A few months ago "Rosario November 2007 CTP" became available for download. Based on the available documentation, walkthroughs and “mini stories” we can safely conclude that this release wasn’t really build to please the software factory guys out there! However, what it *does* contain is a (limited!) version of Service Factory that works on a very early (?) version of the Software Factory Runtime. This might be interesting. Let’s have a look if this version of Service Factory shed some light about what we might expect from Rosario in the software factory space.

(Of course, this CTP is relatively old already and hopefully a new one will arrive in the coming ? but maybe we can learn something from this CTP already...)

Ok, how does Service Factory looks like in Rosario CTP? To find out we can start a new Service Factory project by using the Application Design template that can be found under the “Distributed Systems” node in the “new project” dialog.

After the template unfolded, the first thing to notice in our new solution is the new “Application Explorer”. From this new “Application Explorer” tool window we can create a “Product” that is based on the installed software factories on the machine. As we can see in the screenshots below this machine has two factories installed and one of them is “Service Factory”.

By selecting "Web Service Software Factory" and pressing "OK" in the "New Product" dialog we end up in a situation that is similar to the one we are familiar with when using the current Service Factory. We can create a "New Model" and use the factory "as usual" from there.

Digging a little further in this CTP tells us (Add or Remove Programs) GAX is installed and GAT isn't! Further we can see that besides the package that looks like the "normal" Service Factory a package called "Web Service Factory Application Designer Integration" is installed.

A quick look at the installation location of Service Factory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Service Factory V3) tells us that this version of Service Factory indeed looks like an ordinary software factory that is build on top of GAX. The installation folder still contains recipes, vstemplates, T4 templates, etc.

What does this mean? Can we use our current software factories (or at least parts of them) in Rosario? If so, do we benefit from anything new? How does Service Factory integrate in the Application Explorer? Where do we need this "Web Service Software Factory Application Designer Integration" package for? Is the "Software Factory Runtime" in this CTP of Rosario only implemented by GAX?

To be continued...