Johnny Halife’s Blog

On February 16th, Matías and I participated as speakers on the Microsoft Agile Architecture Forum 2008, held at Microsoft Argentina. The conference covered lots of interesting agile stuff: TDD, FDD/Crystal, the MoQ Framework and Continuous Integration/Build Automation among others.

Continuous Integration was the topic selected by us, here you can find the deck we’ve used.

In this photo: Juan Gabardini, Martin Salias, Matias Woloski, Gabriel Paradelo, Juan E. Ladetto, Johnny G. Halife, Nicolas Paez, Matias Bonaventura

Useful links about Continuous Integration

• http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_integration
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CruiseControl.NET
• Rob Conery » Source Control and Continuous Integration On The Cheap
• How To- Set Up a Continuous Integration Build in Visual Studio
• MSBuild with Cruise Control .NET
• Being Mark Cohen » Cruise Control .net with Subversion

Thanks to Martín Salías and Ezequiel Glinsky for letting us participate in this event.

thanks,
~johnny

Subversion authenticating against Windows Active Directory seems fairly complex from the perspective that there’s no documentation available. The existing information relates to authenticating Apache running on Windows against Active Directory.

After a couple of days nightmare/research we came up with this how-to that will provide the basis and the steps needed to authenticate against AD. We recommend you to read the “SVN Book” (Version Control with Subversion, Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, C. Michael Pilato), to download the book go this website.

What is Subversion?

Subversion is a versioning system, which allows you to store a development filetree in a “repository”, keeps track of edits made to the files, and allows those edits to be rolled back if necessary.

Software Installation

Before we begin please make sure that you’ve the following packages installed on your computer: apache2, apache2-prefork, apache2-doc, libapr1, libapr-util1, neon, subversion, subversion-server, subversion-docs, pam_ldap.

Once you’ve the required packages installed you should be able to configure apache to load the required modules.

(su) a2enmod dav #enables DAV in apache2
(su) a2enmod dav_svn #enables DAV access to SVN filesystem
(su) a2enmod ldap #loads the base library for ldap modules
(su) a2enmod authzn_ldap #this is the apache 2.2.4 module for ldap authentication
(su) a2enmod authz_svn #enabled file-based access to svn repository

NOTE: Consider that this configuration is valid only for Apache 2.2.x installation, previous versions of apache don’t have the authzn_ldap module.

Configuration

The configuration suggested by most of the svn books/posts sets up individual repositories for each file tree. But since each one requires it’s own site on Apache, the administration could become a nightmare if you’re creating/adding repositories all the time. Instead, the approach proposed on this post sets up a parent repository that works as a container for all the child repositories.

Configure the parent repository

Using the vi text-editor run the following command:

(su) vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/subversion.conf

You should edit the configuration to read the following

        DAV svn
        #Configures the location of the parent repositories (repo container)
        SVNParentPath /srv/svn/repositories/
        #This flag allows you to navigate via http the existing repos on the container
        SVNListParentPath on

If you don’t include the SVNListParentPath on the configuration you’ll get a Http 403.3 forbidden error.

Now let’s configure the repository-container folder on the file system.

mkdir -p /srv/svn/repositories/

Restart apache

(su) rcapache2 restart

Now you should be able to navigate your subversion by entering the address on the web-browser (http://localhost/repositories), and your browser should display something like this:

Setting up your first repository

Let’s create a repository using the command-line tools provided as part of subversion-server package

#This command creates the SVN repository and all its required assets
(su) svnadmin create /srv/svn/repositories/myRepository
#This command gives permissions to the apache worker process
(su) chown -R wwwrun:www /srv/svn/repositories/myRepository/{dav,db,locks}

Here we’re setting up a repository called myRepository, you should see your repository on your web browser and also you should be able to navigate it on the web browser by entering the http://localhost/repositories/myRepository/ url.

(The repository under it’s parent repository)

(Inside the recently created repository)

Further on this post, we’ll go thru the common operations that you can perform on the repositories. Because the main focus of this post is the AD (W2K3) integration, let’s see how to secure the repository.

Securing the repository

Authentication against Active Directory seems to be hard, mostly if you research on the web since most of available information is related to the older module authz_ldap that is not compatible with the 2.2.x version of the Apache.

