I have been spending a lot of time the past few weeks working with the Windows Azure Virtual Machines that are currently available as a Preview Feature. The ability to be up and running with a custom hosted Virtual Machine in a matter of minutes without any extra onsite hardware costs still amazes me, although this concept has been around for a while now.  It is ever better that I can use the Virtual Machine for a few hours and then throw it away at a net cost to me of only a few cents. ...

I have been working with Windows Azure Virtual Machines for a few weeks now. As of this blog post, the preview feature is running six locations currently: West US, East US, East Asia, Southeast Asia, North Europe, and West Europe. One of the things I like about Windows Azure is the world-wide presence. When I select Quick Create for a Virtual Machine, I am able to decide what location to host my Virtual Machine so I can ensure this is some place close to me. Today I might be in Seattle but tomorrow...

This is a follow-up to my post and video on Creating a BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP Virtual Machine in Windows Azure.  I hope most of you have reviewed my earlier posts on Creating a Windows Azure Virtual Machine running BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP. So now what? You can create a Syspreped image of the Virtual Machine to be used over and over again to create new BizTalk instances. This would be very handy if you wanted to role this out to 20 new developers on a project (more detail on this here ) with...

Are you experienced with Microsoft Azure? Have you tried the Free 90-Day trial? Have you activated the Virtual Machine Preview Feature? Are you up and running with BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP in an Azure Virtual Machine? If you answered NO to any of these questions then this video is for you! If you are a BizTalk Developer and you are not using or looking at Microsoft Azure now is a great time to jump into what Azure has to offer! Why? Because with the Azure Hosted Virtual Machines the days of downloading...

BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP is now publicly available as a template inside the Azure Virtual Machine Gallery.  BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP supports Windows 8, Windows 8 Server, SQL 2012, and Visual Studio 2012 (this is the only supported version of Visual Studios). What does having a Virtual Machine Gallery for BizTalk mean to you?  If you have an Azure account you can be up and running with BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP in no time at all.  Even if you do not have an account yet – it is simple to get a free...

Many times on larger BizTalk projects developers need to share working inside Projects and Orchestrations. This means at some point you will have conflicts. While Visual Studios offers the option to Auto-Merge files, I have not seen this done successfully with BizTalk Orchestrations. Here are 5 simple rules for simplifying and streamlining large scale BizTalk Orchestration Development. Rule #1 – Do not use the default Operation Name on Orchestration Ports When using Direct Routing Port out...

I have known Steef-Jan Wiggers for many years now. He is a fellow BizTalk Server MVP and one of the sharpest BizTalk guys I know. So of course I was excited when I found out he was working on a solo BizTalk book. His book is a cookbook-style book named BizTalk Server 2010 Cookbook by Packt Publishing. I like this style of book because it contains smaller units of examples related to a specific area or to solve a specific problem. This book covers areas like setup, patterns, error handling, AppFabric...

First off, thanks for all the great suggestions of missing blogs from the BizTalkGurus.com Blog Feed! I will be working on getting those site included into the feed with the next release that should happen in the next week. Now for the winners! Grand Prize of a copy of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 Patters book by Dan Rosanova goes to Mark Brimble . Runner up prize of a copy of Pro Business Activity Monitoring in BizTalk 2009 signed by BOTH authors goes to Stuart Brierley . Thanks again for all the...

For those of you who do not know, one of the features of BizTalkGurus.com is the aggregate blog feed .  This feed goes back over 8 years and has over 8,000 posts.  Since I started the BizTalk feed, I have expanded the aggregate feeds to include App Fabric and Windows Workflow. About once a year, I review Google to see if I am missing any BizTalk Blogs that should be included in the aggregate feed.  It is that time of year again but this time I would like some help. In doing so, I’ll...

The results are in! Out of a total of 12 blog post comments, the winner of the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 Patters Book published by Packet Publishing is… Comment #8 - Mitch Vanhelden As a 2nd place winner, I am also giving away a copy of Pro BAM in BizTalk Server 2009.  The winner of this book is .. Comment #10 - Eric Beyer If you did not win this time, watch for a new contest in just a few days.  

It is amazing how time flies!  It seems like just yesterday my book on Applied Architecture Patterns hit the shelves, but that was almost a year and a half ago now. A few months ago, a new BizTalk patterns book written by fellow BizTalk MVP Dan Rosanova has been released.  It is called Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 Patterns published by Packet Publishing.  What separates this book from other BizTalk books is it covers both BizTalk Basics & Patterns and a detailed overview of a...

Congratulations to Brett Tyrrell from Australia via Facebook and Mike Koerner (@michaelskoerner) from USA via Twitter for winning the BizTalk 2010 Line of Business Systems Integration books from Packet Publishing. Watch for more great opportunities from BizTalkGurus.com in the new future.

Like I have done with many of the other new BizTalk books I have two copies of the new BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Systems Integration book by Kent Weare et al. published by Packt to give away. Not to worry, I will cover all shipping costs. To enter: Either LIKE BizTalkGurus on Facebook or FOLLOW BizTalkGurus on Twitter. I will pick one winner from each site to win a free copy of the book. If you already like or follow us you are automatically entered to win! You must enter by end of day August...

I’m back in the action again working on a large BizTalk Healthcare project after some time off. This is the first time I’ve worked with HIPAA transactions like 270, 271, and others and so far I have learned a lot. Like other projects I have worked on in the past, one of the first things I do is create projects and namespaces for the new code we have to build. This is usually something you did not have to put much thought into.  But with transactions like 270 I went to make a namespace like BizTalk...

After starting off strong for the first part of 2011 with a major site upgrade to BizTalkGurus.com, blogging more frequently, and sending out new editions of The BizTalker, I have really dropped the ball for the past 6 months. But let me explain. In the past 6 months my life has changed. We had our first baby on 2-9-11. His name is Westin. While a new baby in itself takes a lot of work Westin is very special. A few weeks after birth we noticed Westin just was not eating enough to put on any weight...

In the recent edition of The BizTalker Newsletter I featured the below article about BizTalk Adapters.  Read the article below or join the newsletter to have it delivered directly to your email.  I welcome any comments. feedback, or thoughts on this subject. BizTalk contains many built-in adapters for communication with external systems.  When those built-in adapters do not meet the needs of your project, some hard decisions need to be made such as whether to buy an adapter, build...

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...

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...

In the recent edition of The BizTalker Newsletter I featured the below article.  Read the article below or join the newsletter to have it delivered to your email.  I welcome and comments. feedback, or thoughts on this subject. Server AppFabric contains two core pieces – Hosting and Caching. Today, I’m going to focus on the Caching piece of AppFabric. AppFabric Caching is a new offering from Microsoft as part of the Server AppFabric collection of technologies for the Application Server role...

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...