Videos on Modeling (Oslo), Windows Application Server (Dublin), and .Net 4.0 Workflow

by | Oct 28, 2008 | Stephen's BizTalk and Integration Blog

Today is a great day to be a BizTalk Developer! Why? Microsoft has introduced .Net 4.0, Windows Application Server (Dublin), and Microsoft’s Modeling Platform (Oslo).  These new technologies compliment the existing Connection System technologies.

As you look though the various technologies one thing is consistent: Take the best things of BizTalk and allow others outside of BizTalk to leverage it!

I’ve put together over an hour of first look videos to help show the new features of Microsoft’s latest offerings.

The following videos are now available on BizTalkGurus.com:

First Look at Windows Application Server (Dublin) – If you do not watch anything else, watch this video! This video takes a look at the new Windows Application Server features. It shows how to export existing applications and import them into another host on another server, how to set variables inside Workflow 4.0 to be tracked, how to create a custom tracking profile, and how to configure your service to use this custom profile. (Download WMV)

First Look at Quadrant – Oslo’s Modeling Tool -This video is a quick overview of the new modeling tool Quadrant. It walks though the basic user experience. It shows how to work with and edit exiting models, drop workpads onto the workflow surface, add and edit data, and edit existing models. (Download WMV)

First Look at M – Oslo’s Modeling Language – This video walks though creating a simple model using the new M Modeling Language. A simple Domain-Specific Language (DSL) model is also looked at. How often do you get to see a new language? (Download WMV)

Consuming WCF Services in Workflow 4.0 – This video takes a quick look at the new designer experience for Workflow 4.0 inside Visual Studios 10. A simple application is created to communicate with an existing WCF Service. This demonstrates the new interface for Workflow and WCF interactions. (Download WMV)

Flowcharts and Rules in Workflow 4.0 – This video walks though creating an application using the new Flowchart style of workflow. Inside the flowchart workflow, the new Workflow 4.0 Rules are used to evaluate input data. (Download WMV)

It is important to point out that these sets of technologies are not designed to replace BizTalk but rather enhance the rest of the framework. BizTalk still serves a mission critical need as the Microsoft Integration Server and Adapter provider.

Have fun and enjoy!

PDC Day 2 – "M" Under OSP, "Lap Around Oslo" & More Services

by | Oct 28, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Day 2 of PDC started off with another fantastic keynote address, thanks to Ray Ozzie, Steve Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, and David Treadwell. They gave some additional details about Windows 7 as a platform for developers, and then passed the torch to Chris Anderson and Don Box for a live coding session. Of course this was very popular, as the pair demonstrated how a developer could build an application and deploy it to the cloud, using Azure Service Platform, including Windows Azure, SQL Services and .NET Services.


 


We’ve also continued the drumbeat of education on Oslo today. Doug Purdy and Vijaye Raji presented to a packed house their “Lap Around Oslo” session this afternoon. This was the first public demo of the Oslo components, including the “M” language, “Quadrant” visual toolset and repository. Judging from the enthusiastic response of the audience, the initial impression was great.  Doug also talked about a few very important next steps for attendees and those interested in Oslo: learn more here at the show, download the CTPs or Oslo SDK and check out the new resources at the Dev Center and GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK. At this stage, we’re proud to have delivered on our commitment to come to PDC with code, and it’s all about refining it based on the needs and thoughts of developers.


 


Doug also officially announced some news today-we’re proud to be including the “M” language under the Open Specification Promise. Placing “M” under the OSP makes it possible for third parties, including open source projects, to build implementations of “M” for other runtimes, services, applications and operating systems. 


 


So once again, please check it out, and give us your feedback!

A first look into Oslo and more insight to "M"

by | Oct 28, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

While being at the PDC 2008, a got a first approach on Oslo.

In short Oslo is a large modelling environment which has connections to almost every aspect of .NET development. This seems kind of radical and it probably is. The whole of it still has to be processed in my brains (Which is now running double overtime 🙂 )

The Oslo platform can be divided in:

  • "M"
    This is the language where the textual DSL magic happens.
  • "Quadrant"
    The tool for authoring the model visually.
  • Repository
    For the storage of the models which has been created.

So much magic happens at this moment in the M language. It’s used to build your textual DSLs.

Textual what?

Yes what I was used to was DSL with squares, round, connectors etc etc. (Singleminded me 🙂 ) It’s kind of cool and also a bit complex. You create your DSL with the M language.

After that you have you environment (Maybe even pseudo language) to give input to your domain model.

More about "M"

See an example of the "M" language:

   1: module Microsoft.Samples 

   2: { 

   3:   type MusicItem 

   4:   { 

   5:     Id: Integer64 = AutoNumber(); 

   6:     Album : Text; 

   7:     Artist : Text; 

   8:     Rating : Integer32 where value <= 3; 

   9:   } where identity Id; 

  10:  

  11:   MusicLibrary :MusicItem*; 

  12: }

 

In short: "M" is a language for defining domain models and a textual DSL.

