[PDC'05] Last day at the conference

Friday, September 16, 2005

PDC'05

Best session yesterday was probably the web services interop session with Simon Guest and Kirill Gavrylyuk. To show reliable messages between .NET and Java, Simon hocked up a heart beat sensor (which sat on his finger) onto a .NET web service. Then he sent data from that sensor over to a Java client, through a pre release of Axis 2.0. Funny (for the audience anyway) was that Simon heart was pounding so rapidly, the scale on the client couldn't handle it. They had set it up to a maximum of 100 bpm, but he was going at around 130 (!) and the annoying beep-beep-beep that was going on all the time didn't make it easier for Simon to calm down. It was hillariously fun. Make sure to watch that webcast if it comes available sometime in the future.

They showed how to send and receive WS-Security messages as well as Reliable Messages and how to send binary data with MTOM. MTOM stands for Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism.

Later in the evening I sat down and had a discussion with Kirill about the WS design we have in the project I'm working with back home. We seem to be on track, but there are a few things I could change on the architecture to be a bit better prepared and in line with the future. Should perhaps start looking at sending SAML tokens instead of just a simple proprietary ticket.

I spent the whole morning (2 sessions in a row) at the Architecture Symposium here, where they discussed a fictionarly SOA case from end to end. It was quite interesting, but the reality isn't always as Microsoft describes it. Setting up Aggregation Services and Entity Services in front of one or more legacy system is the recommended design if you have a heterogenous environment. Maybe stick in BizTalk or similar workflow middlewhere with adapters if you think you need it to talk to bigger systems like SAP, PeopleSoft and such.

After this last session I'm going to now, it's off to the LAX airport for the lovely trip home...

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