Microsoft Recently announced version 2 of the OBA Composition Reference Toolkit. Microsoft has released a pretty intensive framework.Looks like the beginning of something big!!

Version 1 had been announced at the Office Developers Conference in San Hose in February 2008. I had the opportunity to be a part of the conference and was pretty impressed with the potential this framework provides.

 The OBA Composition Reference Toolkit or OCRT as its called seems to be targetted at Information Workers who want to explore and experiment with the potential of componentized OBAs to make a composite Business Solution by combining the potential of the component OBAs. The best part is that now these Information workers can create these solutions and even deploy them in sharepoint  at the click of a few buttons..they don't need to run to their IT departments for support.

The Set up guides and the hands on lab do a good job in explaining all the steps.Since i installed the whole system on  my box let me list down the main points of this app.I went through the source code available in the V2 to figure out some of these things..

The Installation deploys the following on your system

1. The OBA Composer:- A smart WPF application which provides an intuitive user interface to interact with the toolkit. View the sample Components installed by the system, mix and match the components to make your own OBA. Save it, deploy it in Sharepoint..view it in IE...use your OBA ..Open it..change it and deploy it again. The Composer does a good job of guiding the user as he composes the OBA. The "provisioning" as its called or deployment of the OBA is shown in a real-time updating window which shows all the components being provisioned etc

2. Provisioning Service:- This is not very evident but the its the brain of the system.Though it does look like its all "Magic" and the Composer pretty much manages to abstract the complications behind deploying Lists ,VSTOs, invoking workflows, creating databases etc just at the click of a button, the secret lies in the Provisioning Service.The Provisioning Service is a Windows service deployed on your system which does the all the magic behind the scenes and actaully deploys all the components and connects them..

3. OBA Administration:- Pages added to Application Management of your Sharepoint Central Admin to enable you to upload your own Components, set the security etc. The Components need to be created as per the Component Design and Packaging Guide listed in the documentation. As long as your components adhere to the standards mentioned there..all should be good. So you can upload the components from the Admin Pages and then use the OBA composer to mix and match with the other components to explore further possibilities

4. Source Code:- This is the best part...The  Code seems to be well written, the OBA Composer is a WPF app and seems to be making use of a lot of WPF concepts like property/data triggers, templates,control templates, run time assignment of icons to tree views, multithreading etc. Should be interesting to explore for someone who wants to see the practical use of these concepts

The data layer seems to be written in pure LINQ. Extensive use of C# 3.0 and LINQ features all through the application.

I am glad the source code is exposed. I look forward to exploring it further!!

Another useful feature was that all this information loaded into the OBA Admin pages and used in the Composer can be "Tagged" .This would help group OBAs based on the industry/domain they cater for.

If you have ever worked with OBAs(Office Business Applications) or aspire to do so, then installing this OCRT is a must for you to understand the potential of combining the potency of the different independent solutions to create a new business solution.

If you do install the OCRT, drop me a line .It would be interesting to discuss the potential and possibilities!!

Meanwhile i intend to explore the source code..esp of the Composer and see if it can help me illustrate a few nice concepts!!

Till Then!!

Anshulee