Redmond this week (CSD SDR)

by | Sep 11, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I leave for Redmond tonight and will be on the Microsoft campus through Friday attending some meetings with the Connected Systems Division (at the MS conference center). In fact, a bunch of us from Pluralsight will around campus this week including Keith, Fritz, Jon Flanders, Matt Milner, Brian Randall, Scott Allen, and Ted Neward. Some of us are attending the CSD SDR while Fritz and others will be teaching our new Applied Silverlight course. If you’re around too, drop me a line.

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 – Available today!

by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

 

I’m thrilled to announce that BizTalk Server 2006 R2 is available today!  This marks the 5th major release we’ve had in the last 7 years, which is a great testament to our product team’s ability to deliver value to customers as the market evolves. Just as folks in the US are sitting down to dinner tonight, we will be halfway around the world in Taipei, Taiwan celebrating the availability of BizTalk Sever 2006 R2 with our partners, Intel and HP.


 


I bet you’re thinking “why Taiwan?”  As you may know, it is a primary hub for manufacturing.  The motivation for R2 was simple. Businesses need to CONNECT existing systems regardless of vendor, age or protocol and EXTEND business processes outside the organization- all with software that is ENTERPRISE CLASS. For years, customers have wanted a single platform for application integration, process automation and supply chain management in one box – simply put, customers need an easy way to connect across offices, organization and oceans. R2 delivers!


 


Over the next few days, I’ll be doing several updates to my blog, but today, I’ll start by running through the basics. So, let’s talk more about the first two-extending and connecting.  


 


We’ve made some big investments in R2 that will help organizations push process automation out the edge and beyond.


%u00b7         Full RFID solution to manage device, capture events and invoke workflow.


%u00b7         Hub & spoke enablement for branch connectivity with the new, very low cost BizTalk Server Branch edition


%u00b7         New robust EDI capabilities- including commonly used EDI schemas and trading partner management tools


%u00b7         We are also including four industry accelerators “out of the box”- RosettaNet, HL7, HIPPA, SWIFT


 


In addition to the GA of R2 – we announced a new set of ESB Guidance and a CTP of the BizTalk Adapter pack.


 


First-  “Microsoft’s ESB Guidance,” which provides architectural guidance, patterns, practices, and a set of BizTalk Server and .NET components to simplify the development of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) using Microsoft technology. We want to help customers with best practices to implement an ESB, with the technology they already have- in a way that is both easy and fiscally responsible. This helps remove the mystery and confusion around developing a ESB- and the best part it is free now on CodePlex!


 


Secondly- Today we are delivering the first CTP of the BizTalk Adapter Pack.  Available in the first half of calendar Year 2008 – it will include adapters for SAP, Siebel, and Oracle DB, as well an ADO.NET Provider.  After it becomes available – the Adapter Pack will be included in BizTalk Server 2006 R2. Because these adapters do not specifically require BizTalk Server, many customers will find them to be a very useful alternative to hand coding point to point integration. Think about being able to pull customer information from Siebel into a SharePoint site or load order information from SAP into SQL for BI reporting and analysis. The best part is. these adapters grow with your business. So when you decide the application needs a middle tier you don’t have to rip and replace, rather just implement BizTalk Server.  Go download it, play with it and let us know what you think.


 


With more than 7,000 customers globally, BizTalk is the most widely deployed business process server.  And we think we will continue to impress our customers with R2-that’s what it’s all about!


 

Virgin Schmap

by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I was just reading Kordi’s post on Virgin Mobile, Creative Commons abuser?


Also like John and Rowan I’ve been Schmap’d


“I am delighted to let you know that your four submitted photos have been selected for inclusion in the newly released third edition of our Schmap Auckland Guide:



Auckland Zoo
www.schmap.com/auckland/sights_zoos/p=55926/i=55926_7.jpg


Auckland Zoo
www.schmap.com/auckland/sights_zoos/p=55926/i=55926_8.jpg


One Tree Hill
www.schmap.com/auckland/tours_tour1/p=38878/i=38878_1.jpg


Takapuna Beach
www.schmap.com/auckland/sights_panorama/p=40629/i=40629_3.jpg“


This sort of thing always amused me as the photos that were picked, I didn’t submit and they are not my favourite photos on those topics and three of the four photos that they picked have annoying copyright watermarks!


Another case of this was a designer in the US contacting me to use this photo in a fishing e-commerce site. I always tend to prefer right framing of images… it was interesting for me that the designer mirrored this photo so that the wharf was on the left… must be the sign of a creative rather than analytical mind. 


What is the going rate for royalty free photos?

Tool of the Day: WSPBuilder for SharePoint

by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

What a coincidence: this week I’m in Aarhus, Denmark for a SharePoint 2007 Development Training, and I’ve stumbled upon a very nice SharePoint tool, created by a Danish guy: Carsten Keutmann. The tool is named WSPBuilder and can be downloaded from the CodePlex site. Basically this tool can build a SharePoint solution file (WSP) in minutes. You just have to copy the contents for the WSP to a corresponding structure (e.g. 12\template\layouts, 12\template\features\yourfeature), run the tool and you’ve got yourself a splendid SharePoint solution!

Description from CodePlex:
No more manually creating the manifest.xml file.
No more manually specifying the DDF file.
No more using the makecab.exe application.

