Brian H. Prince

Many architects and developers are integrating services into their strategies and projects. There are two main delivery mechanisms with services (from a mainstream, standards perspective). You can use SOAP, or you can use REST. There have been wars for a long time around which is better, easier to use, and has less impact on the global environment. This post isn’t about that. My answer as to which one you should use is ‘It Depends.’ SOAP has all of the enterprisey-goo that we typically need at the core of our systems. Transactions, Strong Typing, Routing, Security, Extensibility, etc. These are all planned out with WS-* standards for platform interoperability. REST, on the other hand, is simple, lightweight, easy to use, and very straightforward. I think most organizations will end up with a measure of both in their environments. I think SOAP will be more prevalent at the core of your enterprise, with REST at the edges that touch other enterprises and the public at large. When ...

You have likely heard about Windows Azure by now. We made a very big announcement at the PDC today about it. Windows Azure is our Cloud OS. It will allow you to run .NET code in the sky, in a dynamic, scalable, and manageable way. We have also announced Live Services, .NET Services, and SQL Services. These services sort of stack on each other. Think of Azure as your Server OS. SQL provides data related services, etc. Azure will support web facing, interactive, stateless applications. These applications run in an instance called a ‘Web Role.’ You can also host code that just performs asynchronous work, called a ‘Worker Role.’ The Worker Role might host a WCF service fed by a queue for example. You will be able to develop and test locally using the Azure Fabric locally, and then only deploy to the cloud when you are ready. David Chappell wrote a great whitepaper on our new services platform, and explains some expected customer scenarios. It walks through our services platform very ...

The Renaissance was a period of rebirth in Europe during the 14th to 17th centuries. It was hundreds of years of revolution in the arts and in culture. The social patterns, thinking and technology that allowed this to happen took thousands of years to develop. It sparked a new passion in learning, new techniques and styles of painting, and widespread reform.  This lead to an amazing leap in science and technology and the definition of the scientific method, heralding the ‘Modern Age’. This ultimately led to a change in human society so grand, that we still talk about it today. Many of the world’s best achievements and treasures come form this period of time. I think the past few years, and the technologies coming out today, represent the leading edge of Renaissance 2.0. And since we are all geeks, we will of course shorten it to Ren2.0. Today, with cloud services, Azure, software plus services patterns, modern testing, SOAP/REST, Geneva, platforms like Mesh, and everything el...

Mike Wood , James Bender , and Chris Woodruff saw a gap in the community. They saw that there was a strong community and a great deal of support for all types of developers. They also noticed that there isn’t a lot out there to help architects and aspiring architects come together, learn, and become better at what they do. So they got together, scrabbled together some cash (Microsoft is proud to be a sponsor), and launched www.nPlus1.org . The team is organized into two groups. Senior Editors run the organization, and coordinate the original content that is submitted for publishing. Then there is a larger group of Editors. Editors focus on submitting links and summaries of content found elsewhere on the Internet (known as TidBits on the site). They are actively looking for more Editors, so ping them if you are interested. This two pronged approach brings both new content from local authors, and a simple way to find all of the great architecture related content scattered all over th...

My teammate Jennifer Marsman has planned a tour with Mark Mydland through Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Mark is the Principal Group Manager over Visual Studio Team System Test Edition. Mark’s team will be making some huge announcements around what the next version of VSTS:Test can do, and you don’t want to miss this. It’s really incredible. Mark will be presenting at most user groups as he tours, and here is his schedule. Don’t miss it. Jennifer specifically scheduled Mark’s tour after the PDC so he can show you all of the new features. Come ask him your testing questions. We will also be provided dinner at all of the user group meetings, so come on out, and see it all in action. Grand Rapids, MI - Tues 11/11 at 6pm Watermark Country Club, 5500 Cascade Rd, Grand Rapids, MI 49548 Ann Arbor, MI - Wed 11/12 at 6pm SRT Solutions, 206 S. Fifth Avenue, Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Cleveland, OH - Thurs 11/13 at 6:30pm Sogeti office, Beacon Place Office Buildi...

The SOA & Business Process Conference 2009 is put on by Microsoft, and is held on campus in Redmond. I have been to it many times as a partner and customer, and it is one of my favorite events. The event always gives you great access, directly, to the teams building our strategies and products around SOA and BPM. This is a great chance to learn a great deal, and provide feedback on our roadmap. The conference is also loaded with thought leaders, and leading companies in the SOA/BPM space. The event has grown so large over the years, that in order to keep it on campus, they had to break it into two parts. The first part is for partners in the SOA/BPM space, and runs January 26-27, 2009, and will cost $599. The second part will be for customers, and runs January 28-30, 2009, and will cost $599 if you register before December 1st, 2008. There is also a great reception held on the evening of January 27th for all of the incoming customer attendees. The theme for this year is “Re...

I have been working with some friends that are on our Enterprise team to put together an event. We decided to call it the Dog Food Developer Conference. About half of the speakers are local community leaders, and the other half are Microsofties. DF will be held on November 20th, 2008, and starts at 8:00am. We will have three tracks throughout the day, covering a wide range of topics. The schedule is listed below. The last part of the afternoon is left for open discussion with the speakers. We have reserved plenty of small rooms, so you can snag a speaker, and sneak off to have a private conversation. You can, of course, have your conversation out in the open if you want. The event is free, and there are only a few seats left, so register quickly. Lunch will be provided. Time: Track 0 Track 1 Track 2 8 to 9:00 AM Register 9 - 9:45 Key Note S oftware + S ervices , MS Roadmaps, PDC Announcements Speaker: Brian Prince , MS S oftware + S ervices , MS Roadmaps, PDC Announc...

I am just now recovering from a great tip up to AA. The event went very well, and the organizers did a great job. It is really cool to see leaders from five different user groups get together to put on such a smoothly run event. The speakers and content they lined up were just great. I ended up in the big amphitheatre room again, as the last session of the day, just like last year. But I am not complaining. I actually like that. It allows me to tie some of the things I have seen during the day together, and weave them into my talk. I spoke on ‘How to be an architect.’ This was the first instance of this talk, and I think, with that being said, it went pretty well. I definitely found ways to smooth the delivery, and increase the connectedness of some of the value flow. I will work to make these improvements before the next time I deliver it. I have posted the slides here , if you are interested. I do want to follow up on some of the questions that were asked. 0. Someone ask...

The PDC is next week, and it is going to be huge. The amount and scale of the announcements are, in my view, the biggest of any PDC in the past (can’t say for future PDCs). Two of the keynotes by Ray Ozzie will be streamed live. The other keynotes will be available online shortly after they are completed. Since the PDC is on the west coast, this puts the keynotes during lunchtime in the EST time zone. The keynotes will contain all of the big announcements, and the great demos. They will give you an idea for the flavor of what the sessions are going to deep dive into. So here is how to throw a PDC viewing party. 0. Reserve a conference room of some sort. You will need a projector, speakers, and a computer to stream from. The speakers are optional, if everyone in your part can read lips. 1. Invite everyone you know. Invite people you don’t know. Tweet about it. Try not to break any stalking laws though. 2. Either convince your boss to pay for pizza for everyone, or tell th...

Everyone is excited about PDC2008. Go register if you haven’t yet. See your local user group leader for a $200 off discount code! The biggest announcement so far is that each attendee will receive a 160 GB USB hard drive, with all the bits on it, include a pre-beta release of Windows 7! We will also be revealing our cloud platform,  as well as details on .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. To celebrate, Channel8 just published this video, of the marketing team putting together some promos for PDC. Watch to the end to see the twist. PDC 2008 is coming... and I can't wait!