The CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 contains key elements of the previously released Robotics Developer Studio 2008 software, including its visual programming tools, Microsoft says. According to a blog posting by Windows Embedded software architect Mike Hall (right), the CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 is "targeted at developers who are building desktop/server/embedded applications and want to to take advantages of concurrency and distribution technologies, but aren't focused on robotics."

The CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 is said to target applications that are data-driven, with a need for processing data asynchronously. Applications will consist of data-flow oriented services, composed in a loosely coupled manner either within a single node, or on heterogenous devices across the network, the company adds.

The toolkit is touted as providing the following advantages:

• Simple to integrate into asynchronous data-driven applications, with concise asynchronous code
  
• Maximizes the utilization of processing resources by automatically load-balancing across multiple cores
  
• Eliminates the complexities of manual threading, locks, and semaphores
  
• Provides a powerful in-memory message-passing architecture with powerful orchestration primitives, enabling coordination of data and work
  
• Event-based notification model provides increased efficiency in processor and network utilization
  
• Flexible failure handling and late-binding provides extra resiliency

According to Microsoft, DSS is a lightweight, .NET-based runtime environment that sits on top of the CCR, as illustrated below. DSS "provides a lightweight, state-oriented service model that combines the notion of representational state transfer (REST) with a system-level approach for building high-performance, scalable applications," the company adds.


The DSS is a lightweight runtime that sits on top of the CCR
Source: Microsoft
The DSS runtime supports service composition, publish/subscribe, lifetime-management, security, monitoring, logging, and more, says Microsoft. The company claims that services can be written either in Visual Studio, or using Microsoft Visual Programming Language (VPL). VPL (below) allows creating applications as compositions of services simply by dragging and dropping the services onto a canvas and wiring them together based on their data-dependencies, the company adds.


Microsoft's Visual Programming Language
Source: Microsoft
Microsoft notes that the CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 requires, and installs, .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and .NET Compact Framework 3.5. Application development requires desktop or server operating systems, such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008, according to the company. But, once runtimes have been created, they can be deployed on devices running Windows XP Embedded, Windows CE 5.0, or Windows CE 6.0.

Further information

Microsoft's CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 is downloadable now, priced at approximately $400 for commercial users. As part of the company's "DreamSp the company adds, though that option is still listed as "coming soon."

For further information on the CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008, including videos and case studies, see the Microsoft website, here. For the related blog posting by Mike Hall, see the Windows Embedded blog, here.

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