New Beta 2 docs to help with code migration (from .NET 3.x and .NET 4 Beta 1)

by community-syndication | Nov 2, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Fresh on the heels of the beta 2 release of .NET 4/Visual Studio 2010, the team has been working on supplemental documentation to help you out with evaluation and adoption of WCF and WF in .NET 4.

Last week, two sets of documentation went live:

• WF4 Migration Guidance: The WF team updated the documents to .NET Beta 2. We posted the documents up to the Downloads site mid last week.
• B1->B2 Breaking Changes: The team also created a document that outlines the breaking changes between Beta 1 and Beta 2 of the .NET Framework 4.

We have a couple of new migration guidance documents in their final authoring/reviewing stages, and I hope to have them published out to the Downloads site by the time PDC comes around.

It’s exciting times having the second beta bits out, seeing what folks are doing with the new capabilities in .NET 4, and hearing from some customers that they are planning on taking advantage of the ”Go Live” License that is available with the Beta 2 release.

At any rate – happy Monday all – enjoy the docs and the new beta! If you’re heading to PDC and want to grab lunch with someone from the team while at the event, remember to drop me a note. BTW – I saw the shirts for the event last week – they look real nice!

SharePoint 2010: Developing – almost

by community-syndication | Nov 2, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

A few tidbits to share with you so far.

WSS has gone through a name change (there was a time when WSS stood for ’Web Storage
Server’ that SharePoint V1 + Exchange 5.x were based on) and is now called SharePoint
Foundation 2010.

I’m guessing that this name is more inline with Microsoft’s thinking around getting
SharePoint as the backend/foundation in Companies, as Office is standard on user’s
desktops.

Setting up your Development Environment:

(no more WSPBuilderthe SharePoint tools are baked into VS2010 beta 2. A nice feature
is that you can select what a ’Deploy’ does, or a ’ReDeploy’ by essentially adding
all these actions to your config, such as ’restart IIS’, recycle app pool, make web.config
change You just package them up – nice!)

1. SharePoint 2010 Beta Center – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee514561.aspx ***
   Great place to Start ***
2. SharePoint 2010 SDK – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/ee557253(office.14).aspx
3. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 – http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010/default.mspx (this
   will work with the upcoming beta release of SharePoint 2010)
   Point to note: .NET 4.0 introduces WF4.0, however at this point SP2010 supports
   only 3.51. There are some *very* significant changes in Workflow between
   these 2 versions and we’ll have to wait and see the outcome. Performant 10-30x faster,
   reduced memory footprint, more flexible, clean XAML, more events etc etc.
4. One last little point – where is the Public SharePoint 2010 download.unfortunately
   not yet will be soon and should be up on Dev Center Downloads – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/aa905690.aspx

In the meantime, be sure to check out the changes and enhancements to the SharePoint
2010 API model and some of the new capabilities such as:

1. Powershell everything
2. Check out LINQ/ADO.NET Entities integration and querying data
3. Performing JOINS in CAML
4. Client.svc – client side proxying, batching of requests and sending them through to
   SharePoint 2010. Very fast, as we only send what we need.
5. Workflow exporting/importing from Visio->SPD->VS.NET->Deploy.
6. Sandbox Solutions – now we can target our SharePoint Solutions to the Site
   Collection Level (rather than previously targeting only the farm). When we
   create this solution in VSNET2010, it rebinds to a ’fake’ Microsoft.SharePoint.dll
   (v14.0.0.39 from memory) that introduces all the restrictions in your code and provides
   special intellisense. Commands such as ’Run Under Elevated Security’ get caught on
   compile as these are not allowed.

   Could you be in the situation where your code compiles but the *real* SharePoint ’foundation’
   says ’no!..that instruction is not allowed’ – it’s possible, as you’re not actually
   compiling against the real DLL.

   Currently there are several projects that you can’t sandbox based
   on their type – such as Workflow Projects. These still need to be targeted to the
   Farm.

   Worth checking out – specifically if you’re hosting SP sites.

