November, 2006

For the last couple of months, I've had a lingering item sitting in my Outlook todo list. Finish that damn BizTalk 2006 exam. It may seem strange that a BizTalk Technology Specialist wouldn't have the BizTalk certification and one may wonder why I didn...

On a recent project, we had to deal with binary messages in BizTalk Server 2004. Specifically, we needed to run a binary message through an orchestration, both receiving it and sending it through messaging ports, as well as passing it to custom .NET components...

(he) Sometimes, we have to put 10,000 lines into a single scrollbox. Computer hangs, memory consumption goes through the roof, slider is too small, nothing works. What would you do?...( read more )

I'm pleased to announce that all of the content for my book is now complete! As of two weeks ago we've now entered the reviewing/copyedit phase which should last until the end of the year keeping us on track for a March publication. Woo Hoo! Words cannot...

Obligatory Rant BAM is such a good name for this technology for a few reasons. The first is that it reminds me of the kid Bambam on the Flinstones (You know, the baby with the club that had a thing for Pebbles). Very powerful and also tough to handle...

Irena Kennedy posted a lengthy entry on choosing the right integration technology from the growing stack of frameworks and servers Microsoft Offers. Included in the entry as candidates are: SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), SQL Server Service Broker...

A quick note to say thanks to all those folks who attended the webcast i gave yesterday on " Introduction to Biztalk " for VBUG. There was quite a good turnout and i enjoyed giving the presentation Slides have been sent to VBUG and you can get copies...

Yesterday Irena Kennedy posted a great compilation of multiple sources which resulted in a big fat post outlining selection criteria for an integration solution. She summarizes choosing between SSIS, MSMQ, WCF, BizTalk, SQL Service Broker, and Host Integration...

I had some discussion today with Christof Claessens about the merits of using .NET classes as orchestration message types in BizTalk Server 2006. Here are some of the reasons I came up with, and also some of the issues. http://geekswithblogs.net/cyoung...

There are two interesting BizTalk 2006 bugs to be aware of - it seems like they would be encountered fairly often, so I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen more newsgroup/forum activity around these. The first bug is encountered when you attempt...

There are two interesting BizTalk 2006 bugs to be aware of - it seems like they would be encountered fairly often, so I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen more newsgroup/forum activity around these. The first bug is encountered when you...

ROLLBACKs create the interesting events. I've spent a time trying to understand them. When I've tried to use BEGIN TRAN MAIN ... ROLLBACK TRAN MAIN inside of the SP, that is started by BizTAlk SQL port, And I've got couple events: (they are bellow) It...

Eilene Hao, Program Manager, SharePoint has been writing series of posts about SharePoint Services Workflow. You can check out the entire series in the SharePoint team weblog .

The deployment story in BizTalk Server 2006 is greatly improved over that of 2004. A typical deployment in BizTalk Server 2006 goes something like this: 1. Export the MSI using BizTalk Administration or BtsTask 2. Move the MSI to the target computer 3...

Richard Seroter has just posted about the BizTalk 2006 R2 beta 1 installation experience and new functionality - it would appear there is lots of .Net 3.0 and WCF, along with Microsoft EDI/AS2 and BAM Evening goodies! The installation experience appears...

Yesterday I did a quick evaluation of the Beta 1 release of BizTalk Server 2006 R2, and thought I'd walk through the installation process and highlight some new things I noticed. The Beta 1 release looks to be for early adopters only, so there is no ...

Wow, its been a busy couple of months here. I was looking forward to getting to the Microsoft SOA conference in Seattle back at the start of October, but I ended up being pulled back to Toronto for a pressing BizTalk opportunity we had going. That opportunity...

I recently worked on a pilot to access RPG programs on an IBM AS/400 from BizTalk Server 2006. We used the new Host Applications adapter which is included with the Microsoft BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems (which is available for free as long as you...

Whenever we work on BizTalk projects we feel why there is no provision for App.Config file so that one can store Key/Value pairs in it. So to have a work around for it we save key/value pair in Btsntsvc.config file. It is one of the easiest work around...

HowTo: Building a WCF Service and Consumer HowTo: Debug an application crash/hang in production environment