by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Start Time: |
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Tuesday, June 13, 2006 10:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) |
End Time: |
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Tuesday, June 13, 2006 11:15 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) |
Learn how the many capabilities of Microsoft BizTalk Server work together to deliver comprehensive business process management solutions on the Microsoft application platform. This webcast explains how BizTalk Server is evolving within the business process server market. We discuss how the new functionality in BizTalk Server will expand the capabilities of this premier integration server, including when the new functionality will be delivered.
Presenter: Michael Woods, Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Michael Woods is a senior technical product manager in the Application Platform and Developer Marketing group who has worked at Microsoft for 12 years. He is responsible for partner and competitive strategy in the area of integration and business process management. Prior to his current position, Michael was an architectural advisor in the .NET Developer Solutions group, working with customers and partners on early adoption of the initial release of Microsoft .NET.
View other sessions from Tech%u00b7Ed 2006 Webcasts: Power to the Pros.
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
So based on popular demand I’ve added more functionality to the web-based workflow
monitor. You can now see and select activities:
I only updated the Atlas version – just remove the atlas tags and reference if you
want vanilla ASP.NET
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer
From Luke Nyswonger’s Blog at: (http://blogs.msdn.com/luke/archive/2006/06/02/615429.aspx)
The Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer examines a BizTalk Server 2006 deployment and generates a list of best practices issues it discovers. The Best Practices Analyzer is intended for use in BizTalk Server 2006 production and staging environments.
The Best Practices Analyzer performs configuration level verification, by reading and reporting only. For example, the Best Practices Analyzer gathers data from Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes, Microsoft SQL Server databases, registry entries, and other parts of your deployment, and uses the gathered data to determine whether best practices are being followed. The Best Practices Analyzer does not modify any system settings, and is therefore not a self-tuning tool.
Download Now!
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DDA047E3-408E-48BA-83F9-F397226CD6D4&displaylang=en
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Woohoo. This is exciting. One of our Program Managers in Redmond, Mitch, has had the pleasure of announcing the TAP program for BizTalk 2006 R2! Check this out… BTS just gets better! Thanks Mitch…. This is awesome!!
Announcing BizTalk Server 2006 R2 TAP!
Today, in concert with the announcement of BizTalk Server 2006 R2, we launched the BTS 2006 R2 TAP program and nominations are now being accepted.
Program Overview
The BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Technology Adoption Program (TAP) is an “early adopter” program intended to validate the quality and obtain feedback on the new features included in BTS 2006 R2. BizTalk 2006 includes added features to BizTalk 2006 and enhancements to improve compatibility with Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007.
BizTalk 2006 R2 New Capabilities Include:
· Microsoft EDI Solution for BizTalk 2006
Microsoft’s EDI Solution for BizTalk adds full featured EDI capabilities to BizTalk 2006 with over 6000 schemas that include HIPAA, X12, and EDIFACT support.
· Microsoft RFID
The Microsoft RFID Infrastructure Services in BizTalk 2006 R2 provide device abstraction and manageability to RFID-based solutions.
· BizTalk Adapter for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
The BizTalk WCF Adapter allows BizTalk to expose and consume WS-* web services.
· WinFX Adapter Framework
The framework provides a common basis for building integration adapters that can be consumed by a variety of client applications (BizTalk, Office BI, .NET Applications).
· WinFX Line of Business (LOB) Adapters
The WCF LOB adapters deliver application, database and transport adapters to customers, implementing a common Adapter Framework, which in turn is built on top of the Windows Communication Framework (SAP, Siebel, Oracle DB, and TIBCO RV).
· BAM interceptors for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and WCF
Please go to http://connect.microsoft.com for additional information and detailed feature descriptions.
Program Participation
Registration for the BTS 2006 R2 TAP program is available by invitation of Microsoft account team members or by submitting a completed Nomination form that is available on the BizTalk Server 2006 R2 TAP Connect website welcome page (also available in Downloads section).