First of all you should turn off the referrals for the pam_ldap module, because there’s a problem when using Active Directory so you need to turn them off. Edit your /etc/ldap.conf  using a text-editor, and on the first line add:

   1: REFERRALS off

Now you are able to add the LDAP configuration directives to the recently created Apache Configuration. What we found useful is to test the Active Directory connection by using ADSIEdit or you can use this Applet Java LDAP Browser to test the Active Directory lookup information. We strongly recommend you to create a new user to query Active Directory.

Since the Authentication process on LDAP has to phases you should bind an account that performs the query (AD needs to be queried by a AD valid user). Said this, let’s modify the apache configuration to be authenticate with AD.

To open the Apache configuration use this command:

(su) vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/subversion.conf

Then your configuration should look like this:

        DAV svn
        #Configures the location of the parent repositories (repo container)
        SVNParentPath /srv/svn/repositories/
        #This flag allows you to navigate via http the existing repos on the container
        SVNListParentPath on

        #Everything below this line is related to LDAP configuration
        #This sets the AuthProvider to be the ldap provider
        AuthBasicProvider ldap
        #Sets that the authentication type is basic (username & password)
        AuthType Basic
        #This flag indicates that the authentication process continues bubbling up
        AuthzLDAPAuthoritative off
        #This is the message that will be displayed to the users when prompting for
        #for credentials 
        AuthName “My Subversion server”
        #This is the search path for the AD (we’ll explain this later)
        AuthLDAPURL “ldap://directory.example.com:389/
DC=example,DC=com?sAMAccountName?sub?(objectClass=*)” NONE
        #This is the DN of the user performing the query (this could be also a
        #UPN: user@domain)
        AuthLDAPBindDN “CN=apache,CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com”
        #This is the password for the user performing the query
        AuthLDAPBindPassword hackme

        #This flag indicates that only authenticated users can access this repos.
        require valid-user

The AuthLDAPURL indicates the search path where authnz_ldap Apache module will look for the user name, the ?sAMAccountName indicates that the username should match the value of that property for the user on AD. ?sub indicates that the search should be performed recursively. Finally, (objectClass=*) indicates that the object type could be any (I play safe and choose to do objectClass=*).

Now you should be able to navigate, but it’ll prompt you for your domain credentials

IMPORTANT: Since the sAMAccountName doesn’t include the domain name, avoid to user the form DOMAINNAME\user, just enter your user name.

Configuring Authorization Policies

For authorization we’re going to use the authz_svn Apache module, the authorization will be based on a text file, using the domain user name to establish policies or we can use custom groups either.

Configuring Apache to use authz_svn

In order to use the authz_svn module we should open the Apache configuration by doing

(su) vi /etc/apache2/conf.d/subversion.conf

Now we should configure the Apache to use a file for authorization policies definition, so the configuration should look like this

        DAV svn
        #Configures the location of the parent repositories (repo container)
        SVNParentPath /srv/svn/repositories/
        #This flag allows you to navigate via http the existing repos on the container
        SVNListParentPath on

        #Everything below this line is related to LDAP configuration
        #This sets the AuthProvider to be the ldap provider
        AuthBasicProvider ldap
        #Sets that the authentication type is basic (username & password)
        AuthType Basic
        #This flag indicates that the authentication process continues bubbling up
        AuthzLDAPAuthoritative off
        #This is the message that will be displayed to the users when prompting for
        #for credentials 
        AuthName “My Subversion server”
        #This is the search path for the AD (we’ll explain this later)
        AuthLDAPURL “ldap://directory.example.com:389/
DC=example,DC=com?sAMAccountName?sub?(objectClass=*)” NONE
        #This is the DN of the user performing the query (this could be also a
        #UPN: user@domain)
        AuthLDAPBindDN “CN=apache,CN=Users,DC=example,DC=com”
        #This is the password for the user performing the query
        AuthLDAPBindPassword hackme

        #This flag indicates that only authenticated users can access this repos.
        require valid-user

        #This is the configuration for Authorization
        #The following directive defines the file used as AuthZ policies store
        AuthzSVNAccessFile /srv/svn/user_access/authz_policies

Now we should create the file that defines the policies

(su) vi /srv/svn/user_access/authz_policies

The internal file structure is similar to a .ini file, below you will find a sample of how it looks like and then we’ll go section by section explaining it’s meaning

[groups]
administrators = user, user2

[myRepository:/]
@administrators = rw
sally = r
bob =

The [groups] section

Defines a group. The comma separated values are usernames, remember that since we have configured the integrated authentication the username should be a domain username.

