I have another copy of my book “Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform” to give away. The book is a $60 value and I will cover the shipping costs to the winner any place in the world as long as the US Postal Service ships there. Contest #2 – What is missing in BizTalk Server 2010? What feature, concept, UI update, or tooling would make BizTalk a stronger, more robust, simpler, or easier product to work with? As a special bonus, I was able to get the book signed...

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...

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...

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...

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...

First off I want to thank everyone who entered the contest. A winner was picked at random out of all the entries I received.  In total, it was about 10 entries so your chances were good to win!  But I could only have one winner. The winner is:  H. Edidin from USA. Look for more contests coming on BizTalkGurus.com in the next few weeks.

I have an MSDN Subscription voucher to give away! The voucher is good for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription and will give you access to many Microsoft products for 1 year. This is a great benefit to anyone doing development and I believe it now includes monthly time on Azure and Platform AppFabric. The software is good only for development and testing purposes and this subscription is Not For Resale. I will be having a drawing for the voucher on Sunday, October 10th, 2010...

In early September 2010, I got the honor to present three sessions on AppFabric and Workflow 4.0 to the BizTalk Users Group in Sweden at the European BizTalk Conference . While my sessions were not related to BizTalk, they are designed to show how easy it is for someone with BizTalk skills to learn AppFabric and Workflow 4.  I have posted the session slide decks and sample code (including the code generated from my 100% LIVE demo).  I did three sessions: Server AppFabric and Workflow 4...

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...

I am pleased once again to be asked to present in Sweden by the Sweden BizTalk Server Users Group.  This event is the “BizTalk Server 2010 Release Party” and will feature content and topics from my soon to be released book: Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform . This is much more than just a simple presentation.  This is a 2-day EVENT packed with great content from multiple speakers.  I will be presenting alongside fellow co-authors Richard Seroter and Ewan Fairweather...

Looking back at some of my past blog posts, I realized it has been a long time since my last post.  Wow – over 10 months to be exact.  Let me give a little re-cap of what I have been doing in those 10 months. Went to India twice Went to United Arab Emirates twice Went on a month long trip to Australia and New Zealand Went on a weeklong trip to Thailand Visited London, Spain, Germany, Japan, Hungary, Hong Kong, China, and Greece Launched two major eCommerce Websites and numerous major marketing...

Thanks to Packt Publishing, I am pleased to offer you the opportunity to win a copy of Richard Seroter’s book SOA Patterns with BizTalk Server 2009 – a $60 value.  I will even cover the shipping costs, via book mail, to any place in the world the US Postal Service will deliver to.  Here is what you need to do in order to win: Simply let us know of a great BizTalk Tip or Trick using BizTalk 2006, BizTalk 2006 R2, or BizTalk 2009.  Tell us a little about it and why it is useful. ...

Recently I was asked to present at the BizTalk Users Group in Sweden.  I had a great time and was welcomed nicely by my Swedish friends.  I presented on the new enhancements to the Windows Application Server role code named Dublin. I presented two 35 minutes sessions covering a lot of the same material talked about at the recent TechEd in Los Angeles, CA. The two sessions are now online and available for everyone to watch.  The first session is essentially the value proposition of...

On Thursday June 4th I will be presenting in Sweden to the BizTalk Users Group . I am excited to be making the trip to Sweden and it will be great to see so many BizTalk enthusiasts all in one place.  I will be presenting two sessions both on Microsoft's new Window Application Server Enhancements – known as “Dublin”.  The details of the sessions are below.  If you are in Stockholm and want to attend you can get information on the BizTalk Users Group home page.  Meeting Title...

A few months ago Kent Brown and I presented on Dublin (the new enhancements to Windows for Workflow Hosting, Monitoring, and Tracking) at the 2009 SOA and Business Process Conference in Seattle Washington. This session was recorded and is now online.  You can view this video here: http://soaconference2009.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!FA6FC7F5DB1C07!135.entry The abstract for the session is below. Abstract:  Dublin is the code name for the new Windows Application Server features inside Windows...

With BizTalk Server 2009, setting up integration with Team Foundation Server (TFS) has become much simpler.  While setting up continuous integration, automated unit tests, and msi packaging was possible before BizTalk 2009 it was a huge pain.  Below I will walk through the steps to set this up with BizTalk 2009.  I was able to get this up and running in about 30 hours including the time to create the Virtual Machine (that was 15 hours).  It took 47 build attempts in TFS before...

This is a follow up to my post yesterday .  I was setting up some automated unit tests for BizTalk 2009 in Release mode.  I received the following errors.  CIDemo.Schemas.InputSchema does not contain a definition for 'ValidateInstance' and no extension method 'ValidateInstance' accepting a first argument of type 'CIDemo.Schemas.InputSchema' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) CIDemo.Maps.Input_To_Output does not contain...

Today I was setting up Unit Tests for BizTalk 2009 Schema and Maps.  I was using the BizTalk Server 2009 help guide example as a reference.  I ran into the following error message: <Class Name> does not contain a definition for 'ValidateInstance' and no extension method 'ValidateInstance' accepting a first argument of type <Class Name> could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference? This looked like this inside Visual Studios 2008...

The latest edition of BizTalk Server is now available on MSDN. The following editions are available for download (this may vary based on your MSDN subscription): Developer Edition Branch Edition Standard Edition Enterprise Edition I only see the x86 version of each product available for download right now.   BizTalk Server 2009 has the following enhancements and improvements over the past version of BizTalk: Support for .Net 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studios 2008 SP2 XSLT Debugger in Visual Studios...

  The latest edition of the BizTalk Hotrod magazine is now available.  This is a awesome 45+ page magazine with loads of great articles. Get the latest edition here .