Customers are then selected based on acceptance criteria as follows:
· A funded project that incorporates BizTalk Server 2006 R2 features
· The ability to commit the resources required to design and implement a solution using BizTalk Server 2006 R2 features
· The ability to release the solution to production at least 6 weeks prior to BizTalk Server 2006 R2 releases
· Provide high-quality feedback on BizTalk Server 2006 R2 features
· Ability to attend regularly scheduled calls with the product team
· Potential to participate in a Lab Engagement in Redmond, WA
Customers and Partners who enjoy being on the cutting edge of technology and who can benefit from these new features will find value in taking part in this TAP program.
Program Structure
Nomination – Customers can nominate themselves on the BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Connect website by completing the TAP Nomination Form found on the welcome page (also available in Downloads section). The BTS R2 TAP Team will review all Nomination forms that we receive and will contact candidates as their Nominations are accepted/rejected.
Nominations will be open through July 2006 or until the program is full. Additional program dates will be posted to the Connect site as they finalized.
Note that a Premier Support Agreement is required for participation on projects going into production.
Engagement – After being accepted into BizTalk Server 2006 R2 TAP, the TAP Team will work with TAP Participants to review architecture, test, and project plans. During this time most of the documentation and legal paperwork is signed. In addition, the TAP Participant’s expectations of the program are clearly documented and provides a means to clearly evaluate success.
Development / Test – Selected builds will be delivered to TAP Participants for testing and development. Issues brought by TAP Participants are handled by a trained Support Specialist and members of the Product Team. In some cases, developers or testers of a specific feature will work with a TAP Participants to ensure that technical issues are resolved accurately and timely.
Production Roll-Out – TAP Participants should plan on deploying their BTS 2006 R2 project to production no later than 6 weeks prior to the scheduled RTM date and be prepared to sign-off on production worthiness 2 weeks prior to RTM.
For customers that have a premier support agreement, support resources are available “7×24.”
Post-Mortem – When the program draws to a close, your feedback regarding the program in which you took part is critical to our ability to continually improve future programs.
To Access Nomination Forms:
1. Go to http://connect.microsoft.com
2. Sign in using a valid passport account
3. Select Available Connections
4. Look for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and select the Apply link on the right hand site
5. Select I Agree
6. Complete the Registration form
7. Once logged on to the BTS 2006 R2 Site select Downloads
8. Select the BizTalk 2006 R2 TAP Nomination Form link
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
So as an update to my earlier post about WF
and Serialization I’ve discovered another interesting little serialization issue
that relates to activity execution contexts.
If you aren’t familiar with AECs – here are two links to get you going:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/01/WindowsWorkflowFoundation/
http://blogs.msdn.com/advancedworkflow/archive/2006/03/21/557121.aspx
The effect this WF feature has on serialization relates to how they’ve implemented
these spawned execution contexts. Let’s take a simple custom activity inside
of a WhileActivity:
As the While executes – each execution cycle creates a new spawned AEC for activity11.
Let’s assume that the Activity has a private field of a type that isn’t serializable
(I’ll re-use the Point type from my last serialization post):
public class Point
{
public int x;
public int y;
}
So what happens? Well until I use my custom activity inside of another
activity that creates a spawned AEC (or like the last post – until I add a WorkflowPersistenceService)
– everything is fine. But once you put this Activity inside of a WhileActivity
– BAM – Serialization exception.
Why? To understand try this test – create a custom activity – set a breakpoint
inside of the constructor (or use Debug or Console.WriteLine to write out a message
from the constructor) – notice that your constructor gets called twice (see my earlier
post about WorkflowInstance.GetWorkflowDefintion about the second call) and only twice.
Even if you have a While that executes a hundred times – your constructor is only
called twice. This is because on each subsequent spawned ActivityExecutionContext
– the runtime calls Activity.Clone to create a new instance – not “new”.
Of course this is where the serialization exception happens – because the implemenation
of Activity.Clone uses Activity.Save – which is the same method used by the WorkflowPersistence
infrastructure. This is the method that uses a BinaryFormatter to serialize
the Activity type (they clone the “extra” instance they keep around as the “definition”).
So they create a new Activity instance for each AEC by serializing the existing instance
and deserializing into a new instance. Which is why your constructor doesn’t
get called on each execution of the While loop.
Fixing this problem is the same as fixing the serialization issue with WorkflowPersistence.
