It’s time for me to do a review of Steef-JanWiggers book “BizTalk Server 2010 Cookbook”. It’s been a pleasure to read and the overall impression is very good. I tend to read technical books rather than other literature, it might be hard to explain but a really good technical book gives me both excitement, experience
Blog Post by: Tord Glad Nordahl
We are very pleased and excited (as always) to announce the immediate availability of BizTalk360 version 4.0 beta. You can download it from here http://www.biztalk360.com/content/beta
The core focus for 4.0 is enhancing the monitoring capabilities of BizTalk360 to infrastructure related things. As a bonus we also included the ability to maintain/execute custom SQL queries within BizTalk360. In this article, we will see the capabilities of Custom SQL Queries and in the next post I’ll cover the monitoring enhancements
Custom SQL Queries:
When you are actively managing a BizTalk environment, the BizTalk admin and support people typically maintain a bunch of custom SQL queries as their armour to check the health of the system. You can see some of the good resources here for useful BizTalk SQL Queries biztalkadmin, biztalkadminsblogging, technet. At the moment there is no easy way to maintain those queries, and you always need to access SQL management studio to execute them, and more than that you need to provide permission for users to execute those queries across various SQL instances and databases. We wanted to make this task easy for BizTalk admins and support people using BizTalk360.
We added a new link to our data section called "Custom SQL Queries" in our navigation tree, as shown in the below picture.
Once the user click on the link, "Custom SQL Queries – Report" screen will be displayed. The screen contains a combo box with list of pre-defined SQL queries as shown below. The user (BizTalk360 admin user) will have the ability to add new SQL query, or modify/delete existing queries.
The user simply select the query from the combo box and the result will be displayed in the grid below. Example: In the below screen user selected the query "Sendports NOT Started", which brings all the send ports in the environment that are not in started state, as shown below.
Custom SQL Query management:
BizTalk360 comes with set of inbuilt SQL queries, we are planning to add more queries to the default install over the future releases. BizTalk360 comes with complete query management capabilities. As shown in the below window, BizTalk360 administrators can add new query, modify/delete existing query, using this simple screen.
Benefits of Custom SQL query functionality:
There are few great advantages of this functionality.
1. User can execute the query from single management tool. No necessity for SQL server management studio
2. Central Query repository, that makes maintaining queries easier. No more SharePoint or Wiki
3. The end users (support people) don’t need to have access to SQL. The queries will be executed in the context of service account, so only the service account requires access.
4. You can include queries against any SQL instance/Database. As long as the service account got access to them.
In the next article we’ll cover the big functionality of BizTalk360 v4.0, extended infrastructure monitoring capabilities.
Nandri!
Saravana Kumar
Founder – BizTalk360
Every year Microsoft invites some key customers down to Redmond to see the latest and greatest technology. The Summit is geared towards IT Leadership so unfortunately this time around I will not get to hear Clemens Vasters speak about Service Bus during this trip to Redmond.
In the welcome session, they discussed the following
Sessions
Business of the Future (Dynamics AX and CRM)
Dynamics AX 2012 – Business Workloads and Suites
In this session we got the “state of the nation” when it comes to Microsoft’s Dynamics unit. More specifically it related to Microsoft Dynamics 2012 and Dynamics CRM 2011.
A very common theme was around Workloads. Workloads meaning processes and where those processes take place. In some cases those Workloads may take place on-premise where as others may take place in the Cloud. Also some Workloads may be supported natively by Dynamics AX 2012 and some may be supported by an ISV product.
Microsoft has been investing heavily in Workloads. Below is a list of various Workloads that they support. Some may be industry specific and others may be common within organizations (Expenses)
Dynamics AX Adoption
Eating their own Dog Food
Microsoft runs on Dynamics AX
Major Customers in Canada
Adding more core, industry specific capabilities is a good idea in my opinion. Having spent a fair amount of time with SAP solutions, it is quite evident that SAP puts an emphasis on industry specific solutions like the Utilities module: ISU. I always felt that Microsoft relied too much on 3rd party applications to fulfill these verticals. I am happy to see them put more emphasis on industry.
CRM
The next portion of the session focused on CRM 2011. They showed an amazing demo where they built a Metro user interface on top of CRM 2011. The idea behind this was that this company (a beer company) has a mobile workforce that includes “Beer Rangers” (how cool of a job title is that). These Beer Rangers are much like account managers. They need to access CRM to manage their client engagements. Previously, this Brewery had issues with CRM adoption. They found that the Beer Rangers were not using CRM as much as they should have.
The user interface was extremely fluid. You would not even know that this was a CRM system unless someone told you it was. Since the target audience was a mobile workforce, this demonstration was done on a Windows 8 tablet.
I am responsible for managing our CRM implementation at my organization. My initial thoughts were that “I want that solution”. It was amazing.
Neat Statistics
Major Customers in Canada
A Perspective on Cloud Computing & Adoption – Steve Martin
Steve delivered a very practical presentation on Windows Azure. I have been to many Azure sessions that talked about how everyone needs to be in the cloud and made it seem like you were on the outside if you weren’t. From the beginning, Steve mentioned that we would not see one Windows Azure logo in his presentation and he was right. He gave a very forthcoming, honest talk on when and why you should use cloud. He also provided a lot of candid information in areas when you should not use the cloud as it just does not make sense.
When should I embrace the cloud?
Economics
In the majority of cases you will not save money by moving a workload to the cloud. (Yes someone from Microsoft actually said this) From Microsoft’s perspective they have seen customers save money when using Azure for:
- Dev/Test scenarios
- Temporary workloads
- Bursts
- Proof of Concepts – You can perform many tasks over the course of an afternoon for less than a cup of coffee.
He then offered that you will not save money in situations where:
- You have sustained (long term) utilization. The cost of compute is still too high for financial benefits.
Architecture
People will move to the cloud to take advantage of Architecture building blocks that either do not exist on -premise or is outside that organization’s core competency. From a personal perspective, this has always resonated with me. The pure elasticity of Azure is just not something that can be easily emulated within your own datacenter. Also, when I look at some of the opportunities that technologies like the Service Bus provide, it just makes sense to move some of these workloads into the cloud.
Who is adopting?
Cloud Adoption Patterns
Neat Statistics
Cloud is a double edge sword
You know the term “it takes money to make money”? For many years companies that could afford to spend a lot of money on R&D and infrastructure had more opportunities to create the next big thing. With Azure, and cloud computing in general, the playing field has now been leveled. Your competitors now have access to the same toolset that you have access to. These toolsets will now allow businesses to scale at levels that previously just weren’t possible. In fact, Professor Richard Foster of Yale University is predicting by by 2020 more than 3/4 of the S&P 500 will be companies that we have not heard of yet. Considering where Facebook came from less than 10 years ago to approaching a 100 Billion dollar IPO, I agree with Professor Foster.
So that is some of the highlights from Day 1. I will also publish my thoughts from Day 2 on Thursday.
Because there are so many BizTalk (and integration) related events, I thought it would be nice, to dedicate a website for them. So I created www.biztalkevents.com, added a calendar, an entry form and added a couple of upcoming BizTalk related events.
If you have an event, which other BizTalkers must know about, just fill out the entry form and I will take care that the event will be shown in the calendar.
Folks, this is Scotty’s 2nd presentation
this week where he shares is love, scripts and years of experience in Managing Azure
Applications (Breeze started back in early 2008).
Tune into this free event and to hear & see what Scotty has on offer.
| Language(s): English. |
|
Product(s): Microsoft BizTalk Server and Windows Azure. |
So
you just made your first Windows Azure deployment. Now what? Is it healthy? How many
instances do you need? What will my bill be? When do I need to scale up? Was that
a DoS attack? Will auto-patching break me? Getting an application into Windows Azure
is the first step, now you have to run the application for the next three years. Come
to this session and see how to manage and operate your Windows Azure applications.
Blog Post by: Mick Badran
Hi folks,
Scotty (aka Sco the Stig) Scovell is
presenting this week on
Ten
Must-Have Tools for Windows Azure as part of Microsoft Readiness.
We’d love to see you there – free event
| Language(s): English. |
|
Product(s): Microsoft BizTalk Server and Windows Azure. |
Any
platform, by its own nature, creates an ecosystem for third-party tools and helpers.
Windows Azure is no different. In this session we look at a variety of the third-party
tools available in the Windows Azure ecosystem. Included are tools for both developers
and IT professionals. We look at tools that will help manage storage and resources,
migration, scaling, diagnostics and software components that will help you build cloud
applications.
Blog Post by: Mick Badran
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending some time on the phone with Blue Badge Insight’s CEO Andrew Brust . From the ones of you who don’t know Andrew , he is an internationally recognized expert in subjects related to business intelligence and…(read more)
Blog Post by: gsusx
Finally we managed to secure our next user group meeting on 10th May 2012. We settled for the theme BizTalk Administration Special. In recent month, there are whole lot of traction around BizTalk administration and operations. Guys at BizTalk Administration Blogging (http://biztalkadminsblogging.com/) are doing a great job in promoting the importance of a BizTalk administrators role in an organisation.
Event Information:
When: 10th May 2012, Thursday, between 6:30 to 9:30pm
Where: Customer Meeting Room 05
Microsoft, Cardinal Place
London
Registration Link: http://ukcsugmay2012-eorg.eventbrite.com/
Let me introduce Tord Glad Nordahl. Tord is from Norway, working for Bouvet ASA. He is establishing himself as an expert in BizTalk administration area. He is conducting the famous BizTalk Deep Dive course across the world. He got a dedicated blog for BizTalk Administration at http://biztalkadmin.com I met him few months ago in Netherlands during a user group presentation. We bounced back and forth few emails and he kindly accepted to come and present in London.
We are going to have 2 sessions focused on BizTalk administrations. First Tord is going to focus on insisting developers should keep BizTalk Administration in mind while building solutions. Next I’m going to present BizTalk360 (http://www.biztalk360.com ) and show how it can improve the efficiency of administration, operations and monitoring side of BizTalk environment. Both the sessions will complement each other.
London user group is special for us, this is where we announced for the first time in public about BizTalk360 exactly a year ago (http://ukcsbugmay2011.eventbrite.com/). It’s one year on, with 3 major releases (v1.0, v2.5, v3.2) and the fourth one coming end of May.
Please register for the event if you are in/around London. We guarantee it will be worth while of your time.
In February 2012 Ordina (by means of Steef-Jan Wiggers) organised the Ordina BizTalk Innovation Event. We had the honour to receive 2 international guests, namely BizTalk MVP Saravana Kumar and Tord Glad Nordahl. Since that event multiple international BizTalk/Integration events are being organised. I’ll mention a couple that I know off:
10 May: UK Connected Systems User Group
Location: London, United Kingdom
Speakers: Saravana Kumar, Tord Glad Nordahl
More information can be found here
22-24 May: Integration Masterclass
Location: Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Australia
Speaker: Richard Seroter
More information can be found here
24 May: Overnet BizTalk Innovation
Event Location: Milan, Italy
Speakers: Steef-Jan Wiggers, Sandro Pereira, Saravana Kumar, Tord Glad Nordahl
More information can be found here
26-27 September: Bouvet BizTalk Innovation Event
Location: Stavanger, Norway
Speakers are not yet confirmed, but probably: Steef-Jan Wiggers, Saravana Kumar, Tord Glad Nordahl, Lex Hegt
More information: not yet available
So if you are into BizTalk (or integration) and in the neighbourhood of one of those events, join the party!
My pick? Milan and Stavanger! Hope to see you there!
Clemens Vasters was kind enough to round off his visit to Norway and Sweden by presenting a session on Hybrid Applications for the Sweden Windows Azure User Group (SWAG) in Stockholm. After presenting two sessions at TechDays he ditched Power Point and gave a two hour improvised presentation that spread across three whiteboards.
He covered a number of scenarios where the Windows Azure Service Bus could be used to enhance the reach of existing on-premise systems, and also how internet enabled devices can be hooked up to the service bus to provide control and reporting functionality.
Big thanks to Clemens for finding time is his busy schedule to present for us.
If you would like to sign up to the Sweden Windows Azure Group in Stockholm, you can do that here: http://swagmembership.eventbrite.com/
If you are in the south of Sweden, or Copenhagen Magnus M%u00e5rtensson, aka noopman, is kicking of a branch of SWAG in Malm%u00f6. The premier event will be at foocafe on Thursday 24th May. The signup for that event is here: http://foocafe.org/#event-cloud-core-values-from-the-source-with-magnus-martensson-and-glenn-block