by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Sonu Arora, who I had the pleasure of meeting at TechEd this year, has
just posted on her blog that her team has released an RC (Release Candidate) of
the WCF Line of Business Adapter SDK to Microsoft
Connect. In case you don’t know, this is the framework upon which Microsoft
is building their next generation adapters to systems such as Siebel, SAP, and Oracle
Financials. It is based around extracting meta-data from the LOB application,
and works entirely consistently with the WCF channel extensibility model.
If you read my blog and do BizTalk, and even more relevantly do BizTalk and SAP, Siebel,
Oracle Financials or other LOB applications, then you’ll want to look at this.
Post R2 this would be the recommended route to take if you had a LOB application you
needed to integrate with, rather than writing a Custom Adapter. You’d simply
write an LOB Adapter in .NET using this SDK, and then implement with the WCF Adapter
for BizTalk. The benefit there is that the work in the Adapter would be re-usable
to other WCF .NET applications and not tied exclusively to the BizTalk object model.
by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Sometimes the weirdest things come up when testing. I was helping with some
Integration Testing recently, and we needed to submit a new valid postal address with
every request to this system. That’s a hefty load to bear, and certainly if
I were doing Unit Testing I’d be mocking away that system just to not have to deal
with that problem, but for Integration Tests there was no way around it. My
answer? Public data my good friends.
The quest started with Google, as most do, and a search criteria like this :
City State Zip filetype:csv
Which after browsing for several pages I modified to:
City State Zip filetype:csv site:usps.com
That resulted in the CSV which is the source of the data we’re using, a list of Post
Offices across the nation. The list is very long, a total of 19,931 addresses.
Now, it wouldn’t be fair to just list the Google queries here, after all this is a
technical blog. I took the CSV apart, removed the irrelevant fields and parsed
it into an object to hold address data, specifically this object.
[Serializable]
public
class AddressData
{
private
string _Name;
public
string Name
{
get { return _Name;
}
set
{
_Name = value;
}
}
private
string _StreetLine1;
public
string StreetLine1
{
get { return _StreetLine1;
}
set
{
_StreetLine1 = value;
}
}
private
string _StreetLine2;
public
string StreetLine2
{
get { return _StreetLine2;
}
set
{
_StreetLine2 = value;
}
}
private
string _City;
public
string City
{
get { return _City;
}
set
{
_City = value;
}
}
private
string _State;
public
string State
{
get { return _State;
}
set
{
_State = value;
}
}
private
string _Zip;
public
string Zip
{
get { return _Zip;
}
set
{
_Zip = value;
}
}
}
Now if you compile your own version of that code, and create a List<AddressData>
you should be able to Deserialize
this file of all the addresses for your own use.
by community-syndication | Jun 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
http://blogs.technet.com/nmercer/archive/2007/06/27/wellington-new-zealand-panorama-gigapixel-image-microsoft-research-hdview.aspx
by community-syndication | Jun 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Wow what a night planned!!! WF 101 (even good for managers! :)); BTS hosting
WF and making it all happen under BizTalk Labs (that’s next after R2)
Check it out and looking forward in seeing you there……
——– Details ———
Examine Windows Workflow talking to BizTalk R2 and BizTalk Labs.
Firstly a BIG thanks to those that enjoyed the exam cram we did last month (we had
to order additional pizza!) and I’ve since heard that several of you have
sat and passed the EXAM!!! Well done!!
With R2 just around the corner……I decided to tackle the Windows Workflow(WF) question.
The message is usually BTS vs WF, never BTS AND WF.
We’ll cover:
1. Workflow 101 (you should be able to
bring your manager along to this one J)
2. Hosting Workflow’s within BizTalk
with the new BizTalk extensions for WF SDK
3. BizTalk Labs – life after R2….and
where we are heading…..
Meeting details:
When: July 4th Food at 6pm, kick off 6.30pm. Finish up around 8pm.
Where: Microsoft
1 Epping Road
Riverside Corporate Park
North Ryde NSW 2113 Australia. (parking available)
WF Session Focus Details:
1.First up we will look at the fundamentals of Workflow; what
makes them run; communications; and how do we host them.
(WF is the technology that is brightly coloured in VS.NET and comes with .NET 3.0)
– you could even workflow your toaster if you wanted to.
2.Next – we’ll take a Workflow and use WCF
under the covers to act as the communication medium between BTS R2 & WF. Very
nice.
So now in BTS R2 we can host WF (through a small ’Orchestration wrapper’) meaning
that when BTS persists, WF does too – WF is now running inside BTSNTSvc.exe.