7. AJAX through out – even WebPart editor toolparts you can introduce AJAX there for
   alot of the lookups etc.
   
8. Other noted feature is that Throttling is on by default – so if you
   say “list.Items.AllItems” and that returns back 50000 usually, SP2010 will error.
   You have to explicitly ask to make the request without Throttling (couple of properties
   you set before hand)
9. Your WSSv3.0/MOSS sites can be *supported* in SP2010 and stay at their existing UI
   Level (look and feel), then at a later point we can flick the switch and see your
   site under the newer/AJAXY UI – through the APIs we can change it back SPWeb.UIVersion
   = 3 or 4.

Enjoy,

Mick.

Interview Series: Four Questions With Lars Wilhelmsen

by community-syndication | Nov 2, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Welcome to the 14th edition of my interview series with thought leaders in the “connected technology” space.  This month, we are chatting with Lars Wilhelmsen, development lead for his employer, blogger, and Connected Systems MVP.  In case you don’t know, Connected Systems is the younger, sexier sister of the BizTalk MVP, but we still like […]

BizTalk Adapter for SharePoint 2010

by community-syndication | Nov 2, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

As far as I know there’s some good news and bad news

Good news: the existing BizTalk SharePoint Adapter *should* work
with SharePoint 2010 – you will however need to add ’<rebinding>’ section to
the existing adapters web.config *if* the SharePoint 2010 is installed locally to
the BizTalk Server.

The ’rebinding’ tells your local .NET app that even though you want V12.0.0.0 of the
SharePoint APIs, V14.0.0.0 assemblies will give it to you.

Bad News: there’s no new BTS Adapter on the Horizon for this – AFAIK.

——

With SharePoint 2010 we now have the capability to involve many tighter technologies
such as:

1) event notification, rather than polling for the adapter.

2) LINQ and ADO.NET Entities to query the Data.

3) SharePoint Client WCF Service – Client.svc . This is a lightweight
and fast interface, where we can batch up requests, send them over the wire and get
back just what we ask for.

4) Lists.ASMX web service (+ the others) for backward compatibility.

When I get some time:D, I’m keen to develop a .NET LOB WCF Adapter.

BizTalk 2009 – Configuring the SharePoint Adapter *Manually*

by community-syndication | Nov 2, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Well – after spending *far* too long trying to get a little Red X to disappear from
my BTS Configuration tool, so I can have a green light to configure the SharePoint
adapter, I thought “There’s got to be an easier way”

Exhibit A – your honour. The SharePoint Adapter Configured.

So – what I did was roll my sleeves up and do this by hand.

This particular install – BTS09 x86, I installed WSS V3.0 with Sp2 and created a local
sharepoint web application, site collection and had a whole bunch of SharePoint happiness
coming back to me on http://biztalk (my server name).

All good I thought – except the configuration tool didn’t like what it found. I looked
at logs, ran network sniffers and even manually ran the tool  Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.StsOmInterop3.exe http://biztalk with
success:

But still no joy in the configurator.

Here’s how to do it manually:

1. Setup your local or domain SharePoint Groups
   Typically this is the ’SharePoint Enabled Hosts’ Group – if it already exists
   on the domain, then great, if not create it. For this I created my group on the local
   machine.
   I also added as members, my biztalk service account and my Sharepoint Service
   Account.

2. Configure IIS – BTS SharePoint WS Web Application
   1. Within the BizTalk Installed folders – e.g. c:\program files\Microsoft BizTalk 2009\Business
      Activity Services, you’ll find the set of WebServices to choose from. Select the right
      one for your SharePoint deployment.

   3. As you can see I selected BTSharePointV3AdapterWS (for WSS V2 SP3, select BTSharePointAdapterWS).

   4. This is the folder you will point IIS to later.

   5. Open this folder and you’ll see a web application with a web.config.tmpl

   6. Copy the web.config.tmpl and rename the *copy* to web.config

   7. Open up your Web.Config in Notepad and configure as follows:

      <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
      <configuration>
        <system.web>
              <httpModules>
                  <!–add name=”UrlAuthorization”
      type=”System.Web.Security.UrlAuthorizationModule” /–>
              </httpModules>

          <!– Change debug=”true” if you want to debug this web service
      –>
          <compilation defaultLanguage=”c#” debug=”false” />
          <customErrors mode=”Off” />
          <!– Windows Authentication is required for this web service.
      –>
          <authentication mode=”Windows” />
          <!– Impersonation is required for this web service. –>
          <identity impersonate=”true” />
          <authorization>
              <allow roles=”SharePoint Enabled Hosts”
      verbs=”GET,HEAD,POST”/>
              <deny users=”*”/>
          </authorization>

