Tailspin Travel is a sample travel booking application that was born on the stage of PDC09. It is meant to highlight some of the most exciting features of the .NET Framework 4, Visual Studio 2010, and the Windows Server AppFabric.

Technologies Included

The Tailspin Travel application covers a pretty substantial set of functionality, but ultimately seeks to provide a holistic perspective of how Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4, and the Windows Server AppFabric platform can be used together. The following is a list of the exact features that are shown in the application:

Visual Studio 2010

1. Assembly Dependency Graph
2. Multi-monitor
3. Navigate To dialogue
4. IntelliTrace
5. New WF designer
6. MSDeploy
7. Coded-UI tests

.NET Framework 4

1. ASP.NET MVC 2
2. Windows Workflow Foundation
3. Windows Communication Foundation
4. Entity Framework

Server Platform

1. Windows Server AppFabric
   1. Service Hosting
   2. Workflow Hosting
   3. Caching
   4. Monitoring
2. SQL Server Express 2008 R2
   1. DAC

System Requirements

Tailspin was built using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, and there are a few features in use in the demo that require that version (e.g. coded-UI tests). If you’re using a different SKU, you’ll still be able to run the solution, but there will be some features you won’t be able to take advantage of.

Because we consider Windows Server AppFabric a key part to the Tailspin Travel application, we also require that you have it installed. This is what enables the memory-caching, as well as the service/workflow containers, and monitoring support. Nevertheless you will be able to run the solution without having AppFabric installed.

SQL Server Express 2008 R2 is required for loading the DAC project and for storing Tailspin Travel data.