"Five Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me"

by | Jan 9, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I was wondering how long it was going to take to get tagged by this meme that is tracking the globe.


There are many parallel threads running around at the moment I spotted this one at Kathy Sierra’s blog and from Darryl’s blog I see this is already doing the rounds in NZ. Well Frank tagged me so now it’s my turn…


1) I was born on the same day as Elvis in the year that he died… yup that made me 30 2 days ago!


2) I run a group on Flickr called beaches that has 20,590 photos and 1893 members.


3) I broke my right arm at intermediate school and learnt to play racket sports with my left hand. I can now play left or right handed and in the case of table tennis I can play a game with a bat in each hand.


4) I have my school testimonial, university grades, and an early business article online as part of a CV I put together to secure my first job in 1999.


5) If you do a Google Image Search for Nigel Parker 19 of the 20 pictures that come up on the first page relate to me (all except for the first one)!


With Live Image Search I don’t fend as well with only 7 out of 20 relating to me.


Now it’s my turn to tag…


Let’s keep this in NZ… I hereby tag


Steven Kempton


John Lewis


Darren Wood


Tim Haines


Juha Saarinen


Let’s see if they pick-up on this…


Technorati tags: Steven Kempton, John Lewis, Darren Wood, Tim Haines, Juha Saarinen, 5 Things, meme

TechEd 2007 Connected Systems Track – Call for Content

by | Jan 9, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication



 


Although Tech%u00b7Ed doesn’t happen until June, there is an extensive timeline that requires us to have sessions submitted in January in order to drive demand generation for the event.


 


Tech%u00b7Ed is Microsoft’s annual technical conference that brings together IT Professionals & Developers providing them with tools, information & resources to build, deploy, secure, mobilize, & manage solutions across currently shipping and soon to release products.


 


This five day event will take place June 4-8, 2007 Orlando at the Orange County Convention Center(OCCC) followed by 15+ international TechEd events that are expected to reach an estimated 25,000 customers and partners worldwide. 


 


Here is how to submit sessions:


 


Go to the following content Submission site: https://2007.msteched.com/cft – use the password: CON_891


Provide Initial title and abstract submissions for Breakouts, Chalk Talks, Web Casts and HOL’s.


All submissions are due by Wednesday, January 24th 5:00 PM.   


 


***Please note that even though you may be proposing sessions, all requests will be reviewed to determine how well they fit the connected systems track.


 


 


Make sure you align your session proposal to the following track themes:


 


 


The Connected Systems Track Description:


 


We live in a complex world, where building modern applications requires spanning logical and physical boundaries.  Connecting the parts of separate distributed systems into a single agile solution is challenging.  The key to success lies in embracing the tenets of Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) that incorporates efficient Business Process Management (BPM) and integration with existing systems. If your job is to design, develop, deploy or maintain such new applications – the Connected Systems track is for you. Get a holistic up-to-date view of the entire spectrum of Microsoft’s integration and workflow technologies. Facilitate your daily work through real-world best practices. Learn how to manage the entire life cycle of your composite applications, using cutting edge infrastructure and premium servers.


At the Connected Systems track you will obtain the information about products you need to successfully deliver your new solutions:


%u00b7         Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 programming model for Windows that offers new technologies for building applications for seamless communication across technology boundaries and for composing services. These new technologies are Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace.  (The latter three are covered in this track.)


%u00b7         Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 is a business process management (BPM) server that enables companies to automate and optimize business processes. Microsoft BizTalk Adapters and Host Integration Server connect applications built on BizTalk Server or .NET Framework to existing systems.


 


TechEd Website: http://www.microsoft.com/teched2007


 


Session Types:


 


1.    Breakout Sessions: 75 minutes


%u00b7         Session level requirement is 300 or above and it should be focused on a current technical topic relevant to the track.


%u00b7         Breakout session is carried out though a presentation and preferably technical demo(s) to a wide audience.


2.    Webcast Sessions: 75 minutes


%u00b7        This is a breakout session that is pre-recorded and available for via the Internet or the event’s DVD.


3.    Theater Sessions (Chalk Talks): 75 minutes


%u00b7         Small group interactions allowing for group discussion and 1 to few interaction around a specific topic area.


%u00b7         There are white boards, demos, drill downs, but no power point presentation.


%u00b7         This kind of session can compliment a breakout session.


