Thoughts on a cloud manifesto

Thoughts on a cloud manifesto

Recently, Steven Martin at Microsoft talked about a cloud manifesto that would presumably define some agreement around open standards for interoperability in the “cloud”.  Aside from all of the politics and secrecy, I’m wondering what this would actually look like.  I’m all for open standards and I think the big players should be involved in the discussion.  But what standards do we need that we don’t already have?  And do more standards really make things better? 

The actual manifesto can now be found at http://opencloudmanifesto.org  and provides a quick look at the actual statements and a list of supporters.  I can’t help but notice that not only is Microsoft not on the list, but neither are Amazon, Google, and some other major players in the cloud space.  It makes me really question the purposes behind this manifesto and why it was created.  A lot of the points are certainly valid and easy to agree with such as the need for security and interoperability.  I think what most bugs me about this is the idea that a user should be able to pick up their application from one cloud and drop it in another.  Obviously I do my work almost exclusively on the Microsoft platform, buy my sense is that the whole write once, run anywhere thing didn’t work for Java, so I’m not too optimistic about it working in the cloud.

I’m of the mind lately that standards, while helpful can also become overkill. Look at SOAP. Having interop for security enables the connection of code on different platforms which is a great thing.  But then we have standards for transactions, reliable messaging, etc. which are primarily useful within the enterprise to connect disparate systems. Yet many today are finding SOAP to be overkill and turning to REST.  REST still uses standards like HTTP and often XML, but the architecture and the implementation is based more on using what works and keeping it simple.  

I’m all for a cloud where users can have their application connect and interoperate between clouds and private data centers in a secure fashion, but like the manifesto says, I don’t think we need new specifications, we have most of what we need to achieve that interoperability and Microsoft at least is showing its commitment to those existing standards with the .NET Services and Azure platform.  In the end, I think this will, and should, come down to who has the best platform, and who has the best tools for developing on that platform.  I think Microsoft has some great potential in this arena, and I’m excited to watch the Azure platform mature. 

Time will tell. 

RELEASE: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 Hyper-V Guide

The BizTalk Customer Advisory Team and the BizTalk UA Team are pleased to announce the Release To Web of the “Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 Hyper-V Guide”.

The guide provides relevant information to IT professionals to enable them to make educated decisions about the advantages and tradeoffs of using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to virtualize BizTalk Server environments. This guidance is a result of 6 months of effort including a 6-week performance lab conducted by the BizTalk Customer Advisory Team.

Service Virtualization with the Managed Services Engine (MSE)

Service Virtualization with the Managed Services Engine (MSE)

My latest MSDN Magazine article entitled SOA Simplified: Service Virtualization with the Managed Services Engine hit the Web towards the end of last week. It focuses on simplifying large-scale SOA ecosystems by leveraging the concept of service virtualization as an abstraction for managing services over timeMicrosoft Services provides a technical solution for implementing service virtualization called the Managed Services Engine (MSE).  This article introduces the concepts of service virtualization and shows you how to get started with the MSE today. Hope you enjoy it.

You can download the MSE bits from CodePlex along with some installation guides, documentation, and some helpful screencast videos that illustrate exactly how to get started. Definitely worth checking out.

MBVQueryBuilder – Latest Version

MBVQueryBuilder – Latest Version

Download it : MBVQueryBuilder.zip


 


Hello, 


This is the First version of MBVQueryBuilder tool, to integrate your custom Queries in MBV tool.


The zip to download contains :


– The tool itself MBVQueryBuilder.EXE

– Runtime DLLs : MBVEngine.DLL and MYHC.DLL

MYHC.DLL
is in fact the runtime dll implementing My Health Check Framework and MBVEngine.DLL is the runtime dll using MyHC.DLL but is dedicated to analyze a BizTalk system.


Versions of MBV Gui and MBV Console using the runtimes DLLs: MBVGUI.EXE and MBVCONSOLE.EXE

As MBVEngine.DLL and MYHC.DLL are both shared by MBVQueryBuilder.EXE and MBV client tools MBVGUI.EXE and MBVCONSOLE.EXE,
MBVEngine.DLL and MYHC.DLL must be so both located in same folder than the tools using them.



You can find here a quick help about this tool at :

http://blogs.technet.com/jpierauc/archive/2009/04/15/mbvquerybuilder-tool.aspx


 


Let me know please your feedbacks, questions, suggestions, and possible bugs found about this new tool


Thanks !


 JP

MBVQueryBuilder tool : What and Why ?

MBVQueryBuilder tool : What and Why ?

Hello,


 


As mentioned in a previous post //blogs.technet.com/jpierauc/archive/2009/04/01/comming-soon-tool-to-build-your-own-queries-for-mbv.aspx, I make available publicly now on my blog a tool complementary to MBV which will allow you to create easily and quickly your custom queries for MBV.


 


What is MBVQueryBuilder ?


This tool allow in fact to create quickly and easily additional queries for MBV tool
This tool can create and update a Query Repository XML file with all queries you will create and allow also to generate the queries you want in an XML MBV Extension file starting with name “MBVEXT”.


