by community-syndication | Sep 19, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Backpack
For several years now I’ve used a Targus backpack to haul around my portable office. A good bag, one that you can trust and has space for what you want to carry is absolutely key. For me, as you will see below, this means I want a lot of space, with large cavernous storage areas. I find my use of other bags (see the next section) helps organize these large spaces without the waste of the designers trying to guess what I want to carry and what shape it will be. For instance, even my favorite CityGear Chicago bag comes with a cell-phone pouch, how useless is this? Cells change shape so often I swear we’ll have a boomerang shaped one yet. Let me worry about organization, the backpack is about portability and accessibility. Some small amount of small pockets are great for high access items like pens, pencils, etc but I’ll organize the rest, thanks.
Small Bags
Ziploc Bags
I love me some Zip-Lock Bags, these little creations are absolutely fantastic for organizing the internals of your backpack. Now, don’t go overboard and turn into Monk or something, but these bags are great for organizing. I’ve had best luck with the Freezer bag variety because the plastic is tougher. Also, here’s a hint : Punch small holes with a pencil in the sides of your bag. This will let things pack small easier as air can escape, and we’re not looking to hold liquids in these anyway.
Other Bags
There are endless other bags you might be able to use. Go to your favorite online mega-retailer and search on Zipper Pouch or Zipper Bag and you’ll find them. I prefer bags which are more than two sides gusseted together so that I can fit larger items into them. At Tech-Ed 2007 I was given a couple of these wonderful bags (pictured right) which originally were printed with a Windows Mobile logo which has mostly peeled off the non-pictured side. These slightly padded bags have been carrying my portable hard disks and video camera ever since, and I’d love to have more of them (4-6 more would do if anyone has a stack of these in their office, email me).
by community-syndication | Sep 19, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
One of the things that I have had to do as a consultant is get used to moving from location to location. Even if I’m at a client for many months, I’ll often be moved around their facility because I’m not permanently moving in. This has meant that I’ve developed quite the interesting bit of tooling to help me keep a portable office. So there are a few different areas of concern:
- Organization
- Network Connectivity
- Content Capture & Playback
- Computing Resources
- Fallback Plans
- Personal Comfort
This is a run down of what I carry, and what I think of it. My bag is not perfect, as you’ll be able to see from my reviews, but it works for my needs. What works for you will likely be different, but there will likely be overlaps and this list should prompt some ideas.
I’ll update this post with links to each of the posts as I get them up over the next week.
by community-syndication | Sep 19, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
SimpleTalk has a helpful DBA checklist for all those BizTalkers who double-hat and manage a SQL Server as-well-as a BizTalk environment. It covers a number of useful topics, including:
General best practices
High-availability
Performance tuning
Application coding and design
SSIS, Analysis Services, Reporting Services & Service Broker
Plenty of content for both new and experienced DBA’s – well worth a look.
Related […]
by community-syndication | Sep 18, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Just in case you haven’t seen this yet, check out this article in eWEEK from last week. Focuses on Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president of CSD, as well as technical fellows, John Shewchuk and Brad Lovering, discussing their thoughts on modeling, Oslo and where is the industry headed. Great insight to how the group has evolved and what’s to come in the upcoming months leading to PDC!
by community-syndication | Sep 18, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
So I assume many of those who read my blog are aware of Dallas TechFest and either attended, or thought about attending, last year. We’re starting planning for this coming year, and so its time to find out what you, our patrons, would like to see more of at Dallas TechFest 2009? What went great? What needed more attention? What was a waste of time?
Leave me a comment, and tell me what you would like to see.
by community-syndication | Sep 18, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I came across a frustrating little problem today. We have a schema for a web service we call and have done for ages. The schema is generated by the WSE adapter wizard.
We have had a couple of issues we have had to troubleshoot and it became apparent it would be useful to track a couple of promoted properties from this schema to help with the diagnosis.
So you would think it’s pretty straightforward. Add a property schema and then apply the promotion to the schema. It all works great until you save the schema.
Normally a BizTalk schema is in Unicode encoding, but the WSE adapter generates one with ANSI encoding. When you try to save the schema you get a warning because Visual Studio changes the encoding during the save.
