Preface

Once a small company established in 1975, Microsoft is one of the leading software companies in the world today. Over decades, Microsoft has been bringing new technologies to all of us. Some Microsoft products did not have a long life, whereas others became leading software products, supporting a vast number of solutions in the world for many years. Today, Microsoft delivers operating systems for servers, desktops, tablets, and phones. It has dozens of server products, such as SharePoint, BizTalk, Exchange, or SQL Server. It supports a powerful development framework, .NET, as well as development and testing tools. Its Visual Studio is one of the best Integrated Development Environments, and its Team Foundation Server covers all aspects of application lifecycle management. Most of us use applications from the Microsoft Office Suite, and many businesses have deployed Microsoft Dynamics solutions. To make a long story short, the world of Microsoft is huge.

How does an architect, especially a solutions architect, find his way in this world? Typically, architects want to use experience of other architects in the form of patterns and best practices. This book will help you navigate through the ocean of Microsoft technologies and provide guidance to select proper technologies for chosen patterns. We shall look at the patterns from an architect's point of view, focusing on major groups such as data exchange patterns or integration patterns.

This book has significantly changed since its first edition. First of all, it covers the changes that have happened since 2010; for example, new versions of all products, including major changes to the foundational software such as .NET and SQL Server. In addition to this, the second edition discusses .NET and SharePoint, which were not covered before. We also have added some related patterns, including presentation layer patterns.