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Showing posts from March, 2009

Patterns, patterns, patterns

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Today I attended two architecture session at Software Development Event ( SDE ) from Software Development Network (SDN) in Driebergen (Netherlands). First session by Dennis Doomen was Design Patterns applied in the field (through experience). Perhaps you noticed that our work as a developer today is filled by so-called Design Patterns. Think of patterns such as Model-View-Presenter, Dependency Injection, Fluent Interfaces, Factories and Domain Modeling. Even Microsoft is bringing them up now with ASP.NET MVC, which means Model View Controller. If you want to know more about patterns you can the books of Eric Gamma or Martin Fowler, but chance is that you might fall asleep after the first page. In his session Dennis talks about patterns he uses in his daily job. His PowerPoint and code can be downloaded from his blog. Second session by Pieter de Bruin was around application architecture guidance. Microsoft  launched a new version of Application Architecture Guide in January: a docu

DTAP Strategy: Pricing and Licensing

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To implement BizTalk solutions it is a good practice to have an DTAP environment in place. DTAP stands for Development, Test, Acceptance and Production. Development and test environments are equal (mirrored) and same account for acceptance and production. Deploying DTAP environments is easy, because there are many factors influencing outcome of DTAP. One factor is pricing and licensing costs. BizTalk is available in different editions and since BizTalk depends on operating system and database there are some configuration options to. Here is an overview of possible configurations for DTAP environments, hence there is a nice BizTalk Feature Dependency Matrix. Besides features, there are non-functional requirements to reckon with like fail-over, availability and scalability. On Microsoft Pricing and Licensing FAQ section of BizTalk I found this on non functional side. In a large BizTalk Server 2006 R2 deployment, two key considerations ensure redundancy in all areas of the architect

Social Networking with Twitter/Yammer?

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I did some things on Twitter and Yammer (inside my company), but to be honest it does not work for me. Best social networking tool for is and will be LinkedIn. It is professional and adds value with its features. For instance asking questions or start discussion inside groups. I truly like that and it works for me. Yammer account is gone and twitter to (at least I am trying to). I will try some other time to get rid of it. I know it is an hype this kind of social networking, but not for me. I stick with LinkedIn and Facebook to stay in touch with my Canadian, English, US friends and family. Technorati: web 2.0

BizTalk Server 2009 Sandbox Installation Part II

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In past I build an VPC with trail software from Microsoft to install a BizTalk Server 2009 Beta. This time I will do it again using an Visual Studio® Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server SP1 VPC Image (Trial) from Microsoft that will expire 31 December 2009. This image contains TFS 2008 installed on Windows 2003 Server with SQL Server 2005. First on needs to do is download the image this will take some time (in my case an hour or two ). I then clicked on the self extracting en_visual_studio_team_foundation_server_2008_sp1_december2008_vpc.part0001.exe to extract three files (TFS08SP1-V7.vmc, TFS08SP1-R2.vmc, and TFS08SP1.vhd).     Next I did following steps in order: Launch the Virtual PC Console using Start|Programs|Microsoft Virtual PC. Click the New button to launch the “New Virtual Machine Wizard”. Navigate to the Options page and select "Add An existing Virtual Machine" radio button. Click the Browse button and navigate to the location you ex

Wait for BizTalk 2009? Part II

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In my previous post I asked if I should wait for 2009 or deploy an OTAP environment now. I asked this question also in Linked Groups BizTalk, BizTalk Certified Professional Group, BizTalk Professionals, and BizTalk Server Professionals. Comments where divers, but clear on whether or not to wait for BizTalk 2009. Moustafa Refaat: My opinion is not to wait. BizTalk 2006 R2 is a mature platform and already would deliver what you want except 2008 and some 64 bit functionality. So unless you are dependent on these functionalities to run on 64 bit or you can not run in 32 bit then wait for 2009. Chris Romp: I would seriously consider BTS 2009, especially if they're using Team Foundation Server to implement ALM. Overall, however, it depends on what features they'll be using, and if any of those have updated in BTS09. They won't have to wait very long; I would expect to see BTS09 released likely before they go into production. Leonid Ganeline: If these projec

BizTalk OTAP: Wait for BizTalk 2009?

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I am facing a new challenge in deploying an OTAP within two organizations or at least a case, where customer is asking itself about which version for an complete OTAP environment. Question here is should a customer wait until BizTalk 2009 is released or deploy an OTAP now based on BizTalk Server 2006 R2. In my opinion it depends on the situation the customer is in. If OTAP is necessary in a certain program, where an OTAP of BizTalk is required to continue for instance an implementation of SOA (dependency on BizTalk where progress needs to be made on complete program). In case of an green field situation or startup of a program one can wait or start with Beta (through TAP). But I also feel that there are just to many factors to determine what the best solution is: wait or deploy now and start developing solutions? Through this post I hope I will receive some comments (commenting can be done anonymous, no authentication is required), what best way to go is :) Technorati: BizTalk Server