The [myRepository:/] section

Defines permissions for a repository. The form is [respositoryName:path], the path is used when more granular permissions are desired (e.g. permissions for an specific branch or feature).

@administrators: indicates that the permissions are assigned to a group.
sally= indicates that the permissions are only assigned to user sally.

Values for the permissions

NOTE: When a user or group is not mentioned below a repository section it won’t get access of any type.

Further Reading

These are useful links that helped when doing this:

• http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/~gawor/ldap/applet/applet.html
• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_authnz_ldap.html
• http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.serverconfig.httpd.html
• http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/apachead.htm

thanks,
~johnny

I’m proud to announce that we have helped Microsoft Architecture Strategy Team shipping another version of LitwareHR. These are (among others) the enhancements done for this new version of LitwareHR:

· Platform upgrade. Updated LitwareHR v2.0 to run on Windows Sever 2008 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (Beta 2). This included leveraging new technologies like Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (ADSLDS), new management APIs and IIS7.

· Performance. We did performance assessment work for Multi Tenant Database design, the outcome of this research is reflected on a new asset called Multi Tenant Database Guide. Based on this assessment we have updated LitwareHR data access code to enhance its performance.

· Services Enhancements. Created new services leveraging Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 features as RSS & REST.

· SilverLight Streaming mash-up. We did a mash-up with LitwareHR and Silverlight Streaming Services that allows candidate evaluation screen to display a video submitted by the applicant.

· Automated Deployment. Moved from the old document  + readme + bunch of scripts approach to a new one including dependency checking and automated configuration.

· Smart Client Application. We included a WPF application that shows how to consume LitwareHR services from an external application. Also shows offline capabilities.

Gadget. We extended the UX of Litware up to the candidate desktop with two gadgets: one for Fabrikam and one for Contoso.

So now go and grab the bits:

http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=LitwareHR&ReleaseId=8439

thanks,
~johnny

We’ve finally released the Patterns & Practices Repository Factory. This release contains the source code at the completion of the patterns & practices work on this project. As we said before now the destiny it’s on your hands.

The work done includes:

• Independent of Service Factory tree
• Generic code has been moved into a separate assembly instead of being generated every time
• Generated code has been placed in different folders to keep the underlying goop out of the way
• Interfaces are generated for the repositories, so you can provide multiple implementations of the repository
• Auto-mapping of entity fields and stored proc parameters
• Recipe inputs are stored across runs so you don’t have to reenter everything every time you run
• New, easier to use and understand UI screens

and many other additions…

Requirements

To compile this package, you need:

• Visual Studio 2005
• GAT and GAX July 2007 CTP

The package will also compile and run with the earlier GAX Feburary 2007 CTP.

If you wish to compile and run the unit test projects, you’ll need Visual Studio Team Test, Team Developer, or Team Suite editions.

Compilation and installation

Open the DataAccess Guidance Package.sln file and compile.
The easiest way to install the package is to compile the setup project and run the resulting MSI. The guidance package requires a registry key in order to find various support DLL’s needed at runtime. The MSI will create this key for you.

If you wish to manually register and use the guidance package, this registry key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\patterns & practices\Repository Factory

Create a string value named "EntlibBinaryPath" and point it at a directory that contains the following DLLs:

• Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.dll (available in Entlib 3.1 and included in the Lib folder in the drop)
• Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.dll (available in Entlib 3.1 and included in the Lib folder in the drop)
• Microsoft.Practices.ObjectBuilder.dll (available in Entlib 3.1 and included in the Lib folder in the drop)
• Microsoft.Practices.RecipeFramework.Extensions.dll (Included in the Lib folder in the drop)
• Microsoft.Practices.Repository.dll (compile from source)
• Microsoft.Practices.RepositoryFactory.SchemaDiscovery.dll (compile from source)
• You can get both (supported release code and/or Msi) go to: http://www.codeplex.com/RepositoryFactory/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=7429

thanks,
~johnny

Hi! First of all I want to recognize my fault since the last two weeks I didn’t made my weekly-post. I’ve been very busy completing the remaining stuff from Repository Factory. That mostly includes the rework of the Create Repository recipe.

