Presented by: Mohamed R.

Samy Technical Architect, Geek

What is Architecture anyway? The software architecture of a program or computing system is the structure or structures of the system, which comprise software components, the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them. The term also refers to documentation of a system's software architecture. Reference: Wikipedia What is an architectural style?

What is an architectures goal? So what is SOA?

A style of architecture that emphasizes standards based integration.

Is it the best way? Is success guaranteed?

Standards based integration

Friction free interaction/Integration Communication between system components

Should loose coupling be everywhere?

Implicit behaviour vs. Explicit behaviour

Services as an interface to business processes. (That is how we should think about a service when we design it)

Boundaries are explicit

Services are autonomous

Services share contract and policy not class Service compatibility is determined by policy

2 Tier (VB4-5-6) vs 3-Tier Com+ (Client in Egypt, Service in Mexico) In the architecture you have to know where the boundaries are. Practical Example:
Egypt/ Libyan Border vs. Cairo/ Alex Their system vs Our system (A boundary)

Lessons learned:
Authentication, Authorization Communication overhead

Able to choose Self Governing Self sufficient Fax /Telephone between ministries When the computer is down, I can still get my license (Send it later by the mail)

XML not objects, specially not platform specific objects e.g. datasets We need to agree on 2 things:
The protocol The policy

Just what is required for the service to perform its function (Just enough validation)

IT department Policy like language of the system (Arabic Russian English) Policy like http/XML/SSL ports The requirements for the way the conversation is to be held E.g. WS- standards (Message encryption, which parts are encrypted, what algorithm we will use to encrypt)

To understand the patterns we must take a look at the most common anti-patterns

Customer. ADD/Update/ Delete Why not?

Is updating the address just an update or is it a business process?

CustomersList.MoveNext
Who holds the list? Who controls the memory?

1.CustomerObject.Setflagfordelete 2.CustomerObject. Delete

Objects should not be left in an inconsistent state between message exchanges. However, this is dangerous but not wrong.

The perfect interface for all services: XmlDocument PerformOperation(XmlDocument input) Why not? Implicit behavior versus explicit behavior. You need to know what you send specifically and be generic about what you receive (Just enough validation.)

To avoid this anti pattern ask 3 questions: 1.What does the service do? 2. What data does it need to do it? 3. What data does the service return?

A flag called zeft, mido , soso A house of cards

What if the service schema changes? What happens to the connected systems?

Versioning contracts in .NET1.1 vs .NET2.0 [OptionalField VersionAdded = 2] Nickname

Why is that important?

The patterns

Patterns
Document Processor Idempotent Message Reservation

An architectural approach to creating systems built from autonomous services

Integration as a fore-thought rather than an afterthought

A service is a program you interact with via message exchanges

Services are built to last Availability and stability are critical

A system is a set of deployed services cooperating in a given task

Systems are built to change Adapt to new services after deployment

How do you create a simple to use, well defined an interface?

Changing your drivers license, Giza Authority for Traffic

1. Start with a process

2. Compose a workflow 3. Start Defining your message contracts, before your objects and entities(try to be atomic- avoid chatty interface) 4.Define operations

5. Group your operations into services

Tips: 1. Do not use platform specific types e.g. datasets. 2. Decouple Internal vs. External objects 3. Use TDD so you know you are thinking about the service consumer, now you know how it feels.

Context

You are building a web service

Problem

How do you create a simple to use, well defined an interface?

Forces

Your interface should Encourage document centric thinking Define a clear semantic in the contract Promote loose coupling through encapsulation of the implementation Be easy to consume from any platform (WS-I base profile) Represent a business process as a complete unit of work

public FindCustomerByCountryResponse FindCustomersByCountry( FindCustomerByCountryRequest request) { // Do something.... }

-Encourage document centric thinking by defining a schema (XSD) for request and response messages in your project -Generate objects from your schema to simplify development

-Remember this is a boundary so dont leak internals

Benefits

Consumers think about sending and receiving business documents which are naturally more granular The boundary of the system involves conversion from internal structures to external documents The implementation details of the system are encapsulated The service is more consumable from other platforms and can evolve more easily

Liabilities

Performance will suffer with transfers of data from internal to external structures

Should I use the same schema for multiple services or should each service have its own schema? Opinion: Give each service its own schema
Sharing schema makes it difficult to evolve each service independently and introduces unnecessary churn for service consumers

How do I handle duplicate messages received at my service?

Context

You are developing a web service for your SOA You heard that messages should be idempotent

Problem

How do you insure that messages are idempotent?

Forces

You cannot expect anything more from the sender than what the contract defines for your service You are working with a transactional database system with frequent updates

Sender tags message with a request ID Your contract can specify that this is required Your contract cannot insist that the ID is unique across time The ID tags a unit of work which will be done only once
Receiver must check to see if the unit of work has already been done before doing it Then what?

Option1: return a cached response

Option2: Process the message again. Option3: Throw an exception

You will have to cache responses for some period of time how long?
What if the current value is different than the cached value? What if the response was an error? What if the sender sends duplicate IDs for different units of work?

Great for reads, what about writes?

Should we withdraw $1000 from a checking account twice?

Did the sender get the original response?

How does he get the original response if you are sending him and exception?

UOW ID can be a part of the request schema

Implies duplicate handling is part of the business process

UOW ID can be a custom SOAP header

Implies duplicate handling is part of the message processing infrastructure Create a schema for the SOAP header Having a URI for immediate sender can be helpful to detect reentrancy

Data changes should be traceable to a UOW ID Your cached responses may need to reflect what the response was at the time when the request was received

Benefits

Your service autonomy is increased by not having to rely on consumer to do the right thing You wont fool yourself into thinking that reliable messaging will solve this problem

Liabilities

Your service will consume potentially large amounts of durable storage caching responses Your service will take a performance hit for cache management

How do you maintain data consistency across a long running process?

Context

You are building a service oriented application You have a complex business process that you want to expose to your customers with a web service

Problem

Forces

How do you maintain data consistency across a long running process? You cannot share a distributed transaction The business process requires several messages to complete The message exchange process could take anywhere from seconds to hours

Reserve part: 49389 Qty: 200 Reservation ID: 14432 Expires: 2004-09-15 02:43:53Z Confirm reservation: 14432 PO #49839 Reservation: 14432 Receipt: 29389 PO #49839

Know the concepts before you write the code

SOA is not web services SOA is about standards based integration and friction free interaction between systems SOA is not a silver bullet

Web services WCF Biztalk ESB

www.arcast.tv (Webcasts)
www.geekswithblogs.net/Mohamed (Cool tech blog) www.msdn.com/Architecture www.thevstsguy.com (under construction) www.msdn.microsoft.com/practices (P&P)

Email: m_raafat_samy@hotmail.com Facebook @msamy