Here are comments from Microsoft's Mike Champion (erstwhile
contributor to this Group...) on this project:
<<Several of us at Microsoft have signed up to actively participate in
the Apache Stonehenge Project that was accepted into the incubator
recently. This is only the latest in a number of open source
interoperability projects in which Microsoft is active.
So, what is Stonehenge and why am I participating? This project is
championed by Paul Fremantle, co-founder and CTO of WSO2, which has
been a great partner in helping to improve and demonstrate the
interoperability of the WS-* standards across platforms. For example,
at TechEd 2008, Jonathan Marsh of WSO2 and Greg Leake of Microsoft
demonstrated how separate WSO2 and Microsoft components implementing a
mutlti-tier stock trading application can interoperate and be
substituted for one another.
StockTrader is just the starting point for the broader goals of
Stonehenge. As the project proposal puts it:
The aim of the Stonehenge project is to develop a set of sample
applications to demonstrate seamless interoperability across multiple
underlying platform technologies by using currently defined W3C and
OASIS standard protocols.
We are proposing this incubator project because we believe that a
project that includes a set of sample applications, with multiple
language and framework implementations will become a useful and
important part of the SOA landscape. It will:
· illustrate and develop best practice for interoperable
applications that communicate via distributed protocols,
· demonstrate interoperability between platforms,
· provide sample code upon which SOA developers can build,
· help identify interoperability issues and their solutions, and
· build confidence in cross-platform deployment of SOA technologies
More generally, we believe that Stonehenge can help wire up the "last
mile" between the standardized web services infrastructure that is now
implemented across key platforms, and a new generation of service
oriented applications that will span them. Existing WS-*
interoperability work such of the sort done by WS-I and in our
"plugfests" will continue to solidify the platform-level
interoperability. The new work, exemplified by Apache Stonehenge,
should attract a wider community of users who can exploit the hard
standardization and platform interoperability work without having to
wallow in as many nasty details as in the past.
We've gotten clear direction from customers that sample applications
based on real-world scenarios and challenges will help them realize
the potential of these technologies which have been developed and
standardized for the last 8 years or so. Likewise, the initial
response from the Apache community has been quite favorable. I have
a personal commitment to invest in helping make Stonehenge a success,
and look forward to digging in.
For more information on Stonehenge and other Microsoft work with the
Apache Foundation, see:
* Sam Ramji's ApacheCon keynote and the writeup at eWeek
* Paul Fremantle's blog post on Stonehenge, Kamaljit Bath's report
from ApacheCon, and the Apache Feathercast featuring the two of them.
* Subscribe to the mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]>>
You can read his blog at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mikechampion/
Gervas
--- In [email protected], "Gervas
Douglas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> <<The Apache Incubator has just voted to start a new Incubator
> podling, called Stonehenge. I'm the champion, so I'm taking this
> opportunity to explain it a little more.
>
> Firstly, let's get this out of the way. This will be the first Apache
> Incubator project that has contribution from Microsoft. Yes,
> Microsoft. As well as Microsoft, Redhat/JBoss, Progress/Iona, Eviware,
> WSO2 and others have signed up to contribute. For those of you that
> didn't know, Microsoft already has two committers at Apache, and is a
> sponsor of Apache. I think this is a big step and I congratulate
> Microsoft on making it.
>
> What is Stonehenge? The basic concept is to create a project that
> improves SOA interoperability through an Open Source model. The way we
> intend to do this is to create multiple implementations of the same
> application, and to ensure that they interoperate cleanly.
>
> Let me give a concrete example, which is based on the first such
> application: Stocktrader. This application has separate components
> that talk to each other via Web Services. To demonstrate
> interoperability we are going to test each of these frameworks against
> each other. So part of the overall application might be running
> WSF/PHP, part Axis2/Java, part .NET WCF.
>
> I expect this approach will get some interesting feedback. Most people
> think of Apache projects as a place to get a useful library or tool.
> But Apache members and committers think slightly differently - we
> think of Apache as a place where the community and process encourage
> good code. That is why we believe the Apache Incubator is the right
> place for this project - we believe that having many parties
> collaborate to create a set of interoperable applications that show
> best practice.
>
> Of course, these applications won't all share code. Of course if
> several frameworks all use the same interface, say JAX-WS, then they
> may. But this project is not about sharing code, its about sharing
> standards and sharing interoperability.
>
> If you want to hear more, Rich Bowen interviewed Kamaljit Bath and me
> at ApacheCon. You can hear the feathercast here. Kamaljit is a Program
> Manager from Microsoft's interop team and will be contributing to
> Stonehenge.
>
> Finally, if you would like to get involved, we would welcome you.
> Please subscribe to the mailing list here:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]>>
>
> You can read this at:
>
> http://pzf.fremantle.org/
>
> Gervas
>
