One of the things that’s different about being in MSIT is that it’s cut my travel dramatically. Basically, the only travel I’ve done since taking this job was Thomas Erl’s SOA Workshop last September. So it came as a bit of a surprise when I got tapped to present at TechEd (at fairly close to the last minute).

The last year I ran the architecture track, all track owners were asked to include either a globalization or MSIT session in our track. Since then, MSIT has expanded it’s role at TechEd dramatically, with 14 breakouts, 20 chalk talks and our own Technical Learning Center.

I’m doing a two chalk talks on my MSIT project, Rome. I mentioned the project back when I switched jobs, but we’ve never talked about the project by name before. We haven’t accomplished quite as much as I’d hoped since then, but we’ve progressed to the point that we can talk publicly about what we’re doing. Now that we’ve begun to open the kimono a bit, you should see more on Rome, Not only from me but also my teammates who blog: Dale, Rick and Dottie.

So if you’re going to TechEd, make sure you stop by the MSIT Technical Learning Center and say hi. Unlike my last two trips to TechEd, I have very limited responsibilities this time – basically just show up on time and talk about what I do all day, twice – so that leaves plenty of time to attend sessions, chat up attendees and ride roller coasters. Hope to see you there.

ROME: Service Oriented Infrastructure for the Enterprise
Like most enterprises, Microsoft IT is adopting a service oriented approach for the development of their internal systems. However, in order to avoid projects building similar service infrastructures on a per application basis, MSIT realizes the need for a common service oriented infrastructure to build these systems upon. Inside MSIT, the Rome project is tasked with designing, building and maintaining the infrastructure for these services. Come chat with Harry Pierson, lead architect of the Rome project, and discuss the challenges of building a large-scale service infrastructure inside a large enterprise like Microsoft.

• MST02-TLC Monday (June 4th) 1:15-2:30pm
• MST14-TLC Thursday (June 7th) 1-2:15pm

• Dare Obasanjo sez Cool URIs Don’t Change. He’s got other versioning advice, but that’s the main takeaway. Good advice that dovetails nicely with “It’s the URI, Stupid“.
• I usually agree with Jack van Hoof’s stuff, but I don’t agree with his thoughts on loosely coupled transaction processing. It’s much better than suggesting the use of 2PC system like WS-AT, but when he writes that “by design every action has a compensating action to undo the original action” I am reminded of Pat’s old post Why I hate the phrase “Long Running Transactions”. Personally, I’m a fan of using the Tentative Operation or Reservation pattern, described by John Evdemon. Note the lack of a transaction coordinator in that pattern.
• Speaking of service anti-patterns, I wonder how we rationalize the following two statements, both from Microsoft, in documents published by my old team:
  • “CRUD operations are the wrong level of factoring for a Web service. CRUD operations may be implemented within or across services, but should not be exposed to consumers in such a fashion. This is an example of a service that allowed internal (private) capabilities to bleed into the service’s public interface.” John Evdemon, Principles of Service Design: Service Patterns and Anti-Patterns, Readings in Service Orientation
  • “It is very common for Entity Services to support a create, read, update and delete (CRUD) interface at the entity level, and add additional domain-speciic operations needed to address the problem-domain and support the application’s features and use cases.” Shy Cohen, Ontology and Taxonomy of Services in a Service-Oriented Architecture, Journal 11
• Ian Thomas wonders Does ERP suck? In a word: Yes! 😄 Seriously, I’m a strong believer in what Ian alternatively calls “unbundling” and “disaggregation” of monolithic enterprise systems – ERP is the most glaring example of such systems.
• Jamie Cansdale is figuring out how to host Silverlight’s CLR outside of the browser. He’s already got a console runner up and running. He’s working of adding “Test With Silverlight” option to TestDriven.NET. You go Jamie.

Last night, I got to see the final dress rehearsal of The Who’s TOMMY at the Village Theater in Issaquah. My mother-in-law got a couple of free passes because she’s working with the director on a separate project. There was no way to get a babysitter on such short notice, so that meant either Jules or I got to go. She’s not as big a Who fan as I am plus the theater is five minutes from my office, so I got to go.

