TechTalk Bloggers here I come….. :-)

by | Aug 30, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

The ever vibrant Andrew
Coates pinged me an email yesterday asking for my involvement in becoming
a TechTalk Blogger……..

I’m currently on this Island called ‘Hamilton’ at a ‘Partner’ Conference (yeah right!!!
:)) so naturally I said ‘yes!’ (not too many people are saying ‘no’ around here)

I’ve got some great stories around RFID, BizTalk R2 and obvious integration into
WSS/MOSS and what that means.

Hope you’re going to join me on a great journey together! Gotta dash
the scuba diving boat is waiting for me… (erm…the next ‘partner activity’)

Mick. 

A couple of Partner Conference gems…..Innovative Search Interfaces

by | Aug 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I’m currently kicking back at the partner conf. here on Hamilton Island – I have to
kick myself to remind me that I am on a conference. Beautiful scenery and temperature….I’m
sure you get the classic sunset palm tree over a beach image in your mind……..no
more need to be said.

What I did want to share – I’m currently listening to Ian Polangio (MS Sharepoint
TS) where he brought up a couple of great (beta) Search sites.

1. http://mrsdewey.com/ –
here’s a talking person who acts and ‘shows’ parts of your search results.
(She has a bit of attitude to boot as well)
 

2. http://www.tafiti.com/ –
silverlight based search site. Builds trees and it’s quite interactive.
I did a search on my name ‘Mick Badran’ and some interesting results came up 🙂

Very interactive in Silverlight – lots of things spinning and moving and pinning

Dual WAN With Load Balancing

Dual WAN With Load Balancing

by | Aug 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Not long ago, I had my office server connected to the Internet through a consumer cable connection without a fixed IP address.  This worked OK for a while as the IP address didn’t change very much.  But about 2 months ago the ISP changed the way they did things and my IP address was changing every day.  I thought I had better bite the bullet and a get a business ADSL 2+ line with a fixed IP address, so I did.  But I was reluctant to give up my cable connection as it had been reliable (plus the modem was all paid for).  So I started to investigate the feasibility of keeping both Internet connections for redundancy and possible load balancing.  I was surprised to find that there are quite a few routers out there that are designed to connect to multiple WANs and do all the failover and load balancing for you.  The Linksys RV082 looked like a good candidate and I managed to find a second hand one for $150.00 (Australian).  I was so surprised how easy it was to configure.  I downloaded and installed the latest firmware to start with.  Then I plugged the ADSL modem into one WAN port and the Cable modem into the other.  I configured each connection and then ticked a box for load balancing and that was it.


Here’s a photo of the whole rig:



Here’s a couple of the config screens:


 


 



I was just so impressed with the RV082.  It has been extremely reliable and does exactly what it is supposed to do with very easy configuration.

How the WCF LOB Adapter SDK works with IChannelFactory and IChannelListener

by | Aug 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Q. It seems WCF LOB adapters works different from normal WCF service as there is no WCF Service hosted. Do we only use channelfactory to create custom channel for send wcf message to LOB without channellisterner? I just wonder how WCF LOB adapter run time works behind scene.


WCF Service is hosted using a class called ServiceHost.  The ServiceHost encapsulates the functionality regarding bindings, channels, dispatchers and listeners. 


WCF LOB Adapter is surfaced to the consumer as a WCF Binding, where the binding is used to create the channel stack. This binding can be considered a peer to other predefined WCF bindings such as BasicHttpBinding, WsHttpBinding, NetTcpBinding, etc and can be set via app.config or in code by the client application when calling a service.  This binding contains an ordered set of binding elements, with adapter being the key binding element that derives from TransportBindingElement class.  In an outbound scenario, the WCF LOB Adapter SDK runtime uses channel factory to create the adapter (i.e. transport channel).  In an inbound scenario, the WCF LOB Adapter SDK runtime uses channel listeners that listen for incoming channels in a service application. 


When a .NET application set the endpoint information with the WCF LOB Adapter binding, WCF under-the-covers calls



  • BindingElement::BuildChannelFactory, if the application uses the adapter in client endpoint or
  • BindingEement::BuildChannelListener, if the application uses the adapter in service endpoint.

When an application uses the WCF LOB Adapter in an outbound scenario, the WCF LOB Adapter SDK runtime interprets the BindingElement::BuildChannelFactory to build a Channel Factory for a specific type of channel.  When ChannelFactory::OnCreateChannel call is made by WCF, WCF LOB Adapter SDK runtime performs some of the following steps –



  • Checks the type of channel (IOutputChannel, IOutputSesionChannel, IRequestChannel, IRequestSessionChannel) and creates appropriate adapter send channel
  • Create connection pool
  • Create metadata cache


Then, on channel’s OnOpen() method, WCF LOB Adapter SDK runtime creates the connection (or uses the connection from pool), builds appropriate outbound handler that implements interface IOutboundHandler and/or IAsyncOutboundHandler and call the Execute/BeginExecute/EndExecute method for message exchange.


Similarly, when an application uses the WCF LOB Adapter in an inbound scenario, the WCF LOB Adapter SDK interprets the BindingElement::BuildChannelListner to accept channels of a specific type from the binding (i.e. the adapter).  The adapter checks for the type of channel (IInputChannel, IInputSessionChannel, IReplyChannel, IReplySessionChannel) and creates appropriate adapter receive channel.   Then on channel’s OnOpen() method, WCF LOB Adapter SDK retrieves the connection from the pool, builds appropriate inbound handler that implements IInboundHandler and/or IAsyncInboundHandler, and invoke the TryReceive()/WaitForMessage() methods to map the lob-specific method calls to WCF messages.   The listening application/service then uses this channel to receive incoming messages.


Check the EchoAdapterSample’s TestEchoAdapter_Channel (outbound) and TestEchoAdapter_Channel_Inbound (inbound) projects to see how the channel model is used directly to communicate with the adapter.  Then see how the WCF Service Model sample consumer projects TestEchoAdapter_Proxy (outbound) and TestEchoAdapter_Service_Inbound (inbound) hide the channel related details from the end-user.  The EchoAdapterSample is available from the WCF LOB Adapter SDK install directory under \Documents\Samples.

WCF LOB Adapter SDK Download

by | Aug 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

WCF LOB Adapter SDK is now generally available for download . . .


We are pleased to announce the release of WCF LOB Adapter SDK. 


Here are some of the related links:



  • WCF LOB Adapter SDK Technology Site
  • WCF LOB Adapter SDK Download Site
  • WCF LOB Adapter SDK MSDN Forum
  • BizTalk Server Roadmap
  • Building Custom WCF Channels

While the team is working on providing the official documentation, see some of the following posts to learn more about WCF LOB Adapter SDK.



The WCF LOB Adapter SDK ships with two samples – EchoAdapterSample and ContosoAdapterSample. The samples are installed as part of the setup in the {install_location}\WCF LOB Adapter SDK\Documents\Samples.


Download WCF LOB Adapter SDK