 


Why MBVQueryBuilder  ? 


MBV use a custom Health Check engine I developed (“MyHC” Engine) which is easily extensible in tem of queries and rules.
This extensibility is made possible via any XML file starting with name “MBVEXT” and located in same folder than MBV.


These MBV Extension File contain additional custom queries (with their rules if exist) which will appear in additional Queries tabs in MBV gui interface.


To generate easily and quickly such MBV Extension XML files, it became obvious to create a tool to do it.


 


Where to download laetst version of this tool ?

http://blogs.technet.com/jpierauc/archive/2009/04/27/mbvquerybuilder-latest-version.aspx

 


Where can I find a quick help on this tool ?


http://blogs.technet.com/jpierauc/archive/2009/04/15/mbvquerybuilder-tool.aspx


 


Ler me know please your feedbacks, questions, and suggestions about this tool


Tha%u00a8nks!


JP

BizTalk 2009 RTM – go get it!

Being an ex BizTalk Technical Specialist, this one is close to my heart 🙂 BTS 2009 RTM’d recently and the General Availability is imminent. Summarised, here are the most important changes (and you can visit the url: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/roadmap.aspx#WhereWereGoing )

Key Features & Functions in BizTalk Server 2009:

%u00b7 Supports the latest Microsoft platform technologies including SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5.

%u00b7 New Hyper-V Virtualization Support: Takes advantage of the latest virtualization improvements included as part of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, which can lead to reduced costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead, plus the creation of a more dynamic IT infrastructure

%u00b7 New Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) support: Provides support for Team Foundation Server (TFS), and allows development teams to be able to leverage the integrated source control, bug tracking, support for team development, Project Server integration and support for automating builds via MSBuild.

%u00b7 New Web Services Registry — Includes a UDDI 3.0 registry which provides support for registry affiliation, extended discovery services, digital certificates and extensibility for a subscription API.

%u00b7 New Mobile RFID Platform and device management – Delivers a new lightweight platform for a variety of mobile devices, which simplifies the development of mobile applications that expose relevant, real-time business information. Also include support for key RFID industry standards (including LLRP, TDT, TDS, WS Discovery and partial EPCIS support).

%u00b7 Delivers other top features requested by our customers, including:

%u00b7 new and enhanced LOB adapters (Oracle EBS, SQL)

%u00b7 enhanced mainframe and AS400 host systems integration (updates to MQ, CICS, IMS, CICS)

%u00b7 enhanced B2B integration capabilities (updates to EDI, AS2, SWIFT)

%u00b7 a new release of ESB Guidance 2.0 patterns and practices.

Gov and Health – SQL 2008 SP1 is here

Just in case you have not seen any of the blogs or announcements!

Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 is now available for download here and is primarily a roll-up of previous cumulative updates, quick fix engineering updates and minor fixes made in response to requests reported through the SQL Server community. While there are no new features in this service pack, customers running SQL Server 2008 should download and install SP1 to take advantage of the fixes which increase supportability and stability of SQL Server 2008. With this service pack, Microsoft has made investments to ease deployment and make management of service packs more efficient. Key improvements in SP1 include Slipstream, Service Pack Uninstall and Report Builder 2.0 click-once deployment.

You can keep up to date with all SQL related news at the Insiders Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/default.aspx

SQL Server Kilimanjaro and Madison webcast

If you are up for an early morning start, check out the upcoming webcast:

This session will provide you with an sneak preview into the next release of SQL Server  codenamed ’Kilimanjaro’ as well as project ’Madison’ both of which will ship in the first half of CY 2010. This session will introduce at a high level the set of upcoming technologies in the areas of Self Service Business Intelligence, Application & Multi-Server Management and Scale-out Data Warehousing as well as several other key capabilities planned for the next release of SQL Server

http://www2.eventsvc.com/academylive/register/95712536-abbb-4621-a484-33cb28bce69c

Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Americas) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

(you can convert the time to work out when its beamed in your city!)

Now also a pipeline component library

Hi all

Just as i have started developing a functoid library (found at http://eebiztalkfunctoids.codeplex.com/)
I have also started developing a pipeline component library. Right now it contains
three components:

  • DevNull. This pipeline component is quite simple. It will "swallow" everything
    that comes as input. This enables performance testing of stuff without concerns about
    adapter transport time at send port for instance.
  • SearchAndReplace. This component will perform a search and replace on the incoming
    stream, replacing some string with some other string. Optionally, you can decide to
    let the input string be a regular expression and replace based on that instead of
    normal string search and replace.
  • Promote. This component has three parameters, the name of a property, the namespace
    of the property and an XPath expression. The component will read in the value that
    corresponds to the XPath expression at runtime and promote it to the property given
    by the name and name space. This enables you to promote reoccurring elements.

You can find it at http://eebiztalkpipelinecom.codeplex.com/ –
the url is weird, I know. But there is a limit to the length of the urls at codeplex,
unfortunately.



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