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SO-Aware and the Microsoft Technology Stack
Since the launch of SO-Aware, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of times other Microsoft partners in the middleware & integration space have positioned our product together with the rest of Microsoft’s Service Oriented (SO) technology stack when responding to competitive engagements against traditional J2EEvendors such as Oracle, IBM, SoftwareAG or Tibco. Our surprised is not based on any technical reasons (we built SO-Aware to fill the SOA governance gap in the Microsoft stack) but rather on how quickly Microsoft, partners and enterprise customers have embraced SO-Aware as a natural complement to the Microsoft integration and middleware technology stack.
What’s Your Little Software doing in my BIG Technology List? SO-Aware and Microsoft’s Technology Stack
I hate stereotypes but let’s face it; most big enterprises might be surprised when they see a third party product included as part of a proposal for a SO implementation. In the case of SO-Aware the explanation is really simple:
“SO-Aware enables the management, governance and testing of a very foundational piece of the Microsoft technology stack: WCF; and provides native integration with every other Microsoft technology that relies on WCF.”
SO-Aware was built to address the management, governance and testing of WCF services. Given that WCF has become the messaging foundation of Microsoft products, the value proposition of SO-Aware have extended way beyond WCF solutions to become a natural service management, governance and testing solution for a large number of Microsoft technologies.
As more and more Microsoft technologies expand their use of WCF, we will see more and more use cases and scenarios for applying SO-Aware. The following figure illustrates how SO-Aware capabilities relate to different Microsoft technologies.
Based on the lessons we’ve learned during these initial months working with customers adopting SO-Aware, I’ve decided to put together a summary of how SO-Aware extends, complement and integrates with different Microsoft technologies.
SO-Aware & WCF
SO-Aware was built on WCF to manage WCF solutions. Even though SO-Aware can manage services on any technology, it does excel in the management, testing and governance of WCF services. If you are building WCF services today, SO-Aware can help you in the following areas.
SO-Aware can help me to…. | How? |
Catalog WCF Services | Using SO-Aware, you can keep a catalog of the WCF used in your SO solution |
Centralized the configuration of WCF Services | You can use SO-Aware to keep a catalog of the WCF bindings and behaviors used by your WCF services |
Enforce configuration consistency on WCF services and clients across different environments | SO-Aware configuration repository will allow you to enforce the consistency of the configuration of WCF services and clients across your development, stage, test and production environments |
Testing my WCF Services | Using SO-Aware, you can model and execute load tests against the WCF services used in your solutions |
Load Testing my WCF Services | You can use the SO-Aware Test Workbench to load test your WCF service while visualizing the results in real time |
Monitor my WCF services | SO-Aware will enable the monitoring and tracking of the runtime behavior of your WCF services without the need of adding any specific configurations |
Version my WCF services | SO-Aware will allow you to keep track of the different versions of your WCF services as well as the differences between them |
Keeping track of dependencies between services | SO-Aware will allow you to visually model and keep track of the dependencies between the different services in your WCF solution |
SO-Aware & Visual Studio
With SO-Aware, we try to make the developers part of the SOA management and governance processes. In order to enable this capability, SO-Aware includes various Visual Studio plugins that allow WCF developers to leverage SO-Aware as part of their development process.
If you are building WCF services and clients using Visual Studio, you can take advantage of SO-Aware in some of the following areas:
SO-Aware can help me to…. | How? |
Publish a WCF service to SO-Aware | Using SO-Aware Service Explorer, you can publish a WCF service to SO-Aware service repository directly from Visual Studio |
Import and reuse WCF configuration sections in my project | Using SO-Aware Service Explorer, you can import and reuse WCF configuration files into your WCF project. |
Generate a WCF Service Reference with 0 configuration | Using SO-Aware Service Reference plugin, you can generate a fully configured WCF proxy for services registered in SO-Aware |
SO-Aware & BizTalk Server
For years, BizTalk Server has been at the center of Microsoft’s middleware and integration strategy. SO-Aware naturally complements BizTalk Server by enabling the configuration, monitoring and testing of services created or consumed by BizTalk solutions.
If you are a BizTalk developer, you could use SO-Aware in some of the following areas:
SO-Aware can help me to…. | How? |
Catalog the services used by my BizTalk applications | Using SO-Aware, you could keep a catalog of the services used in your BizTalk solutions |
Enable true service discovery for the BizTalk ESB Toolkit | SO-Aware includes a native Resolver for the BizTalk ESB toolkit that can be used in BizTalk ESB itineraries to dynamically resolve the location and configuration of WCF services and adapters |
Centralized the configuration of BizTalk-WCF adapters | SO-Aware can be used as a repository to centralize the configuration of WCF LOB adapters such as SAP, Oracle Apps or PeopleSoft. |
Monitor my BizTalk-WCF service endpoints | You could use SO-Aware to monitor the activity of WCF endpoints hosted in BizTalk Server |
Load Testing my BizTalk-WCF endpoints | You can use the SO-Aware Test Workbench to model, execute and obtain real time results of load tests against BizTalk applications |
SO-Aware & Windows Server AppFabric
SO-Aware extends the capabilities of the Windows Server AppFabric by enabling the cataloging, configuration management and testing of WCF and Workflow Services hosted in the Windows Server AppFabric.
