Greg Leake is very passionate about loosely-coupled service-oriented n-tiered application architecture. He has created an impressive service-oriented application called StockTrader. We will be highlighting his great work over the coming days with a four part mini-series on StockTrader. Most of the series will be comprised of demos of StockTrader in action and explanations of what's going on behind the scenes in this truly exemplary example of how to create a powerful client-server application that is based on a loosely-coupled service architecture. Further, the interoperability story here is excellent (one of the great advantages of standards-based protocols...). This is Part 1: An Architectural Overview of Stocktrader.
This application is an end-to-end sample application for .NET Enterprise Application Server technologies. It is a service-oriented application based on Windows Communication Foundation (.NET 3.0) and ASP.NET, and illustrates many of the .NET enterprise development technologies for building highly scalable, rich "enterprise-connected" applications. It is designed as a benchmark kit to illustrate alternative technologies within .NET and their relative performance. The application offers full interoperability with Java Enterprise, including IBM WebSphere's Trade 6.1 sample application, and newly provided implementations on Oracle Application Server 10G (OC4J) and Oracle WebLogic Server 10.3 (Oracle implementations included with the download below). As such, the application offers an excellent opportunity for developers to learn about .NET and building interoperable, service-oriented applications.