by community-syndication | Nov 19, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Netfx 3.5 release is now live on MSDN. Please see the download links below:
.NET Framework v3.5 |
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en |
.NET Framework v2.0 (x86) SP1 |
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=79BC3B77-E02C-4AD3-AACF-A7633F706BA5&displaylang=en |
.NET Framework v2.0 (x64) SP1 |
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=029196ED-04EB-471E-8A99-3C61D19A4C5A&displaylang=en |
.NET Framework v2.0 (IA64) SP1 |
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=32E77AE0-96EF-4ECD-A157-9BF61A7C8DAA&displaylang=en |
.NET Framework v3.0 SP1 |
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EC2CA85D-B255-4425-9E65-1E88A0BDB72A&displaylang=en |
Regards,
Marjan Kalantar
by community-syndication | Nov 19, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
At TechEd Developer 2007 in Barcelona, Steve Swartz, Clemens Vasters and David Chappell, 3 amazing speakers, conducted a Channel 9 interview on Software + Services and SOA.
You definitely want to watch this great video. They clarify definition of Software + Services and what services mean in this context as well as how it all relates to SOA. They also explain differences between ESB and ISB and BizTalk services’ role. They also cover other areas including goals of our identity platform, value of WCF framework and much more.
Enjoy watching this great video!
Regards,
Marjan Kalantar
by community-syndication | Nov 19, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Now here’s an idea!!! Hosted and Managed Services for BizTalk! Why hasn’t someone thought of this earlier in Aus 😉
I’ve worked closely with both Bryn and Utilisoft over the last several years (in my old national BizTalk role) and they both have excellent capabilities in BizTalk. They have decided to partner up and develop this offering.
If you are in Melbourne on Friday 30th Nov, register for their session.
by community-syndication | Nov 19, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
scottgu has the inside word!
This will make my Christchurch session tomorrow on VS2008 for web that little bit more interesting 🙂
by community-syndication | Nov 19, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Hot off the presses, you can get it now from MSDN subscriber downloads or the trial version. See Soma’s blog for more details on the new features, etc.
Surprisingly, being a WF and BizTalk guy, I’m least excited about the WF/WCF integration. I’ll talk more about what I dislike later, but this is a happy post! I’m jazzed about the new web models in WCF if only because it provides a nice affirmation of the extensibility of WCF. I might not like all of the details of how they have accomplished things, but the CSD team has certainly shown that WCF is a solid platform with all the extensibility hooks you need.
I’m also excited to spend some time with LINQ now that I’ll have the bits on my main PC (I have only put the beta on VMs or my secondary machine in my office). Like everyone else, I’ve done the simple examples to get some data out of a database and bind it to a UI, but I really want to dig in and see how it works after I have some code written and want to change something in the database. I want to see what the visual modeler/designer can and cannot do, and how using XML files might benefit me more than using the simple path that is there in V1.
The main thing that really sells this, and some folks don’t know this, is that VS 2008 and .NET 3.5, build on the existing .NET 2.0 framework. So, it should be close to a no-brainer for organizations to upgrade because they can still build their 2.0 applications without having to worry about using 3.5 assemblies if they use the multi-targeting correctly in VS / MS Build. That’s right, there are only additive changes and bug fixes in 3.5 and it uses the same 2.0 runtime that you are using today. So there should be no issues with breaking changes to core things like datasets and remoting like there were moving from 1.1 to 2.0. I’m upgrading all my boxes to take advantage of the new features and perf improvements. The only reason I could see for not updating is if you have other tools like BizTalk or Commerce Server that depend on the 2005 version. Then you can run both side-by-side, and maybe strip out some of the tools from 2005 that you no longer used to free up some space on your hard drive.
So, download, enjoy, and happy coding!
by community-syndication | Nov 18, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Ari Bakker and Isha have just completed the new Fly Buys website built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. I meet the team to check in on progress a few weeks back andf it is great to see that the new solution is now live! Along with http://aa.co.nz and others we are starting to see a bit of MOSS on the NZ Interweb.
