Microsoft’s Intentions for “Dublin”

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 release will be adding significant functionality to the development platform. Among these is a large enhancement codenamed "Dublin" that will focus on improving scalability and manageability of Windows based applications and provide a standard host for applications by extending IIS.

“Dublin”, in a nutshell will:

• Provide standard host for WF and WCF applications
• Provide pre-built developer services
• Support message-based correlation and content-based message routing
• Contain a message forwarding service
• Offer a compensation service for long-running transactions
• Enable scale-out of stateful workflow applications
• Persisting and rehydrating state for high scalability
• Enhanced management and monitoring functions
• Tracking store for workflow events
• Supports “Oslo” modeling platform

You may read those bullet points and say “hey, this sounds like BizTalk”. Well, yes and no. The easiest way to view this is that some BizTalk functionality will be available within the .NET Framework.

“Dublin” will be available for download when released and will eventually be included in future releases of Windows Server. “Dublin” will be fully supported thru current support contracts.

“Dublin” will be the first Microsoft server product to deliver support for the “Oslo” modeling platform. “Dublin” does not require “Oslo” in order to operate but administrators will be able to deploy applications from the “Oslo” repository directly to the “Dublin” application server. “Dublin” provides model-driven “Oslo” applications with a powerful runtime environment, out of the box.

The intention is for “Dublin” based applications to interoperate with BizTalk based services. The integration server and application server workloads are distinct but complementary so they can be deployed separately as needed. The intention is for “Dublin” to be an application platform, BizTalk an integration platform. When they need to work together, they will be able to. Otherwise, requirements will drive which platform to use.