by community-syndication | Sep 17, 2005 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I have had some fun in the last couple of weeks debating the Microsoft Rules Engine with Peter Lin. Many people in the BizTalk community will know that Peter used Amazon and The ServerSide site early this year to launch an attack on Microsoft’s representation of their rules engine.You can read the original thread here. Based on a BizTalkperformance whitepaper, the latest version of which is here, and on the documentation of the Rules Engine on MSDN, he deduced that that the engine does not implement the Rete algorithm correctly, does notsupport forward chaining inferencing and does not scale. For the uninitiated reader, the Rete (Latin for ‘Net’, pronounced “Ray-tee” according to my Latin-English dictionary, or “Ree-tee” if you believe everything you read on the Internet).algorithm is the most commonly used algorithm within inferencing rules engines, and implements a number of important optimisations by establishing, at runtime, a directed acyclic graph of memory nodes to representa rule set, andretaining information about matches as data (‘facts’) pass through the nodes.
At the time, Scott Woodgate had some involvement in the debate, and confirmed that the Microsoft Business Rules Engine does indeed implement the Rete algorithm (see his comments here). I regretted, at the time, not challenging Peter’s assertions, and over the months have had it in mind to tackle the issue at some point. My opportunity came a few weeks ago when the issue arose again on the TSS site. There has followed a debate in which I have chiefly aimed at showing that Peter has no grounds whatsoever for the claims he makes.You can read the threadhere. I cannot (and really don’t need to) ‘prove’ that Microsoft has implemented their engine correctly, but I can and doshow that the performance figures published by Microsoft provide no evidence of an incorrect implementation. To this end, I have published the results of some simpletestshere. Peter has also raised a number of concerns based on the documentation of the rules framework API, and has also highlighted the “side effects” feature. I do admit the the “side effects” feature is ‘impure’, although I consider it a very practical feature, but I contest that it somehow invalidates Microsoft’s implementation. Other API issues, such as Peter’s recent comments about the Assert class (see here), are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what he is reading on MSDN.
If you enjoy this sort of stuff, do please feel free to read and join in the fun!!
by stephen-w-thomas | Sep 16, 2005 | Stephen's BizTalk and Integration Blog
There is a 52 minute video on BizTalk Solution Designer. If you do not have a full 52 minutes to devote to this, you can get a good feel for the tool in the first 15 or 20 minutes.
BizTalk Solution Designer is a visual tool for Biztalk Development. It abstracts the whole process of building port, locations, pipelines, routing, and more into a visual tool.
This new tool is targeted toward the business developer but is will not be available any time soon. It will not be available until after Biztalk 2006 is released.
They showed some of the prototypes that this tool could have looked like. I liked the Saturn design myself…
I really wanted to see the new XSLT visual mapper. I think mapping in an integration solution is under valued (i.e if the map is wrong or does not work the whole solution is worthless). But, they did not cover it.
If they keep making BizTalk development so easy, they are going to put me out of a job.
You can get more details from Scott’s post or go directly to the Solution Designer Video.
Channel 9 also has a Windows Workflow Video available too.
by community-syndication | Sep 16, 2005 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
We had a bunch of fun recording this video for channel 9 on the BizTalk Server Solution Designer which is coming after BizTalk Server 2006 and was shown to folks at PDC along with a demo of Windows Workflow Foundation in an ASP.NET web-site talking to BizTalk Server (its pretty simple stuff you use web-services or the sharepoint adapter and all is good). Anyways I hope you enjoy the video of the BizTalk Server Solution Designer.
To view it click here.
by community-syndication | Sep 15, 2005 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Windows Workflow Foundation has been officially announced at the PDC. Get a load of this, from Darren Jeffords blog;
For those of you familiar with BizTalk Server 2004, Windows Workflow Foundation is analogous to the Orchestration Designer and Orchestration Runtime (XLANG) in BizTalk. It allows you express your “workflow” using a designer and then have this executed by a runtime.
The Orchestration designer in BizTalk was fairly heavy-weight and not really suitable to be hosted and used in other applications (memory footprint, etc.), Windows Workflow Foundation is light-weight and re-hostable allowing you to integrate workflow functionality into your application.
I wonder what this means?
Business Rules are built into the designer allowing you to encode any flexible rules separate from the implementation allowing for easy modification.
WWF provides a framework for building and hosting workflows inside Windows apps. It will be part of the WinXF namespace along with Indigo and Avalon.
OK, no need to panic – from the horses mouth;
Future versions of BizTalk Server, MBS Applications and Office “12” will use this technology. As of today workflow is a new player in the middle tier for application development. Every application includes some workflow and with Windows Workflow Foundation you can capture that workflow in a model.
by community-syndication | Sep 14, 2005 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Can you see why I kept stum, there were some rumours about the workflow strategy and partnership. Still not quite sure whether K2.Net will be bought out by Microsoft. I dont think so, as the WWF is to allow workflow partners to complement the base workflow services, for example look also at Captaris Teamplate
An indepth look at the architecture is now available
by stephen-w-thomas | Sep 14, 2005 | Stephen's BizTalk and Integration Blog
I have put together a video and sample walking through a simple Sequential Workflow using Beta 1 of WinWF (available for download from Microsoft).
This video will take you step by step through creating your first sequential workflow in less than 15 minutes!
This workflow is hosted by .net using a Windows Form. It takes in an input value and returns a string of how long it took to process the order.
The sample includes two windows form for calling the workflow.
Download the sample code: Sequential Workflow using WinWF
Download the video: My First Sequential Workflow Video
by stephen-w-thomas | Sep 14, 2005 | Stephen's BizTalk and Integration Blog
Today Microsoft released the long awaited Windows Workflow Foundation at PDC.
You can get all the details from the Windows Vista Development Center for Workflow.
Microsoft’s awesome new Windows Workflow Community Site is located at http://www.windowsworkflow.net.
WinWF will provide a framework for building and hosting workflows inside Windows. It will be part of the WinXF namespace along with Windows Communication Foundation (Indiago) and Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon).
The Beta Code for WinWF is available though the Vista Development Center.
Watch for samples and videos to be posted shortly to my Windows Workflow Foundation page.
by community-syndication | Sep 13, 2005 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I wish to express my sincere condolencies to Cristiano Ronaldo , who lost his father at an early age, as did I. I know exactly what he is going through. You have the support of the worlds biggest football fan club my friend. God Bless. Rest in Peace.
by community-syndication | Sep 13, 2005 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
ATLAS has now landed. Asynchronous Javascript and XML ie AJAX is now supported within ATLAS and will be integrable within Whidbey as an addon. I’ve been using XMLHTTP object in IE for many years when one of my colleagues introduced it in one of our client projects. Good for minimisation of round trips at page level, and give web page that extra stable look and feel, ie no more flickering… As far as browser independence is concerned alot of the modern browsers will be wrapping up this object within their javascript.
So yeup, its all happening at PDC , wish you were here as they say…I’m not unfortunately.
by community-syndication | Sep 13, 2005 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Forgot to mention this, also I discussed the workflow strategies, and how I was impressed with K2.Net, and so whats gonna happen to HWS. Well WinOE is now WWF, Windows Workflow Foundation in theme with Indigo is Windows Communication Foundation etc…
I have been asked to stay stum about WWF as it could well be unveiled at PDC, tomorrow? Heres a sneak preview before then.
If you want to catch up on this arena I suggest you monitor the workflow webcasts webcasts
So yes, partners such as K2.Net and others, should be be able to layer their apps on top of WWF for that extra piece of workflow functionality.
