Whitepaper: Rules Processing & BPM: An Architectural Perspective

by | Mar 5, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on a whitepaper which SolidSoft has published today on our web site.  It’s been published to coincide with the Microsoft Architect Insight conference at Newport which started today.   SolidSoft is one of the event sponsors, and I spent the morning delivering a workshop looking, from an architectural perspective, on the use of rules engines in business process management.   It seems to me that while there is lots of guidance and information on rules processing in BPM for business stakeholders, and some for business and enterprise architects, there is far less material orientated towards solution architects.   I’ve attempted to push the boat out a little in the whitepaper by identifying some common patterns drawn from the work we’ve done around BizTalk Server and other technologies in the last few years.   I hope it will provide some food for thought for solution architects who are considering the use of rules processing in relation to business processes.   We are a Microsoft shop, and the patterns are illustrated using Microsoft’s process automation and workflow toolset, but I have tried to define the patterns in a reasonably agnostic fashion so that they have a wider appeal.


 


The whitepaper can be downloaded from http://www.solidsoft.com/WhitePaperDownload/DownloadFile.aspx?file=WP Rules Processing and BPM.pdf.   You have to register with our site to access the paper, but if you do, you can also download a series of whitepapers by my colleague Simon Holloway on RFID.   Simon worked for Microsoft as one of their RFID consultants until recently, and is a recognised authority on the subject.


Previously posted at http://blog.solidsoft.com/blogs/charles_young_mvp_biztalk/default.aspx

Event Handlers in SharePoint 2007

by | Mar 5, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Brian Wilson has started a nice series on event handlers in SharePoint 2007, first episode: Everything you need to know about MOSS Event Handlers.

I’m already looking forward to episode 3: Free Add-on : Site Settings – Manage Event Handlers. It sounds like a nice replacement for Patrick’s tool: Event Handler Explorer! 🙂

Technorati tags: sharepoint, wss, moss, event handlers

Awesome Code Samples on BizTalk Server 2006 at MSDN!

by | Mar 5, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Check out the cool Code Samples on BTS 2006 at MSDN:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/aa937647.aspx
Featured Samples

BizTalk Server 2006 Code Samples Collection
This file contains all of the BizTalk Server 2006 samples for easy download. It is updated as new samples are published.

Integrating BizTalk Server 2006 and Windows Workflow Foundation (BizTalk Server Sample)
This sample demonstrates how to integrate Microsoft BizTalk Server […]

WordPress Upgrade to 2.1.2

by | Mar 5, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

As reported on Slashdot and on the WordPress.org blog, the 2.1.1 release of the WordPress blogging system was hacked sometime towards the end of February/beginning of March.
The hacker gained user-level access to one of the servers that powers wordpress.org, and modified two files to include code that would allow for remote PHP execution. Although details […]

Sending multiple attachments with SMTP Adapter

by | Mar 4, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I’ve received a number of questions regarding a sample I posted a while ago: Arbitrary
Binary Attachments to Multi-Part Messages; mostly related to issues when sending
the resulting messages through the SMTP adapter and not all attachments (or no attachments
at all) getting to the destination account.

I’ve found that usually, this is the result of setting the SMTP.MessagePartsAttachments
property to the wrong value. In the sample I posted alongside the article, I was setting
the property to 2. I didn’t give any explanation about it at the time, but
contrary to what it may intuitively appear, you don’t set this property to the number
of attachments (parts) you want to send alongside the message.If you attach 4 different
parts to the message, you don’t set the property to the value 4.

Instead, the value 2 means “Send all parts as attachments”, which is exactly the behavior
you want. For completeness sake, here’s what each possible value for this property
means (taken from the BizTalk
documentation):

  • 0 – No BizTalk message parts will be used as attachments.

  • 1- The BizTalk message body part is sent as an e-mail attachment. In this case, the EmailBodyFile or EmailBodyText properties
    should be specified. If neither of these properties are specified, the BizTalk message
    body part is sent as the e-mail body instead of as an attachment.

  • 2 – All parts are sent as attachments. However, if EmailBodyText or EmailBodyFile are
    not specified, then the BizTalk message body part is sent as the e-mail body and other
    parts are sent as attachments.
    • Technorati
    tags: BizTalk
    Server

    BizTalk BAM Gotcha

    by | Mar 2, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

    So I’ve built a “BizTalk For Business Analysts” class that I’m delivering next week to 20 or so of my new co-workers. We’re covering the basics of BizTalk, and I’ve built three lab exercises that deal with the Orchestration Designer for Business Analysts, using SharePoint/InfoPath with BizTalk, and building and consuming BAM models. […]