So unless you don’t read any of the “big” .NET bloggers (like Scott

Hanselman’s Blog or Podcast, Phil

Haack, Jeff Attwood,

etc) then you’re likely familiar with the “FizzBuzz” problem described in those various

posts. In case you missed it, the idea of FizzBuzz is a super simple coding

exercise which can be completed during the course of an interview to prove that the

candidate can at least write a program. FizzBuzz in particular is an example

of that as follows:

Write a program that prints the numbers 1 to 100. But for multiples of three

print “Fizz” instead of the number and for multiples of five print “Buzz”. For

numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”.

It’s simple, elegant, and proves that the candidate can at least write simple code.

As many people have pointed out, it will not highlight great developers, but it will

knock out bad ones.

My question to the assembled audience here is, what is a good FizzBuzz problem for

BizTalk? Obviously asking you to write a custom Adapter or Pipeline component

is just right out. They are to complex to be accomplished during the time of

an interview. But what is a fair example of this type of problem for BizTalk?

How about sometime like this:

Write, deploy and start a BizTalk solution which will accept an XML file containing

a root node named “Root” and a potentially unlimited number of child nodes of the

root called “Data” from the path “C:\Test\In” and will output the same structure with

to “C:\Test\Out” with the value of every “Data” node multiplied times 100.

Sample Input:

<Root>

<Data>1</Data><Data>2</Data>

<Data>1</Data><Data>2</Data>

</Root>

Sample Output:

<Root>

<Data>100</Data><Data>200</Data>

<Data>100</Data><Data>200</Data>

</Root>

The problem here is there isn’t such a thing as the “5 minute” BizTalk Solution.

I think I could do this solution in 5 minutes, but I wrote the thing. What do

you think? Is this unreasonable to expect during an interview? Again, the point

is not to prove you know BizTalk Server inside out and backwards, it’s to prove that

you don’t know it at all through failure. Thoughts?