Darryl has the word on NZ’s two MOSS MVP’s.
by community-syndication | Nov 16, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
As part of the RFID end to end course we decided to get the students to create a RFID
provider. Or more specifically this is Scott’s little
brain child – he’s a human dynamo on this stuff. Talk about an idea and this is what
he produces….
A little while ago I fielded a question on one of the internal D/Ls around
“Can you write a provider that interfaces with ’sensor’ type equipment for
BizTalk RFID?” – so now you create a provider that demonstrates how to do
that.
This comprehensive provider (these aren’t the course
lab notes – just a quick readme that Scott did)
is based on a Folder on the File System. As part of the management APIs the
Provider goes searching for ’Antenna’ which are sub-folders.
When files are dropped into these folders that acts as a ’Tag Read Event’ and the
Provider also supports Tag Writes/Prints.
Thought you might enjoy it ahead of time 
Lab04
Extension Sample Code
Well done Scotty!!!>
by community-syndication | Nov 16, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Over on the Pluralsight blog, Joe Hummel talks about supercomputing in 2007 and some of the worrying problems the chip manufacturers are starting to encounter as we move to dual-, quad- (and above) cores.
In a nutshell, the chip manufacturers seem to have hit a brick wall in terms of CPU speed (levelling off at around […]
by community-syndication | Nov 16, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Clearly the best day of the conference until now, with two really great sessions: Pat Helland’s and Rafal’s.
The first session was Justin Smith’s “Connections in the Cloud – BizTalk Services and WCF“. This was an interesting session about BizTalk Services, with some demos to illustrate how it can be used. I’ve described the technology previously, so I’m not going to spend time here on it. I especially liked the demo where the access control to a service is done at the ISB-level, based on claims and w/out any change whatsoever to the service. We were also told the team is using agile methodologies, with new drops every 6-8 weeks. Workflow is obviously the feature everybody is waiting for. And I personally wish it had context-based routing, and not only named-uri/topic-like pub/sub. CBR is an immensely powerful mechanism available in BizTalk Server, and it allows for greater decoupling between the sender and receiver(s) of a given message.
Next was Matt Winkler’s “What’s the Context of this Conversation: Enabling long running services in workflow services“. The basic ideas of Workflow Services (in .Net 3.5) are implementing services as workflows, and hosting workflows as services. The session described the current mechanisms used to communicate between the wf host and its instances using applicational queues, and described how this works in long running scenarios. If this was BizTalk Server, this would be a session about Correlation and Convoys. Since its not, it was about the exchange of context information between the service and its clients so that the correct instances can be rehydrated when messages/invocations arrive. Matt highly recommends the “Conversation” sample from the SDK to learn about this topic. Having studied previous versions of WF, I’m glad they are dropping the Handle External Event/Call External Method ways of communication between host and workflows, which always felt strange to use.
This was not the greatest of sessions, but it was interesting nonetheless.
After lunch there was Pat Helland’s “Data on the Outside vs Data on the Inside“, the best session of TechEd IMHO. This is not a new session (also see this), it’s a couple of years old, but the ideas are still up-to-date. The session starts with the idea that services communicate using messages, and from there Pat explores the location of the data (inside services, or in messages being exchanged). The most interesting part of the presentation were the parallels between the theory of relativity and messaging. Definitely a great session. Some quotable sentences I noted: %u00abMessages are not from the now, but from the past. There is no simultaneity at a distance%u00bb, %u00abServices, transactions and locks bound simultaneity%u00bb, %u00abAll data from distant stars is from the past [so, each service has its own perspective]%u00bb and %u00aboperators is hope that something will happen in the future%u00bb.
