Hammad Rajjoub - Microsoft Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook

Hammad Rajjoub works as an Architect Evangelist with Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, he was awarded Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional award, seven years in a row. Along with being an MVP he was also a Microsoft Business Platform Technology Advisor. Being an MVP in Connected Systems gave him early access to Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, as well as Windows Server AppFabric. In his previous roles he has been a CTO at a technology startup, Vice President at one of the largest financial institutions, as well as a Solutions Architect at a leading consulting company.

He has over a decade of experience using Microsoft Technologies, especially .NET since its beta 1 release. He is a published author and a frequent speaker at technology conferences (including TechEd and Cloud Computing Asia). He has founded a number of developer and architect communities over the years and remains a passionate speaker and contributor at local technical communities in Singapore. He is also an active member of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) - Singapore Chapter. His areas of interest include Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture, Design Patterns, and Quantum Computation.

At home he is a busy husband and father of twin girls and a baby boy. For more details visit his website at http://www.hammadrajjoub.net or on twitter: @hammadrajjoub.

Alhamdulillah - This work would not have been possible without the help and support from my family. Special thanks to my mother Noor and my wife Iman for being supportive and giving me time and help to complete this book.

I would also like to express my gratitude to my friend and co-author of this book, Rick Garibay, for accepting my invitation to co-author this book and sharing his feedback throughout the lifecycle of this book. Also, special thanks to Adnan Masood, Zubair Ahmed, and Alvin Lau for technically reviewing the book, providing feedback, and correcting numerous mistakes.

Last but not the least, thanks to the editorial and project team at Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to write this book, and also being patient and understanding through the process of writes, re-writes, technical edits, as well as cases of missed deadlines.

Rick G. Garibay is a developer, architect, speaker, and author on distributed technologies and is the General Manager of the national Connected Systems Practice at Neudesic. With over 13 years' experience delivering distributed solutions across industry sectors such as finance, transportation, hospitality, and gaming, he specializes in distributed technologies such as Microsoft .NET, Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation, and Windows Azure to help his clients deliver business value and drive revenue while reducing operational costs.

As a five-time Microsoft Connected Systems MVP, he is an active speaker, writer, and passionate community advocate and is the Co-Founder of the Phoenix Connected Systems User Group (pcsug.org), celebrating four years in operation. He serves as an advisor to Microsoft in a number of roles as a member of the Microsoft Application Platform Partner Advisory Council and long-time member of the Business Platform Advisors and Azure Technology Advisors groups.

Recent presentations include talks at the Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference, Microsoft TechEd, Dev Connections, .NET Rocks, Desert Code Camp, and numerous Microsoft events and user groups throughout North America. He is a frequent contributor to industry publications such as CODE Magazine and maintains a blog at http://rickgaribay.net. You can catch up with Rick on Twitter @rickggaribay.

I would like to thank my loving, patient, and amazing wife Christie for being my rock and providing a foundation which has allowed us to grow a beautiful family while enduring the sometimes overbearing demands of my career. I'm also grateful to my wonderful children, Sarah and Ricky for tolerating the many lost nights and weekends holed up in my home office working on this book.

I would also like to thank Mickey Williams, VP Technology Platform Group at Neudesic for his support in taking on this project along with his words of encouragement and (always timely) sense of humor along the way.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my friend and co-author, Hammad Rajjoub for inviting me to participate in this project and trusting me to help carry out his vision for this book. Hammad and I both share a labor of love as it applies to the Microsoft distributed technology stack affectionately (and somewhat nostalgically) known as "Connected Systems" and this book is both a reflection and an acknowledgment of the tremendous work the WCF, WF, and Dublin teams have done in putting these tremendous capabilities within reach of developers tasked with solving tough distributed challenges today.