Some interesting BizTalk compiler hints, well not quite.

Ok, so these aren’t entirely compiler hints, but interesting nonetheless:
1. Re-Ordering of Catch Clauses
The compiler will throw the following warning if you catch specific exceptions after a general exception block:
Orchestraion.odx(653,17): warning X4001: automatically re-ordering catch clauses from specific to general
I’m surprised that this doesn’t throw an error as including a General catch block as […]

Whats the future for BAM?

I was at the SOA/BPM Conference this week at reading and was watching one of the presentations which discussed the differences between BizTalk and Dublin.

It occured to my that with BizTalk being pitched as the integration product and dublin being pitched as the application server product this means that BAM is strategically misplaced in terms of being within BizTalk.

This is just my opinion but I think that in the future it would make sense to move BAM to be part of the SQL Server BI offering. I think that if it was part of SQL Server then it would expose BAM to more products within the Microsoft space. A summary of my thoughts is:

  • It would allow you to easily use it with Dublin as it would be likely you are using SQL Server for persistence and tracking anyway.
  • It would still support BizTalk which is based on SQL Server anyway
  • It would allow other products which are based on SQL Server to use this without requireing BizTalk (eg: Dynamics)
  • It would allow ISV’s to develop hooks into BAM. A number of the ISV products which compliment the Microsoft BPM offering often use SQL Server but not necessarily BizTalk
  • In the future it would probably be easier to hook models developed with Oslo into BAM if it was part of SQL Server

These are just my random thoughts and ideas, I have not seen anything from Microsoft which indicates this is a planned direction, but if anyone has an opinion on this feel free to comment below

Added functoid to read from app.cofig

Hi all

A new functoid has been added to the collection of functoids that an be downloaded
at http://www.eliasen.eu/Downloadsoftware.aspx.

The functoid simply takes one parameter, which is used as a key against BizTalks app.config
(The BTSNTSvc.exe.config file in BizTalks installation folder) to read an application
setting from the appSettings group.

So given a .config file like this:

<appSettings>
<add key=”eliasen” value=”eliasenValue” />
</appSettings>

and the parameter “eliasen” to the functoid, it will return “eliasenValue”. If the
key cannot be found, an empty string is returned.

And the documentation has also been updated – look at http://www.eliasen.eu/DownloadSoftware.aspx



eliasen

Application Architecture "Pocket Guides" From Microsoft

Was trolling CodePlex today and noticed that those Patterns and Practices cats just released a neat little set of short architecture guides that cover a few specific architectural areas including the Agile architecture method, web application architecture,  mobile architecture, rich Internet application (RIA) architecture,  rich client architecture, and finally, service architecture.
The service guide is a […]

Code for my book is up

Code for my book is up

 

You can find it at http://www.rest-ful.net/book/default.aspx . 
My plan is to have more REST and WCF content up on that site soon – but at least the
code files for the book are there.

Watch out for the code from Chapter 10 (consuming REST services)  – I created
some code to use SQL Server Data Services – I haven’t had time to see if it still
works, but I will be updating it soon.



Check out my new book on REST.

Sharepoint Optimisation (Optimization) Tool

James, a student of mine this week pointed me to a great tool that ‘optimises’ your
SharePoint site (as well as websites in general).

Runtime Peformance
Optimisation (RPO) is the place where it’s all at. You basically plug your URL
in and it sends you a report on how it can be optimised.

(I’m yet to check this out) James mentioned that it operates off a DLL that you include
as part of your swag in the \bin folder (or GAC) and it requires the DLL for runtime
operations.

Here’s the process…..

1. click on the ‘Try now button’

2. Plug the values in for your site..

3. Then peruse over the emailed results at your leisure…..

It does things like Image optimisation, file compressions and even gives you the results
in cold and warm boot times!
Very very very nice!

Looks like I’ll be talking to Santa this Christmas!!! 🙂