Now it’s a wizard!

As you might know our core in this factory was the generation of Repositories, Chris figured out that it was too hard to do (as it was designed). So we’ve converted the addition of operations to the repository from an ugly screen to a wizard.

Operation detail

Improved parameter mapping

Summary

I’d like to close this post saying thank you. All the improvements done in this project have been community-driven. As I insisted in all the posts about the Repository Factory, the community managed the course of the actions by prioritizing, voting, providing feedback, and reading these posts. Now it’s our call to action: Wanted- Project coordinator and members. Yes, now you have the opportunity to be a developer for this factory!.

From my side I want to thank the community members like BennyXNO and David Hayden whose continuous feedback help us a lot while doing the factory. I’m really happy to work with Chris Tavares who is a great developer and was a great Project Manager.

thanks,
~johnny

As I promised when we launch this project, I’m reporting each week the progress that we’ve accomplished in the past week.  This week has been mostly QA and a highly valuable improvement.

Improved wizard reentrancy

Last week we’ve accomplished wizard reentrancy for Create repository recipe, but we had a bug where we’re not persisting the Identity for each operation (when it applies). Now we’ve added the Identity to the recipe state file as depicted below.

Fixed mapping duplication

When you had a stored procedure that uses a parameter and it’s also included on the as ReturnValue it appear twice in the mappings. Now we’ve fixed this by adding the parameter direction on the recipe state file. How now a parameter looks like

<parameter propertyName=”Name” parameterName=”pty_Name” parameterDirection=”6″ />

Enabled recipes to run on IIS hosted project 

We’ve done a small fix to the GetConfigurationAction that allows you to run the recipes that uses configuration file on web sites that are not on File-System.

Place generated code on folders by entity

This was the major improvement for this week. Previously when you generated a repository, all the files that comes along with it where added to the root of the Data Access Project.  Chris figured out that once we’ve the RepositoryFactory.Create you no longer needed to be aware of those file and generated repository implementation neither. Now this is how your data access project will look like.

This improvement has a couple of benefits:

1. If you want to get rid of the generated code and maintain just the interface, now you just have to remove the {EntityName}RepositoryArtifacts folder.
2. All the generated code is encapsulated in a single folder, so you don’t have to be aware of how many files and the implementation details since you’re relying on the factory.
3. In addition to the RepositoryFactory.Create() this will keep your projects not aware of where the generated files are.

Finally, if you use the generated stuff as showed below, you’ll just have to include a Using to DataAccessProjectNamespace.

using ClassLibrary17;
using Microsoft.Practices.Repository;

public static class Class1
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        IPersonRepository repository =
                                RepositoryFactory.Create();
    }
}

This week we’re probably tackling the rework of the UI. We want to make the factory more usable, since we consider the usability as a core part for software factories.

Summary

We finished another week, all the tackled issues were not invented by us, they are community requests. We’re listening to you, please feel free to provide feedback in our community site. We work on the improvements starting with highly ranked ones, you have a chance to influence the course of the project.

thanks,
~johnny

Another report of Repository Factory from the trenches. Now we’ve completed the week of work. In addition to what we’ve done last week this is the report of the stuff completed during this second week.

As I  told you on previous posts this project is community oriented, you can decide what we should do during next week. How? Enter our community site and keep voting for your favorite issues.

Repository Class improvements

Our previously generated repository used to have the databaseName field on its declaration, that field is no needed since it’s declared on base class (Repository). In addition we’ve updated the Repository class to allow you instantiate a repository using the default database declared on the config file.

public class PersonRepository : Repository, IPersonRepository
{
    // This field has been removed.
    private string databaseName;

    public PersonRepository(string databaseName) : base(databaseName) {}

    // Added c’tor overload that allows you the usage of defaultDatabase
    // declaration used by Enterprise Library DAAB.
    public PersonRepository() : base() {}
}

Enterprise Library default database configuration, it’s done by adding this line to your config file.

