If you are headed to the SOA & Business Process Conference in Seattle this week and you have an interest in Dublin (Microsoft's new extensions to windows to host WCF and WF) make sure you check out my session. I will be presenting with Kent Brown from Microsoft. The abstract is below. Abstract: Dublin is the code name for the new Windows Application Server features inside Windows. In this session we will take a look at how to build a service to leverage the management tools inside Dublin...

Today Microsoft has released the Beta for BizTalk Server 2009 to the public. It is available on Microsoft's Connect site at https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=218 This beta will be community supported though the Microsoft TechNet forums here . Some of the key enhancements to BizTalk 2009 is support for the latest Microsoft offerings (including Windows 2008, Visual Studios 2008 SP1, .Net 3.5 SP1, SQL 2008, and TFS), support for RFID Mobile, and new LOB Adapters (including...

Don't miss the screen cast video on this same subject available at Content Based Correlation in Workflow 4.0 Content based correlation is used when you send a message out of a long running workflow and need to get a response back later into that same workflow using information contained inside the original message. In this case, the correlation needs to be stored and made available to match the response message. Content based correlation is easy to set up and use inside Windows Workflow 4.0....

I was reading an interesting blog post today called Will Dublin Replace BizTalk? It got me thinking more about this and I wrote up the response below. I would love to hear other peoples comments and thoughts on this. I see a clear separation on when you would use BizTalk vs when you would use Dublin. I see a great story going forward with both technologies working together. I welcome comments and feedback on this. Comment on "Will Dublin Replace BizTalk?" blog post: "I like your article...

What is Correlation? Correlation is when a process sends a message out and that same process is expecting a response to be returned to the same instance of that process. The complexity rises when the messaging patterns become asynchronous or the process becomes long running. Asynchronous and long running processes are a common scenario inside business processes today. BizTalk Server is great at correlation inside Orchestrations given the publish and subscribe architecture of BizTalk Server. BizTalk...

Make sure you check out the video content on Dublin available on BizTalkGurus.com: First Look at Windows Application Server (Dublin) Dublin is the code name for the new Windows Application Server components. At the core, Dublin is designed to be a hosting environment for Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation based applications. It integrates into IIS and provides eight new features out of the box. If you have worked with BizTalk Server 2006 in the past, as we walk through the next...

Make sure you check out the video content on Workflow 4.0 available at BizTalkGurus.com: Consuming WCF Services in Workflow 4.0 Flowcharts and Rules in Workflow 4.0 Windows Workflow 4.0 is a major upgrade to the existing Microsoft workflow technology. As part of this upgrade, the designer has been enhanced to account for new features and increase the developer experience. Below is a screen shot of a basic sequential workflow. A cool feature, that is not shown here, is the dynamically changing gray...

Make sure you check out the video content on Oslo available on BizTalkGurus.com: First Look at Quadrant – Oslo’s Modeling Tool First Look at M – Oslo’s Modeling Language Oslo is the codename for Microsoft's Modeling Platform. The end goal of Oslo is to increase productivity by promoting the use of model-driven applications. Oslo is composed of three pieces: a Tool, a Language, and a Repository. In this blog post, I will share some features and screen shots of the tool...

Today is a great day to be a BizTalk Developer! Why? Microsoft has introduced .Net 4.0, Windows Application Server (Dublin), and Microsoft’s Modeling Platform (Oslo). These new technologies compliment the existing Connection System technologies. As you look though the various technologies one thing is consistent: Take the best things of BizTalk and allow others outside of BizTalk to leverage it! I’ve put together over an hour of first look videos to help show the new features of Microsoft’s latest...

Today Microsoft announced an updated Roadmap for BizTalk Server highlighting the next release of BizTalk and outlining plans for future releases every two years.  Included with this is a name change.  BizTalk Server 2006 R3 will now be called BizTalk Server 2009.  While most people will see this as a simple name change.  What this represents is Microsoft's commitment to BizTalk Server as an Enterprise Class Integration Platform.  This new name combined with the forward...

Recently I have gotten a rare chance to step away from writing word documents and working with Visio to get to do some exciting BizTalk testing. As part of my testing, I was pushing BizTalk and various Adapters until they failed. In doing so, sometimes this caused some odd side effects. Recently, I was seeing thousands of Active Service Instances in BizTalk Administration that looked like this: The Service Name was simply "Name is not available". To make matters worse, I was not able to...

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...

As many of you probably know by now, Microsoft has announced the next release in the BizTalk Family. This will be called BizTalk Server 2006 R3. I for one am excited for this release! Not so much for the new adapters and added features that will be available, but more by what this represents. Microsoft and the Connection Systems Division are actively working on Oslo (the next generation of model drive design - all in all super cool stuff) so for them to announce a new BizTalk Release before the Oslo...

Last week I released volume 12 of The BizTalker. This issues' feature article was written by Dwight Goins of QuickLearn and talks about working with the WCF Adapter in BizTalk 2006 R2. Also covered is the new BizTalkBlogs.com and the new training available on BizTalk-Training.com You can view the newsletter online or to make sure you don't miss out simply subscribe !

To keep on the Commerce Server Adapter line of blog posts here is another minor pain point I ran into. I was setting up the Commerce Server Catalog Send Adapter on a multi-server BizTalk Environment. I opened up BizTalk Admin and configured the Send Port. I went to run the solution and I received the following error: "Failed to create Catalog Context in 'Commerce Server Catalog Send Adapter'. Message:" Turns out that the Send Host for the Catalog Adapter was running on another Server...

Just wanted to post a few follow ups to my post last week on the Commerce Server Orders Receive Adapter running in a 64-bit host. During testing on another server, I received the following error: "Failed opening or reading the Registry subkey: Software\Microsoft\Commerce Server 2007 BizTalk Adapters\Orders\<somekey>. Message: Requested registry access is not allowed." This was because when I created the new registry key, I did not give the host user permission to access it. So make...

Recently I have spent a lot of time working with the Commerce Server 2007 Orders Adapters for BizTalk. Getting it set-up and running on a single machine with BizTalk and Commerce Server together was not too hard (although anyone who thought BizTalk 2004 was hard to install should try installing Commerce Server). Getting everything to work correctly on a 64-bit BizTalk Server installation was another story. I was running BizTalk 2006 R2 64-bit with a 64-bit process Host. I was setting up the Commerce...

Sometimes getting BizTalk to communicate successfully with Commerce Server 2007 using the provided Orders Adapter can be tricky. Here is a quick tip when initially setting up the Orders Receive Adapter in BizTalk 2006 R2. If you receive the following error: Creating the search clause factory failed for Commerce Server Orders Receive Adapter. Message You are not authorized to perform the requested operation. Make sure the user the BizTalk Host is running under is added to the Commerce Server Order...

Recently I've been doing some work Commerce Server 2007 and BizTalk Server 2006 R2. I have been using the Microsoft supplied Commerce Server Adapters for integration between Commerce Server and various systems. For those of you who do not have a lot of experience with Commerce Server, both the BizTalk Adapters and the Commerce Server Catalog Manage use the supplied Commerce Server Web Services for Catalog Imports. When working with large catalog imports, both tools will run into a minor limitation...

A few weeks ago I released Volume 11 of The BizTalker. This issue, featuring an article by Eric Stott, walks though the automatic removal of BAM definitions during the uninstall of a BizTalk Application. Read this issue online . Be one of the first to receive the BizTalker by signing up for the free email newsletter here .