Indigo - The new Communication Technology

After doing some work on Avalon I shifted my focus to Indigo. I started reading about it. And the most fascinating thing is that I came across the unification of the existing .Net Framework communication Technologies. The power of all in one. It’s a great idea to start with. Then the thinking that the current investment of the people remains safe with interoperability. Finally the best thing is that the whole idea is around SOA.

BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 2 Launch

Microsoft has launched BizTalk Server 2006 Beta 2. For those who want to get their hands onto it are adviced to logon to Microsoft Beta Home. Once you are registered you can not only download beta 2 but also ODBA (Orechestration Designer for Business Analyst) beta 2 as well as BizTalk Adapters for Enterprise Applications. its a must download.

:)))

Depending upon the Dependency properties

Going through Avalon a new area of Avalon opened before me, "The Dependency Property System".Dependency properties are properties that are registered with the "Avalon" dependency property system. There are two typoes of Dependency Properties
1. By backing your common language runtime property with a dependency property. This Includes support for styling, databinding, animation, default values, value expressions, property invalidations, or inheritance.
2. Attached properties are properties that can be set By the child or contained element for/of its parent or Container Object.

This Dependency property system is the core component for the Avalon. I personally really adored this approch of microsoft.

Encounter with the Avalon Kind

I was working on the Microsoft Presentation layer (Avalon) and had a strange feeling that I’m working in good old days of HTML but just an advance version of the HTML. Jokes aside Microsoft has given Framework and Tool developers their long awaited desire of generating and persisting UI in XML format. The thing that impressed me most is the flexibility in creating Controls e.g. I can have a button and in a button I can have a Panel in that panel I can have images, text ect. The simplicity of XAML combined with the power of Avalon has made this Presentation Layer Framework a very elegant piece of Software Engineering. But I do have some fears about it as how it will perform in a Real Application with the complexity of User Requirement is involved. I hope and feel that Avalon will come good and Microsoft have finally nailed it right this time around.

Framework Description

Finally I finished scripting the Description of the Framework :). There were many things to talk about but the dilemma was not what to mention but rather how much of each element to state, I hope that I got it right. Following is the Post-Development draft for the Framework

"Framework provides a mechanism that guides programmers through a proper order of steps via a common interface to implement business vocabularies in a systematic format and technical structure. Framework, consisting of specialized APIs, services, and tools, is built around the concept of providing technological support for reducing knowledge as well as time programmers’ needs to built extensible applications. Framework is prevalent in the area of .Net based desktop designs.
At the heart of the Framework is an Application Container and a Framework Class Library (FCL).The Application Container constitutes an environment for servicing and running WinForms based application that inhabits FCL. FCL is a managed code library of classes and interfaces that define a contract of cooperation between application and the container itself. Framework is tailored around the concept of Thin Client. Framework Security Administration Panel implements IoC (Inversion of Control) to provide integration with Enterprise Business Application.

Framework provides,
1) Secure Client-Server Communication (based on Symmetric key Encryption as part of Security sub-package of Microsoft Enterprise Library Block).
2) Dynamic Download of Business Components.
3) XML based data-binding model – Performs auto-binding of WinForms to domain objects and vice versa.
4) Dynamic Security - dynamic menu generation and tasks (Action Buttons), as per the assigned user permissions/rights.
5) Theme Builder and Appling Theme – Theme builder generate user desired XML based Theme which automatically applies to application to give it a consistent look & feel.

Framework is built exercising .NET Remoting, XML and .NET Microsoft Enterprise Library Block.
Along with Framework development, C# code generation tool was also developed which Generates PONO reflected against existing database schema of different styles."