Testing Pipeline Components – The Pipeline Testing Library

by | Mar 11, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I’ve spent some time recently working almost exclusively with BizTalk pipeline components and took the opportunity to use the excellent Pipeline Testing Library produced by Tomas Restrepo (more info is available here and here). If Microsoft were writing this post, they would probably say that ‘It Rocks!’. I’m British, so I’ll be a little more […]

Events and happenings.

by | Mar 10, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Some quick notes:

  • Tomorrow (Mar 11 2008) my friend and all-round rock star Michele Leroux-Bustamante will be speaking at the Connected Systems SIG of the San Diego .NET User Group. We will meet at the Microsoft La Jolla office, 6:00 for pizza and networking, 6:30 for the meeting.
  • Wednesday Chris Romp and I take our critically-acclaimed (we’re critical, and we acclaim it :)) BizTalk Development Best Practices show to the Orange County Connected Systems User Group meeting (Microsoft Technology Center, 3 Park Plaza, Suite 1600, Irvine). I’ve done a bazillion presentations (and perhaps even more!) during the course of my career, and this is perhaps one of the most fun to deliver. It always turns into a highly-interactive event, and everyone, including us, learns something. RSVP to [email protected]. Pizza and networking at 6:30, meeting starts at 7:00.
  • I will be presenting at TechEd again this year, this time a Technical Drilldown into Microsoft’s ESB Guidance, in the SOA and Business Process track. I’m really looking forward to it, TechEd is always such a great event.
  • Lastly, I am honored to be participating on a curriculum advisory board for California State University, for a new SOA program they are developing. This is going to be fun I think, and it’s great to be able to help shape a far-reaching course like this. I did a similar thing for University of California San Diego a couple of years ago. If anyone has any thoughts on this, please drop me a note.

SPWebConfigModification Best Practices and Guidelines

by | Mar 10, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

The SPWebConfigModification class allows developers to write code that will make modifications to the web.config files of SharePoint sites. This is quite often necessary when you want to deply SharePoint customizations together with configuration settings. Using the SPWebModification class is not without any danger! 🙂 You can mess up your web.config files especially if you don’t think about how you want to be able to undo your changes. Mark Wagner wrote an excellent article about the best practices related to the SPWebConfigModification class; required reading for every SharePoint developer. Mark explains some very important things you should know to get started:



  • To save the modifications, you must use of the following code:
    myWebApp.Farm.Services.GetValue<SPWebService>().ApplyWebConfigModifications();
    myWebApp.Update();

  • Only call this code once in your feature handler, otherwise you get the error “A web configuration modification operation is already running.“

Great info Mark, and please do create an complete example of the best practices, packaged in a feature!

More on the Commerce Server BizTalk Adapters – General How-To’s

by | Mar 10, 2008 | Stephen's BizTalk and Integration Blog

To keep on the Commerce Server Adapter line of blog posts here is another minor pain point I ran into.

I was setting up the Commerce Server Catalog Send Adapter on a multi-server BizTalk Environment.  I opened up BizTalk Admin and configured the Send Port.

I went to run the solution and I received the following error:

“Failed to create Catalog  Context in ‘Commerce Server Catalog Send Adapter’. Message:”

Turns out that the Send Host for the Catalog Adapter was running on another Server so the registry subkey was missing.  Oh, and since this was also a 64-bit Host the keys were written in the wrong place – same as the Orders Adapter.

To fix this, all I had to do was open the Send Port on the other Server and click OK.  This created the registry key.  Then, I simply had to move it into the correct location.

Here are some general How To’s I’ve put together when working (mostly when configuring) with the Commerce Server Adapters:

1.  Always create Send and Receive Ports on the Servers you intend to run them on.  (Not sure what happens when you import an MSI – will get to that soon)

2.  Do not expect any of the Adapters to work in a BizTalk Group scenario.  In fact, disastrous results may occur if ran in Group Scenarios. (Hope to test clustering the service soon). 

FACT: Catalog and Orders do not operate in Group Scenario.  See the help guide for more info.

3.  Expect manual configuration if working with 64-bit hosts.

4.  Make sure you read the Commerce Server 2007 help guide including “Performance Considerations for the BizTalk Adapters” and “Concurrency Issues with the BizTalk Adapters” and “Troubleshooting the BizTalk Adapters” sections.

5.  Remember how easy it is to set up and work with the Adapters! :).  All in all, they provide us a lot of great benefits!

More to come as I continue to work with the Adapters.

Where in the World is the BizTalk Adapter Pack V1.0 Download

Where in the World is the BizTalk Adapter Pack V1.0 Download

by | Mar 10, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Hi all – in a recent post I came across an updated version of the BizTalk Adapter
Pack V1.0.
Doing a search on the web will yield you to a bunch of *.CHM files, but still no *download*
link!

I’m on the hunt – here’s a ‘close’ page, but still no download link http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/adapter/default.mspx

The Adapter Pack has RTM’ed and is available on the Standard/Developer + Enterprise
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Editions.

Looks like I’ll be up for up for a MSDN download or two….. smile_regular

My Presentations in Arizona this Tuesday

by | Mar 9, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication


Update: You can now download the slides + demos I used during my talks.  Click here for the Silverlight Talk.  Click here for the MVC Talk.


This week I’m visiting Scottsdale Arizona and will be presenting at a free user group event during the day.  I’m presenting two sessions myself:


1) Developing Applications using Silverlight 2: This will be a drill-down into the new Silverlight 2 Beta1 release, and how you can build applications with it using VS 2008 and Expression Blend.  You’ll leave this session with a good understanding of the basics of Silverlight programming and how to start building applications with it.


2) Developing Applications using ASP.NET MVC: This session will be a drill-down into the new ASP.NET Model-View-Controller framework option (which last week was updated .  You’ll leave this session with a good understanding of what it is, how it works, and how to start building ASP.NET web applications with it.


In addition to my sessions above, there will also be great sessions at the event from Microsoft employees on “Consuming Web Services with Microsoft Silverlight”, “Encoding Video for Microsoft Silverlight”, and “Serving Applications with Microsoft Silverlight Streaming”. 


You can sign up and attend the sessions for free.  Click here for more details on the events, and click here to register online to attend. 


Hope to see some of you there,


Scott