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Bixhorn Paints Indigo Picture
January 18, 2005
Ari Bixhorn, lead product manager of Web Services Strategy in the Developer and Platform Division at Microsoft, discusses Microsoft's plan to create a unified programming model (code-named Indigo) for building distributed, interconnected apps in an interview with VSM Editor in Chief Patrick Meader. Ari will help Eric Rudder, Microsoft senior vice president of Servers and Tools, present the Indigo keynote that anchors Indigo Day at VSLive! San Francisco on February 8.
PM: I've heard people from Microsoft describe Indigo as everything from a new paradigm for building service-oriented architecture (SOA) applications to a tool for implementing advanced messaging, with rich support for intermediaries and end-to-end security. On a basic level, what is Indigo?
AB: Indigo is a unified programming model that enables developers to build connected systems in a productive manner.
The world we live in today is more connected than ever before, and only getting more so. Five years ago, Microsoft made a big bet on connected systems with .NET and its emphasis on Web services. Web services provide us with a basic level of interoperability, but developers face a lot of connectivity challenges that aren't addressed by the current state of Web services.
For example, how do you implement these interoperable apps in a way that provides end-to-end security? How do you take into account the fact that some networks have high latency or might fail in some cases? How do you make them span organizational trust boundaries? These challenges all drove the design goals of Indigo.
PM: How does this tie back into service-oriented development?
AB: Indigo provides a unified programming model that enables developers to build service-oriented applications explicitly—loosely coupled, autonomous services that provide end-to-end security and reliable messaging assurances.
Developers have been asking us questions about which are the right programming model(s) to use for building interconnected systems for distributed applications. Today, there are a variety of programming models for building distributed apps—ASMX, Web Services Enhancements (WSE), .NET Enterprise Services, and so on—and people today have to ask themselves, which one of these do I need to use to create the functionality I want?
Our desire is to simplify this process with a unified programming model that enables developers to build connected systems in a productive manner.
PM: When you say a unified programming model, what do you mean by that?
AB: We take the functionalities that are provided in our existing distributed application programming models, and we expose them to the developer through a single namespace within the .NET Framework. Whereas today, developers have to use separate programming models provided by WSE, ASMX, System.Messaging, System.EnterpriseServices, and .NET Remoting, Indigo will bring the best aspects of these together. If you're a VB.NET or C# programmer, you simply reference the System.ServiceModel assembly, then import that into your code. This gives you access to all the functionality that exists in today's disparate technologies and more through a consistent, productive programming model.
PM: There is the perception that Microsoft is a Johnny-come-lately in the SOA world. Tell me about the breadth of Microsoft's commitment and some of its key products in this space.
AB: Web services are at the center of our SOA strategy. Product support for Web services today spans our entire platform, including clients, servers, services, and developer tools. As we move toward the Longhorn timeframe, this commitment will only expand and in many cases become an even deeper part of our products. Key products include BizTalk Server, Indigo, MapPoint, Microsoft Business Solutions (Microsoft CRM, Great Plains), Microsoft Office, SharePoint, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Web Services Enhancements (WSE), and Windows Server 2003.
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