by community-syndication | Apr 20, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
When building applications today, it’s hard to consider building something that doesn’t involve connectivity of some sort. Applications require business data and logic that is distributed across several applications or servers. Unfortunately, not all systems provide the same interface to their data and business logic which ultimately forces developers to figure out how to talk to each of those systems. Connecting to a system doesn’t just involve opening up a port on a network address either; we have to work with different message formats, varying security mechanisms, and in many cases custom libraries that rely on proprietary mechanisms. In the end, it’s common for developers to struggle with learning a variety of different programming interfaces, communication protocols, and messaging semantics.
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) promises to change all of that. WCF provides a unified programming model for building distributed applications using the .NET Framework. WCF was designed to provide a single unified programming model for writing either clients or services while also providing a flexible framework for different styles of communication on the wire. This approach allows developers to focus on writing code in their business domain rather than on learning new networking interfaces or object models. The code you write with WCF always looks the same but you can configure your apps to use different transport protocols like TCP, HTTP, and MSMQ; different message encodings like XML, MTOM, and binary; and varied security options including certificates, passwords, and security tokens.
The goals addressed by WCF are also very similar to the integration goals of Microsoft%u00ae BizTalk%u00ae Server. Ultimately BizTalk Server is primarily focused on providing an easy-to-manage model for connecting disparate, heterogeneous systems using a variety of different protocols, message formats and security mechanisms without requiring much, if any, code. The WCF LOB Adapter SDK and the BizTalk Adapter Pack whitepaper discusses how the worlds of WCF and BizTalk Server 2006 are fully converging through the WCF LOB Adapter SDK and the BizTalk Adapter Pack.
by community-syndication | Apr 20, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Sorry to all for having been out of blogging action for so long, and many of you have posted comments and questions on the blog which I have not had the opportunity to respond to. If there are any outstanding requests – please let me know via [email protected]. So what’s been happening I moved on from the BizTalk Technical role a while ago now – so many of your detailed BizTalk technical questions I will have to defer to my great Aussie colleagues as I am not really hands on as much around BizTalk. I moved to a role in Microsoft called an Application Platform Solution Specialist which is essentially a Solution (and technical) Sales role for our:
- Data Management stack (SQL Server)
- BI Stack (SQL Server and Performance Point)
- Dev Tools stack (Visual Studio / .NET platform etc)
- Integration stack (BizTalk) – had to make sure that stayed with me 🙂
- User Experience (Expression / Silverlight / Next Generation Web etc)
All in all a great set of products and having awesome fun. I work specifically with Victorian Government (includes Health and Education), Tasmania and some of the Communications Sector customers. It also extends to the partners and ISV (Independent Software Vendor) Community.
In the last month we’ve also had our third child – so busy on all fronts!
Keep and eye out on the blog, as I’ll post updates to what’s happening around this space – and look forward to your commentary!
by community-syndication | Apr 20, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
My current Foundations article on versioning in Windows Workflow Foundation (May 2009) is now available online. In this issue I tried to cover the core issues around versioning workflows to help developers understand the core issues that make it hard in the first place. I then attempt to provide some guidance and tips on how you can ease some of the pain and work around some of the issues. I didn’t have space to give this topic the complete coverage it deserved, but hopefully this article helps people gain a deeper understanding of the issues and how to approach versioning in workflows and workflow services.
by community-syndication | Apr 20, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
My buddy Ewan’s newest paper on BizTalk and Hyper-V was released a few days ago. I had the opportunity to provide some feedback on the early drafts, and while it’s nice that he mentions me in the acknowledgements, I’m mad at him for outing my not-so-secret employer I am now actively searching for […]
by community-syndication | Apr 20, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Microsoft just shipped the final episode in their three-round WCF marketing campaign found at http://www.microsoft.com/net/wcf/champ/. It’s actually pretty entertaining while highlighting the key value propositions of WCF as a communication framework. Here’s the blurb from the site:
Let’s get it on! We are engaged in a battle that pits the “old way” of creating web services versus the “new way.” In the video series, two fighters go toe-to-toe, or rather keyboard-to-keyboard to highlight the benefits of using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to build robust web services. Take a tour of what WCF has to offer by exploring the pillars below. You may find yourself saying,“Finish Him!”
