Phoenix Connected Systems User Group

January Phoenix Connected Systems User Group Meeting - Jan 8th

Rick G. Garibay — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:05:54 GMT

The Phoenix Connected Systems User Group is gearing up for what promises to be an exciting year for Connected Systems technologies.Our first quarter is already booked, with talks covering the .NET Services Service Bus in January, BizTalk ESB Guidance 2.0 in February and a big event in March that you will not want to miss.

Speaking of the January meeting, please join Glenn Kees, Principal Consultant with Sogeti USA who will be presenting on the Microsoft .NET Services Service Bus on January 8th.

Glenn will present a scenario-based approach for using the .NET Service Bus to address challenges that occur when implementing Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solutions, particularly across disparate networks with various network traffic restrictions.

Going forward, we will be sharing relevant information via www.pcsug.org. To ensure that you do not miss any important updates throughout the new year, please take a moment and register for our mailing list: http://www.pcsug.org/Account/Register

More about PCSUG:

The goal of the Phoenix Connected Systems User Group is to educate, evangelize and inform the community about the direction in which the Microsoft Connected Systems Division (and software engineering) is going, and how developers and architects of various, yet intersecting disciplines can start to prepare for what is ahead while serving the community through knowledge sharing and evangelism of current shipping technologies.

We meet the 2nd Thursday of each month at the Microsoft District Office - 2929 N. Central Avenue, Suite 1400, Phoenix, AZ from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm.

Phoenix Community XBOX 360 Party

Rick G. Garibay — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 15:05:29 GMT

Harold Wong is hosting an XBOX party at the Phoenix Microsoft campus for community members and influencers. Come out and play XBOX games like Guitar Hero, Halo 3, Gears of War 3, hang out with your friends within the community and make new ones. The party is from 4 pm to 9 pm.

From Harold's invite:

"Calling all IT Pros and Developers in the Phoenix area! Come join us for a fun time at the Microsoft Office. There is no PPT slide or demo involved. This is a year-end "party" for all the different User Group members to get together and have fun. If you aren't already a member of one of the local User Groups, no problem, you are still welcome to come and have fun.

There will be 4 XBox 360 consoles networked together for maximum fun. If you have your own favorite controller that you want to use, please feel free to bring it along."

To register, please follow this link so that Harold knows how much pizza and sodas to buy: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=133878

See you there!

November PCSUG Meeting on WF 3.5 - Recap + Late Breaking Update on WF 4.0

Rick G. Garibay — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:09:34 GMT

If you attended the Phoenix Connected Systems User Group meeting last week you know what a great talk it was. For those who attended and would like a summary, and for those that were not able to make it, here's what you missed.

Recap

Rob Wisehart, Technical Team Lead at DriveTime Sales & Finance did a fantastic job introducing the group to WF 3.5. He provided an Overview and Essentials of WF and really did a great job of explaining why WF is important and why it matters. People are visual. We've learned thousands of languages since the beginning of time, but our Neanderthal ancestors had it right. We still communicate best with drawings and pictures. At least I do. Rob went on to talk about Sequential and State Machine Workflows and when each is appropriate. Rob really showed his experience with WF applications here, talking about the pros/cons of each worklfow type. Discussed as well was Hosting and Services. Just like WCF, WF needs hosting love too. In fact, any CLR process can host a WF service, and the models are quite similar.

My favorite part of the talk was on Custom Activities. Rob did an awesome job talking about why Custom Activities should be the preferred way to build WF applications. He really hit the nail on the head, talking about how, at DriveTime, they color code their Custom Activities, so that users (developers, and analysts) start to build that emotional connection with the software. For example, brown Custom Activities are always queue based activities while blue might be database related.

Of course, Rob closed out with a discussion on using WF as a WCF Service. While in 3.0 this required heroics, the story got better in 3.5, and today, if you are building a WCF service, using WF to orchestrate the logic should be compelling. On this topic, I believe that .NET 4.0 will really focus on WF from a marketing perspective, and WCF will be somewhat in the shadows of WF. This is OK, because .NET 3.0 and 3.5 was really all about WCF because it was a) a tremendous accomplishment that *will* change your life as a developer and b) fully baked. WF 4.0 will focus much more on the modeling aspects of building service-oriented applications, relegating WCF as a utility player. Of course, anyone that knows WCF understands that this could be further from the truth due to the incredible robustness and richness of the framework, but when a technology becomes commoditized, its a clear sign of success, both as a technology and from an adoption perspective. To say that WCF will commoditize cross-process communication between WF 4.0 applications is a very good thing indeed.

The Goods

Rob's deck can be downloaded from SkyDrive here:

Rob's code can be downloaded from SkyDrive here:

Swag

We closed the event with some great handouts, including WF+WCF 4.0 t-shirts courtesy of the Connected Systems Division, some laptop stickers and a group photo with folks that were lucky enough to get a t-shirt. Many thanks to Marjan Kalantar at Microsoft CSD for taking such good care of us.

