Abu's blog : Architecture

"M" is "Oslo" Modeling Language Language > Tools - Query Analyzer or SQL Server Management Sudio for SQL and “Intellipad” for "M"

abu — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:12:00 GMT

The evolution of programming languages have been categorized as 1GL, 2GL, 3GL, 4GL....E.g. Machine Language -> Assembly Language -> C / Fortran -> SQL / Focus 4GL. The evolution of these languages are towards Low level language to High Level language.

In 1995, I stated learning computer languages. First I learned C, just after going through Fundamentals of Computer. In my first Academic project using C, I spent lots of time only for writing thousands lines of code. During this period I have gone through System Analysis and Design - where I learned about how to translate / transform the business application into computer systems [application]. Then I learned C++ and OOP, it was too nice experience, where I could compare the whole thing to real life cases. But it was amazing when I came to know SQL - real 4GL... Writing SQL Statement is about "WHAT" not "HOW" [With few exceptions - Query Hints etc.]. Using SQL generally few lines code computes the values from a set of collections as the resultset/output. Then I started my career with one of the biggest giant - Petroleum Company in India using Sybase and Power Builder. Here I got opportunity to work with all my favourite technologies.

About the future or coming technologies, termed as NEXT GEN Application, I expressed very early in one of my post published on September 15, 2005 Real Challenge to the architect for architecting and designing for FUTURE application development’s method.

That time I was thinking that DSL, ORM, Modeling language were dream and will be goals for the language developer.

Now Microsoft comes up to this with a fantastic way!!!

In last version - .NET Framework 3.5, we got LINQ, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to XML, LING to Object.... Here we focused more on the Entities, Visual Studio writes the code for data manipulation using SQL/XPath all underlying technologies... we stopped thinking about implementation to map the data source to object classes for .NET to some extents. Here we got LINQ to SQL, LINQ to XML and so on so...

This is not the "Full Stop" ("."). Along with more advancement, Microsoft came up with "M". It is "Oslo" Modeling Language which is a declarative language for working with data in more readable way for Structuring the the data as well as for querying too. It's not about how data is stored or accessed, even not by implementation of specific technology.

M builds on three basic concepts: values, types, and extents.

A value is the data which follows the rule
A type describes a set of values.
An extent provides dynamic storage for values.

M has been designed to map the relational model too. Using “Intellipad” tool of “Oslo”, model the data and the corresponding T-SQL statements generated by the compiler. Here “M”->SQL translates “M” "modules" to SQL "schemas."

SOA in the Real World

abu — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:16:00 GMT

This is one of my most interesting eBook which gives the real concepts of SOA. I am here to share this... Click on the book's image to download

Application Architecture Pocket Guides

abu — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:27:00 GMT

Application Architecture Pocket Guides http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/tags/AppArch/default.aspx

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Architecture

abu — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 01:15:00 GMT

A bird’s-eye view from 1000 feet in MSDN... Conceptual diagram whitch cover A2Z Basic Key Words associated with WCF.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733128.aspx

WCF Architecture Digram

Basic level articles from MSDN

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480210.aspx

A Developer's Primer from Code Project
http://www.devx.com/codemag/Article/31674/0/page/1

patterns & practices App Arch Guide 2.0 Beta 1

abu — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:06:00 GMT

Every year we can see many new things have been released. All new features are exciting!!!

Same time we, who are having engaged for Commercial Application Development and architecting enterprise solution, looking for the best from existing technology too... to do the best designing and implementing in application, the most valuable resource is here

patterns & practices App Arch Guide 2.0 Beta 1

http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2008/10/27/new-release-patterns-practices-app-arch-guide-2-0-beta-1.aspx

http://www.codeplex.com/AppArch

Concept of Design Patterns

abu — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:47:00 GMT

These links are the best to Know about Design Patterns...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/Patterns.aspx

http://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns

patterns & practices April 2007 DVD

abu — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:05:00 GMT

I am looking for getting more and more knowledge for improving the process of .NET applications mostly using SQL Server and some are used Oracle, and BI solutions. This includes starting from application architecture to deployment and operations the same.In regards, I believe the best resource is patterns & practices recommended by Microsoft.This DVD contains detailed technical information including printable guides, source code, PowerPoint presentations, and multi-media content. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6724e09b-ca2e-425a-8d71-8febad3ba203&displaylang=en

Architectural Guidance - 3-tier Architecture with ASP.NET 2.0 Tutorial Series

abu — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:30:00 GMT

Architectural Guidance
Learn how to design applications with ASP.NET and the .NET Framework.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/hi-in/architecture/aa336583.aspx

Ron Jacobs & Software Architecture - Listen

abu — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 14:26:00 GMT

Good resources on the latest trends in architecture with new products and technologies.

