At this year’s TechEd in Orlando I will present on a very important topic that many people seem to either ignore or just do not know enough about.

CSI357  My Home is My Castle: Hosting Applications - Why You Care about Threads, AppDomains and Processes

Is a console app not enough for my 24/7 app? Some think that implementing and testing core code is enough for running today's modern applications. A good process model and hosting environment is a fundamental base for reliable, secure and robust applications. Windows and .NET provide a number of choices for hosting including Enterprise Services/COM+, ASMX/IIS, MSMQ, SQL Server, or a custom application like a Windows Service. In this session we investigate the advantages and disadvantages of each process model and give guidance on which of them is the best choice for your problem. We discuss reliability, monitoring, security and other core topics impacted by your choice of hosting models. In essence, we talk about threads, application domains, and processes - and why you should care. Because there is more to a successful application than just '.EXE'.

Although my talk is in the CSI (Connected Systems Infrastructure) track, this session actually talks about the common need to think about where and how an application actually runs – paired with thoughts about communication woes.

If you are interested in some more thorough ideas of a different view on software architecture I highly recommend to take a look at my .NET Twins brother’s current series on Software Cells. One of Ralf’s main claims is to always use pre-fabricated hosts (but not only the ones mentioned in above abstract): don’t think about it ;)
Some interesting thoughts over there…