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Showing posts from November, 2007

Web and Enterprise 2.0

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Y esterday LEAP 2008 Master classes in Holland ended. Next stop will be Redmond in January 2008. I liked this last master class around the knowledge worker, new way of work and collaboration. I heard some new terminology like enterprise 2.0. So I wondered what that is. So I used a web 2.0 technology like wiki, in this case Wikipedia to look it up. So I found this: Enterprise 2.0 is a new enterprising environment which can be differentiated from traditional Enterprise (say, enterprise 1.0). The new enterprising environment use social software in "enterprise" (business) contexts. It includes social and networked modifications to company intranets and other classic software platforms used by large companies to organize their communication. In contrast to traditional enterprise software, which imposes structure prior to use, this generation of software tends to encourage use prior to providing structure. Aha social software to let people like you and me interact and share data wi

SOA with BizTalk

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W ell as you all will know is that basic components in a SOA are services that provide a service. Other components in my humble view are orchestration (composition of services) and a communication infrastructure to provide in messaging between services. Optional components like Business Activity Monitoring, Business Intelligence, Business Rule Evaluators or Security and so can provide in more desirable or needed functionality given specific situations. Services are building blocks of a SOA and provide a specific predetermined function that adheres to open standards like WS-*, which dictates what service requirements are in case of interoperability, protocol and message format. Orchestration is a composition of services to create a new set of functionality. This is not just a gathering of two or more services, but adding logic to for instance validate if services can be called to do work. Processes are in fact orchestrations and are not the same as service composition. Services commu

Last Master class Leap : Knowledge Worker

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This week the last LEAP master class in Holland, before all LEAP attendees will go to Microsoft campus in Redmond for the final master classes. Coming master class is about the knowledge worker, hot topic. People Ready Business From day one Microsoft has put the user, the people at the center of IT. More specifically software is supposed to support people in garner insight, make decisions, close deals, invent new products or services and find new efficiencies. It is people, not systems that do these things within companies. Information around Microsoft’s vision can be found at their site and in this whitepaper . New World of Work Microsoft translates upcoming trends that influence the way we conduct our work – the vision part – into software strategies that help people cope with these trends – the strategy part. In the new world of work two subjects will become apparent: Enterprise Information Management and Unified Communication . Related subjects like collaboration , enterprise c

Buzz Words

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Two weeks ago the Microsoft SOA and BP Conference took place in Redmond. During this Conference a lot of buzz words and concepts were spread around. A couple of speakers from this Conference have done an interview one can find at channel 9 , where they explain a couple of these words and concepts like SOA, Software as a service, Sofware + services, Enterprise Service Bus, Internet Service Bus, BizTalk Services are explained. Technorati: SOA SaaS Software and services Internet Service Bus BizTalk Services

New Visual Studio Mangazine Site Online

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I have been a subscriber for a long time now for Visual Studio Magazine, even when they were Visual Basic Programmers Journal. In March I visited VSLive in San Francisco, where I had the pleasure to meet Patrick Meader the Editor in Chief. The Magazine is all around Visual Studio .NET and related technologies. So if you have not heard of this magazine. Check it out or go to their site . Technorati: Visual Studio Magazine VSLive

Everything you want to know about Microsoft OSLO and beyond

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T oday I got an email from Enterprise Architect Insight with yet another article around Microsoft’s OSLO. Since its announcement it has gotten a lot of attention and will have in the near future. So where can you find this information and buzz about OSLO. Well here is a list if you like to let you consume al this information: Microsoft Directions PDF by Rob Helm; Microsoft's Oslo: Putting SOA on the Map by John K. Waters; Microsoft Oslo: now where have I heard this before? by Tim Anderson ; Microsoft Roadmap Leads to ‘OSLO’ by Stuart J.Johnston; OSLO: Microsoft Get it but Hurry ! by Jean-Jacques Dubray; Microsoft’s OSLO: What is the fuss all about? By Christian Weyer ; OSLO Announcement by Tim Rayburn ; Microsoft announces major SOA initiative and a whole new wave of innovation by Brian Loesgen ; Microsoft’s OSLO Vision : Windows Becomes A Platform for Heterogenous SOA by Charles babock. Also take a look at Microsoft’s new SOA Portal, here you also will find info about OSLO. A