If you are building solutions using the Windows Server AppFabric, SO-Aware can help you to address some of the following challenges:
SO-Aware can help me to…. | How? |
Catalog WCF and Workflow Services | Using SO-Aware, you can keep a catalog of the WCF and Workflow Services used in your solution |
Centralized the configuration of WCF and Workflow Services | You can use SO-Aware to catalog the WCF bindings and behaviors used by your WCF and Workflow Services |
Dynamically resolve WCF endpoints configuration | SO-Aware includes a series of WF activities that can dynamically resolve the endpoint configuration of WCF services consumed by a WF application |
Testing my WCF and Workflow Services | Using SO-Aware, you can author and execute tests against your WCF and Workflow Services registered in the SO-Aware repository |
Load Testing my WCF and Workflow Services | You can use the SO-Aware Test Workbench to load test your WCF and Workflow Services and to visualize the results in real time |
More tracking information | SO-Aware extends the AppFabric tracking system with custom elements that allow you to track extra levels of information about the runtime behavior of your WCF and Workflow Services |
SO-Aware & Windows Azure AppFabric
When building applications using the Windows Azure AppFabric, you can take advantage of the same capabilities of SO-Aware available on on-premise applications using WCF and the Windows Server AppFabric. From those features, testing and configuration management result particularly appealing to developers planning on building applications that leverage the Windows Azure AppFabric.
If you are building solutions using the Windows Azure AppFabric, SO-Aware can help you to address some of the following challenges:
SO-Aware can help me to…. | How? |
Catalog WCF Services | Using SO-Aware, you can keep a catalog of the WCF Services used in your solution |
Centralized the configuration of WCF and Workflow Services | You can use SO-Aware to centralize the configuration of the Relay Bindings and Behaviors required by services using the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus as well as the federation bindings used by the Access Control Service |
Load Testing my WCF Services | Using the SO-Aware Test Workbench you can load test your WCF services virtualized through the Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus and evaluate the performance impact of the different relay configurations. |
SO-Aware & Team Foundation Server
Many organizations use Team Foundation Server (TFS) as part of their development process of SO applications. SO-Aware can integrate with TFS to enable some of the following capabilities:
SO-Aware can help me to…. | How? |
Register my WCF services as part of my build process | Using SO-Aware, you can dynamically register the WCF services included in your solution as part of the build process so that they become visible to other applications |
Test my services as part of my build process | You can use SO-Aware to automate the functional; test of your WCF services as part of your build process |
SO-Aware & SharePoint Server
SharePoint Server is becoming a central component of modern composite applications in the Microsoft world. SO-Aware complements various SharePoint Server technologies with capabilities such as service management, testing among others that can improve the development experience of SharePoint applications.
SO-Aware can improve the capabilities of your SharePoint applications in the following areas:
SO-Aware can help me to…. | How? |
Catalog your SharePoint Services | Using SO-Aware, we can keep an accurate catalog of the different services being hosted or used by your SharePoint applications |
Catalog the Services used by your BCS applications | Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is one of the most powerful features of SharePoint Server that enables the interaction with Line of Business (LOB) data from your SharePoint applications. You can use SO-Aware to keep a catalog of the different services used by your BCS applications so that they can be easily discovered and reused by other SharePoint applications |
Catalog your SharePoint OData Services | SharePoint Server 2010 exposes various OData Services that abstract different areas of a SharePoint solution. Using SO-Aware, you can catalog and test those services so that they become easily accessible to other applications |
Testing your SharePoint Services | Using SO-Aware and the SO-Aware Test Workbench you can model an execute functional tests against the services hosted or used by your SharePoint solutions |
Load testing your SharePoint Services | Using the SO-Aware Test Workbench, you can execute load tests against the different services hosted or used by your SharePoint application |
Monitor your SharePoint Services | SO-Aware can monitor and provide analytics about the runtime behavior of the services included in your SharePoint applications |
Conclusion
We see SO-Aware as a natural complement to the Microsoft technology stack. In its current version, SO-Aware provides native integration with several Microsoft’s middleware and integration technologies such as BizTalk Server, Windows Server AppFabric, Windows Azure AppFabric or SharePoint Server as well as with application development tools such as Visual Studio .NET or Team Foundation Server. As Microsoft executes on its vision around these technologies, we see a growing set of scenarios and opportunities for leveraging the capabilities of SO-Aware as part of middleware and integration solution.