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/ARCast_with_Ron_Jacobs

Coding Guidelines

abu — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 05:47:00 GMT

Presently I am working on - XML Enhancement in .NET Framework. This is a big chapter. Slowly and gradually I am going too deep. I have another two interests. The Best Practices for .NET Application development and System Architecture. It's also true both of these two are closely associated to each other. Also I love working with SQL Server & Oracle too.

Today I found one good link for best practices - Coding Guidelines.

http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/articles/361363.aspx from Brad Abrams [Design Guidelines, Managed code and WinFX]

I will explore more onto this...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpgenref/html/cpconnetframeworkdesignguidelines.asp

http://www.tiobe.com/standards/gemrcsharpcs.pdf

Best Practices for Using ADO.NET
ASP.NET : 10 Tips for Writing High-Performance Web Applications
Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability
ASP.NET Caching: Techniques and Best Practices
Best Practices for Representing XML in the .NET Framework
Coding Best Practices Using DateTime in the .NET Framework
Best Practices for Handling Exceptions
Design Guidelines for Class Library Developers - MSDN

Object Architecture Philosophy – If you were to start from scratch, how would you architect your object model and why

abu — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:45:00 GMT

VS.NET supported DSL for Modeling Tool

Using the Microsoft DSL tools you can create your own designer, integrated into Visual Studio, for a visual domain-specific language. The tools help you define the domain-specific language and generate the code of a graphical designer for you. The resulting designer uses the same underlying modeling technology that is used by the Class Designer and Distributed System Designers in Visual Studio 2005.

The Microsoft Tools for Domain-Specific Languages is part of the Visual Studio 2005 SDK

White papers download URL:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=57a14cc6-c084-48dd-b401-1845013bf834&DisplayLang=en

http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/transcripts/vstudio/05_0524_dn_dsl.aspx

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032256938&Culture=en-US

It revolves around many related concepts, models and patterns. Primary principle will be to achieve the primary objective that is to develop the application, which will meet the entire requirement. Now the question will arises:

How ease to build to implement the design?
How much time is required?
What is cost?
How it will be maintained?
Is it a tempering proof?
Whether this is scalable?
What will be Load balancing factor?
Performance wise acceptable or not?

Enterprise Application architecture can be viewed in separate angles as follows:

Business architecture: the business processes and supporting organizational structure
Application/software architecture: the architecture of applications that support the business processes
Technology architecture: addressing the infrastructure that supports the applications
Information/data architecture: addressing the information that supports the applications

The whole process is having the following steps:

Conception
Decomposition
Analysis
Design
Coding
Implementation
Maintenance

The whole process can follow either the waterfall model, spiral model or prototype model but on top of this certain principles can be implemented for achieving the ultimate feasible solution. That is the object oriented principles. While doing any of the job we need to keep in mind the background process regarding the object oriented principles i.e. concept of reusability, abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism.

If we consider the analysis we see OOA, for designing OOD, for selecting language OOL, for programming OOP. In this whole process the key thing is the architecture which bridges between the requirements and implementation. Now implementation comprises two components:

Modeling which can be understood by the programmers/developers i.e. Internal Users, conceptual as well as implementation point of view; I mean to say that the developer can understand clearly to create the expected by using the appropriate technologies. It should be technically perfect.
The ultimate application which will be useful to the end user i.e. External Users. It should be functionally efficient.

The key words of this topic are as follows:

(a) “Object Architecture Philosophy”

(b) “Start from scratch”

Objective: Software Quality in terms of following Factors

Object-oriented techniques enhance key external and internal software quality factors, e.g.,

External

Correctness
Robustness and reliability
Performance

Internal

Modularity
Flexibility/Extensibility
Reusability
Compatibility (via standard/uniform interfaces)

What is the rationale for using OO?

