Developer Introduction to Windows Server AppFabric (Part 1): Hosting Services

Many business applications have a significant code base responsible for back end business processes and activities that are both hard to write and even more challenging to manage. With Web Services being the primary way to expose and consume business logic, building services, coordinating services and implementing the long running processes across these services needs to get easier. The combination of Windows Workflow Foundation in Microsoft .NET 4 together with Windows Server AppFabric provides a new way to create these business processes, to coordinate services and to expose these workflows as services themselves. This Ramp Up track provides you with the initial knowledge needed to build services and workflows and to understand how to configure and manage these using Windows Server AppFabric. The training assumes that you are a competent .NET developer and know your way around web applications, databases and Microsoft ASP.NET. No prior workflow or web services experience is necessary.

This training kit is available as a full download, including a complete recorded delivery of the class (in High Quality – 720 and Medium Quality – 450 versions). You can also review and download the resources for each module and even complete the lessons online using the Virtual Lab environment.

Learning Resources

Published: October 2010

Download the Training Kit
Download three different versions of the training kit and virtual machine here.

Developer Environment Setup
This lab will get your system setup for running the Hosting labs of this training kit, including how to install Windows Server AppFabric. If you are using the Virtual Lab environment for the exercises, you do not need to do this lab—everything is setup ready to start Lab 1.

Lab Document: Developer Environment Lab Setup

Overview
This module contains the result of completing all the Hosting labs that follow. It provides a brief overview of the Fourth Coffee scenario for your reference, which is the sample scenario that is used throughout the hosting labs. This scenario involves the creation of a web application that takes coffee orders and a business process for the approval of custom labels to be printed on the coffee purchased. A number of web services and workflow services are created in the scenario and Windows Server AppFabric is used to host and manage these services.

Introducing WCF Services
In this module you’ll learn how to build a code based Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service and monitor it using Windows Server AppFabric.

WCF Workflow Services
In this module, you will build a workflow service using the sequential modeling style. You will learn about correlation support and how to call other services.

Going Deeper with Workflow Services
In this lab you will build a stand-alone service, as well as a service orchestration. You will be introduced to the FlowChart modeling style, and client activities that act as proxies to the service orchestration.

Custom Activities
In this module you will use activities from the WF ADO.NET Activities Pack and create a custom activity to handle user input with a workflow service.

Securing WF Services
In this module you will use the PrincipalPermissionScope activity to restrict access to an operation in a service.

Calling Services from ASP.NET and Silverlight
In this module you will be calling workflow services from Microsoft ASP.NET and Microsoft Silverlight.

Managing Services with Windows Azure
This module demonstrates multiple techniques to use when attempting to resolve issues with Workflow Services.

Module Deployment
In this module you will use the Web Deployment Tool (MS Deploy) and features from Visual Studio to deploy the Inventory Service application to a test server.

Versioning Workflow Services
This module is about versioning for services and activities. Topics include routing with the WCF Routing Service and versioning of workflow activities.

Windows Azure in the Enterprise
In this module you will become familiar with Auto-Start and how to enable it for your services.

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