This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Christian Weyer. Original Post: ShadowFax: SOA in practice - now! Feed Title: Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET Feed URL: http://www.asp.net/err404.htm?aspxerrorpath=/cweyer/Rss.aspx Feed Description: Philosophizing about and criticizing the brave new world ... Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Christian Weyer Latest Posts From Christian Weyer: Web Services & .NET

Did you ever ask yourself  "How do I build a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) with .NET?"  Today there seems no clear answer to that question. Project Shadowfax just exists to answer this very question at a practical level.

Microsoft just released an early version of ShadowFax. Ron Jacobs is the lead of this project which is available in a M0.1 Pre-Alpha Source Code build. They are building it because customers are asking for it. Market analysts are predicting that by 2006 SOA will be mainstream in most large enterprises.  Customers have been asking for guidance about how to implement SOA using the existing products and platform. If Microsoft doesn't provide this type of guidance, many customers will simply have to learn by trial and error how to be successful with SOA.

Shadowfax is a reference solution for building service oriented architecture with the .NET Framework. It includes 3 main pieces

- A reusable framework which consists of full source code and reference documentation
- A reference implementation consisting of several use cases from a fictional bank
- An architecture guide which defines what we believe the key elements of SOA to be

What about the relationship between Indigo and ShadowFax? Here is the answer from one of the team members:

Generally we regularly review Indigo and other upcoming technologies from MS that will help support implementing SOA systems. We're in the fortunate position of being able to review their plans long before public announcements, so it makes it easier to think about them early.

The Indigo technologies are on a later timeline then the Shadowfax project, so we won't be able to use Indigo technologies in Shadowfax. However, with Shadowfax we're trying to be consistent conceptually with future technologies while at the same time showing you how to do effective SOA with our existing technologies.

If you are interested in playing with ShadowFax be sure to check out the How-To samples.