M domain models define schema and query over structured data

  • Values, Constraints, and Views
  • Natural projection to SQL

So now we know what it is what is it not:

  • An object oriented language
  • A data access technology
  • A replacement for T-SQL

The M Framework

  • M is itself implemented as M DSL
    • Parser exposed using M DSL machinery
    • Type flow exposed as framework component
  • SDK ships with an evaluator(MrEPL)

 

So lot’s of new stuff 🙂

Also check out my colleague Michel Heijman about his first contact with Oslo.

PDC-08 CSD Bits Review Webcast

by | Oct 28, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

13:00 Tuesday saw the public availability of the virtual image congaing the “Bits” from the Microsoft Connected Systems Division (CSD). The image contains early builds of a lot of the technology that is being demoed at the PDC, and also a set of hands-on labs that will walk you through some examples of using the technology.
The “Oslo PDC-08 CSD Bits Review” webcast will take a quick tour of what is available, and give you some tips on learning about all the new goodies.
The main components that are installed on the image are as follows:
%u00b7 The preliminary release of software for code name “Oslo” and code name “Dublin”, including:
o “Oslo” repository
o “Oslo” SDK
o “Quadrant”
o “Dublin”
o XAML Import/Export tool
%u00b7 Documentation for code name “Oslo” and code name “Dublin”, including:
o Help
o Hand-On Labs
%u00b7 Windows Server%u00ae 2008 Standard operating system without Hyper-V, including:
o Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0
o .NET Framework 3.0 (includes ASP.NET)
o Windows%u00ae Communication Foundation
o Windows Communication Foundation Test tools
o Windows Workflow Foundation
%u00b7 Microsoft%u00ae Visual Studio%u00ae 2010 Workflow Designer
%u00b7 Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0
%u00b7 Microsoft SQL Server%u00ae 2008 Enterprise Evaluation
%u00b7 Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)
%u00b7 Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Team System
%u00b7 Administration Pack for IIS 7.0 CTP2
You will need a pretty fast box to run the image as it’s based on Server 2008 and really needs about 4G ram, a fast proc, and fast drives to run efficiently. If you are stuck with an old laptop you can always download the ”Oslo” SDK and run that on bare metal. “M” and “Mg” will keep you busy for a few days.
I hope you guys can download it in less time that it took me to upload it.

PDC Keynote Day 2: Windows 7

PDC Keynote Day 2: Windows 7

by | Oct 28, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Today we got to see Windows 7 (the first time for me and many others) which had some cool features in the user experience around the taskbar and notification area.  There are also new features around quickly jumping to certain documents and applications, managing window layouts, and managing documents using libraries.  Libraries seem like a combination of search and folders to make it easier to find your files. The search capabilities are more easily surfaced as well.  In fact, it seems like a lot of Windows 7 is about making it easier to do things in Windows that you could previously do, and improving the user experience.  I think this is critical to competing with Apple as the one thing they really excel at is the user experience.  There are improvements in home networking connecting all your devices automatically and allowing for scenarios where I can for example load some music from another PC and play it on my home audio system, controlling it all from my laptop.  Pretty cool stuff for the home user. 

The taskbar stuff is pretty cool and generally the UI improvements are nice and should make working on Windows a lot better.  We also got to see some of the touch features in Windows 7 (including using it with a new version of MS Paint -woo hoo), which I think is most relevant for tablets, which most people don't have.  I just don't see a lot of people using touch on a monitor on their desktop.  What do you think?  Am I missing something here? 

Homegroup is a cool new feature that simplifies connecting a machine to all the devices in your home network.  Even if you bring your work laptop home, it can participate as a client without comprising the security of the work files on the laptop.  Smart thinking on the part of the team. 

Other interesting features:

  • BitLocker on USB – lose that USB thumbdrive?  No problem.
  • VHD mounting and creation- built right into the disk manager allows for creating VHD from disks or attach one as a drive.  Steven S also said you can boot Windows 7 from a VHD and also use something similar to "undo disks where I can reset that drive for development.
  • Multi-monitor/remote desktop – Easier ability to show on projector with "windows + p" and true multi-monitor support when using remote desktop
  • UAC settings – now on a continuum so I can pick how strong I want the UAC to be. 

 

Scott Guthrie

New WPF Controls like DataGrid, Ribbon, DatePicker, etc.  Integration into Windows 7 using XAML which looked really easy. 