          <!– Uncomment this block if you want to do some tracing of
      this web service –>
          <!– <trace enabled=”true” requestLimit=”10″ pageOutput=”false”
      traceMode=”SortByTime” localOnly=”true” />  –>
          <globalization requestEncoding=”utf-8″ responseEncoding=”utf-8″
      />

          <!– The size of a document being posted to SharePoint depends
      on this setting –>
          <httpRuntime maxRequestLength=”100000″ />
          <trust level=”Full” originUrl=”” />
        </system.web>
        <runtime>
          <assemblyBinding xmlns=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1″>
            <dependentAssembly>
              <assemblyIdentity name=”Microsoft.SharePoint”
      publicKeyToken=”71e9bce111e9429c”/>
              <bindingRedirect oldVersion=”11.0.0.0″
      newVersion=”12.0.0.0″/>
            </dependentAssembly>
          </assemblyBinding>
        </runtime>
      </configuration>
      

      1. (you can always go back and tighten security up on this when you’ve got it working).

      2. Note the ’SharePoint Enabled Hosts’ – local group here.

      3. I’ve also removed the ’Documentation’ tags so I could get some WSDL to make sure it
         works within the browser.

      4. Save your web.config within Notepad.

      5. NOTE: make note of the Folder Path to get here as we’ll need it in IIS next.
         
   8. Configuring IIS
      1. Bring up IIS Admin MMC snapin.

      2. Select your SharePoint enabled Web Site, I selected ’Default Web Site’. Right click
         when ’Default Web Site’ is Selected and select ’Add Application’

         note: IIS 7.0 Manager shown.

      3. Configure this as follows:

         (Note – the App Pool User should be able to post into BizTalk and SharePoint)
         Physical Path: <path you had previously to either V2 or V3 of your BTSharePointV3Adapter>
         

      4. Click OK.

      5. To Test your WS: browse to: http://<your server>/BTSharePointAdapterWS/BTSharePointAdapterWS.asmx

      6. You *should* get this:

         You can invoke the IsAlive function and get TRUE back.

      7. If not, then fix your IIS related errors, at this point you’ve got a WS that uses
         the SharePoint APIs (locally). Some things to check:
         1. Local file security – make sure the Web App Pool acct can access those directories.

         2. Windows Auth is turned on, on your Web App.

         3. Check IIS log files for clues.
      8. You’re done on the IIS side of things, let’s configure BTS Side.
3. Configuring BizTalk Side
   Fortunately the WSS Adapter is installed as part of the BizTalk Runtime configuration
   – it’s just not configured. So as far as registering the adapter with BizTalk it’s
   already been partly done.
1. Install the “I’ve been Configured Registry Keys” – I took these from a previously
   successful 2009 install.

BTS
WSS Reg Keys

2. Once the registry keys have been applied you’ll need to go and configure the \TPM
   key to reflect your setup as follows:
1. In Particular – configure your SharePoint SiteID to the one you saw in IIS.

>

3. How is this Different for a x64 bit Install
1. The IIS piece is the same.

2. The BTS Piece – the Perf counters are the same,
   
   but the ..\TPM piece is under HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\BizTalk
   Server\3.0\ConfigFramework

3. So you’ll need to ammend 1 of the above 2 REG files.

>

You’re done!

Why oh why is this so hard from within the Configurator.

NOTE: There *USED* to be a Registry key that told the BTS WSS Adapter where
to go looking for the BTSharePoint WS – a URL (..STSServiceUrl). This eliminated the
need for a local machine install of SharePoint/WSS. Alasthis is *NOT* the case with
WSS Adapter post BTS06.

ACSUG Meeting Thursday November 19 – A Practical exploration of the Business Rules Engine in BizTalk Server with Jeffrey Chilberto

by community-syndication | Nov 1, 2009 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I’m happy to announce that the next Auckland Connected Systems User Group meeting is set for the 19th of November 6:00pm at Datacom, 210 Federal Street downtown Auckland, New Zealand . Free entry, pizza and drinks provided as usual. Register here.
Jeff will take us through a practical exploration of the powerful Business Rules Engine in […]