Microsoft Lending Reference Architecture V-Lab Released

I am very excited to announce that we have finally released the Virtual Lab for The Microsoft Lending Reference Architecture Version 1. I have heard from you load an clear over the past few months! We now have an Virtual Machine in the "Cloud" ready for you to examine workflows, dive into code or just play with the scenario.

Virtual Lab Start Page

 

Keep an eye out for future releases of the Lending Reference Architecture as we have been heads down on version 2.0 with a ton of huge additions. Version 2 will be released in the same style as with version one which will include whitepapers, source code and source code.

A compile of version 1 Lending Reference Architecture materials include:

Whitepapers

Developing the Lending Reference Architecture

Building Sustainable Banking Architectures

Architecting Regulatory Compliant Architectures

Architecting Enterprise Loan Workflows and Orchestrations

 

Blog Posts

Extending the Lending Reference Architecture: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/11/extending-the-or-los-lending-framework.aspx

Windows Mobile Appraiser Solution Scenario: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/02/using-windows-mobile-with-or-los.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/03/30/obas-deliver-soa-to-the-people.aspx

The Lending Message Bus Gets Along with all Standards: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/10/the-microsoft-lending-message-bus.aspx

Unstructured Data, The Achilles Heel of SOA: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/23/unstructured-data-the-achilles-heel-of-soa.aspx

Using the Lending Reference Architecture for Commercial Lending: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/11/or-los-and-commercial-lending.aspx

OBA’s deliver SOA to the People: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/03/30/obas-deliver-soa-to-the-people.aspx

Choosing a Loan Message Standard for Banking: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/01/17/choosing-a-loan-message-exchange-standard-for-banking.aspx

Web Casts

Lending webcast: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/10/2007-office-system-the-next-business-platform.aspx

Document Generation: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/11/or-los-and-commercial-lending.aspx

Books

Office Business Applications: Building Composite Applications with Microsoft Technologies

Conferences

These are conferences where we talked about the Lending Reference Architecture

Worldwide OBA Architecture Forum

My Presentation Done Completely in Post-It Notes

Strategic Architecture Forum – Canada

My EA and OBA Sessions at TechEd 2007

 

Partners

We have a lot of great partners that have used either the bits or have used the Microsoft Guidance to influence the future direction of their architectures. One in particular is a gold partner in Australia called Dataract. See my post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/08/20/new-financial-services-oba.aspx

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Office Developer Conference Update

ODC 2008 is the premier event for Microsoft Office developers, bringing together architects, developers, industry technical experts, Microsoft insiders, and key partners in a public forum to redefine what it means to be focused on 2007 Microsoft® Office system development.

We have an incredible six keynotes by senior Microsoft executives. Of course, live code and demos will be the order of the day, and we will be presenting hot new sessions that bring together diverse topics, from composition to S+S, SharePoint to VOIP, OOXML to Silverlight, and everything in between!

We have 5 technical tracks, and 70+ breakout sessions and hands-on labs.  And for the first time ever, we will have an Executive Track where analysts, Microsoft and industry executives will get together to learn the how and why of Office applications and the competitive advantage offered by them.

 

Tracks

Client Track – http://blogs.msdn.com/odc2008clienttrackblog/archive/2007/11/30/list-of-sessions-in-odc-client-track.aspx

Architect Track – http://blogs.msdn.com/odc2008architecture/archive/2007/11/07/breakout-session-abstracts.aspx

Real World Track – http://blogs.msdn.com/odcrealworldtrackblog/archive/2007/11/30/odc-2008-real-world-session-tracks-ready-for-review-a-work-in-progress.aspx

Server Track – http://blogs.msdn.com/odcservertrackblog/archive/2007/12/01/server-track-draft-session-list.aspx

Services Track – http://blogs.msdn.com/rbarker/archive/2007/12/03/99-7-there-for-the-odc-services-track-sessions.aspx

OpenXML is getting Closer, and we should all be Excited about It!

With the latest changes to the specification it is bringing the standard close and closer to the finish line. This is a great thing not only for Microsoft but for the community. To have one standard that allows us to represent information in our word / calculation processors (i.e., Word and Excel).

Brain Jones gives a full update on where we are with the standard on his recent post.

I think that it is very important for us to consider the value of this. Like it or not we have Word and Excel tightly integrated into our business processes. Often times our business users demand these tools so they remain productive.

The proprietary artifact formats that these tools leave behind have given architects challenging obstacles. This is particularly true in the realms of integration. Now if we have an XML standard that defines the information, it makes the data all that much more interoperable with our business processes. 

Architects should consider how OpenXML will impact their IT Systems and think through some of the new opportunities that can arise with this new format.