4.    Hands on Labs (HOLs): 45- 60 minutes


%u00b7         Hands-on Labs allow attendees to gain first-hand experience with Microsoft tools and technologies.


%u00b7         Labs are primarily one hour self-paced sessions, though a few of the topics are usually broken into modules so that you can work on them throughout the week, and not be taken away from other valuable activities.  Both self paced and instructor lead will be offered. 


 


The event will cover T&E for external speakers.


 


Thank you for taking the time to begin planning for this important event.   


 


 Ofer Ashkenazi   


 


 


 


 

Middleware Mania 2007

by | Jan 9, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Last Saturday we had a one day event called Middleware Mania 2007 at BDotNet (http://groups.msn.com/BDOTNET), India's largest and most active .NET user group in Bangalore with 8750+ members. Held in one of Microsoft's building, which received a good number of people right from junior developers, solutions architects to project managers.

I got invited to present 2 sessions at the event, one was on the New Features in BizTalk Server 2006 and the other was on Adapter Development in BizTalk 2006.

You can download the presentations and code form the link below.

http://www.seamless.in/files/NewFeaturesInBizTalk2006.zip

http://www.seamless.in/files/AdapterDevelopmentinBizTalk2006.zip

 For me, this was a good event after a long time… there were other presenters who gave good presentations on RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF), Introduction to BizTalk,  Enterprise Integration Patterns etc. Received a lot of good feed back about the presentations.

Over all it was fun…, the audience was quite enthusiastic, they even did a little leg-pulling of one of the presenter and one funny lady who was there to promote her company and was woo-ing  everyone to join her company J

 

Regards

Benny Mathew
Seamless Integration Solutions
BizTalk Consulting, Development, Training
Cell: +91-9945602604 / Office: +91-80-41676177
http://www.seamless.in
http://GeeksWithBlogs.net/benny

Property Promotion inside Orchestration

by | Jan 8, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Promoting properties inside BizTalk is quite common task, after all back bone of BizTalk’s underlying routing infrastructure Publish-Subscribe is based on property promotion. There are tons of articles published in the web explaining this concept.

Properties get promoted within BizTalk at different places, Example: some of the properties gets promoted by Adapters, Pipelines Components, Messaging Engine etc,etc. In custom pipeline components ,developers can use either IBaseMessageContext.Write to write context properties or IBaseMessageContext.Promote to promote context properties. The basic difference between writing and promoting (aka distinguished and promoted) properties are, properties that are written cannot be used for message routing, whereas properties that are promoted can be used for message routing. (There are quite few other important differences, but they are not relevant for this article).

Orchestration:

The syntax for promoting properties within Orchestration is

Message(PromotedPropertyName) = value;

Example

MSG_OUT_PERSON(HTTP.ContentType) = “text/xml”;

this is the only direct option available within an orchestration to promote a property. Properties promoted by this method are written rather than promoted. That means it can’t be used for message routing (filter expressions in Send Port, Orchestration etc).

The sample code contains an orchestration named “PromoteProperty.odx” as shown in below figure, it just receives a message, does property promotion inside the message assignment stage and send the message out.

The following two lines are present inside the “Message Assignment” shape:

MSG_OUT_PERSON = MSG_IN_PERSON;
MSG_OUT_PERSON(PropertyPromotionInsideOrchestration.PropertySchema.ID) = “SK007”

If you look at the outgoing message context, it will look like as shown in figure below, and you can see clearly the property is “NOT PROMOTED”

So, how can you promote property within Orchestration for routing:

Orchestration got the concept of Correlation, basically which routes the response messages to the correct running orchestration instance that initiated the request message. Within Orchestration we use Correlation Set and Correlation type to archive this type of instance routing.

Correlation type is nothing but a set of Properties, Example in our case it’s “ID” (you can have multiple properties together to form a single correlation type, Example EmployeeId, EmployeeCompany).

Correlation Set is based on Correlation type and its a set of properties with specific values. When we “Initialize a Correlation set” within orchestration, the orchestration instance automatically promotes those properties in Correlation set into the message context.

We can use this mechanism to promote propeties (rather than just writing properties), there is no need to do a follow up of the Correlations sets we initialized, and it NOT going to create unnecessary subscriptions. (In simple terms you create correlation sets, not for correlation but for property promotion.)

