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Showing posts from September, 2008

Microsoft SOA and BPM Conference 2009

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Yesterday I attended BTUG Meeting at ATOS Origin Utrecht. At end of this meeting some announcements were made about next BizTalk Server Release and that next SOA & BPM Conference will be held not this year, but January 2009. Exact dates were mentioned as well 26-29 of January. Fact that it will not be held end of this year is probably due to PDC 08, where some BizTalk related things will be announced like OSLO. Venue will be same at Microsoft campus in Redmond. Technorati: Microsoft SOA and BPM Conference

BAM Training Kit

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Microsoft recently added a training kit for Business Activity Monitoring. I downloaded the kit and installed it on my BizTalk 2006 R2. This kit kit contains an overview of the BAM feature ("BAM Training.doc"), a BAM solution sample ("BAM Training_Hands-On Exercises.doc"), sample code files to use with the sample solution ("BAM Training_Lab Files" folder), and a PowerPoint slide deck to use in an instructor-led setting ("BAM Training_Instructor Slide Deck.ppt"). Before running the kit I checked if BAM was properly configured in this environment, which was not the case. After I configured BAM I ran the executable, which contains a sample called ‘OrderProcess’ solution and msi. I imported this msi file inside BizTalk Administration console. The solution contains one orchestration visualized below. After running msi I fired up BAM portal to check if everything is working properly, which was the case. I then deployed BAM definition file (saving Order

Dutch BTUG Meeting

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I sometimes see posts of BizTalk User Group Meetings taking place in other parts of the world than where I live in the Netherlands. Coming Monday there will be one BizTalk User Group Meeting (part of BTUG world wide, dutch chapter) too at ATOS Origin in Utrecht. Following presentations will be given: * BizTalk Implementation at Kas Bank; * Experiences BizTalk at Unive (Insurance company); * Implementation of BizTalk at Oasen (Drink water company); * Covast presentation of a B2B BizTalk implementation; * Finally Microsoft will reveal some interesting developments. This will be something for Dutch BizTalk developers to look forward too. I have a chance to visit my old employer again, so some nostalgia for myself. Technorati: BizTalk Server 2006 R2 BizTalk BizTalk Server

Facebook

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I finally decided to add myself on FaceBook. Facebook is not used by many in the Netherlands, people use Hyves more. I like Facebook though and did not have a look at it before. My family in Canada already found me so I am connected to them. Also so people I know in the IT space are connected now. I also added some pictures of my children and so on. So now you can find me there too. Feel free to add me as your friend.

Some more OSLO

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Microsoft OSLO is getting more attention as PDC 2008 is approaching. In eWeek there is a new article published about 'The Origins of Microsoft's Oslo Software Modeling Platform'. Santosh Benjamin already posted some great comments on that article . But there is more look at article published on PDF zone called 'Microsoft's Oslo Helps Non-Programmers Build Data-Centric Apps', which essentially refers back to article I just mentioned. If you wondering what Don Box is doing , well he is working on Oslo. On 27 October Douglas Purdy will reveal OSLO at the PDC with his team. So there the real journey will start. There is even more posted on eWeek, Oslo: How 'Easy'is Easy? So just a few weeks before everything will be made clear to us, a lot of attention is created. In just a couple of minutes I dug this information up to see if there is some more news, information about OSLO. And that is indeed the fact, but it is not much and will just have to wait until

Asynchronous or synchronous?

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Currently I confronted with a dilemma concerning synchronous or asynchronous processing of batches. A customer I work for currently process batch in the back-end system. This customer is demanding a solution in which processing can be controlled and back-end systems are efficiently used. At the moment this not the case, systems are sometimes running idle and batch processing is done during non-working hours (17:00 – 8:00). Everything in these batches are processed at once and sometimes the batch windows is not sufficient to have everything processed, so this processed the next day. Systems are used during working hours by staff and processing during these hours interferes greatly with their work (long duration for data to pop-up their screen or transactions are not preformed). Therefore they suggested a drop wise batch processing, where processing can be controlled and preformed during day as well on moments that systems are not too busy. I suggested a solution with BizTalk, that is he

Microsoft Netherlands

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This afternoon I went to Microsoft Head Office in the Netherlands at Schiphol. It is their new Office I not yet had the chance to visit. Microsoft Netherlands held an presentation about the new way their magazine is going to be in the future. Microsoft will focus on content (articles) itself, since it is all technology and out sources the publishing aspect to Array publications that also publishes Software Release Magazine, Optimize and so on (all Dutch ICT magazines). A couple of Microsoft employees form a editorial group that will review each incoming article on its content. Layout magazine (which will be restyled ), advertisement and so on is done by Array. I met a couple of people that have written article(s) too for this magazine in the past (6 years) like myself. Some of them I met for the first time like Randal van Splunteren, Dennis Doomen and Mark Willems. Very nice professionals I had a good conversation with. I like the new environment where Microsoft is working and hosti