(cross off the list – ’find a place for my WF’s to live’)
3.Thirdly – Imagine being able to call our creation from anywhere
and behind umpteen firewalls between caller/sender…..enter into the ring
BizTalk Labs!!! Very exciting – labs.BizTalk.net.
(what communications do you think we use…….WCF……hmmm….seems to be a common
thread here!)
So it’s a night on WF/R2 wrapped up in WCF – wow what a great set of technologies!!!!
See you there and let me know your coming
Mick Badran.
p.s. I’ve fallen in love with Microsoft Surface…….wow!!!
by community-syndication | Jun 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
What a name….talk about the pinnacle of TLA’s at the height of a great technology
field.
Can you imagine being at work/meetings etc.
and say “Hold on, I’ve got to grab the WCF LOB Adapter SDK for my BTS Messaging
Hub”
(at this point I’m sure it would clear the floor if you were at a party and people
would be looking at each other thinking that someone hasn’t taken their vitamin B12
this morning)
So we really do need to come up with a sexier name than this (when I was 4 my parents
read me a great book about a kid called “Tikki-tikki-tembo-no-sarembo” and he fell
into the well – you could say I was scared off long names as a kid)
What does this thing do for you? It will change the way you develop adapter
for use with/without BTS. Sensational!!!
WCF
LOB Adapter SDK
Enjoy!!!!
p.s. you don’t necessarily need BizTalk to build adapters with this
framework. There are BTS06 R2 ‘extensions’ to this framework – the BTS ‘strand’ of
this SDK is currently called the BizTalk .NET Adapter SDK
There’s some very cool things ahead…..stay tuned……
by community-syndication | Jun 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
MS have been busy in this space and we’ve now got the following (or soon will have
🙂
-
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Evaluation Edition
-
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Branch Edition
-
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Developer Edition
-
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Standard Edition
-
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Enterprise Edition
Most are pretty self explanitory except for the Branch Edition (BE) –
for those of you that remember the BTS Partner Edition (phased out
with the introduction of BTS2006), BE is comparable with it.
There are some restrictions on this though (as currently determined by the powers
to be…):
– the BE must connected to Enterprise Edition.
– two or more BE’s can’t talk directly to each other,
must go through a Enterprise Edition
There’s a document available that discusses upgrading to BTS06R2 – it’s still a work
in progress but it’s a good start –
MS
Upgrade Document
In particular there is a great image that gives a good outline of the dependencies
(taken from the document):
Food for thought folks – there’s some very exciting times ahead.
by community-syndication | Jun 29, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Hi,
Microsoft hasswiftly released WCF LOB Adapter Release Candidate yesterday. This WCF LOB Adapter RC contains SDK , which allows developers to build WCF Adapters integrating .net applications with existing applications and messaging platforms.
Download this adapter SDK and its documentation from Connect site. You can also get more information on the same from BizTalk Server 2006 […]
by community-syndication | Jun 28, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
We are delighted to announce the first public RC release of the WCF Line-of-Business Adapter SDK.
Goal of this SDK is to create uniform, reusable and metadata-based service-oriented interfaces to existing systems and applications using WCF. It allows adapter developers to build WCF-based adapters for integrating .NET applications with existing enterprise systems, databases and messaging platforms. This SDK includes application programming interfaces, design-time tools, samples and documentation to surface line-of-business adapters as WCF Bindings. The WCF-based adapters can be consumed like typical WCF services in the user applications. It is available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
To learn more and download the adapter SDK and its documentation, please refer to our Microsoft Connect site (you need to register using a valid passport).
Make sure to visit our forums for additional information and community based support as well.
We’ll be recording a channel 9 interview on the adapter SDK in the upcoming month also! J
Regards,
Marjan Kalantar
by community-syndication | Jun 28, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
How would you like hours and hours (in fact weeks) of training and sessions on WPF, Silverlight and everything Web Related?
Arturo Toledo has even given us permission to share with you the Expression Blend, Web and Silverlight Hands On Labs from MIX!
One of my favourite labs is building the Expression Blend: Color Swatch that appears in the Blend Samples.
If you live in New Zealand take a trip to http://www.microsoft.co.nz/nextgeneration and grab a copy of the DVDs (including > 20GB of love) while stocks last!
We’ll even throw in a bonus DVD of Visual Studio Team Suite 2008 (Beta 1).
Enjoy!
by community-syndication | Jun 28, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
From Netcraft yesterday…
“Microsoft has recently switched its main website, www.microsoft.com to Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft-IIS/7.0.
There are already around 2,600 sites running Windows Server 2008 on the Internet. Whilst some of the servers running Windows Server 2008 are at Microsoft itself, the majority are not…”
Also there have been some more great write ups on REMIX in Aus JD, Lee, Scott