<dataConfiguration defaultDatabase=”myConnectionString” />

In addition to the changes done to the Repository class and T4 template, we’ve modified the RepositoryFactory class allowing you to instantiate a repository without connection name.

public static class RepositoryFactory
{
    // These are the added overloads that allows you 
    // the instantiation of the repository class without 
    // passing the connection string name.   
    public static T Create();

    public static object Create(Type repositoryInterface);
}

Combining that configuration line and the improvements done this week, now you’re allowed to use the RepositoryFactory in this way

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    IPersonRepository repository =
                        RepositoryFactory.Create();
}

Configuration issue fixed

We’ve modified the way the recipe edits the configuration file and appends the repository mapping information. More information can be found in the following snippet I took out from the code.

[FILE: SetRepositoryMappingAction.cs]

public override void Execute()
{
    // We’re using XML in this action because there’s a 
    // dll issue with Guidance Package and the target project.
    // They’re referencing the same assembly but in different
    // locations and that generates that runtime errors.
    XmlDocument document = new XmlDocument();
    document.Load(configuration.FilePath);
    EnsureConfigurationSectionDeclarationExists(“repositoryFactory”,
                                       Resources.RepositoryFactorySectionDeclaration);

    XmlNode repositoryFactorySection = GetOrCreateConfigurationSection
                                                            (“repositoryFactory”);

    AddRepositoryMappings(repositoryFactorySection, document);

    document.Save(configuration.FilePath);
}

Create Repository wizard reentrancy

One of the most voted issues on our community site was giving the “Create repository recipe”  the ability to store the operations and mappings selected the last time you’ve used it to create a repository for a given entity. I’ll show this new improvement with a sample.

The wizard page

On this page you’ve to specify the operations you want to generate in your repository class, the improvement we’ve done allows you to store this information as metadata on a rcpState file.

The generated recipe state file

The recipe state file is an Xml file that stores the information of the operations you’ve chosen to generate the repository. The structure is depicted on the snippet bellow

<repositoryInformation>
    <repositoryMetadata name=”Person”>
        <operation operationName=”DeletePerson”
                   hasInputParameters=”True”
                   procedure=”DeletePerson”
                   operationType=”DeleteOne” />
    </repositoryMetadata>
</repositoryInformation>

Finally the Xml is stored on the solution folder, with the solution name and rcpstate extension.

Documentation

We have added the ///XMLDoc to all of the types existing on the Microsoft.Practices.Repository.

Summary

We finished another week, all the tackled issues were not invented by us, they are community requests. We’re listening to you, please feel free to provide feedback in our community site. We work on the improvements starting with highly ranked ones, you have a chance to influence the course of the project.

Also we’ve dropped our first CTP that you can find as source code release here.

thanks,
~johnny

We've completed the first week working on the Repository Factory project. As I mentioned on a previous post, Chris Tavares and I are working on this amazing project.
I'd like to share with you the improvements we've done during this week, and remember that your vote decides the future of the project. Enter codeplex and keep voting, we're tackling most voted stuff.

GAT/GAX July 2007 Support

We have migrated the guidance package to GAT/GAX July 2007 CTP. More about GAT/GAX 2007 migration can be found here.

Service Factory independent

We've removed all the dependencies to Microsoft Patterns & Practices Service Factory, so you can run the package without the necessity of having the Service Factory installed.

Place generic code into its own DLL

As you might recall the formerly Data Access Guidance Package generated a folder called generic on your Data Access Project. The intent of that was having base-classes for the repository assets. But that code was always the same, so we moved that code a new assembly called Microsoft.Practices.Repository. This new assembly contains the generic code, making your DAC projects are smaller, and easy to maintain.

Generate interface for Repository

Let's explain this point with little bit of code. Suppose that we've a presenter class, that uses the repository, and we want to use IoC pattern. Our code should look like this:

public class Presenter
{
     public Presenter(Repository repository)
     {
        //TODO: Add some constructor logic here
     }
}

Since we're sticking to the concrete repository implementation, we won't be able to mock the repository implementation, when we want to write a unit test. Ok, you might be thinking that you can easily do Right Click -> Extract Interface, we knew that but better than using the refactoring tools we're doing it for you. Both repository and interface are generated by Repository Factory. e.g.

//The interface generated by RF
public interface IMyRepository
{
     void Add(MyEntity entity);
}

//The concrete class
public class Repository : IMyRepository
{
       public void Add(MyEntity entity)
       {
       }
}

Create factory to retrieve repositories

Based on the previously explained improvement (Generate Interface for Repository), we've created a RepositoryFactory (besides the GP, a class) that you can use on your code to insulate callers from the concrete repository implementation. Based on this you can write code to retrieve the repository by it's interface and then you can change the implementation by modifying the config file.