In addition to the 3 videos (one per round), this site also provides some categorized links to some valuable WCF learning resources. If you’re considering WCF in the near future, it’s definitely worth a look.
by community-syndication | Apr 20, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Cross-posted from the Silverlight Web Services Team blog.
I hope you enjoy the content we post on this blog. I’ll be giving a talk at the upcoming TechEd conference in LA, going through some Silverlight 3 content similar to what we have been posting here. If you’re attending TechEd, check out:
SOA03-INT Interacting with Web Services Using Microsoft Silverlight
Yavor Georgiev
Tue 5/12 | 4:30 PM-5:45 PM | Blue Theater 2
300 – Advanced, Middle Tier Platform and Tools, SOA and Business Processes, TLC Interactive Theater
Learn how easy it is to utilize POX, REST, RSS, ATOM, JSON, and SOAP services in your Silverlight 2 mash-up application. Hear best practices for developing and consuming secure services within and across domain boundaries. Experience new features in the upcoming Silverlight 3 release including optimized binary communication format, improved support for server- to-client "push" scenarios and new security features.
If you have not registered, you still have the opportunity to do so:
If you do attend, make sure you let me know you’re a reader of our blog I’d love to hear any feedback you have.
Cheers,
-Yavor
by community-syndication | Apr 17, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Star Trek Premier and MIX09 recap, all in one night in the Twin Cities on May 8th.
A
match made in heaven, naturally.
by community-syndication | Apr 16, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I have seen quite a few instances where people run into issues while using the WCF Siebel adapter because of
a. Siebel Web Client is not installed correctly on the machine
b. Or the URI passed to the adapter, that eventually gets transformed to the connection string passed to Siebel, is incorrect
In order to eliminate the above 2 as possible causes, you can try out the following sample code that will use the Siebel COM interface to directly talk with Siebel (adapter is not involved). Please make sure you don’t see any error messages.
/// Application that will issue Login-Logoff request to Siebel
///
/// To run this program,
/// – Set ConnectString, Username and Password. ConnectString is of the format
/// siebel://host/EnterpriseServer/AppObjMgr/SiebelServer
/// (SiebelServer is required in case of Siebel 7.5)
/// For an example, please see the code below.
/// – Add a reference to sstchca.dll (found in siebel client install folder)
/// – Compile and run the program
/// – If the login fails, you will see an error message
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using SiebelBusObjectInterfaces;
namespace Sample
{
class Program
{
const string ConnectString = “host=\”siebel://adapsblsrvr77:2321/ent77/SSEObjMgr_enu”;
const string Username = “abc”;
const string Password = “def”;
static void Main(string[] args)
{
SiebelDataControl sdc = null;
bool loggedIn = false;
try
{
/// Create a connection
sdc = new SiebelDataControl();
sdc.EnableExceptions(1);
sdc.Login(ConnectString, Username, Password);
loggedIn = true;
}
catch (COMException ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(“ERROR: “ + ex.ToString());
}
finally
{
if (sdc != null)
{
if (loggedIn)
{
sdc.Logoff();
}
Marshal.ReleaseComObject(sdc);
sdc = null;
}
}
Console.WriteLine(“Press any key to terminate…”);
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}
by community-syndication | Apr 16, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
For future reference to all those that want to remember in what order do maps and pipelines get executed on receive and send ports:
One-way Receive Port:
End system -> Receive Adapter -> Receive Pipeline -> Inbound Map -> Message Box
Request Response Receive Port:
End system -> Adapter -> Receive Pipeline -> Inbound Map -> Message Box -> Outbound […]
by community-syndication | Apr 16, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
As I’m looking into sizing up systems currently for a project, the question that you
always ask “Is my CPU choice any good?” “Should I go Dual Quad Core or Quad Dual Core?”
and the questions just keep on coming, even in your sleep sometimes 🙂
I recently came across a gem of a site that gave me all my answers. There’s a bunch
of other CPUs and options available also. Check it out.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=%5BDual+CPU%5D+Intel+Xeon+E5420+%40+2.50GHz
