Architect Master Class

Juval Lowy is a software architect and the principal of IDesign, specialising in .NET 3.0 architecture consulting and advanced .NET 3.0 training. Juval is Microsoft's Regional Director for the Silicon Valley, working with Microsoft on helping the industry adopt .NET 3.0. Juval participates in the Microsoft internal design reviews for future versions of .NET and related technologies. Juval published numerous articles, regarding almost every aspect of .NET development, and is a frequent presenter at development conferences. Microsoft recognised Juval as a Software Legend as one of the world's top .NET experts and industry leaders. Learn more about this course.

Brian Noyes is a Microsoft Regional Director for the Mid-Atlantic region. He is an MVP and has been developing software systems for more than fifteen years. Brian speaks at major software conferences around the world, and writes for a variety of software journals and magazines. He has published two books "Smart Client Deployment with ClickOnce" and "Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0", and has been published in the following, "Build Composite WPF Applications" CoDe Magazine, Nov 2008 , "Advanced WPF: Understanding Routed Events and Commands", MSDN Magazine, Sept 2008 and "Connect Apps with WCF", Visual Studio Magazine, Feb 2008.
 

While many developers and managers have a clear idea regarding the characteristics and practices, and corresponding set of responsibilities of their own roles, the picture is often vague when it comes to software architects. What is the single most important task facing the software architect? What is the division of labor and responsibilities between the architect and the project manager? How much the architecture should be tied in to the particulars of the underlying technology used, or for that matter, for the specifics of the projects? What are the necessary skills and analysis tools employed by an architect? How do you validate the design before construction? How do methodologies such as service-orientation affect the design and development process? What are software architecture best practices, guidelines and pitfalls? How do you go about designing world-class systems? How do you make the transition from abstract design patterns and concepts to concrete development decisions? The class answers the above questions using a combination of frontal lecture and interactive and accelerated design sessions. Conducted in the style of a classic Master Class, the IDesign architect will provide the common foundation of modern service-oriented applications required by software architects.

Noteworthy is that this class is called the Architect’s Master Class (as opposed to the Architecture Master Class) because it is dedicated to core body of knowledge required of today’s architects, knowledge that transcends mere design patterns and architecture. The core body of knowledge comprises of three elements: development process and project leadership skills, technology, and finally analysis and design. The class agenda reflects these three elements.

The first day is devoted to the accompanying service-oriented development process and the required project management skills. The second and third days are an accelerate course in WCF, ensuring the architect is a qualified technical lead in all aspects of WCF, such as interface-based design and factoring, service oriented design, general design principal and patterns concerning reliability, data transfer, instance management scalability and throughput, availability and responsiveness, loosely coupled systems, fault propagation, transaction management, concurrency management and security scenarios.

In the fourth and fifth day Juval Lowy will explain the IDesign original approach to large system analysis and design and the IDesign Method™ for capturing the design decisions. Juval will interactively design one or two systems by soliciting from the students requirements for an actual application, and proceeding in real time to design the system, outlining the architecture that addresses the requirements, discussing logical tiers, security, interoperability, scalability, transactions, and other aspects of a service-oriented application. Lastly, you will see how to convert and execute on the design diagrams a vertical slice of the system design. Students will see how to approach rarely discussed topics such as allocation of services to assemblies, allocation of services to processes, transaction boundaries, identity management, authorization and authentication boundaries and more.

Any .NET architect, project lead or senior developer would benefit greatly from the class. The class relies on WCF as a reference model.

The Architect

• Modern software systems
• Types of architects
• Architecture and technology
• Service-oriented programming

Service-Oriented Development Process

• Project Planning
• Estimation and tracking
• Documentation
• Requirement management and traceability
• Configuration Management
• Quality Control
• Design for performance
• Services simulation and emulation
• Peer reviews
• Development standards
• Metrics collection
• Visibility management

Introduction to Service-Orientation

• What are services
• Service-oriented architecture
• Service-oriented applications

WCF Essentials

• Service-oriented programming
• Using WCF
• WCF architecture
• Implementation considerations

Service Contract Design and Factoring

• Service contract design
• Contract factoring techniques
• Contract metrics

Service-Oriented Design Patterns and Best Practices

• Data contracts versioning, data contract and data tables
• Instance management and throttling
• Operations and event management
• Transaction management and consistency
• Concurrent management, responsiveness and availability
• Security scenarios
• Service granularity

Design and Architecture Case Studies

• Use cases analysis
• Assembly allocation
• Run-time processes design
• Identity management
• Authentication
• Authorisation
• Transaction flow
• Synchronisation
• Code-access security policy
• Vertical slice implementation

"The Architect’s class transcends technological trends and gives you practical knowledge that will be useful for almost any platform and for the rest of your career."

"The graduate class for real world Architects charged with providing solutions to real world businesses."

"You should not in good conscience call yourself a software architect if you don’t posses the skills and techniques presented in the class."

"This class is light years ahead of the industry in terms of content and the sheer volume of knowledge the IDesign team present."

"The incredible amount of experience and knowledge presented during the Architect’s Master class has completely changed the way I think about software architecture."