Screen Shots of Oslo, Dublin, and .Net 4.0 Workflow

by community-syndication | Nov 3, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I’ve put together a series of First Look blog posts covering Oslo, Dublin, and Workflow 4.0.

These posts include several screen shots of the new Microsoft Technologies and gives you a high level overview of some of the new features.

Check them out here:

First Look Dublin (Windows Application Server)

First Look Oslo (Quadrant and M Modeling Language)

First Look Workflow 4.0

Do not forget to check out all the great videos on these same subjects at BizTalkGurus.com media gallery.

Interview Series: Four Questions With Yossi Dahan

by community-syndication | Nov 3, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

We continue our monthly look at thought leaders in the “connected systems” space by interviewing Yossi Dahan.  Yossi is a great technologist,  prolific blogger, Microsoft MVP as well as a good tipper.  Yossi recently attending Microsoft’s PDC conference in Los Angeles, and I wanted to get some insight from him as to what he saw […]

Microsoft "Oslo": What’s in a Name?

by community-syndication | Nov 3, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

When I blogged about the .NET Framework 4.0/Dublin announcement recently, I also mentioned that the code name “Oslo” has taken on a refined meaning. Since then, I’ve seen some confusion out there, and thought I would do a post that specifically addresses just this change.

First off, the vision of what this new wave of technologies has not changed. The term “Oslo” used to refer to the entire technology stack that will make it so much easier to develop applications. Now, as we move through the development lifecycle, some items are migrating, quite naturally, into their ultimate ship vehicles. Some examples of things that were once under the “Oslo” umbrella, but have since migrated, include:

• WCF/WF enhancements (part of the .NET 4.0 framework)
• The runtime hosts for WCF/WF and models (part of the Windows Server application server, will be shipped as part of “Dublin” and beyond)
• Improved WCF/WF design/authoring experience (now part of Visual Studio 2010)

A nice side effect of all this is that the separate pieces are now decoupled from each other. There will be no “Big Bang Release” that will appear one day, the decoupled pieces can be delivered independent of each other. However, as all of this work is being done by Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division, everybody’s is talking to each other, and the end-goal remains the same.

So, with those things out from under Oslo, what is Oslo? Oslo today is now the modeling platform, which consists of three things:

• the repository
• the modeling language
• tooling (to author/deploy models)

Hopefully this helps to clear up some confusion.

Another name change from last week… if you’ve been following the work at labs.biztalk.net, which has been live for over a year, well…. that was the incubation project, it morphed into Zurich, and was re-unveiled last week as .NET Services. It consists of an identity system, a service bus and a workflow engine. I looked at this some months back, and my experience at the time was it took about an hour from the time I downloaded the SDK until I had my first customized workflow running in the cloud. It was a defining moment for me, and my mind started reeling, when I sat back and let the potential implications of what I had done sink in. With a few quick browser clicks, I had a workflow running in the cloud. A few years down the road, it would just take a credit card number to scale that and have it running on hundreds of machines…. Intrigued? Check it out, you can sign up for an early preview.

Another name change from last week, the poorly kept secret code name of “D” for the modeling language in Oslo is no more, it’s now “M” (for models), as well as the related MGrammar for creating DSLs. I’ll have much more to say about these soon….

Yet another name change – sort of… if you follow my blog you know I really like Live Mesh and use it a lot (see: Adventures with Live Mesh (CTP), More cool tricks with Live Mesh). Live Mesh is now integrated into the Live Services part of the Azure Services Platform. They also moved from CTP to Beta stage last week, and the geeky-cool part of the new release is Windows Mobile support. I take a picture with my phone, and it automagically appears in the “mobile photos” folder of my Live Mesh desktop-in-the-cloud, as well as any other devices that are synchronizing that folder.

IIS7.0 and beyond Web Platform Installer Tool (beta)

by community-syndication | Nov 3, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Folks – while setting up some IIS servers for a BTS production environment I came
across this handy little tool.

Basically gives you a Tree View of what things you’d like to install on your IIS Web
Server from MS (mother ship).

Includes things like Service Packs, etc etc. – handy spot to grab all the new files
in one spot.
(as opposed to the piece meal approach – of install asp.net, oh you need
the .net 3.5 framework – install…oh…you also need SP1 ..with maybe a few reboots
inbetween)

– single place for all the tools and other components that you’ll need.

– great way to do them all at once.

Here’s what you’re after –

http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebPlatformInstaller.aspx

Data Modelling in “M” Webcast

by community-syndication | Nov 2, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

"Using the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Adapters in BizTalk Server" Whitepaper

by community-syndication | Nov 2, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Written by Aaron Skonnard, this was originally named “Integrating Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 with the Windows Communication Foundation”. It has been renamed to “Using the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Adapters in Biztalk Server”. It can be found  on MSDN at  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb967002.aspx, or directly from the download center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=a976dc7d-2296-4f88-be4d-0d314fca9e59&displaylang=en&tm.

