event! In addition, we will have a Microsoft Partner solution showcase, networking opportunities and great prize drawings! It promises to be an event you won’t want to miss!

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Check out Office Business Applications Developer Portal

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All of you who have been reading my posts know that how much do i believe in power of OBA (office based applications). It looks like Office is becoming main stream as far as development platform is concerned. I still remember the quote from Bill Gates who in his speach couple of years back mentioned “New world of work.

Now with the new office suite and MOSS; office based applications are gaining momentum. While browsing MSDN Architecture web site i came across this excellent book,titled “Building Composite Applications Using the Microsoft Platform“. It covers wide range of topics, including introduction to “Composite Applications”, “Office as a development platform”, as well as “Financial Services OBA”.

This is a must read!

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Deploying .NET applications on 64-bit hardware permits faster and more scalable operations due to access to more powerful hardware and more memory. ODP.NET and Oracle Database Extensions for .NET betas are now available for 64-bit Windows x64 and Windows Itanium. These 64-bit ODAC releases also include 64-bit OLE DB, 64-bit ODBC, and 64-bit Oracle Services for MTS.

download from here.

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I am writing this blog post from Riyadh. We are participating here in an exhibition called SMFEX. There are a number of companies on display demonstrating their applications for capital markets of gulf in general and KSA in particular. This is my second participation in an exhibition of this type in as many months. Anyways coming to the point, most of the applications on display are Microsoft based and some of them are .Net 2.0 based products, which is an encouraging sign to see. But what is rather amazing is that almost all the applications have similar look and feel (mostly because they are .Net based etc.).
So alot of people who come and see the demo and get into conversation asking that
“all the applications look the same…”. Then we end up telling them that how we are different and what’s the value that we add etc. But from the user point of view if they take a cursory look every thing looks alike and hence a confusion.
So the question arise how do you become different? And answer is to be more innovative, how about non-rectangular forms? how about use of touch screens? how about sleekness? how about creativity? besides these how about movnig to .net 3.0 and using windows presentation foundation? AERO style UIs?
what do you say?

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Dear .Net Palmers!

A very wet and chilly welcome from Dubai! As the weather takes its turn and a brand new winter season comes with all the rain and over cast conditions (some thing good for us desert dwellers who have added rain to their hashtables containing sun, sand and beach) we have taken a similar approach and updated our portal (http://www.dotnetpalm.net ). With its new theme it offers a better look and feel, thanks to great work from Imran Sami.

By the way it’s not only the weather and a new theme of our portal that’s new out there, more good things have been happening on the IT landscape of Arabian Gulf. Prime example would be launching of first Gulf based Architect Community, called GulfSkyScrapers (http://www.gulfskyscrapers.com ). It’s a great initiative for all those who are interested in learning about or sharing their knowledge on Solution and Infrastructure Architecture.

Also, Imagine Cup (http://www.imaginecup.com) has been launched in Gulf (http://www.imaginecupgulf.com ) . Imagine Cup is Microsoft’s Global Student Technology competition and a phenomenal opportunity to showcase our commitment to innovation and education – where students demonstrate solutions to real world problems facing society today.

TechGuru(http://www.microsoft.com/gulf/techguru ) competition is also announced. It’s a great opportunity for IT professionals to win great prizes and get recognized as guru. So hurry up as the contest ends January 31st, 2007.

Soon we will be launching our Windows Vista and Office Launch series of events to get all of you in depth and technical knowledge of this next generation platform. Till then happy .netting.

Your g e e k mate,

Hammad Rajjoub

http://www.dotnetpalm.net
http://dotnetwizards.blogspot.com

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I was last week invited as guest speaker at American University In Dubai (AUD) to present a lecture on “Design Patterns”. I presented two patterns namely “Command Pattern” and “Interceptor Pattern”. I gave a code based demonstration as well. The discussion got interesting while we were discussing interceptor pattern i.e when we talked about considering interceptor pattern for languages and grammers. I gave an example of a trading system that allows investors or traders to key in orders as text based queries instead of GUI based interaction.

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