The sample code contains an Orchestration called “PromotePropertyUsingDummyCorrelationSet.odx” which is exact replica of our first Orchestration “PromoteProperty.odx”, with one addition. I added a Correlation Type, Correlation Set and Initialized the Correlation set in the Send shape as shown in below figures.

      

Now, if you look at the outgoing message context , it will look like as shown in figure below. Now you can see ID property is PROMOTED. The attached sample clearly explains this concept. Read the Download section for details.

David Hurtado highlighted this trick on his blog. I expanded his trick with proper sample and more explanation, so that it will be helpful to some one in the future. Or atleast to me if in case I can’t remember.

Download:

The download contains the complete source code, sample messages, File drop folders and binding file. Follow the steps to setup the sample.

1. Extract “PropertyPromotionInsideOrchestration” solution to “C:\BTSSamples” folder

2. Open it in Visual Studio, Build/Deploy it, it will create a Biztalk Application called “PropertyPromotionInsideOrchestration”. Rectify the errors if something pops up.

3. Open Biztalk 2006 Administration console, right-click on the application “PropertyPromotionInsideOrchestration” and import the binding file “binding.xml”. (Start the application).

Execution:

1. Drop the message “NoPromotion.xml” into “FileDrop\In” folder, you’ll see the output only in “FileDrop\Out” folder.

2. Drop the message “PromotionWillHappen.xml” into “FileDrop\In” folder you’ll see the output in both “FileDrop\Out” and “FileDrop\Out.ByID” folder. (Because message is routed via the second send port to this folder by Content based routing.)

Microsoft.BizTalk.Gac.Fusion, Access denied Exception and GAC is empty

by | Jan 8, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Once in a while you get the following error while trying to compile/build the BizTalk project (With few more Access denied errors and some HRESULT values).

Error 2 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Gac.Fusion.IAssemblyCache.InstallAssembly(AssemblyCacheInstallFlag flags, String manifestFilePath, FusionInstallReference referenceData)
at Microsoft.BizTalk.Gac.Gac.InstallAssembly(String assemblyPathname, Boolean force)
at Microsoft.BizTalk.Deployment.BizTalkAssembly.GacInstall(String assemblyLocation)
at Microsoft.BizTalk.Deployment.BizTalkAssembly.PrivateDeploy(String server, String database, String assemblyPathname, String applicationName)
at Microsoft.BizTalk.Deployment.BizTalkAssembly.Deploy(Boolean redeploy, String server, String database, String assemblyPathname, String group, String applicationName, ApplicationLog log)

The error messages were very generic and its hard to diagnose anything with those messages. As a developer you tend to try few things like 1. Shutting down Visual Studio, 2. Restarting Biztalk, 3. Restarting IIS, 4. Stopping Virus scanners, etc etc and at one stage even restarting Windows. After doing one, two or all of the above steps, you’ll be ok at some point (but you never know the root cause). The project will recompile without any issues this time.  Whenever you are experiencing this issue if you look at the GAC, the GAC will be empty (Yes! believe me, scary stuff, but that’s true. I put two pictures below to show that).

You’ll experience similar errors once in a while, when you have some Visual Studio “Built Events” scripts that deploy assemblies into GAC. One day I decided to spend some time and find out the root cause for the problem. SysInternals (Oops! now Microsoft’s) FileMon came to rescue, I put the filter on FileMon to watch for the GAC folder and started to rebuild the assemblies, all of a sudden I started to see the process cisvc.exe popping up the screen, a bit of search revealed it the “Indexing Service” that blocks the GAC folder temporarily. I don’t know whether “Indexing Service” is part of Windows XP or it got installed as part of some other updates. If in case you have it installed on your PC, that’s the services you need to start and stop if you are experiencing the problem outlined in this article.

Nandri!

Saravana

CES Yahoo and Windows DreamScene

by | Jan 8, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I have been linking to (Lee Brimelow) and http://thewpfblog.com for a while now.


Check out what Lee and the team at Frog rolled out for Yahoo at CES. Yes another commercial Windows Presentation Foundation application.


Oh yeah and I’m pretty excited about Windows DreamScene as well… here is my first concept video…




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";” mce_src=”http://blogs.msdn.com/blogfiles/nigel/WindowsLiveWriter/CESYahooandWindowsDreamScene_C6FD/videocapturef7c9b77740e94778bab32b5f.jpg” galleryimg=”no”>

What do you think?


Oh yeah and for those that watched Bill G’s keynote at CES you might like to try out Group Shot as well.