"Consuming and Hosting WCF Services with Custom Bindings in BizTalk Server" Whitepaper

by community-syndication | Nov 2, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

“Consuming and Hosting WCF Services with Custom Bindings in BizTalk Server is a new WCF whitepaper.  You can find the download page from MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd203050.aspx, or download it directly from the download center at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=70badd79-ce7e-4ccb-be5c-3ff74ca3a8c4&displaylang=en. 

Here are the first few paragraphs from the paper giving a brief introduction of it’s content.

IntelliPad (IPad): adding commands

by community-syndication | Nov 1, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Last week at the PDC was Oslo’s big
coming out party.  If you haven’t heard Oslo is a new set of technologies from
Microsoft relating to model-driven development.  The three main parts of Oslo
are:

1) A language:  The M language is a language for writing stuff down.  You
write down the things you need to drive your application.  The things could be
application configuration data, or application specific data, or data which is actually
your application.  How exactly you use M is largely up to you.  There is
also MGrammar which I’ll be covering more in future posts.

2) A repository: There needs to be a place to hold all this data, so Oslo has a SQL
Server 2008 database named the "Repository".  The Repository is full
of models, both models that Microsoft has created, as well as models you might want
to create.  Microsoft has created a large number of models that they think will
be useful for us as developers.  Things like endpoints, service contracts, workflows,
as well as other data our applications will need.  You can choose to put your
models made in M into the Repository, or you can put your models into your own database. 
The choice I think will largely be based on whether you want your models to be able
interact with Microsoft’s models, and whether the Repository becomes your main application
database.

3) A visual tool:  To view the models in the Repository they’ve create a visual
tool named "Quadrant" (this is a code-name hence the quotes).  "Quadrant"
is a tool for viewing models for those of you who are visual/spatial people. 
Some people like text – so they have M.  Some people like drawings – so they
Quadrant.  Quadrant is a highly customizable general purpose data viewing and
editing tool.

Those are the three "main" pieces, but there are other pieces as well. 
To create a great editing experience for M, the Oslo team built a tool called IntelliPad
(or IPad) for short.  IPad is a customizable text editor that has support for
the M language.  Here is a screenshot of IPad in action:

In this picture I’m using M to generate "Reach SQL" which is SQL that isn’t
limited to the Repository.  The test.m buffer is in "MMode" which means
there are additional commands available that wouldn’t be available if I where editing
any other kind of text file.  The other buffer is generated from the M in the
test.m buffer, and I made this happen by going to the MMode menu and selecting "Reach
SQL". 

If you want to see Repository SQL you can use the MMode menu and select "Repository
SQL".

In this case I am beginning a model to represent a blog.  I’ve created an M type
named BlogEntryType, and then an extent (the name for storage space in M) named BlogEntry. 
You can see on the right that the M will generate a table named BlogEntry with the
appropriate columns.  As Scott points
out one of the nice features of this system for developers even if you aren’t using
the Repository is that you will be able to check-in the m file to source control and
doing all the usual source control type things on it.

That’s all a brief introduction to Oslo and IPad.  The purpose of this post (indicated
by the title) is that IPad is super customizable.  When I was at the last Oslo
"SDR" like event a few weeks ago, I asked for a feature in IPad – the "Open
Folder in Windows Explorer" feature from Visual Studio 2008 which I find to be
the most useful simple feature in Visual Studio I think for all time.

Chris Sells (who is a
PM on Oslo) said "You add it".  Which is a very typical Chris response,
but at least in this case it is possible since IPad’s whole system of commands is
totally customizable.

Harry will happy that this is
forcing me to learn about IronPython, although I have to admit I was able to make
it work without much actual learning of the IronPython language.

Almost all of IPad’s commands are actually written in Python.  These commands
are registered with IPad when IPad first starts, and the commands are implemented
by manipulating the interface to IPad’s object model. 

The main command file is Commands.py which is in the Oslo install directory under
Bin\Intellipad\Settings.  It contains almost all of the standard mode commands. 
To add a new command, all I had to do was add a new .py file to that directory. 
IPad seems to search at least that directory for .py files and loads up all the commands
found inside into the environment.

Each command has at least one IronPython function, which represents the "Execution"
of method of the command.  This function is annotated with an "attribute"
(which I think may be added by the IPad team, I can’t seem to find any reference to
attribute support in IronPython – Harry?).