The next session was “Silverlight, Asp.Net and Web Services in IronPython and IronRuby“, presented by Mahesh Prakriya. The session was very much about the Dynamic Language Runtime and the languages that use it. It included quite a few impressive demos of Silverlight and its interaction with IronPython, as well as using Web Services (and dynamic proxy creation). The Asp.Net demo was less interesting. I find dynamic languages really interesting (I love languages like Lisp, Prolog and Xslt), although much less structured that C++/C#/Java-like languages, and would like to experiment using these languages in some enterprise scenarios. Unfortunately, however, it’s possible to call from DLR languages into CLR languages, but not vice-versa. Which means I can’t develop over SharePoint, OBA-apps, or even BizTalk, calling into DLR code. Helas.
The last session of the day was Rafal Lukawiecki’s “Developing More Intelligent Applications Using Data Mining“. Rafal is a great speaker, and this was a very good session, which is available online here at a previous event. Rafal is widely known to be able to deliver great sessions whatever topic (he did sessions on security, networking and MSF, at TechEd), being a very eloquent and expressive speaker. His session was dedicated to the use of data mining techniques in application development, and started by establishing the differences between OLAP (interactive exploration of data) and Data Mining (Proactive discovery of information/patterns). This “discovery” aspect, or “Predictive Programming”, is what can allow use to develop more intelligent apps, with adaptative user interfaces, data input validation, and business process validation. De session ended with a demo of Input Validation using Sql Server 2005 Analysis Services. Overall this was a very interesting session that left me with several ideas of possible applications in the development work we do at |create|it|.
[Edit]
And thus ended the third day of the event. At night, there was the portuguese country dinner, with all the portuguese people attending the conference. (Did I mention TechEd was largely about networking? ;-))
by community-syndication | Nov 16, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I’m thrilled to announce that business is so very good at the moment that Sogeti is
once again looking to increase the ranks of their Microsoft Practice. Sogeti
has been my employer since August of 2006, and I must say that I’ve been thrilled
with my experience there. The team that we have in Dallas are some of the brightest
folks I know. Of course, platitudes are not a reason to work for a company,
but enjoying what you do is key. In case you are not aware, Sogeti is a division of
Capgemini which focuses on regional IT services delivery. What does that mean?
It means our consultants don’t travel (for the most part) and are placed at positions
within their home cities.
We have at Sogeti one of the best work/life balance benefit packages I’ve ever encountered
in the industry, here are some details:
-
All full-time employee consultants are salaried, W2 employees. We are a consultancy,
not a contracting body shop. Rolling off a project with a client results in
bench time at the office while sales places you at the next client, not the end of
your time at Sogeti.
-
Medical and Dental Insurance paid for the consultant, plus the option of a Health
Savings Account which allows you to save money towards any sort of “out of pocket”
medical expenses, even over the counter drugs, with pre-tax dollars. If you
don’t use the money, it rolls over year to year, and becomes yours to do with as you
wish at retirement age.
-
Comp-Time for every billable hour over 40 worked in a week. We’ve all had that
nasty 60 hour a week project, they for the most part cannot be avoided, but with this
plan you would earn 20 hours of Comp-Time per week to use to spend time with your
family when work was less crazy. They reward time with time, not money, and
that is key.
-
Three weeks of PTO for the first two years, four weeks after that (it goes up again
but I forget when). Also twice per year you can purchase a week of PTO, meaning
you could have as much as 5 weeks of PTO in your first year and that is not factoring
in Comp-Time.
What sort of folks are we looking for you ask? .NET Developers of all levels
but if you have experience with any of the following technologies that would definitely
help:
-
BizTalk Server – We’ve got the premiere BizTalk practice in the area and would love
to welcome more talented developers into the fold.
-
Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 aka MOSS 2007 – A hot technology at the moment
and the emerging enterprise web technology. If you’ve work
with Sharepoint, drop me a line.
So are you interested? Drop me a line at [email protected] with
your resume attached and I’ll get you in touch with the right people to start the
process. Remember, life is to short to do something you don’t enjoy completely.
Tim Rayburn is a consultant for Sogeti in the Dallas/Fort
Worth market.
