Chapter 3. Creating a Service-Oriented Application

For the purpose of this book I could have used a simple "Hello World" type application that demonstrated Software Configuration Management with Visual SourceSafe 2005 and Visual Studio .NET 2005. However, I felt the need to give you as much value as possible, given the fact that the development process of building software is rarely so trivial and easy.

So, let's take a more realistic software development scenario. What I am going to build is a room-reservation system for the newly launched Orbital Hotel. As you well know, this is the very first space building, after the International Space Station, used for tourism, allowing people to enjoy a view of our blue planet and stars from their private rooms. OK, OK, the Orbital Hotel doesn't yet exist, but when it does, it must have a room reservation system anyway. Who knows, it might be this one.

I will build a prototype for a hotel reservation system outlining the way Software Configuration Management makes the job easier. Don't worry if you are not fully familiar with the technologies used. The purpose of this application is purely for reference, so you can sit back and relax.

At this point I will use my time machine and get a screenshot for the final application so you can see how it will look like. Or, I can insert the screenshot after it finished. I think the first way seems more reasonable. This is what the public reservation site looks like:

If you like it, you can download the application from the book's website: http://orbitalhotel.alexandruserban.com.

Now let's get back to our time and start the development lifecycle on the Orbital Hotel product. The first phase is the specifications phase.