Oslo, SOA, BizTalk Express & crossing the chasm.
So what exactly are MS up to with the Oslo initiative? We certainly know a fair bit about the Internet Service Bus (ISB) but that isn’t the whole story. WCF has been with us now for some time and is certainly being adopted with a fair amount of vigour, however, lets be fair, the amount of ’stuff we need to know’ that has crept into developing services (WS* etc) is becoming increasingly burdensome for software teams to maintain, heck Juval is saying that it’s (WCF) as big as .NET itself (I should learn 2 .NET’s?). Where should I turn? BizTalk? Yikes! In all seriousness I am currently investing more time to master BizTalk, but let me say it’s a narrowly focused and targeted strategy, where I plan to take advantage of the products sweet spots where the right circumstances are present. It is simply not realistic to choose WCF or BizTalk as an exclusive method of messaging. Scaling BizTalk is an expensive option and if I’m looking to use messaging (not the WCF or ASMX RPC styled request / response) then I need some options.
Variety is the spice of life.
NServiceBus is a great option (and it’s free), other vendors provide more heavy weight (smart network ESB products) and Microsoft currently offer BizTalk & Service Broker when it comes to messaging frameworks / products. Lets face it the Microsoft options are expensive if you want out of the box Pub / Sub across the organisation or Enterprise. I could roll my own bussing architecture but that’s expensive and risky, I recently called for BizTalk Express so I could distribute a messaging solution without the expense but something tells me that I might not see that product in the near future. What I want is a simple bus framework that isn’t overly weighed down in complexity (NServiceBus fits the bill again) and I get the feeling that Oslo will provide me with a set of tools that are not going to be very different from a technological aspect, rather will deliver a set of guidance with some new frameworks & integration points that utilise current technology - the ISB working hand in hand WCF everywhere and BizTalk for arguments sake.
Good things come to those that wait?
Certainly I will continue to use WCF and WF where it makes sense and I will use NServiceBus where warranted but in the meantime I will continue to wonder about what Oslo will deliver. How far will it reach into the tooling and the API? All this is yet to be seen but we live in hope and anticipation. Certainly BizTalk is now beginning to cross the chasm but an Express version would have it make leaps farther than Carl Lewis on Ben Johnson’s dietary fibres.
ESB Guidance with a broker - how does that work?
The current Microsoft foray into the space of the Enterprise Service Bus currently depends squarely on BizTalk Server and the ESB Guidance Tools that have been kicking around for some time now. So how does that help all the humble developers who work for Tier 2 companies but have a genuine need for a Bus framework to support their SOA initiative. Answer is NOT MUCH I’m afraid. Frequently, BizTalk will represent too high a barrier to entry for those business’.
Apart from the business reasons that the ESB Guidance Package probably wont get a look it, there is always the lingering question of why use a “Broker” as a Bus? Sounds odd don’t you think, they are after all different architectural patterns.
Don’t get me wrong here, I actually think BizTalk is a brilliant product and contains some incredible features, and when consulting I would love to have the flexibility to use it more often, but wearing my architect / developer hat, it doesn’t feel kosher to use it for my Service Bus (Enterprise or otherwise). My Bus needs to be where my messaging app’s are located, publishers, subscribers etc and I cant do (afford) that with BizTalk.
Recently I called for an ‘Express’ type product offering of BizTalk and I can conceive of an Architecture where ‘BizTalk Express’ is deployed throughout my organisation. I might utilise BizTalk to facilitate ‘store and forward‘ of messages and as a host for service endpoints, but alas until I have such a product this is a pipe dream (pardon the BTS pun).
My team and I are currently working on implementing something with SQL Express and SSB and we will also use NServiceBus (a great framework from Udi) on projects where appropriate. It would be great to have the flexibility to employ a solution with BizTalk Express if it existed.
I am sure that somewhere the ESB Guidance is being used, but I doubt it’s in the mid-smaller more agile businesses. Let’s tell Redmond that the smaller guys need this product!
Wait, Oslo I hear you cry? That’s a story for another day.
Oh yeah BizTalk Express is what we want!
Recently I posted about the wish (need) for a free(ish) version of BizTalk and it’s integration into VS.Net. My friend colleague Mark posted his own approval of such a sentiment and coined the name of such a product as BizTalk Express (ala SQL Express), which I think is exactly what’s in order. Bring it on Redmond. I would love to post an image or logo for this proposed product and get people to put it up on their blogs as a sign of their wish for it. Thoughts?