C# and .NET 3.5

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In light of announcement of BizTalk Server 2009 I started reading a book called C# in depth. Why? Well new version of BizTalk will support Hyper-V, Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.5, SQL 2008 and Windows Server 2008. This book is designed to bring you to a new level of programming skill, which dives deeply into key C# topics—in particular the new ones. By reading this book I hope to learn to reuse algorithms in a type-safe way with C# 2 generics and expand the functionality of existing classes and interfaces using C# 3 extension methods. The author Jon Skeet gives easy-to-follow explanations and snappy, pragmatic examples (that's what the site of manning press mentioned about the book). I also downloaded and installed VS 2008 C# Express Edition directly on my Vista OS (so now virtualization this time) to try out some samples. Beside's .NET 3.5 and C# I will have to look for some good books around SQL 2008 and Windows Server 2008 (Hyper-V). I hope by doing this trip into reading and

Workflows

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On Mike Breeze blog I noticed two posted about last TechEd08 about building RFID solutions with BizTalk and Getting Workflows Running and talking in Your Applications. First one I could not much with since I do not have an environment with BizTalk running together with RFID the another one was for me more interesting. The slide deck and code could be downloaded . I tried out the examples on my VS2008 virtual environment. The samples are around the presentation demoing different aspects of hosting and running workflows (WCF based, .NET 3.5, Tracking, FilePersistence, Obtaining Metadata etc). I downloaded the samples, unzipped them and started the solution. I did get an error concerning Microsoft Office; on this virtual machine no office was installed so that explains the error. On project called WordDesignerRehosting need Microsoft Office. I set BasicWorkflow project as startup project and started instance. I tried out sample running a toss coin. Nice, I am going to try out the other

Face lift

As some of you might have noticed I have given my blog site a new look. After almost two years of blogging I got fed up with template from blogger one can standard add. So I took the liberty of taking a new one. I have chosen the frozen-age look and changed the banner to a picture of myself taken during my stay at LEAP 2008 in Redmond. It is me with mount Rainer in the back. I also left so things behind like cloud tag, what I am consuming and most of the advertisement. Well I hope you like it, at least I do since it is more vivid in my opinion.

BizTalk 24*7 BlogDoc

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Saravana Kumar has added new functionality to BizTalk 24*7 called blogDoc , which basically a MSDN style structured grouping of BizTalk blog articles out in the public. It’s a consolidation of blog posts from different BizTalk blogs. Check it out. Technorati: biztalk

BizTalk Server 2009

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BizTalk Server 2009 is the new name instead of BizTalk Server 2006 R3. Does this mean that it will be a complete new version of the product of just an extension of BizTalk Server 2006 like R2? What can be expected from this version is : - Support for the latest Microsoft Platforms including Hyper-V Virtualization, Visual Studios 2008, .Net 3.5, SQL 2008, and Windows Server 2008. - Enhancements to SOA and Web Services, B2B Integration, and Developer Productivity. - Additional enhancements driven by customer feedback. Many people including myself have blogged about R3 or mentioned it somewhere. Steve Martin mentioned in his blog post yesterday that it will be a major version change. That is a bit different than announcement made early this year (April 2008), where the product would take advantage of 08 wave of products (OS 2008, .NET 3.5, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008) and deliver customer requested capabilities like: - New web service registry capabilities with support for UDDI

PDC 2008 I can't wait

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Today I stumbled over a blog by Marcel Fernee from Microsoft The Netherlands. I know him through projects I have done with customers and he helped me out a couple of times. I read his post about coming PDC. As a employee of Microsoft he went to their internal TechReady Conference in Seattle. He mentions that there will be a lot announcements from Microsoft. In his posts two code names where mentioned; Red Dog and Zurich. So I googled around a bit and found some information. Red Dog is a cloud utility and will be a competitor to Google's App Engine . Zurich is an initiative to extend Microsoft’s .NET application development technologies to the Internet ‘cloud'. Having read this I am really anxious to hear about during the PDC end of October. Technorati: PDC 2008

Microsoft ESB and OSLO

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Today I browse around some RSS feeds about BizTalk and came across two interesting things. First I interesting thing I found was a discussion on MSDN about ESB Guidance for BizTalk Server. I recently wrote an article together with Wouter Goedvriend about ESB Guidance package to be publish hopefully in Dutch Software Release Magazine coming fall. We posted a question: Is Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) a well known (super)pattern and if so in which scenario's does one apply it? On linked-in we got a couple of answers back. These were as follows: "My understanding of the concept of an ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) is that it is a way to bring all of the technologies within a company, entity, or enterprise together. Depending on the magnitude of what that could encompass, it *could* mean a simple product that "maps" everything together.Usually, though, it is a way -- and therefore, an architectural pattern as you stated -- to bring all of the different softwares, databa

High Performance Learning Environment for BizTalk Part IVa - Developing Solutions

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A couple of weeks ago Jean-Paul Smit released BizTalk Software Factory V1.5. I myself want to start with next part of my High Performance Learning Environment for BizTalk i.e. development. This factory is useful if you want to start developing BizTalk solutions. In a previous post I already described the previous version of the BizTalk Software Factory. This version has improved a lot and there are features in them like unit tests. Besides developing your solutions testing is very important to eventually end up with a robust solution. I downloaded new BizTalk Server Factory and installed it on my virtual machine (I first had to uninstall the previous version). I then opened up VS2005 and started a new project; type BizTalk Software Factory Solution. I created a snk file and created a BizTalk Solution with all options. I noticed that a couple of solutions were generated and even unit tests. I then found out biztunit and nunit were not properly installed or installed at all. So I had