Visual Studio 2010 built on WPF providing better multi-monitor support, better designers.  Sweet demo showing WPF Control embedded into the text editor and enabling rich visualization of comments including linkable bug identifiers that enable a pop up WPF control that shows the bug details from TFS.  Having WPF embedded into VS is going to enable a LOT of very cool developer tools from MS, third parties and the community. 

All of this is based on the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) which I haven't totally groked yet, but sounds pretty powerful not just in VS but in other applications as well. 

 

Tesco (biggest grocery retailer in the world) showed off a great WPF application built for customers to help manage meal planning, buying groceries, getting them delivered, etc.  They also showed off a cool feature where they put a soda can in front of the web cam, grabbed the UPC from the can and then used that to bring up the product and add it to the cart.  Very cool example. 

  • IIS Smooth Streaming – new feature in IIS 7 that provides the bit rate throttling much like what MS used for the Olympics site. 
  • netflix now using Silverlight for their instant view (which will make my wife the Mac user happy). 
  • Great new suite of Silverlight controls shipping with source. 
  • New Silverlight designer in VS 2010 sharing the codebase with the WPF design surface
  • New release of Silverlight coming with better media support and the ability to run Silverlight in and OUT of the browser.

 

David Treadwell (Live Framework / Mesh)

Mesh service becoming part of Live Services platform including data synch, device management and building applications on top of the live system.  He announced the Live Operating Environment (consistent across devices -cloud, mobile, pc, etc.) and Live Programming model. 

Demo of a very cool use of Live Mesh culminating with a picture being taken on a phone, synched to a desktop and shared though synch with another desktop version of the application.  Also showed simple access to devices, folders, and contacts. 

Another cool demo from BBC using their iPlayer and POC of mesh integration with devices and contacts.  Super cool example where they started watching a show on the desktop, then it was synched to the mobile phone where it not only downloaded the show, but started playing where he stopped watching on the desktop. 

  • Mesh support for mobile 6 and Mac coming in the beta later this week.

 

Office 14 Web Applications

WOW – huge announcement involving Web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.  This means a user on the web can view and edit files in these applications in the browser.  Demo showed adding a picture/content to a onenote notebook on the desktop and it showed up seconds later in the web version of the notebook with no refresh.  I guess this is Software + Services!  Very nice. This even works with Windows Mobile where OneNote can run. 

Web applications will work on IE, Firefox and Safari, but also provides a rich Silverlight experience.  I'm actually excited about Office again. 

PDC Day One – Key Note a Go Go!

