Azure Thoughts, EAI Challenges

Most of you are familiar with the interview series by Richard Seroter . Based on this concept I want to start with a series of blog posts, in which I would like to introduce active BizTalk community members. Contrary to the interview series the focus here will be solely on BizTalk Server. It will bring several active BizTalk community members to the foreground. The first person from the BizTalk community I like to introduce is Tord Glad Nordahl , an active community personality with a strong BizTalk administrative background. He has been active on forums and TechNet Wiki for the last couple of months. I had a chat with him on his background, what kept him busy in real-life, what sports he enjoys practicing and/or watching and what he would like to say to the BizTalk community. Tord is 25 years old, has a beautiful wife Alfa, and has a lovely daughter Maribell who is nearly two years old. In June they are expecting their second child. The family lives in the rainy city of Bergen...

In this post I would like to summarize how my year 2011 went. For one it has been a very busy year. I have been writing a BizTalk Server 2010 Cookbook that due March this year. It took me more than nine months to write. I have had great support from Randal van Splunteren , Richard Seroter , Saravana Kumar , Tord Gard Nordahl , Mikael Hakansson , Sandro Perreira , Rene Brauwers and Abdul Rafay . They have supported me by reviewing it, contributions and valuable advice. That is not all I have been doing more than just writing a book. I have written 47 blog posts on this blog and some on the BizTalk Ordina blog , a lot of wiki articles , code gallery samples , articles for magazines, book reviewing, and public speaking. I enjoyed my interview with Richard Seroter during the MVP Summit and the interview about me by Ed Price. I loved the opportunity to speak at Ordina , BizTalk User Group Netherlands and Sweden: Masterclass BizTalk and AppFabric BTUG: BizTalk integration with Sale...

Last couple of week I written a few wiki article for TechNet Wiki a place, where content is generated by community about Microsoft technologies for the community. I very much like the concept and glad I was able to contribute (see my interview on Wiki). Below you will find a list of my ten completed wiki articles on BizTalk: First the featured article BizTalk Server 2010 and discusses BizTalk and shows all resource on its features. Second a list on all available BizTalk Server 2010 community tools in BizTalk Server 2010 – Tools . Third article is on BizTalk Server 2010 Adapter Pack an enhancement of previous adapter pack 2.0. Fourth article is a short overview on BizTalk Server 2010 and created before I written complete article on BizTalk and its features. Fifth article on BizTalk databases as a survival type of article listing all relevant resources on how to maintain healthy BizTalk environment with focus on BizTalk databases. Subsequently I written another article lis...

My company Ordina will host next Dutch BizTalk User Group Meeting. This event we will have four speakers and agenda will be: Steef-Jan Wiggers (Ordina) - "BizTalk Server Adapter 2010 Integration" Jeroen Boiten ( GasUnie ) – "BizTalk at Gas Unie" Jasper Defesche ( Axon Olympus ) - "BizTalk and Dynamics AX" Jeroen Hendriks ( Axon Olympus ) – "Robust BizTalk DTAP” It will be all Dutch talks and if you able to attend you can sign up here .

Past few weeks I have contributed the following samples to MSDN Code Gallery: BizTalk Table Operations - Messaging This sample will show how to perform simple table operations using WCF-SQL Adapter a part of BizTalk Server Adapter Pack. The Sample provided by Microsoft shows only Select statement operation. This sample will show all the other operations. It is based on the BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010 WCF-Custom with sqlBinding Table Operations through Messaging solution post . Polling SQL Azure Table - BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010 This sample will show polling a SQL Azure database table. It is based on my Polling SQL Azure Database Table with WCF-SQL Adapter post . Sample - Table Operations on Oracle 11g XE with OracleDbBinding This sample will show all the Oracle Table operations (in comparison with SQL, but there a few differences!). It is based on my Table Operation on Oracle 11g XE with OracleDbBinding post . WCF-SQL Adapter Stored Procedure : SQL Azure This sample will ...

Next week a new BizTalk User Group Meeting in Sweden is scheduled with two sessions: A Lap Around BizTalk Adapter Pack A Lap Around BizTalk360 The first session will be done by me and it will be first time I will do a session in English in another country. The other session is done by Saravana on BizTalk360 . It will be second time both me and Saravana will share the same stage. Last time was June this year for the Dutch BizTalk User Group. There are still seats left for this event , so if you want you can attend; it is in Stockholm and I expect many if it not all from Sweden. My session will be talk about BizTalk Adapter Pack, its evolution how it became the pack that is shipped along with BizTalk 2010, its origin, alignment with Microsoft Platform, Cloud and an integration scenario with Oracle. Saravana will take you through his BizTalk360 product showing a lot of its capabilities and how you can leverage them in a BizTalk production environment. For those who will attend I ...

Packt Publishing has released another great BizTalk resource by title of Microsoft BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Integration . Authors have done an excellent job detailing integration with Dynamics (CRM,AX), SalesForce, SharePoint, and SAP. There was not much documentation on integration with Dynamics for instance and most it was out dated. Currently there a couple of BizTalk books out there and all they focus mainly on out-of-box features and capabilities. None of them really talked about capabilities offered by BizTalk Adapter Pack that has been out there a couple years now. Line-Of-Business adapters in this package enable integration with SAP, Oracle, Oracle eBusiness Suite, Siebel and and SQL Server. This book does deal with integration with a couple of these LOB systems. Besides that it shows how to integrate with SharePoint, and Dynamics two other Microsoft Products, which may seem that that easy to integrate with. It isn't, as it can be quite complex, but with guidance p...

In previous post I detailed how to perform some table operations in Oracle 11g using OracleDbBinding (WCF). I now like to show how to do polling in Oracel 11g XE. You can download a number of BizTalk Server 2010 Adapter Pack samples and I will use the Polling an Oracle Database sample. What sample will do is configuring a polling transaction (query) that targets the <schema name>. ACCOUNT_PKG.ACCOUNTACTIVITY table. For each polling transaction, the following actions are performed: Executes a polling statement specified for the PollingStatement binding property. The specified polling statement is a query that selects all records from the <schema name>. .ACCOUNTACTIVITY table. The response for the select query is copied to a FILE location. Executes a post poll statement specified for the PostPollStatement binding property. The post poll PL/SQL code block moves the records in the query result set to the <schema name>. .ACTIVITYHISTORY table. Execute the polling sta...

Last year I did a post on table operations on SQL Server Table with WCF-SQL Adapter from BizTalk on SQL. Now I like to do similar thing on table in Oracle 11g Express database using the Oracle Binding from BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010. Oracle 11g Express Edition is available through OTN. For downloading software you will need to have an account! It is important that when accessing Oracle you have appropriate client installed. This can sometimes be a hassle if you do not know, which client you need. When you trying to connect to Oracle you will get error messages like: Connecting to the LOB system has failed. Could not load file or assembly 'Oracle.DataAccess, Version=2.111.7.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89b483f429c47342' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.. This can be pretty annoying, but there is documentation that can help you going the right direction. In installation documentation I read that supported versions are: Oracle d...