The WSPbuilder is a console application that creates SharePoint Solutions files based on a folder structure. WSPBuilder will automatically traverse a “12” folder structure and creates a SharePoint solution manifest.xml and the wsp file based on the files it finds. Therefore you do not need the knowledge of how to create a solution manifest.xml and wsp file any more. The folder structure that WSPBuilder uses to build the wsp file is actually the same folder stucture you will find in: “%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12”. So all that you have to do, is the create a \12 folder in your project and add your files to that folder matching the same structure as if you where to put them directly into the “%Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12” folder manually.

Thanks Carsten, if you happen to be in Aarhus this week, I’ll buy you a beer! 😉

Technorati tags: sharepoint, sharepoint2007, wsp, solutions, wspbuilder

King’s Peak 2007

by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I’ve been busy. One of my craziest summers ever. Now that it’s winding down, the kids are back in school, and I’m finding comfort in the routine, I figured it was time for an update. My summer was full of outdoor activities, sporting events, family projects and a big family reunion (in Island Park near West Yellowstone).


But the highlight was the 50-mile backpacking trip that I did with the scouts in the High Uintas. The trip was similar to the last one we did in 2005 but this time we had a much bigger group, and everyone without exception made it to the top of King’s Peak, the highest peak in Utah (~13,500 ft). Here’s the snapshot:



I’m not sure what compels us humans to climb mountains (in reality not metaphorically), but there’s nothing quite like the sense of accomplishment you feel when you get to the top. 


Basic stats from the trip: 14 people, 50.32 miles, 252 fish, 49.5 lb pounds on my back (on day 1 at least), and 5 lbs less around my waist when I arrived back home. Here’s an example of one of many brookies we caught:



Work didn’t slow down one bit during all of this madness so that made for a blog-less summer. However, there’s a bunch of work-related stuff happening that I’m really excited about…and will be posting about later.


I hope your summer was equally exhilarating.

Adding Breadcrumb Navigation for SharePoint Application Pages

Adding Breadcrumb Navigation for SharePoint Application Pages

by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Application Pages in SharePoint 2007 are a great way to extend SharePoint’s default user interface for your custom SharePoint solutions. An application page is deployed once per Web server and it’s not possible to customize these pages per site (like the normal Site Pages). A good example of an Application Page is the default Site Settings page: every site has one, and it’s not customizable on a per site basis (although the contents can be different for sites). A very basic application page could look like:

<%@ Page MasterPageFile=”~/_layouts/application.master”
    Inherits=”Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls.LayoutsPageBase”   
    Language=”C#”%>
<asp:Content
    contentplaceholderid=”PlaceHolderPageTitle” runat=”server”>
Jan’s Page
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content
    contentplaceholderid=”PlaceHolderPageTitleInTitleArea”
    runat=”server”>
Jan’s Page   
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content
    contentplaceholderid=”PlaceHolderMain”
    runat=”server”>
Jan’s fantastic Application Page content goes here!
</asp:Content>

When this ASPX page is saved in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS folder, it can be accessed from any site by making use of the following URL: http://siteurl/optionalsubsite/_layouts/pagename.aspx.

 

(More information about creating your own Application Pages can be found in Ted Pattison’s excellent Visual How-To) As you can see, this page resembles the Site Settings page (or any other default Application Page) quite well. But there is one important thing missing: the breadcrumbs above the page title! Check for example the default Site Settings page:

You can’t fix this by adding a breadcrumb control (aka SiteMapPath control) to the Application Page, actually there is already a breadcrumb on the page (defined in the default master page), the issue is that the new Application page is simply not known by the navigation infrastructure. Luckily this is quite easy to solve: SharePoint uses the ASP.NET 2.0 navigation functionality, so you just have to update the site’s sitemap. This is an XML file containing the navigation hierarchy and is located in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\wss.u2ucourse.com\_app_bin\layouts.sitemap. If you want that your Application Page behaves as a sub page of the Site Settings page (a common scenario for Application Pages), look for the siteMapNode of the settings page:

<siteMapNode title=”$Resources:wss,settings_pagetitle” url=”/_layouts/settings.aspx”>

And add your own siteMapNode as a child element:

<siteMapNode title=”Jan’s Page” url=”/_layouts/jan.aspx”/>

Et voila, the custom Application Page’s breadcrumb control will automatically display the correct breadcrumb links. Of course modifying the layouts.sitemap file manually is not very nice since a SharePoint environment could have more than one web application (potentially on different servers), so you’d have to edit a couple of files. But of course you can automate this as well, I’ll go into the details in a follow-up post.

Technorati tags: sharepoint, sharepoint2007, application pages, navigation, breadcrumbs

My DevDays Sessions on MSDN Showtime!

by | Sep 10, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

[Thanks Yves for the tip!] Last summer I delivered two presentations on the Dutch Developer Days in Amsterdam. You can see both sessions from the MSDN’s Showtime site:

Be aware that both sessions are in Dutch. I haven’t watched the recording yet completly, it’s really awkward to see yourself speaking in public… Anyway the recordings are very professional (multiple camera’s),just like the rest of the event, so kudos to the Dutch guys for organizing this event!

Technorati tags: sharepoint, sharepoint2007, web parts, develoment, devdays