.NET StockTrader shows Interop between WCF and WebSphere

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Customers looking to build distributed applications according to the principles of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can use the new .NET StockTrader as a blueprint. This new sample/performance kit download includes full source code and a technical whitepaper that provides best-practices guidance for developers seeking to create high-performance, scalable, and interoperable financial services solutions on Microsoft’s Application Platform, including Windows Server, the .NET Framework 3.0, and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Some key highlights of the sample:

  • Performance: Since performance is often a key concern when building mission-critical applications, the StockTrader download includes instructions for how to conduct performance testing across distributed environments. This is particularly useful when combined with iterative configuration changes - for example, changing the WCF protocols used, or changing a service to use asynchronous delivery. You can assess the performance impact of a change to the service implementation, relatively quickly.
  • Interop: The StockTrader application also illustrates full interoperability with the Trade 6.1 sample/benchmark application for WebSphere from IBM. The service interfaces in the .NET StockTrader mirror those used in the Trade 6.1 application. The .NET services can transparently interconnect with the WebSphere-based services in Trade 6.1, with a simple URL change in a configuration file.
  • Scale out: The StockTrader application illustrates an architectural pattern for load-balancing across multiple instances of a WCF Service. This simple and easy scale-out mechanism requires no special, extra-cost software, or obscure techniques. And you don't need to configure Windows Load Balancing to do it.
  • Configuration: StockTrader also illustrates a pattern for managing the configuration of all the various distributed WCF services in the network. As a services network expands, managing the configuration of all the various independent services becomes challenging. All StockTrader services implement a common administrative (web services) interface, which allows secure, remote configuration changes, without mucking with WCF config files.

An excellent sample and illustration of interop , StockTrader can also be used a comparative benchmark. The full benchmark results show that the .NET Web services in StockTrader deliver twice the performance of the equivalent Web services running in WebSphere, at less than ¼ the software license cost of the IBM solution.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/stocktrader

(Update, 27 July 2007: the source code is now available, download it here.)