It just goes to show you though – that you can have serialization “issues” (when I
say issue I don’t mean to imply that WF has anything wrong with it – quite the opposite
I find the implemenation of AEC’s and Clone to be really well done) even if you don’t
use WorkflowPersistence.
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Looks like there is going to be a new release of Biztalk Server in 2007 named “BizTalk Server 2006 R2”. It appears to be that there is not going to be any “Architectural Changes” (Great!) and is going to enhance the existing functionalities in some areas and is also designed to integrate well with Office 2007.
Two things that caught my eye from this announcement
1. At last there is going to be some EDI Enhancements for Biztalk.
2. RFID support with Biztalk
3. Native connectivity and support for WCF
Check out this article for more details
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
There’s a cool video on Channel 9, covering VSTO for Office 2007:
The Future of Visual Studio Tools for Office
%ufeffIn this video we talk to Visual Studio Tools for Office team General Manager, KD Hallman, and Development Manger, Eric Carter. They’re working on “Cypress”, a fully-supported add-on for Visual Studio 2005 that enables developers to build solutions that target Office 2007, and the next full release of Visual Studio Tools for Office, code named “Orcas”. We talk about the features and goals of these two releases, and how they work with Office 2007 and Vista.
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=201396
Charles Sterling has more information about Cypress:
Cypress will include the following functionality and release at about the same time as Office 2007:
- Application-level add-ins for the most popular Office applications including Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, InfoPath and Visio. This is currently the #1 most requested feature for VSTO – safe loading, unloading, and management of managed add-ins. I’m thrilled that we’re going to be able to provide this functionality to developers much earlier than anticipated.
- Office key feature support: programming model and runtime support for Ribbon, Custom Task Panes, and Outlook forms regions. Office’s new UI contains exciting extensibility opportunities and Cypress will enable VSTO’s simple coding experiences like IntelliSense.
- Maintainability and compatibility are core principles for the VSTO team and Cypress will also ensure that your applications built on Office 2003 with VSTO 2005 continue to run with Office 2007.
Cypress is an add-on and is incremental. It is not, itself a complete Visual Studio product release. Anyone who has a licensed version of Visual Studio 2005 will be eligible to download Cypress for free. However, I want to be clear that Cypress is not a super-set of all the VSTO 2005 functionality that was made available for Office 2003 replicated for Office 2007. As promised, Excel Workbook and Word Document project support for Office 2007 will come on-line in VSTO “Orcas”, and be made available in upcoming “Orcas” CTPs. Also look for the exciting new VSTO “Orcas” functionality, such as the visual designers for the Ribbon and Custom Task Panes, and Outlook in these “Orcas”CTPs.
I’m impressed by the Office platform and VSTO tools energy in the market. It’s clear that this value packed combination is resonating well with customers and developers. Office 2007 is an exciting release with features that are clearly interesting for developers. It’s no wonder that developers want make use of these features when Office 2007 ships, and not wait for Orcas to get started. Cypress will get you started.
You can get a CTP of Cypress by going to http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/future/ and a beta version will be out later this summer.
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Fantastic news, I got my box of complimentary copies of Professional Visual Studio Team System which is now on-sale in the UK as well as the US, so go get your copy 🙂
It looks like a great book, especially Chapter 6 which is the DSL Tools Chapter that I authored, it’s based on the Feb CTP of DSL Tools which you can get here.
I’ve had a chance to look at all 3 of the major Team System books, and this is my personal opinion (I’m trying not be be biased! 🙂
Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System by Sam Guckenheimer is a fantastic looking book (Haven’t had a chance to read it all yet), unlike the other books that concentrate on the technology it focuses on the process and methodology aspect first which is crucial to all organisations and then details how Team System can help from that angle (A top down approach if you like).
Team System is a great set of technologies with some awesome features, but using it right to solve your organisational/project problems is the “ace card”
Professional Visual Studio Team System by a number of authors, me included. It covers in great depth all of the technical areas of Team System including Testing, Profiling, Source Control, SDM Designers, etc.
Pro Visual Studio Team System 2005 by Jeff Levinson and David Nelson, I’ve had a quick look at this book and it like the previous book covers all of the main technical areas but in my (quick read) view it covers them at a higher level so more friendly for a less dev-technical person.