Microsoft SOA and Business Process Conference 2007 Recap

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I am home after a good week of conference in Redmond and some sightseeing. This year’s Microsoft and BP Conference was a good one with a focus on BizTalk, but more on SOA itself like Governance, Business & IT agility, Anti-Patterns and business cases. Conference kicked off with keynote session, where OSLO was announced. Since it was announced a lot of attention in blogosphere was noticeable. I attended a lot of session during the conference and here is an overview of them: * Increasing Business & IT agility with SOA & Microsoft – Kris Horrocks (Microsoft) * Flexible Governance Infrastructure – Frank Martinez ( SOA Software ) * BizTalk Adapters for WCF: Deep Dive – Aaron Skonnard (Pluralsight) * Best Practices for Creating Composite Activities – Matt Milner (Pluralsight) * Service Virtualization with .NET & BizTalk Server – William Oellerman, Raul Camacho (Microsoft) * How everyone should test their BizTalk based solutions – Darren Jefford (Microsoft) * Connections

Final day Microsoft SOA and BP Conference 2007

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Last day here at the Microsoft SOA and BP Conference in Redmond I attended Modeling & Composition of Applications by Steve Swartz & Clemens Vasters. It was a cool session and there demo was great. It will be available later this year on their blogs (probably Clemens ). They will also release a white paper about this topic. Next session BizTalk Advanced Orchestration Concepts and best practices Stephen W. Thomas. This session was almost the same as done on Tech-Ed 2007 and can be downloaded . Last session I attended was building solutions with the Microsoft ESB guidance by Marty Wasznicky. Objectives and takeaways were like why and what of an ESB, guidance capabilities, scatter-gather, exception management framework and custom handlers and policy driven invocation. A couple things were the same as session yesterday. It was a fun last day which I spend mostly with a Dutch partner in crime Wouter Crooy from Macaw. Technorati: Microsoft SOA and BPM Conference 2007 SOA Microsoft

SOA Anti-Patterns

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Final session of today is about identifying and avoiding common anti-patterns in your service oriented architecture solution. It is presented by John Callaway (Quicklearn). Agenda Anti-patterns defined Common anti-patterns and solutions Patterns A pattern is something which is documented to a common problem that produces beneficial results, there everywhere and SO ones adhere to tenets of Service Orientation. The tenets are all to known by now everybody in world who knows Service Orientation (explicit, autonomous, policy, share schema and contract). Core SO Patterns Share reuse assets Share representations of core entities and types Consolidate function and data Conform to standards Separation of concerns between system aspects Anti-Pattern A pattern design that may appear to be beneficial, but ultimately is detrimental Identify SO can be best de done by defining what are not best practices..and avoid them Quote Michelangelo : When I look at a slab of marble I see the statue that was t

Microsoft ESB

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One of the last talks today at Microsoft SOA and BP Conference I attended is one from Marty Waszinicky about the architecture of the Microsoft ESB . Session objectives and takeaways are • Why what of an ESB (SOA Terminology) • Microsoft ESB guidance capabilities (messaging infrastructure, End point management, Operational Support, Invocation patterns) • Governed service platform with ESB guidance and SOA Governance vendors • Installing the ESB guidance (Demo) • Running the samples (Demo) • Using the ESB Management Portal • What’s NEXT Version one of Microsoft ESB will come soon (final version). Technorati: Microsoft ESB BizTalk 2006 R2

Building Workflow Powered Services

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This afternoon I attended the ‘Building Workflow Powered Services in .NET 3.5’ talk by Matt Winkler . He talked about WF,WCF combination, why combining them, the architecture Workflow Services, when/how to do combinations, implicit/explicit context management, and messaging patterns and application protocols implemented workflow services. There is a video on channel 9 where a demo of combining WF and WCF can be found. There is also one building WCF Services with WF Technorati: WCF WF Workflow Services Matt Winkler

Robust Error Handling in BizTalk Server Solutions

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Third day of Microsoft SOA and BP Conference stared off for me with a session about robust error handling for BizTalk Server solutions by Matt Meleski. He did a general discussion first before he started some demos around error handling relying on Message Box and BizTalk framework or failed message routing to file share or SharePoint. These first demos involved error handling in BizTalk server solutions were errors could occur in places like receive location, receive pipeline, messaging failures, maps, send pipeline, send adapter. Errors were handled by using MOM or failed message routing. Last demo he did were around errors occurring inside an orchestration and handled through compensation or scopes. Why should there be error handling inside a BizTalk Server solution, because it is something that cannot be ignored and should be planned up front. There are some resources out there in the world to achieve robust error handling like tools , books , sites and blogs . Technorati: BizTalk