So, though I had to miss it, reports from Redmond are hitting the wire about the SOA and Business Process Conference.
First, SOA technology roadmaps and press releases for project code-named "Oslo" were announced. The Oslo technology/product roadmap, posted by Christian Weyer, outlines Microsoft's strategy for its next generation of messaging and workflow technologies through (and initially releasing in) 2009.
The story within the story is maturing support, from within the Microsoft server and tools stack, for end-to-end SOA application life-cycle and run-time governance. Further, the "model-driven and service-enabled principles" referred to in the press release re-ups on the Microsoft SOA technology framework, server and tools commitment and marks maturing messages on composite applications and the "software-plus-services" play.
Other conference news comes out of Microsoft Services and the patterns & practices groups. The Managed Services Engine (MSE) and the Web Service Software Factory v.Next (modeling edition) were announced and are now available on Codeplex.
MSE looks to start to address the lack of Microsoft SOA repository/registry, virtualization and run-time governance tools - though, admittedly, I need to crack it open and check it out: updates to come. My hope here is the project matures and gets widespread community support, as in the case of EntLib, and receives product group and further P&P engagement. Microsoft product PMs and VPs take note from the field: they've got some great feedback.
It'd seem that Oslo is still in flux so let's put on our lobbying hats and provide feedback. Is there such a thing as a lobbying hat? If so - It'd probably be blue and have an LA on the front. ;-)
The November 3rd Service Factory drop is the final (modeling edition) release for Visual Studio 2005: this release "helps developers build WCF and ASMX Web Services in C# using Visual Studio 2005." I can't say enough about the service factory - the December 2006 release was the first and best community software factory implementation out there.
Good stuff! I'll be digging in over the next week...