In general, systems evolve and functionality changes, but objects and classes tend to remain stable over time

“Object Architecture Philosophy”

All through OO

OOA, OOD, OOL and OOP – all these are OOs.

Object-oriented methods may be applied to different phases in the software lifecycle e.g., analysis, design, implementation, etc.

OO Analysis (OOA) is a process of discovery; where a development team models and understands the requirements of the system. Analysis emphasizes an investigation of the problem and requirements, rather than a solution. “Analysis” is a broad term, best qualified, as in requirements analysis (an investigation of the requirements) or object analysis (an investigation of the domain objects).
OO Design (OOD) is a process of invention and adaptation; where the development team creates the abstractions and mechanisms necessary to meet the system's behavioral requirements determined during analysis. Design emphasizes a conceptual solution that fulfills the requirements, rather than its implementation. A critical, fundamental ability in OOA/D is to skillfully assign responsibilities to software components.
OO Programming (OOP)

“Start from scratch”

Prerequisite for architecting

OOA / OOD / OOP concepts
About the System modeling tool
Design Pattern
The concepts of UML
Concept of Domain-Specific Language (DSL)
Object Role Modeling (ORM)

The whole process is broken down into the following steps.

Understand the system properly - Functionally

Conception
Decomposition
Requirement Analysis

For requirement analysis we will definitely draw the use case diagram as well as write down in the text specification also. (Presently, what we are following for V2020 project)

Prior to go through in detail into the design

Find out the Design Pattern

We will try to find out the appropriate match with the current problem and existing design pattern’s problem specs. If it will not match with a particular one then we will try to design based on that experience.

But in reality it’s very much impossible to get same type of problem spec. In this scenario better we will go through the patterns which are closely same to the current problem. Then we will try to integrate into one pattern.

Architect the System

Draw the Class Diagram and also sequence diagram

These two diagrams are very important to map the problem to the solution.

Also we would like to architect the system keeping into the mind these following things:

Components as Assets of the organization which should be domain specific as well as same thing will work independently.
Modularity
Scalable
Better performance oriented
Flexible
Easy to understand and easy to maintain
Finally, well structured

“Architect your object model and why”

Why architecture with OO methods?

OO methods provide a set of techniques for analyzing, decomposing, and modularizing software system architectures. In general, OO methods are characterized by structuring the system architecture on the basis of its objects (and classes of objects) rather than the actions it performs

Main purpose of these design concepts is to manage software system complexity by improving software quality factors. This provides the following benefits

Helps to focus on large-scale system design
Separation of design concerns
Can identify good domain-specific architectures
Design abstraction
Have a common language

Managerial basis for cost estimation & process mgmt
Reuse
Consistency and dependency analysis
Technical basis for design

OO Modeling of an Solution

Identifying Objects of Interest from the Model
Associating Attributes with Objects of Interest
Specify how the objects, and interactions and interrelationships among the objects, will effect a solution to the problem

Types Model

(a) Textual Models

These are textual descriptions of both individual objects and systems of objects.

(b) Graphical Models

These graphically represent the characteristics of individual objects or systems of objects.

Where do Objects come from?

The following are potential sources of objects:

The model itself, e.g.:

Written documents
paragraph, the nouns, pronouns, noun phrases, adjectives, adjectival phrases, adverbs, and adverbial phrases will suggest candidate objects.
Graphical model
certain objects may be implied by such things as nodes and communication among the nodes.

The information supplied by the OORA(Object Oriented Requirement Analysis) process
The mind of the software engineer
A study of existing objects in an object library
Technical references, e.g., books and articles

Object Modeling using UML

There are three prominent aspects of the modeled system that are handled by UML:

Functional Model

It describes the functionality of the system from the user's Point of View.

It’s through Use Case Diagrams.

Object Model

It showcases the structure and substructure of the system using objects, attributes, operations, and associations.

It’s through Class Diagrams.

Dynamic Model

It showcases the internal behavior of the system.

It’s through Sequence Diagrams, Activity Diagrams and Statechart Diagrams

Use Case model

Provide an overview of all or part of the usage requirements for a system or organization in the form of an model or a business model
Communicate the scope of a development project
Model the analysis of the usage requirements in the form of a system use case model

Use Cases are used primarily to capture the high level user-functional requirements of a system. The Use Case model is about describing “what” the system will do at a high-level and with a user focus for the purpose of scoping the project and giving the application some structure.