The knock on to this is that we are unfortunately using the worst source control system in the world (not naming any names) which then wont allow you to check in your change because it can not diff the files due to the encoding change.
Bit of a pain in the bum but you can work around this, id be interested to know if there is a reason the adapter does a different format to everything else.
by community-syndication | Sep 18, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Just came across this new resource on MSDN, the BAM Training Kit. Looks quite interesting. According to the blurb,
There are several roles involved during a BAM solution development including business analyst, BizTalk developer, and system administrator. This training breaks down the BAM solution development into roles. Each lesson covers the background information, the tools and […]
by community-syndication | Sep 17, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
A view days ago I read a very interesting blogpost from Martin Fowler about an Evolutionary SOA. Which is a very interesting topic.
The main question Martin Fowler asks is whether a SOA can be done on a Agile/XP way.
I think it can be done.
If you want to start with an Service Oriented Architecture, start with baby steps (see also a post about Guerilla SOA.) Quite often I see the that a lot of components are build as a service. But services only have one consumer at development time (And will have much longer.) At the moment an components starts to represent a service delivered as a ‘physique service’, that’s the moment to start adding services. And no SOA isn’t ‘just a bunch of services’. So just adding a xml-something interface doesn’t make it better useable, if you don’t need it.
Can a service evolve an a Agile/XP way?
Yes it can, but changing your Interface contract on a frequent base, doesn’t make the consumer of your service very happy. It can be handy to implement Consumer Driven Contracts.
If you use BizTalk the WCF LOB Adapter SDK can be a help. (And can also be used without BizTalk). Within WCF there’s support for the Extensible object. What happens is that upfront the service is designed with options to extend the interface contract. So consumers who wishes not to upgrade to your newest contract version, can still use the service as of before, but newer consumers can make use of the extension classes.
Those were my 2 cents. Any other ideas please feel free to share them.
Technorati tags: SOA,Architecture,Evolutinary SOA
by community-syndication | Sep 17, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
We conclude this series of blog posts by demonstrating how to take a set of feeds, and mash them up into a single RSS feed using RSSBus.
If you’ve been following this blog series, you’ll know that I was asked by my leadership to prove that RSSBus could generate a 360%u00b0 view of a “contact” by […]
by community-syndication | Sep 17, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
These last two weeks represent a shift in Endpoint WF/WCF Developer Screencast series. The first four screencasts in the series concentrated on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) development; we will now focus on Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) for four screencasts. We will then alternate back and forth every four screencasts.
This (and last) week, CSD Matt Milner from PluralSight walks you through how to create your first sequential workflow, and how to create your first state machine workflow. Compared to the WCF screencasts, these may seem to be a lot more to digest up front, but these screencasts provides a good starting overview, that we will drill into as we move through the series.
Last week, Matt covered how to create your WF Sequential Workflow. The screencast takes you on a quick tour of putting together a sequential workflow – creating the workflow, adding the business logic using flow control activities, and using custom activities to do the work. As an example, Matt uses the example of processing an eCommerce order – processing a customer purchasing transaction and working with back-end inventory. As we create the workflow, Matt discusses custom activities, using base activity library activities, and binding activity properties to custom workflow properties.
This week, Matt walks you through how to create your first WF state machine workflow. The screencast takes you on a quick tour of putting together a state machine workflow – creating the workflow, adding the states, and using custom activities to do the work. As an example, Matt uses the example of processing an eCommerce shopping cart – and lifecycle/events that go along with it. As we create the workflow, Matt discusses custom activities, using states, and handling multiple state events (both listening for an event to happen and timing out).
As mentioned above, the WF screencasts are a weekly series of Channel9 videos done in conjunction with the folks at PluralSight to help developers new to WF/WCF see how the technology is used. It’s worth noting that Aaron and the PluralSight folks are now offering online training courses (in a format similar to these screencasts) as a compliment to their catalog of instructor-led training courses covering Microsoft connected systems technologies. Their training topics range from .NET v3.5 (including an excellent WF/WCF Double Feature course) to WSS to BizTalk server.
