Introduction to SOA and WCF

Key learning below from the presentation below:

SOA (definition): The decomposition of a system in autonomous, discoverable, and secure units of responsibility and interoperable exposure of said units.

SOA decomposes an application into services and allows connectivity of dissimilar technologies. SOA is the next evolution of programming, design, architectural paradigm.

Other legacy paradigms that the IT industry has witnessed are:

1. Procedural programming – no code/app reuse was possible and it required a lot of code to plumb the apps
2. Object Orientated programming – no code reuse possible outside the app
3. Component Oriented Programming – objects housed within libraries (.dll) required external service management (COM+, MTS, Corba etc)

Then came along Service Oriented Programming where objects were encapsulated within autonomous services each with its own set of responsibilities. SOA programming needed a good “glue” technology to handle plumbing for ancillary technologies. Technologies had to be interoperable – enter WCF.

SOA

Service is an encapsulated unit of responsibility that is atomic, durable, secure and always leaves the system in a consistent state. In order to build an SOA system, you must functionally decompose a system to smallest units of responsibilities possible.

WCF

Windows Communication Foundation provides an unified communication model with: Web Services, Remoting, Sockets, Enterprise Services, MSMQ. WCF enforces a message based communication approach.

WCF consists of:

• System.ServiceModel/System.ServiceModel.Web
  • Assembly and Namespace
• Data Contracts
• Service Contracts
• Services
• Service Host
• Client Proxy
• Configuration

Service Contracts are interfaces that define service operations which work with single type of data contracts.

Use [ServiceContract], [OperationContract]

Data Contracts  defines the data that is to be received/returned by a service. Data Contracts must be serializable [DataContracts] System.Runtime.Serialization.

Service Classes provides the service implementation of one or more service contracts and returns a data contract.

Services can be hosted on IIS using HTTP services.

Configure your service

Service

Client

Microsoft Podcast: Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management

Podcast

Summary:
   Process Agility
   Biztalk server 2010
   Microsoft view is SOA Realworld Realistic view
   IT Challenges:
      Connect, Change, Control
      Maximize Long-term ROI
      Agility
      Maximize Invesments
   Microsoft edge:
      Low cost, save time
      simplified interoperability
      reduces operational risk
   Traditional approach to SOA is to re-architect applications (i.e. complete rip and replace). This approach is    no longer necessary with Microsoft Biztalk Server.
   Provides visibility across disparate heterogeneous systems.
   Components:
      Biz Rule Framework
      Biz to Biz Integration
      Biz Activity Monitoring
      Orchestration
      Messaging
      RFID Platform

      EAI - Enterprise Application Integration
      SOA - Service Oriented Architecture
      ESB - Enterprise Service Bus

      EAI in service oriented world:
      reuse
      lower operational cost
      dynamic biz changes
      loosely coupled messaging environment
      registry driven message routing
      service discover-ability
      itinerary based routing

      Biz talk server integrates with Sharepoint, Microsoft Office

      Why Microsoft SOA/BPM NOW more than ever?
            Get more what we you already have (keep investments already made in IT)
            Automate to reduce costs and errors (less manual)
            Innovate to stay competitive
            Integration to eliminate redundancy
            Provide tighter compliance and control (using activity monitoring)

resources:
http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/soa.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/default.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itmanagement