Abstract: The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for implementing a tenant provisioning system in a multi-tenancy architecture using a single provisioning master in the architecture, and a data center provisioner in each data center in the architecture. The provisioning master receives user requests to provision a tenant of a service and routes such requests to an appropriate data center provisioner. Each service in the multi-tenancy architecture implements a common interface by which the corresponding data center provisioner can obtain a common indication of load from each different service deployed in the data center thus facilitating the selection of a scale unit on which a tenant is provisioned. The common interface also enables a service to dynamically register (i.e. without redeploying the tenant provisioning system) with the provisioning master as a multi-tenancy service by registering an endpoint address with the provisioning master.

Abstract: The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for implementing a tenant provisioning system in a multi-tenancy architecture using a single provisioning master in the architecture, and a data center provisioner in each data center in the architecture. The provisioning master receives user requests to provision a tenant of a service and routes such requests to an appropriate data center provisioner. Each service in the multi-tenancy architecture implements a common interface by which the corresponding data center provisioner can obtain a common indication of load from each different service deployed in the data center thus facilitating the selection of a scale unit on which a tenant is provisioned. The common interface also enables a service to dynamically register (i.e. without redeploying the tenant provisioning system) with the provisioning master as a multi-tenancy service by registering an endpoint address with the provisioning master.

Abstract: A distributed application deployment engine uses declarative deployment data that describes deployment characteristics for application modules, and potential target environments. The engine uses the deployment data to potentially match a module to a deployment target. At some point, the modules may then be actually deployed on the identified deployment target. This may be performed for multiple modules in the distributed application, thereby deploying the distributed application in a distributed environment.

Abstract: An interactive user interface for displaying mappings between modules of a distributed application and deployment targets in a distributed environment. The user interface represents module items, deployment target items, and correlation items that represent various mappings of module items to deployment target items. In some cases, the manner in which each of these items is displayed may be altered in response to user input. The correlation itself may also be potentially altered in response to user input. Multiple solutions may be displayed in which there are different mappings of modules to target solutions.

Abstract: The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for distributed behavior controlled execution of modeled applications. Embodiments of the invention facilitate the interoperation of a central data store along with various peer-to-peer functionalities. Thus, distributed applications can be executed in an environment that utilizes advantages of both a central data store and peer-to-peer messaging. A read-only portion of a centralized data store can be used to provide some behavior control over various processing systems during execution of a distributed software application. Thus, embodiments of the invention can be used to form a policy-driven collective of nodes forming a distributed, decentralized run-time for model-based applications. Utilizing a cooperating collective of nodes that comply with centralized polices and execute applications over a peer-to-peer fabric permits a distributed application runtime to accommodate distribution and decentralization on a large scale.

Abstract: Various technologies and techniques are disclosed that merge components on a design surface. The system receives input from a user to add components or clauses to a design surface and analyzes the components to determine if some of the components can be merged. If the system identifies components that can be merged, then the system merges the identified components to reduce the number of components present on the design surface. The system determines that some components can be merged if the components meet the same criteria, such as having components that are equivalent and that have the same number of incoming paths or the same number of outgoing paths. The system provides a visual indicator on the design surface to indicate that components are being merged. The system provides an undo feature to allow the user to undo the component merging when desired.

Abstract: Abstracting communication with a plurality of containers. Each container encapsulates or hosts a module (e.g., a web service, a database, etc.) associated with a distributed application. A meta-container communicates with drivers that interface with each of the containers. The meta-container represents an abstraction and a virtualization of the containers in the hierarchy. Each container may also be a meta-container for other containers. The recursion and layered hierarchy provide flexible, extensible, and efficient management of the distributed application.

Abstract: The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for distributed behavior controlled execution of modeled applications. Embodiments of the invention facilitate the interoperation of a central data store along with various peer-to-peer functionalities. Thus, distributed applications can be executed in an environment that utilizes advantages of both a central data store and peer-to-peer messaging. A read-only portion of a centralized data store can be used to provide some behavior control over various processing systems during execution of a distributed software application. Thus, embodiments of the invention can be used to form a policy-driven collective of nodes forming a distributed, decentralized run-time for model-based applications. Utilizing a cooperating collective of nodes that comply with centralized polices and execute applications over a peer-to-peer fabric permits a distributed application runtime to accommodate distribution and decentralization on a large scale.

Abstract: Abstracting communication with a plurality of containers. Each container encapsulates or hosts a module (e.g., a web service, a database, etc.) associated with a distributed application. A meta-container communicates with drivers that interface with each of the containers. The meta-container represents an abstraction and a virtualization of the containers in the hierarchy. Each container may also be a meta-container for other containers. The recursion and layered hierarchy provide flexible, extensible, and efficient management of the distributed application.

Abstract: A method of providing an extension mechanism to an schema editor such that custom properties may be defined for nodes within an XSD schema. The custom properties allow the schema editor to define characteristics of non-XML data within XSD schemas in a standard fashion. The XSD schemas may then be used to parse and validate instance data that is not natively in XML format, such as flat files.

Abstract: Mapping between a source object and a destination or target object uses techniques and functoids that provide an auto-linking feature in which mappings are automatically provided based solely on source and target field names, or, ignoring field names, field locations within hierarchy. Functoids provide support for callout to programming artifacts, such as custom programming logic embedded in .NET assemblies or custom XSLT, and table-looping to generate and map data into a target document even though that data did not exist in the map input.