Last week I attended the great workshop “SOA Done Right” by Daniel Marbach and Adam Ralph (organised by the .Net User Group Bern). They did an incredible job to explain SOA, services and how designing for loosely coupled systems differ from an entity-first approach. I learned a lot in the workshop and still need a few days more time to get a deeper understanding of those concepts.
The most impressive thing for me started before the workshop. I had to prepare my machine so that I could run the examples. With distributed systems that usually means a bunch of tools and a lot of configuration that all has to work together to know if it works at all. I expected pain and many hours of wasted effort because I missed some little detail. Not this time.
All the necessary steps where written down in the Readme.md. Instead of manually turning Windows features on and configuring them, you can run the Particular Platform Installer that takes care of MSMQ and DTC. All other tools you need have a direct link to their download page and you can install them by clicking Next on the installer. There is a script that creates all databases and when you are done, you have another script to drop them. The tutorial ends with an explanation on how to use the tools for the advanced exercises and a FAQ.
You only need to read this tutorial to see how much effort went into it. The effect of this was great: Everyone could start with the exercises and there was no time wasted to setup machines at the workshop itself. It is so important that the first exercise work to keep up the motivation, in this workshop I got this positive first experience before I even was at the workshop.
We had only two tiny little problems with the exercises that both where fixed with a pull-request. This did not just fix the problem for our workshop, but for all future ones as well. The same approach we use with software development works with workshops as well.
I wish more workshops would follow this example and offer a well-tested setup process. As “SOA Done Right” showed, it helps the attendees so much and offers a great experience. Therefore, a big THANKS to Daniel, Adam, Particular Software and the many contributors who made it such a smooth experience.