Blogs

If you consider yourself a hard core BizTalk Developer, then this session is for you! A few weeks ago I presented a session on Server AppFabric to the BizTalk User Group in Sweden. This session was geared to showing how similar Workflow 4.0 and AppFabric are to BizTalk – conceptually at least. The goal of this session was to show how us BizTalk guys and gals can quickly pick up Workflow 4 and AppFabric because we already understand the concepts. I would highly recommend this 60 minute session...

Our book, Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform: An In-Depth Scenario-Driven Approach to Architecting Systems using Microsoft Technologies, is now available in India at a significant discount for orders placed and delivered in India!  This type of discount is common with most technology books due to the difference in costs and wages in India vs. US and Europe. Computer Bookshop is offering our book for 400 Rs (20% the normal price of 500 Rs).  The direct link is: http...

What is one of the biggest problems with having to set up BizTalk in a new Environment? Creating all the Hosts, Host Instances, and assigning the Adapters to these new hosts. This process has been made much simpler with the help of the BizTalk Host Setup Tool. This tool is fed by a configuration file to set up the Hosts, install Host Instances, and assign Adapters to those Hosts. This tool also has the ability to prompt for a user password and reset all the Adapters back to the default Host (this...

Scott Watermasysk, of .Text and Community Server fame, has a post on his new blog which talks about the start of his current project at Telligent called Graffiti . In it he discusses his opinion that if a first version of your project cannot be accomplished...

I just wanted to thank all the entries into the “ What is missing in BizTalk 2010 Contest ”.  It was a hard decision for the other judges and I. Finally, the decision was made.  The winner was Siffnn from the UK.  He received a free hard copy of my book “ Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform ”. His entry was the following: “I Would like to See following features : 1- GUI in admin console to tune BizTalk Message Box Parameters 2- GUI similar to SQL Management studio...

I had the honor of being the Technical Reviewer on the BizTalk 2006 Recipes book.  One of the authors, Mark Beckner, has updated the book for BizTalk 2010.  It is currently available on Amazon.com at 38% off list price. This book covers the following topics: What’s New in BizTalk Server 2010 Schemas Mapping Messaging and Pipelines Orchestrations Adapters Business Rules Framework EDI Solutions Deployment Administration and Operations Business Activity Monitoring I would highly recommend...

MSBuild is the new build platform for Visual Studios. It allows great flexibility, customization (through creating custom Tasks), and integration with unit tests. While MSBuild doesn’t directly support building BizTalk solutions, tasks are available to call the DEVENV executable and Microsoft UK has released a set of custom tasks to support a wide verity of common BizTalk tasks (available on GotDotNet ). This provided an easy method for scripting automated or ad-hock BizTalk builds and deployments...

[In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu ] This is the first in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming ASP.NET MVC 2 release.  This blog post covers the...

We recently had an issue where we had a lot of a receive locations connecting to the same server (sum 1,200). They kept going down complaining the Messaging Engine failed while notifying an adapter of its configuration and The error threshold was exceeded...

I have posted online all the sample code from my book, “Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform”.  You can download it at http://www.biztalkgurus.com/media/p/30260.aspx .  This code contains various samples using BizTalk, BizTalk ESB Toolkit, Server AppFabric, SharePoint 2010, .Net 4.0 Workflow, SQL, Stream Insight, Azure, SQL Azure, Platform AppFabric Service Bus, Server AppFabric Caching, and more.  Of course, you will get the most benefit of this code using it alongside...

Envelopes can be used with the Xml Disassembler in Biztalk 2004 to break up larger Xml messages into single messages. Another approach to message debatching is to use xpath in a loop inside an Orchestration. Both these approaches are covered in this Message Debatching Options Lab for Biztalk 2004. This lab will take around 40 minutes to complete and is based on Microsoft’s hands-on-labs. Download: Message Debatching Options Hands-on Lab Setup is simple. Unzip the download to your c:\ drive...

I am pleased to announce my book is now available for immediate delivery on Amazon.com! The book is called “ Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform ” published by Packt Publishing. This book is a detailed scenario-driven approach to architecting systems using Microsoft technologies covering BizTalk Server, .Net 4, AppFabric, Azure, SQL, and more. We dive into 13 real-life style scenarios and talk about various technology options available to solve the problem. One technology...

Packt Publishing has given me a few copies of my book “Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform” to give away on BizTalkGurus.com. Over the next few weeks, I am going to have a few contests. The book is a $60 value and I will cover the shipping costs to the winner anyplace in the world as long as the US Postal Service ships there. Contest #1 – Below are the architectural patterns covered in our book. We started with a much larger list and cut it down to what we thought...

The new SQL Adapter in the WCF Adapter Pack 2.0 supports composite operations, that is performing multiple SQL operations in response to a single input message. The purpose of this blog post is to provide a walkthrough of how this works. I am using the...

It has been over a year since my list issue of The BizTalker.  With all the excitement in the air about BizTalk in the cloud and AppFabric, I figured now is a good time to bring back the newsletter.  I am planning to send out a new issue monthly with the next one in just a few days.  I am reaching out to various 3rd parties to try to get some freebies to give away for future newsletters.  In the next issue you will have a chance to win a copy of my new book plus an exclusive discount...