Class Diagram

It shows the classes of the system, their inter-relationships, and the operations and attributes of the classes. Class diagrams are used to:

Explore domain concepts in the form of a domain model
Analyze requirements in the form of a conceptual/analysis model
Depict the detailed design of object-oriented or object-based software

Object Sequence Diagram

Object Sequence Diagrams are about deciding and modeling HOW our system will achieve WHAT we described in the Use Case model.

It’s a dynamic modeling technique. UML sequence diagrams are typically used to:

Validate and flesh out the logic of a usage scenario.
Explore the design because they provide a way to visually step through invocation of the operations defined by the classes.
To detect bottlenecks within an object-oriented design. By looking at what messages are being sent to an object, and by looking at roughly how long it takes to run the invoked method, you quickly get an understanding of where need to change the design to distribute the load within the system. In fact some CASE tools even enable to simulate this aspect of the software.
Gives a feel for which classes in the application are going to be complex, which in turn is an indication that may need to draw state chart diagrams for those classes

Activity Diagram

This is used to explore the logic of the following

A complex operation
A complex business rule
A single use case
Several use cases
A business process
Software processes

Deployment Diagram

Deployment diagrams show the hardware for the system, the software that is installed on that hardware, and the middleware used to connect the disparate machines to one another. A deployment model is to:

Explore the issues involved with installing the system into production.
Explore the dependencies that your system has with other systems that are currently in, or planned for, the production environment.
Depict a major deployment configuration of a business application.
Design the hardware and software configuration of an embedded system.
Depict the hardware/network infrastructure of an organization.

Real Challenge to the architect for architecting and designing for FUTURE application development’s method.

abu — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 03:32:00 GMT

Now “Software Factory” is the “Buzzword”

To the architect real challenge to make “Platform Independent” auto generated coding tools which will be domain specific.

How extent is this possible? Here things are required, strong domain knowledge along with technical skills. If I talk about .NET initially this came as one of the best programming tools/language/platform – all together the term is used as “Framework”. Yes, thought was very very strong. Vision was Excellent. This is one of the great job done by Microsoft!!! After successfully done this job next it is coming with better approach where basically I found what I used to do in critical way now this is becoming in simpler to the simplest way.

In January 2000 I started programming in PERL, where to write something i.e. to display some thing I used to writer through “print” statement.

In 2000 I started programming in ASP, there I say the way to program is much simpler that the PERL. Where I got the advantages to keep ASP codes were embedded along with the HTML scripts.

But in the same time I used trying to keep the main UI pages in separate file and Codes are into separate files. Same time I used to avoid keeping ASP codes embedded in HTML. That time I used to us FrontPage as page design tool and Interdev as programming tool.

To get maximum benefits I used to follow certain things as follows:

Keeping the commonly useable codes as includes files and I used to maintain in the folded naming as “general”. In 2001 I stated leading one team having 10-15 team members. Presently, I remember Jayan, Marina, Libi … and others used to follow the techniques and this is also true that I always open and sometimes they used to guide meJ I coded some program that used to work as template. Sometimes to these developed means my nearer friends used to use the term “Stereotype” work.
Next I stated playing with the system tables of SQL Server Databases. From the syscolumns, sysobjects etc. I stated writing program to generated code for Standard Stored Procedures and ASP pages for CRUD operation.
Same way I stated working on .NET in the year of 2002 and I have written auto generated code for CRUD operation. Where
- First I used to select the table and then the columns of it.
- Then it used to generate the Stored Procedure
- And from the Stored Procedure to BLL Object (Class) and also UI(.aspx pages)
Also I used to use some common code for almost same in so many projects, especially for login, logout, forget password, role management, page accessibilities etc.

After this entire thing what I noticed in .NET 2.0 Microsoft came up Membership API, Personalization Features all these commonly used modules.

Second things related to readabilities of UI and making consistencies there are Master Page, Themes concept are introduced.

Thirdly with concept of DSL now the thinking is coming into new era. Now instead of Membership API, Personalization Features this reusability concept is extending to the Domain Specific Reusable Modules.

I think this is FUTURE. Making reusable modules for the domain specific area, initial coding through the Auto-generated tools, and then customization the whole thing to get the specialized thing.

Finally the coder will start thinking and thinking for code optimization and for the performance issues.