I blogged that I'm impressed by the Web Service Software Factory (WSSF) from patterns & practices and I thought that I would write a couple of blogs about it, starting with the most basic stuff; What's needed to run it?

To be able to install WSSF, the first step is to install Global Automation Extension (GAX) which you can find here. If you already have installed GAX a while ago, it might be worth knowing that patterns & practices team released a new version in February. The new version runs on Vista and also have fixed an performance issue in startup that happens when you have run a couple of recipes in a factory for a solution. Tom has more details and also writes about the pain it is to upgrade it.

I believe that most of you that chooses the WSSF path, will be making minor or even major modifications to the factory that patterns & practices delivers. To be able to make the modifications it's necessary to also install the Global Automation Toolkit (GAT) that can be downloaded from here.

When this is installed the only thing left is WSSF itself. Also notice that patterns & practices have released three other software factories: