by community-syndication | Jun 20, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
BizTalk community is very much alive. Around the world sessions are given to the community by BizTalk Server MVP’s and members of the BizTalk community. The BizTalk events site will give you a good overview of events taking place around the globe. Besides the events there is a lot more activity going round in the community. Forums, TechNet Wiki, blogs and the publication of books.
One of the members that is active in the community is Randy. I sent him an email a few weeks ago with a couple of questions and he responded. So here is another story of a BizTalk community member I like to bring to the foreground: Randy Aldrich Paulo.
Randy Aldrich I. Paulo is 28 years old and from the Philippines. Last couple of years he is living in the Netherlands (Leiden) with his wife and two wonderful children ages 3 (son) and 8 (daughter).
Randy currently works as a BizTalk Consultant for a company in Sassenheim and aside from BizTalk development,he also works on ETL solutions using (SSIS) and multi-tiered .NET development (WCF/ASP.Net). His diversified experience and knowledge gives him an edge when it comes to deciding the right combination of technology to solve a specific problem.
Randy is a MCPD (web) and has a MCTS in BizTalk 2006/2010 and WCF 4.0. He maintains a blog, which contains posts focused on the previously mentioned technologies. From time to time he updates them based on his experiences to help developers and server administrators alike.
Randy started his career working as open source Web Developer using PHP and mySql. Later on he made a switch to ASP Classic and COM+. In retrospective:
“I think this is one of the good decision that I have ever taken. And also during that time I was introduced to BizTalk 2000. At first I thought what a horrible application that from time to time I couldn’t explain why it works when it shouldn’t work and why it works when it shouldn’t, and since I was only allowed to use Microsoft products at that time (volume licensing) that’s why I was stuck with it. I still remember building my own AIC and register it as a COM+ and the schemas and maps are just lying somewhere in the network.When Microsoft release BizTalk Server 2004 that’s where things get slightly organized and from there onwards I love building integration solutions with it. Most of the time I do BizTalk development & administration and I am aiming to be BizTalk architect in the near future.”
Since Randy has worked with earlier versions of BizTalk he was able to see how BizTalk evolved and matured as a product. He is happy with how the product is now, yet he is partly sad because in the future they’re planning to rename the product (BizTalk). Some of the buzz around it worries him.
Randy feels BizTalk is a strong brand and I agree with that. A brand that overtime has gained the trust of many companies and organizations. It is a reliable middleware application server. Randy is hoping that Microsoft would at least retain the BizTalk name.
“It is like a brand that comes to mind whenever you speak of integration in a Microsoft context.”
Rest assure that with the latest developments and announcements during Tech-Ed North America, BizTalk will be amongst us for quite some time.
In his spare time Randy likes to watch movies, TV-series and playing competitive online games like StarCraft II. He also from time to time browses the MSDN forums providing answers if he can (Randy’s MSDN Profile). In the Philippines, as it might sounds weird (since they’re not as tall as the Dutch) the number #1 sport is basketball. So when Randy was growing up he became a huge fan of Michael Jordan and played lots of basketball. He also likes watching soccer games especially when the Dutch team is playing.
Last but not least a final quote from Randy:
“Aside from mastering BizTalk, one should’ve at least a theoretical knowledge of different Microsoft Technologies as there’s no one solution for a real complex problems/scenarios. And you can’t just use BizTalk for everything.”
I would like to thank Randy for his time and contributions to the community.
by community-syndication | Jun 20, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Recently I came across the need to execute a command and script after a Biztalk deployment using the BizTalk Deployment Framework (BTDF). In order to accomplish this BTDF allows the use of two specific deployment ’Targets’ in the btdfproj file. Each one will allow the execution of custom deployment or undeployment steps. The ’CustomDeployTarget’ tag […]
Blog Post by: kmorillo
by community-syndication | Jun 20, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The full title would not fit the headline, but it should really read “(MSTS): Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 (70-595) Certification Guide – a review”. Not exactly catching, is it, but do not let that fool you. This book is the ticket.
Have you ever thought “I should get certified! Take that exam, and get famous! Or at least a pay-raise and respect from my peers” but then you thought “But I don’t know if I can pass and there is really no way for me to know what to study” so you did not go thru with it?
Stop that! Now you have the best support you could ever get. A study guide for the exam. Before this you had to resort to blog posts like this, and then read more comprehensive books. The latter might not be so bad but you constantly wonder: Is this important for passing the exam? So now you do not have to worry anymore. This is a definite five star product that is a great companion in the pursuit of the coveted title of MCTS.
The book walks you thru everything you need to know in order to pass the exam and then some. I think that even if you do not plan to take the exam, this is a good book to get anyway because it shows so many BizTalk things in such rich detail. After each chapter there is a short section called “Test your knowledge” in which you get to answer a couple of questions in the style of the exam itself.
The structure of the book closely mimics the different sections in the exam so you know that you get the right amount of knowledge and know you are studying the the rights things in order to pass.
- Configuring a Messaging Architecture
- Developing BizTalk Artifacts – Creating Schemas and Pipelines
- Developing BizTalk Artifacts – Creating Maps
- Developing BizTalk Artifacts – Creating Orchestrations
- Debugging and Exception Handling
- Deploying, Tracking, and Administrating a BizTalk Server 2010 Solution
- Integrating Web Services and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services
- Implementing Extended Capabilities
The last couple of chapters are the icing in the cake: the first is a very practical instruction about how to get prepared for the exam, how the exam is structured and so on. The last is a sample certification test! You can actually measure your chance of passing as well as getting feedback about your level of knowledge and what to, perhaps, read up on.
The authors are well versed in the product and have years of experience as developers, architects, Certified Trainers and to some extent as authors.
The only critique I have for this book is that it too focused of explaining how something is done (How to configure a sendport to use the HTTP-adapter) and it does not tell you why you should use the particular adapter, and perhaps discuss pros and cons. I fully realize that this is not the point of the book but I still want that.
The style of the book, that it is so packed full of information, tends to make it a bit tedious to read and you quickly fill up on information. Do not try to cram it all in at once, small chunks and you will be fine.
Go to packpub.com, or Amazon, or perhaps Bokus and buy it and get the title of MCTS, now!
More information about the authors:
Johan Hedberg, @Johed – MVP and MCT
Kent Weare, @wearsy – MVP
Morten la Cour, Microsoft Employee
Blog Post by: Mikael Sand
by community-syndication | Jun 20, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Kent Weare has written a fantastic blog post that details some of the improvements in the upcoming release for BizTalk – http://kentweare.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/application-integration-futures-road.html Some things stand out as pretty exciting for me BizTalk running in Azure – Finally a means to remove the requirement forhardwareprovisioning for BizTalk server, and potentially a bit more flexibility to scale […]
Blog Post by: Johann
by community-syndication | Jun 20, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
When creating schemas I typically follow the rule that each xsd file contains one root node only. However when dealing with schemas that have been generated from metadata it is quite common for schemas to be generated with multipe root nodes. In the case of web services all the request and response schema definitions across […]
Blog Post by: Johann
by community-syndication | Jun 19, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
So, after a wonderful event in the Netherlands and Italy It’s now decided to do one in Norway. Together with my company and some co-workers we set up everything and I invited a total of4 MVPS and 1community member,MVP Steef-JanWiggers, MVPSandro Pereira,MVPSaravana Kumar, Lex Hegt and MVP Nino Crudele. It has kinda evolved from the
Blog Post by: Tord Glad Nordahl
by community-syndication | Jun 19, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
So, this bring up a funny discussion. How to teach your DBAthe wayBizTalk databases works! I’ll split up the different questions with my answers. You often end up in some sort of disagreements with DBAs, they sure know SQL and will be a good friend when you have trouble but they might not know that
Blog Post by: Tord Glad Nordahl
by community-syndication | Jun 19, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I’m writing series of blog post about our story on how we set up a complete BizTalk infrastructure in the cloud in our BizTalk360 blog.
In these articles I explain how we set up virtual network, active directory, DNS, single server BizTalk installation and multi server BizTalk installation etc. You can read more about it here
How did we setup our entire BizTalk Testing Infrastructure in the Windows Azure cloud?
BizTalk Testing Infrastructure in the Windows Azure cloud – Stage 1
I’ll update this post with rest of the articles as and when we finish, hopefully before end of this week.
– Saravana
by community-syndication | Jun 18, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
This is more of a “note to self” but I feel it is worth sharing with the community. Microsoft recommends that hot fixes should only be applied if you are experiencing the issues they address. There are good reasons for this, mainly around the amount of testing a hot fix goes through in comparison to […]
Blog Post by: Colin Meade
by community-syndication | Jun 17, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Hey Everybody, Since few weeks I work on Azure (in particular Service Bus). With the new feature VM on the cloud, we’ve got a new portal : https://manage.windowsazure.com it’s a full html 5 portal and it is veryto understand how does it work For the moment Service Bus is unavailable, time question In a […]
Blog Post by: Jeremy Ronk