In short, your organisation definately needs the Sam Guckenheimer book if your going to adopt Team System (get it implemented and used right), if you want deep technical details on Team System you want Professional Visual Studio Team System and if you want a higher level view you want Pro Visual Studio Team System 2005.
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I demonstrated over a year ago the code required to subscribe to the Policy Override event when developers checkin code, as you know you can apply Checkin policies to ensure developers do things like linking to Work Items, provide Checkin comments, etc. These can of course be “skipped” by Overriding the policy which is valid for scenarios like say 0200 when you need to get the code checked in for a change.
When I first demonstrated it, and plenty of people have demonstrated since, it involved in writing bits of code (not a lot but code nonetheless), things obviously improved as the product developed and here’s the much cleaner way of achieving this.
You can simply use bissubscribe.exe to subcribe to events now instead of writing a custom application that used the various Team Foundation Web Services, this command subscribes to the Checkin event and filters on the PolicyOverrideComment – if it’s been filled in (which is mandatory) the developer has “skipped” your Checkin Policy at which point you may wish to have words 🙂
bisSubscribe.exe /eventType CheckinEvent /userId VS2005\Administrator /address [email protected] /deliveryType EmailHtml /filter “PolicyOverrideComment <>””
Note that CheckinEvent is case sensitive – watch out (it had me stumped for a while)
This will cause an email to be sent to [email protected] when a developer overrides the policy, you’ll get an e-mail containing all of the changeset information including the TFS user in question.
You can obviously filter on anything you like but that will catch all PolicyOverrides, if you then want to have more control about the notification (perhaps IM, custom e-mail, etc. – then you’ll need to do it the Web Service Way:
bisSubscribe.exe /eventType CheckinEvent /userId VS2005\Administrator /address http://localhost:8080/CheckInNotificationWS/Service.asmx /deliveryType Soap /filter “PolicyOverrideComment <>””
As you all should know I’m a big fan of strong-typing when it comes to XML so I use XSD/C on the checkinevent schema that you can find here:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup\CheckInEvent.xsd
Then declare any-old Web Service that has a method that looks like this (note the policy override code isn’t required as the bissubscribe tool is doing this for you)
[WebService(Namespace = “http://tempuri.org/“)]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]
public class Service : System.Web.Services.WebService
{
public Service () {
//Uncomment the following line if using designed components
//InitializeComponent();
}
[SoapDocumentMethod(Action = “http://schemas.microsoft.com/TeamFoundation/2005/06/Services/Notification/02/Notify”,
RequestNamespace = “http://schemas.microsoft.com/TeamFoundation/2005/06/Services/Notification/02”)]
[WebMethod]
public void Notify(string eventXml)
{
XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(CheckinEvent));
StringReader sr = new StringReader(eventXml);
CheckinEvent CheckIn = xs.Deserialize(sr) as CheckinEvent;
if (CheckIn != null)
{
// Were there any Policy Failures during this checkin?
if (CheckIn.PolicyFailures.Length > 0)
{
}
}
}
Enjoy!
by community-syndication | Jun 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I've finally shipped the Adapters chapter of Professional BizTalk Server 2006, which makes 3 chapters done and plenty more to go 🙁
The chapter specifically doesn't cover writing Custom Adapters or the underlying Adapter architecture as I've taken the call that BizTalk Unleashed contains the "bible" of Adapter Development written by Kevin Smith (who I like to think as the godfather of that area 🙂
I discuss the myriad of Receive and Send Port magic and drill into each Adapter providing background on when you should and shouldn't use them (MSMQ vs MSMQT for example), the context properties promoted and provide a walkthrough on developing and configuring the FILE, WSS and SOAP Adapters and with the SOAP adapter I explain how to effectively create the message required to send to a SOAP adapter with a complex-type (i.e. class).
Plus with our announcments around BizTalk Server 2006 R2 it looks like I'll be modifying the book in a number of areas to make it cover R2 (especially with regard to WCF) and will ensure it's bang up to date when it hits the shops early next year.
I've had to replan the chapter ship schedule as I'm a bit behind 🙂 but I'm still on-target to meet the original end date and I've got the BizTalk Architecture chapter to ship before I go on holiday early July!
