Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform Book Review

This is a book that would be good for anyone that wants to get a snapshot of the current Microsoft technology stack. It gives decent primers on Window Communication Foundation (WCF) 4.0 and Windows Workflow (WF) 4.0, Windows Server AppFabric, BizTalk, SQL Server, and Windows Azure. The primers are thorough enough to give you a decent understanding of each technology. The book then covers common scenarios found in most enterprise level applications. The scenarios include, Simple Workflow, Content-based Routing, Publish-Subscribe, Repair/Resubmit with Human Workflow, Remote Message Broadcasting, Debatching Bulk Data, Complex Event Processing, Cross-Organizational Supply Chain, Multiple Master Synchronization, Rapid Flexible Scalability, Low-Latency Request-Reply, Handling Large Session and Reference Data, and Website Load Burst and Failover. Each topic has a complete chapter dedicated to it. The chapters start off by describing the requirements, presenting a pattern, and then they list several candidate architectures giving the good and bad aspects of each. They then pick the best one and implement a solution. Most of the chapters were pretty good. The only one I found really lacking was the one on Multiple Master Synchronization. It included SSIS, Search Server Express, and Microsoft's Master Data Services as part of the solution. The details of the solutions were way to vague to give any real insight into how to implement the suggested architecture. All in all I found this book a very interesting read. It gave some great insight into Microsoft's current technology stack. I definitely recommend grabbing a copy.