Abolfazl Hadi

 

The Need to Focus on Manageability in Enterprise Solutions

Have you ever deployed your application in multi-tier environment by developing and deploying services? Developing service-based and service-oriented applications are common nowadays.These approaches improve the application scalability and make maintenance more easier than the past.So many architects suggest companies to choose 3-tier or 4-tier deployment and sometimes encourage them to move toward Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).They emphasize on some quality attributes and sometimes forget to consider some of the important one : Manageability.

“Manageability defines how easy it is for system administrators to manage the
application” (Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, Second Edition)

 

Considering Manageability in 3-Tier Solutions

Assume that we are developing an application with 3-tier architecture style in hand.It is an enterprise application with a lot of services that are deployed on the application server.What are the main features we need to support manageability aspects of our solution? The following issues are common in this situation:

• How do we provide robust hosting environment for the application?
• How many of services are getting activated? What is their status?
• Are you getting errors?
• How do we set service settings in a centralized location?

Introduction To AppFabric

Windows Server AppFabric is an infrastructure to extend Windows Server functionality in hosting, management and caching of services and web applications. Before AppFabric you have to develop some infrastructure to manage services by using .Net, Windows Process Activation Services (WAS) and Internet Information Services (IIS). The AppFabric hosting capabilities add more manageability features to mentioned products.

 

AppFabric Features

• Service Hosting
• Service Management
• Service Monitoring
• Service Configuration Management
• Distributed Caching
• Workflow Persistence Management

If you look at these features, you find out that most of them are about management of components.After Biztalk Server ESB guidance, it is second module from Microsoft that helps in providing enterprise solutions in Service Oriented Architecture approach.

 

Installation Requirements

Supported Operating Systems:Windows 7;Windows Server 2008;Windows Server 2008 R2;Windows Vista. Internet Information Services (IIS) 7

Download Location

Download Windows Server AppFabric

 

Additional Resources

You can find out some useful information at AppFabric section of MSDN :

• MSDN Documentation

  Windows Server AppFabric

• Book

  Pro Windows Server AppFabric (Beginning) Author: Stephen Kaufman ISBN: 9781430228172

Quote of the Day:
None of you really has faith unless he desires for his neighbor what he desires for himself.
--Prophet Muhammad

According to research firm Gartner, attacks trend is toward  applications instead of infrastructures, so for me as an application architect, security is more important than the past.When I was preparing “Application Security” course, I asked my self “which subjects do we study for improving our knowledge about application security?”. I think considering security affects all main activities of software development lifecycle like as analysis, design, architecture, build, test and deployment.The followings are top ten books about security that help in entering security in application development lifecycle, introducing security design guidelines, discussing cryptography best practice, explaining security engineering and a lot of significant materials that are waiting for you to read them!

Writing Secure Code: Practical Strategies and Proven Techniques for Building Secure Applications in a Networked World Author: Michael Howard ISBN: 9780735617223

 

.NET Development Security Solutions Author: John Paul Mueller ISBN: 9780782142662

 

The Security Development Lifecycle: SDL: A Process for Developing Demonstrably More Secure Software Author: Michael Howard ISBN: 9780735622142

 

Security Engineering Explained Author: Microsoft

 

24 Deadly Sins of Software Security: Programming Flaws and How to Fix Them Author: Michael Howard ISBN: 9780071626750

 

WCF Security Guide,Scenarios and Implementation Guidance for WCF Author: Microsoft

 

Foundations of Security: What Every Programmer Needs to Know (Expert's Voice) Author: Neil Daswani ISBN: 9781590597842

 

SOA Security Author: Ramarao Kanneganti ISBN: 9781932394689

 

A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control (Patterns & Practices) Author: Dominick Baier ISBN: 9780735640597

 

Ajax Security Author: Billy Hoffman ISBN: 9780321491930

 

Quote of the Day:
No mind is thoroughly well-organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

New section was added to the site, Presentation, and the first presentation title is: “Using Dependency Graph in Visual Studio 2010”.Here is the presentation specifications and download link :

Summary:

Managing relationships between components is one of the main activities of a software architect.Coupling between components affects reusability, changeability, and  maintainability of the whole solution.Dependency graph in Visual Studio 2010 is a tool to visualize components' relationships and also provides facilities for analyzing these relationships.

Title :

Using Dependency Graph in Visual Studio 2010

Keywords:

Circular Reference, Hub, DGML, Dependency Graph

Slides:

14 slides

Size:

476 KB

Format:

Original Format:          Microsoft Power Point 2007

Compression Format:  Rar

Download link:

Using Dependency Graph in Visual Studio 2010

 

Quote of the Day:
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
--Albert Einstein