Most people who know the show have either heard the album, seen the movie or both. Pete Townsend adapted it for Broadway in the early 90′s and I got to see it as it came through Washington DC on it’s way to New York. Suffice to say that the movie is very different from the stage show. It’s so different that the Village Theater specifically “does not recommend the film for previewing to gain an understanding of the stage version.”

If I had to pick, I like movie version more than the stage version. The stage arrangement of the music is orchestral, which I feels waters down the power of the music. This is most obvious on Eyesight to the Blind which was performed in the movie by Eric Clapton. The orchestral arrangement is barely recognizable as the same song in my opinion. The stage version also adds a new song – I Believe My Own Eyes – which I don’t very much.

However, if you look at it on it’s own, The Who’s TOMMY is a good show. It’s over the top, but for this show that works. Tommy’s journey from “deaf, dumb and blind kid” to “new Messiah” is even more appropriate today than it was in 1993 when the Broadway version premiered. At the time, Townsend got a lot of flak for the changes the show, but as he said “what’s actually changed is the times”.

While the show itself is over the top, this production is even more so. To quote from the flyer (which I can’t find online) everything is in nearly constant motion. Actors, set pieces and a huge video screen that dominates the stage. Again, given the show, it works. The cast was good – Michael Lee (pictured above) as Tommy was a particular stand out. There were a few rough spots in the large chorus numbers, but that’s to be expected in a dress rehearsal, right?

Bottom line, it’s a good show so if you live within driving distance of Issaquah, you should check it out. If you’re already Who fan, just be aware that it’s not supposed to be just like the movie…

• 3D Printing is going to be huge. According to the NYT, we’ll be looking at around $1,000 for one within four years. For the impatient, check out Fab@Home and build one right now.
• It’s been a while since I experimented with the P2P stack in Windows, but it looks like it’s getting the managed treatment in VS “Orcas”.
• The managed Ruby hits keep on coming. Last week was DLR and IronRuby. This week it’s a new drop of Ruby.NET which includes VS integration.
• Looks like Sun is trying to get back into the Ajax/Flash/Silverlight fray with JavaFX Script. I wrote over a year ago that “In platform portability, Flash has succeeded where Java failed.” I can’t help but believe JavaFX is too little too late. Also, it’s yet another Java technology name that sounds like it’s been blatantly copied from MSFT. JDBC, JSP, JDO … What’s next? JINQ? (via TechMeme)
• Steve Maine has a great series of posts on the new Web Programming Model that’s coming in .NET 3.5 and is currently being previewed as part of the BizTalk Services SDK. But it was his Balancing reach and rich post that I found most illuminating. The first version of WCF feels hopelessly bound to the WS-* view of the world, which makes it difficult to incorporate alternative messaging models into the same programming model. I’ve run into this trying to use SSB with WCF. In the next version, that WCF / WS-* marriage looks like it’s getting a little more open. In my current role, I’m not so interested in the web programming model, but I am very interested in how they are integrating these alternative models.

Light on the geek factor this morning:

• My daughter Rileyanne turned two Saturday so we had a little pool party. One of the major selling points when we bought the house was the double sized hot tub in the back deck. So even though it was only in the mid 60s, we could still get in and swim.
• Saw Spiderman 3 yesterday. I liked the first two very much, but this one is iffy at best. The problem with these blockbuster movie series is the perceived need to be “bigger” than the previous installments. So we get more effects, more action, more villains. But that usually means less drama and less story. Spiderman 3 is no exception. Here’s hoping that Christopher Nolan’s Batman series doesn’t suffer the same fate.
• Lost announces an end date. There will be three more shortened seasons for a grand total of 48 episodes (plus the three remaining this season). While I love Lost, I’m glad they’re going this route.
• Politics 2.0 Watch: according to their blog, QubeTV.tv is “the conservatives’ answer to YouTube”. Two thoughts on this: First, Having a site of conservative videos for conservatives seems like preaching to the choir. Second, to quote Andrew Sullivan: “It’s not a good sign when a movement cannot engage the mainstream.”
• John Shewchuk as more details of the BizTalk.net connectivity service. Hybrid mode and Direct connect are nice optimizations, but don’t change the messaging semantics at all. But pub/sub eventing does, so I’m primarily interested in that capability.