Our new web site is now open for business. We've re-designed this site using the latest development tools:
- Visual Studio 2005
- SQL Server 2005
- .NET Framworks 2.0
- ASP.NET 2.0
We'll be using this site in the coming weeks to demonstrate the new technologies available using these tools. We'll be discussing the bugs found and potential workarounds. We'll share our experience and we hope you will share your comments and solutions with our visitors as well. We look forward to hearing from you as we all get ready for the changes ahead.
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Anyone who has worked in IT for any length of time learns to develop a healthy skepticism for buzzwords. The lexicon changes faster than my remote at prime-time. Every once in a while though the new words actually reflect and describe a paradigm shift. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is just such a case.
For those of you who have been sleeping through the latest software revolution SOA represents the use of a set of standards to implement information exchange between systems over the internet. Collectively these standards are called Web Services. SOA can be broadly defined as a method for designing applications that focuses on the use of web services to solve traditional data exchange problems. In much the same way Object Oriented Programming (OOP) revolutionized software development in the last decade SOA is poised to become the de-facto design pattern for application development in the next.
Object Oriented Programming is now so totally ubiquitous and embedded in our development tools that everyone presumes that their applications implement OOP technologies. Like OOP Service Oriented Architecture is rapidly permeating the consciousness of the programming universe.
Perhaps a better analogy would be the paradigm shift from mainframes to distributed client server computing. SOA provides a new framework for collaboration. By separating the interface from the service SOA applications allow collaboration between disparate systems over the internet. In essence the internet is the machine. But SOA is more than simply the use of web services for developing internet applications. It is a way of thinking about a problem. Service Oriented Architecture looks at each function or service as a process to be invoked independently of every other function or service in the application. Designing interactions that invoke interfaces between disparate systems over the internet using platform-independent standards provides a framework for application development that solves a whole host of problems. The salient properties of an SOA solution include:
- An exposed contract between the client and the service
- A service whose location can be determined and invoked dynamically
- A service that is self contained (i.e. maintains its own state)
Service Oriented Architecture reduces complexity and increases functionality by encapsulating the elements of the exchange and clearly defining the requirements. The modularization inherent in SOA encourages reuse reducing development time and increasing reliability. Using well established standards and protocols such as WSDL, SOAP, HTTP, and XML as its foundation Web Services and SOA would appear to be the next great leap forward in software evolution.
Dynamic Sitemaps
One of the great new controls in ASP.NET 2.0 is the Sitemap control. Using the Sitemap control and the FreeTextBox HTML editor control we have implemented a method for updating this site from within the application itself. Any page on this site can be edited and new content can be added by simply adding a new sub-menu item and the content to be displayed when the item is selected. To view the article on Dynamic Sitemaps Select Community Server. This will take you to our Community Server site where you will see many other features such as Blogs, Rss News Readers, Photo Albums and more. Simply select the Forums option from the main menu and then visit the ASP.NET 2.0 forum. You will find the Dynamic Sitemaps article there. This probably wasn't the best location for an article but we're just learning CS. The article may move to a better location but when it does we'll be able to easily update it here to let you know because using the Dynamic Sitemap and FreeTextBox control makes it easy.
You can also see a demonstration of Dynamic Sitemaps in action by logging in. If you are not a registered user but would like to see the demo the following guest user credentials are available:
User Name: DemoUser
Password: Guest@359
Following your login the Dynamic Sitemaps menu option will be displayed as the last item in the menu control on the left. Selecting this will display the same interface that the site admin uses except the sitemap treeview control is limited to the Dynamic Sitemap branch. Instructions for using the demo are presented on the demo page.
Please be aware that this is a work in progress and there are still some bugs to be worked out. Specifically we are currently experiencing a problem where the SqlCacheDependency is not always reliable and menu items are not always updated immediately. We are still investigating this and if anyone can shed some light on this we would appreciate your suggestions.
We'll have lots of other topics and features of the new tools to present here in the future. We hope you like our new format and we hope you'll let us know what topics you think are important so we can get the discussion going here at SummerStreet.com.
Thanks for visiting!
-ron cicotte
Ron cicotte