Azure Thoughts, EAI Challenges

Recently I wrote a post for TechNet Wiki Blog and pointed out that many resources can be found through the TechNet Wiki . So in case you want to check out what is available on TechNet Wiki around integration I suggest reading Integration is my business and business is good! . I have been working on a couple of articles for TechNet Wiki last 18 months and published them. I am not the only one. There's a lot of us in the BizTalk community for instance that have published and edited numerous articles. The number of BizTalk related articles on TechNet Wiki is close to 200 by now ranging from BizTalk versions 2006 R2 to 2013, general ones (common across versions) and Windows Azure BizTalk Services. You can access them from one place: BizTalk Server Resources on the TechNet Wiki . In case you have not yet bookmarked it then you the opportunity now. If you like to participate in writing and/or editing articles feel free to do so. You will need to sign in or up and you all set to g...

L ast week I had my first experience with SQL Server Integration Services. Customer I am working now needed a data transfer from Oracle to SQL Server. The reason they wanted this was because availability of Oracle was not guaranteed. Data needed to be available at all times and Oracle databases were hosted by a third-party and SQL Server database were in house and we control over them. If one has access to SQL Server Instance with SSIS installed and templates for creating solutions are available inside Visual Studio one can start a analysis project, where SSIS packages can be incorporated (I do not know if this the exact approach to do it, but here I found a SSIS packages). I created a new SSIS Package. Next thing I did was creating two connection managers, so I can make connection to Oracle and SQL Server. When one creates a new connection manager there are a number of providers available like Native OLEDB\Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle. Choose this one fill in the details a tes...

Today I went to the first day of DevDays 2007 in Amsterdam. It was a fun day and met a lot of people, old colleagues, people I worked with, speakers, trainers from companies like class-a, Microsoft people like Arie Leeuwensteijn (organizer DevDays). It was just awesome. I started the day with a keynote from Scott Guthrie, who talked about Silverlight . Most of you probably already heard about this new Microsoft Technology. From a SOA perspective it is interesting to note it has an API for connecting to web services, so consuming services for displaying data will be no problem. He also showed a new product of Microsoft called Expression. This product was demoed by Wayne Smith. After this demo a few more followed around Sliverlight with one you can look or try out yourself called bananas. So in a nutshell Silverlight will give you: Broad reach Rich Multimedia .Net Multiple languages (Ruby, Python, Dynamic VB) Express Studio Visual Studio Services Second session I went was SQL Server Inte...

B it late to share my experience during the integration master class given by Microsoft consultants, but here it is. The master class took two days and the information shared was good. Three Microsoft consultants went through integration in general with their pallet of products and technologies like SQL Server Integration Service, BizTalk, WCF, WinWF, SQL Broker, WSE, ASMX, .Net Remoting and Host Integration Server. With this in your let’s say toolbox or kit one can face the integration challenge the Microsoft way. A demo was shown using WCF, MSMQ, SQL Replication, SSIS and BizTalk. From general view they went on down the BizTalk path and talked about: • Design lessons learned BizTalk Scenario’s; • Developing effective BizTalk Server Solutions; • Deployment And Operations of BizTalk Server Solutions; • Future Developments; • Integration Project Recommendations. Information shared was good and brought in a proper context: Integration. Ok well that’s all I like to share for now, next sto...

8 and 9 march I will be attending the exclusive integration master class with some of my colleagues at Microsoft near Schiphol Airport. This master class will be about a number of technologies concerning integration like BizTalk Server, SQL Server Integration Server, Host Integration Server and Microsoft Windows Foundation. Besides technology architectural scenarios will be discussed taking scalability, performance, latency and fault tolerance in to account. Microsoft consultants will be the speakers during this master class. My colleagues and I are very interested what this master class will bring us in Microsoft insights about EAI and their technologies. Hence integration of different information systems is complex and brings a lot of challenges. I have experienced that during a number of EAI projects in the past. Well I am looking forward this week to the master class. I will post my experiences after this event .