by | Oct 28, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

They should have called it “Stockholm” instead of “Oslo”; they really should.
“08”, pronounced “noll%u00e5tta”, or “j%u00e4vla noll%u00e5tta” in the north of Sweden, is the nickname for Stockholmers (08 is the area code for Stockholm), so “PDC 08” would mean “PDC Stockholm” in Swedish.
David Chappell Article
As always, David Chappell has been following the development of “Oslo” and realted technologies from the early days. He has just had an article published on MSDN “Workflows, Services, and Models – A First Look at WF 4.0, Dublin, and Oslo”, which will be well worth reading.
BizTalk .net Services
BizTalk Services is now .net Services, a part of the “Windows Azure” cloud based operating system. “But why is it called BizTalk Services?” has been a common question for a while. I’ve never really understood the logic of applying the “BizTalk” brand to a set of cloud based WCF services. Changing the name to “.net Services” makes a lot of sense. There is a good section of articles in “The Bloggers Guide to Oslo” on this technology, in the BizTalk Services section (this will be renamed in the next version) and also a webcast on using the services here. It will be interesting to see how the cloud based workflow has evolved as there was quite a limitation on what could be built in the BizTalk labs workflow hosting.
“Oslo” SDK Goes Live
The “Oslo” SDK has been released and is available for download. To install the SDK you will need to have Windows Server 2008 installed, as the repository database is dependent on some of the SQL 2008 features. The SDK will allow you to explore the “M” declarative programming language and create data models declaratively. The “M” language is the brainchild of Don Box, the self declared “Chief Modeling Officer” in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft.
The SDK contains the following components:
%u00b7 Repository Database
%u00b7 “M” Modeling Language
%u00b7 “Mg” Domain Specific Language Creation language
%u00b7 IntelliPad Editing Tool
I’ve taken a quick tour of the “Oslo” SDK and looked at the key features.
Oslo Repository Database
The Oslo repository database is used to store models.To view the database, open the SQL Server 2008 Management Studio and select it. If you expand the table structure, you will see a large number of tables relating to the various models that are present in the repository.
The schema names feature of SQL has been used to create a storage structure that reflects some of the net class library namespace. If you are a WCF developer you should take a look at the System.ServiceModel section and check out the tables used to store WCF related information. These tables will be used by the Quadrant editing toolbox to allow users to model service contracts and persist the models to the repository database.
The information in the repository database is intended to be “transparent”, meaning it should be easy to query and modify with custom tools. This is a welcome change, as the BizTalk databases were “owned” by Microsoft, it seems like the Repository will be more open both in terms of data content and structure. There seems to be quite a number of models present in the database, but it is designed to be extensible by using the “M” modeling language to design data models that can then be imported to the repository.
IntelliPad
IntelliPad is a text editor targeted at “curly brace” programmers allowing them to define the schemas for data that will be stored in the repository in a productive manner. There were a lot of rumors sating that IntelliPad would be “Emacs.net”, but as I’ve never used Emacs, i could not make the comparison.
IntelliPad provides a good environment for prototyping “M” and “Mg” scenarios, providing quick feedback on what the developer is typing. The experience falls somewhere between Notepad and Visual Studio, resulting in a lightweight application that provides features like syntax color encoding, and basic IntelliSense.
My favorite feature of IntelliPad is the “Dynamic Parsing”, which will show the SQL output that is created from you “M” instantly as you edit the code. This is a really nice way to learn “M” as you see the results of code immediately, allowing you to experiment freely with the language.
“M”
“M” is a text based declarative data modeling language aimed at “curly brace” programmers. It initially started out being called “D”, but was changes to “M” shortly before PDC. “M” was originally created for building the models that are present in the repository database. There is a project in the samples folder that appears to be the “M” source files that have been used to create the repository, but I have not confirmed this.
The best way to start learning “M” is to use IntelliPad to declare a model, and then see the representation of that model in SQL. The “M” compiler can currently create two forms of SQL.
%u00b7 Rich – For importing models into the repository
%u00b7 Reach – Standard SQL for using in a regular databases
My immediate thoughts when using “M” were that it would be a great way of modeling regular relational databases in SQL Server. This view has been echoed by others that have worked with “M”. One of the reasons for using a text based language for modeling is that most programmers find that code is much more productive that working with graphical tools, and this is certainly the case with “M”. It took me about 30 minutes to get the basics of “M”, and a few hours to explore a few of the language features, and start creating simple models. I would imagine most developers will pick it up very quickly.
Links to the Best News Articles
I’ve added links to some of the best news articles relating to Azure on the Bloggers Guide.net front page. I’ll be updating this daily for the next couple of weeks.
Alternatively, you can follow the story on Slashdot for jokes about “Azure Screens of Death”, Soviet Russia, hot grits and chair throwing. Imagine a Beowulf Cluster in the cloud
PDC Top Tip #3: Vary the Experience
PDC is a bit like Glastonbury without the mud. You get tired of walking, your diet is not too healthy, you lose your mates in the crowd, and you never get enough sleep. It’s also similar in that there are the big headline events on the main stages, the smaller minority stuff that you really have to see, and also all kinds of cool things going on that are never in the program. The Expo is like the Green Fields, there’s a lot to see, it’s good for meeting people, there’s some great unannounced events going on, and you can always score some swag.
I skipped one of the main sessions and took a break and to head down there, and was rewarded with some very cool “Dublin” and “Oslo” t-shirts, a signed copy of first “M” language programming book. I also caught a demo of the “M” language in an unannounced spontaneous chalk-talk session by Don Box in front of 20 people. This was very cool to see, as the official public unveiling of the “M” language is not until the keynote tomorrow, it was great to see Don presenting “M” to such a small audience, much better than seeing it in front of 5000 people.
24/7 Networking People
There is an “MVP & Influencers” event at most conferences, and the one at PDC was scheduled for 10pm Monday to 1am Tuesday. I was thinking of trying to get an early night, but Marjan Kalantar said attendance was compulsory. It was a good bash; I met Kris Horroks and Mark Berman outside, and got chatting to Ofer Ashkenazi, who is the PM for BizTalk, as well as some of the other MVPs and CDS team. More Oslo, Dublin and WCF WF t-shirts to be had, nicer colors this time.
PDC FAQ 03: What’s in the bag?
%u00b7 A PDC 08 T-shirt
%u00b7 A PDC 08 water bottle
%u00b7 A copy of MSDN Magazine
%u00b7 An invite to the Universal Studios Party
%u00b7 Lots of bits of paper
%u00b7 No Oslo bits (There should be a green ticket in your pass wallet that allows you to pick up “The Goods” on Tuesday at 13:00.)
Technology on Steroids
I’ve so many people are saying that XXXX is YYYY on steroids. Here is a summary of the ones I have heard so far.
Technology
Is ______ on steroids.
IntelliPad
Notepad
Dublin
WAS
Quadrant
Access
Re-Sharper
Snippets
WCF
.net Remoting
Workflow Foundation
BizTalk
BizTalk
Workflow Foundation
It seems everything at the PDC is on steroids, I wish I was I’m exhausted.