Usage

public void SomeMethod()
{
      IPersonRepository repository =
                RepositoryFactory.Create(connectionString);
}

On the config file you'll have something like this

<repositoryFactory>
      <repositories>
             <add repositoryInterface=”IMyRepository, MyAssembly”
                  repositoryType=”MyRepository, MyAssembly” />
      </repositories>
</repositoryFactory>

Auto-map entity fields to Stored Procedure parameters

Sometimes you'll have to add an operation to your repository that is more than just a single CRUD operation. Previously when you needed to create this operation you had to map the input/output parameters and return values from to entity fields. Now we've improved this by automating the mapping. It's a little bit smarter than just mapping Name -> sProcName, it performs the mapping ignoring case and removing “pty_” (and other suffixes).

Summary

We finished this first week, all the tackled issues were not invented by us, they are community requests. We're listening to you, please feel free to provide feedback in our community site. We work on the improvements starting with highly ranked ones, you have a chance to influence the course of the project.

We're going to be delivering a CTP version soon! So stay tuned…

thanks,
~johnny

PS. Acknowledgements

I want to thank Paulo who gave my blog the new head-wash, he is a really creative person, don't forget to check out his blog…

Today Chris Tavares and I started working on the Repository Factory. This is a guidance package that automates creation of entity classes that map to database tables and repository classes to read and write those entity classes. The generated code removes the tedium task of creating a persistence-ignorant domain model.

This package was originally shipped with the Web Service Software Factory as “Data Access Guidance Package”. But we saw that Data Access is a much larger problem space than just services. The source code of the current Guidance Package is available on CodePlex website www.codeplex.com/RepositoryFactory.

On CodePlex web site you’ll find the list of work items we’ve identified and also some community added. If you’ve got a suggestion or want something to be in the Guidance Package, enter our CodePlex site and vote for your favorite work item.

FAQ

Q: Is this another ORM?
A: No, this package is intended to be a light-weight code generator that automates most of the tasks needed to generate a domain model object and persist them to data base.

Q: Does this project has defined scope and a road map?
A: No, although we have a set of planned updates, once they’re competed where going to release the package to the community to drive and develop. Your welcome to participate, for more info visit Contributing Repository Factory

Q: Do I need the Web Service Factory to use this package?
A: No, you’ll be able to generate repositories to whatever type of application you’re building.

Q: Should I wait to your last release to use it?
A: Definitely no, each time we check-in something new it will be related to an issue/feature/enhancement, so you’ll be able to download the code and start using it.

Q: Which is the first thing you’ll get done?
A:  We’re currently working on the package independence and isolation from the Web Service Software Factory.Also the factory generates a bunch of generic classes along with the repository, now they’re going to be placed in a separated dll and referenced from the project. The result: a cleaner repository project, and removed the duplication of code when you have more than one repository project.

Stay tuned, at the end of each week I’ll try to post what are the enhancements we’ve done.

thanks,
~johnny

Acropolis is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications. Acropolis is part of the “.NET Client Futures” wave of releases, our preview of upcoming technologies for Windows client development.

Acropolis builds on the rich capabilities of Microsoft Windows and the .NET Framework, including Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), by providing tools and pre-built components that help developers quickly assemble applications from loosely-coupled parts and services. With Acropolis you will be able to:

• Quickly create WPF enabled user experiences for your client applications.
• Build client applications from reusable, connectable, modules that allow you to easily create complex, business-focused applications in less time.
• Integrate and host your modules in applications such as Microsoft Office, or quickly build stand-alone client interfaces.
• Change the look and feel of your application quickly using built-in themes, or custom designs using XAML.
• Add features such as workflow navigation and user-specific views with minimal coding.
• Manage, update, and deploy your application modules quickly and easily.

If you read the description above it seems to be very similar to Smart Client Software Factory. What's the relationship between them, how does the future of SCSF looks like? If you have this questions, your planning to use SCSF or you are using SCSF check out this post on Glenn's Block (P&P Product Planner) about P&P, SCSF & Acropolis.

If you wanna play around with Acropolis bits download them from here. For a preview of Acropolis and to get involved I recommend you this video Getting started with code-name “Acropolis”.

thanks,
~johnny