Late Breaking Update on WF 4.0

I also took about 5 minutes to talk about some of the changes that are coming in WF 4.0. Most of this content is a combination of what I learned at PDC along with a draft of a whitepaper that Kenny Wolf shared with me. While I've been asked not to circulate the paper until it is fully baked, I provided some of the biggest highlights and key points with Kenny's permission, of course.

As I've discussed in earlier posts (http://rickgaribay.net/archive/2008/10/28/wf-4.0-big-changes-ahead.aspx, http://rickgaribay.net/archive/2008/10/30/more-on-wf-4.0.aspx), there are several new features and key changes coming in WF 4.0:

WF 4.0 ships with a completely new designer which very much resembles the look and feel that is being demo' d in Quadrant.
WF 4.0 provides full declaration of activities using XAML. While this is the same XAML that is used in WPF and WF 3.0/3.5, the file extension has been changed from .xoml to .xamlx.
There is a new activity model which makes all WF 4.0 artifacts activities. There is no longer the concept of distinguishing between Workflows and activities. In WF 4.0, all artifacts *are* are activities, and this includes Sequential Workflow Activities, State Machine Activities and a new Flowchart Activity. The key is that activities are the root of everything in WF 4.0 and activities compose other activities, be they custom activities or workflow activities.
Significant runtime performance, between 10% and 100%.
Better persistence and re-hydration performance largely due to the fact that the entire workflow need not be persisted as is the case in 3.0/3.5, but instead, because the XAML model is extended to every aspect of the workflow application, persistence can be managed at the activity level (see, there is a method building here).
Code Activities are dead. Don't write them anymore. Seriously, no Code Activities in WF 4.0.

These are just a few of the major improvements/changes coming our way. The next thing we talked about is what do to to prepare and what the migration story is.

WF 3.0/3.5 will run side-by-side with WF 4.0. WF 3.0/3.5 will run in the 2.0 CLR and WF 4.0 will run in the 4.0 CLR. What?! You didn't know there is a brand, spanking new CLR coming in NET FX 4.0? Better start coming to PCSUG meetings!
WF 3.0/3.5 can be composed within WF 4.0 activities using the Interop Activity. I joked here that this is like the P-Invoke of WF, and I don't mean that in a critical way, it's just necessary. If you look at how we pass variables around in WF 3.0/3.5 and the fact that in WF 4.0, variables are just neatly bound at the activity level with in/out semantics (and thus, different signatures) you need a bridge. The Interop Activity is that bridge.
There is no support for the Code Activity. Is there an echo in the room? Stop using them and start writing Custom Activities.
There will be a migration tool to port from 3.0/3.5 to 4.0, but like any tool, CSD will try their best but it won't be perfect.

Start preparing for WF 4.0 now by:

Choosing the fully declarative workflow template in 3.5
Do not use Activity.Initialize to initialize your activity, instead use Activity.Execute. The former goes away in 4.0.
Being diligent about scoping your variables within your 3.5 activities.
Think in terms of activities. Think in terms of your domain. Build activities.
Using WCF Send/Receive Activities in 3.5
Stop using Code Activities (there's that echo again)

As promised before, as soon as the guidance whitepaper becomes public, I will post it here.

Note: There will be no PCSUG meeting in December as we will be participating at the MSDN Unleashed Presents: The Best of PDC event on December 10th. Be sure to register for this event as seating is limited and when you arrive, be sure to fill out our PCSUG registration card so we can stay connected and inform you of what's coming in 2009.

November PCSUG Meeting on WF 3.5 Next Thursday 11/13

Rick G. Garibay — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:32:12 GMT

Join the Phoenix Connected Systems User Group at the Phoenix Microsoft office for an introduction to Windows Workflow 3.5 on November 13th.

Rob Wisehart, technical team lead for internal systems at DriveTime will provide a foundational introduction to WF, Microsoft’s premier framework for building workflow-enabled applications and services. This session will focus covering workflow types, basic activities, custom activities and demonstrating how to workflow enable a WCF service and compose it with other WCF services hosted in different runtimes.

In addition, I will be providing a whitepaper on what you need to know and how to prepare for changes coming your way in WF 4.0.

We will also have a bunch of cool swag from PDC 2008, courtesy of the Connected Systems Division. WF + WCF 4.0 and Oslo T-shirts, laptop stickers, and other cool stuff will be available on a first-come first-serve basis. In addition, I will have a few books on "M" Oslo's new modeling language which is only available in limited release.

As always, details regarding location and logistics can be found at www.azgroups.org or www.pcsug.org.

See you there!