The Metadata.CommandExecuted "attribute" tells IPad this is a definition
of a command.  It has three parameters,  the IPad object that should execute
the command, the name of the command, and the keyboard shortcut (which is optional). 
Here is my CommandExecuted function defintion from the MyCommands.py file I created
in the settings directory:

import sys
import System
import Microsoft
import Common



@Metadata.CommandExecuted('{Microsoft.Intellipad}BufferView', '{Microsoft.Intellipad}OpenExplorerAtBuffer', 'Ctrl+B')
def OpenExplorerAtBufferExecute(target, sender, args): from System.Diagnostics import
Process from System.IO import Path, File exists = False file = sender.Buffer.Uri.AbsolutePath
exists = File.Exists(file) if exists: Process.Start(Path.GetDirectoryName(file))

The first argument of the CommandExecuted can either be (as far as I can tell so far)
the BufferView object which represents the current buffer, or the HostWindow object
which seems to represent IPad itself.  OpenExplorerAtBuffer is the name I gave
this command, and Ctrl+B is the keyboard short cut.  The code is pretty easy,
I just find the path of the buffer and if it exists (since a buffer in IPad might
not have been saved yet) I just call Process.Start at the directory to open explorer.

Each command can optionally have a function that IPad will call to find out if the
command should even be available at a particular time, so I added that one as well:

@Metadata.CommandCanExecute('{Microsoft.Intellipad}BufferView', '{Microsoft.Intellipad}OpenExplorerAtBuffer')
def CanOpenExplorerAtBuffer(target, sender, args): from System.IO import Path, File
file = sender.Buffer.Uri.AbsolutePath args.CanExecute = File.Exists(file)

The "CommandCanExecute" function just checks to see if the file exists and
returns the args.CanExecute as true or false, if true the command is active, if false
the command is not. 

The next step was to add my command to a menu, since I tend to be a mouse/keyboard
developer (sometimes I use the mouse at odd times – just the way my hands work I guess). 
To add a command to IPad at all times,  I edited the MenuBar.xcml file which
is in the Intellipad\Settings\VisualStudio folder, and drives the default menu (other
IPad "Modes" can have additional menu items merged, as the MMode mode does
with the MMode menu).  I added a new item under the File menu:

<act:Exports
      xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation' xmlns:x='http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml' xmlns:act='clr-namespace:System.ComponentModel.Activation;assembly=Activation' xmlns:mis='clr-namespace:Microsoft.Intellipad.Shell;assembly=Microsoft.Intellipad.Framework' xmlns:mi='clr-namespace:Microsoft.Intellipad;assembly=Microsoft.Intellipad.Core' xmlns:mih='clr-namespace:Microsoft.Intellipad.Host;assembly=Microsoft.Intellipad.Core' >
<act:Export Name='{}{Microsoft.Intellipad}MenuBar' xmlns:mti='Microsoft.Intellipad' >
<Menu> <Menu.Resources> <mi:FileNameConverter x:Key='fileNameConverter' />
<mi:ModeToMenuItemConverter x:Key='modeToMenuItemConverter' />
</Menu.Resources> <MenuItem Header='_File'>
<MenuItem Header='_New' Command='{mis:NamedCommand
Name=mti:New}' /> <MenuItem Header='_Open' Command='{mis:NamedCommand
Name=mti:Open}' /> <MenuItem Header='Open
_Project' Command='{mis:NamedCommand Name=mti:OpenProject}' />
<MenuItem Header='_Save' Command='{mis:NamedCommand
Name=mti:Save}' /> <MenuItem Header='Save
_As' Command='{mis:NamedCommand Name=mti:SaveAs}' />
<MenuItem Header='_Close Buffer' Command='{mis:NamedCommand
Name=mti:CloseBuffer}' /> <MenuItem Header='Open
_Buffer Folder In Explorer' Command='{mis:NamedCommand
Name=mti:OpenExplorerAtBuffer}' /> <Separator /> <!-- rest of file
omitted--> </act:Exports>

So adding the command allowed me to to Ctrl+B from any buffer and get the windows
explorer folder of the current buffer to open.  Changing the MenuBar.xcml file
enabled me to get the menu item on the File Menu:

All in all I find IPad to be a really interesting and powerful text editor – but being
able to customize the menus and commands with such ease I think is just another example
of the cool work the Oslo team is doing for us as developers.

Check out my new book on REST.

TFS/Scrum Podcast…

by community-syndication | Oct 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I had a chance to sit down with Jeff
Brand while down in Omaha for my presentation
at the HDC.  We recorded a podcast on all (most) things Scrum and TFS –
you can check it out here. 
It was great fun – thanks Jeff!

"Oslo"==SOA++?

by community-syndication | Oct 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

In my last post I wrote "Oslo" == Windows Registry++, to describe the simplicity of "Oslo". I also said "the simplicity of "Oslo" is what makes up its complexity".

SOA has different impact upon different roles within an organization. But if you would be a "Process Developer", you would have this "toolbox of services", which you could reuse when creating your processes. One could imagine such a tool being Visio, and where you'd find the publicly exposed service in some toolbox window, and you could drag these services to the process surface to compose the content of the process. So far these services has been more or less the endpoints of those services.

-Now, imagine the Repository of "Oslo" being the source of that toolbox window. -But hey, the repository stores much more then endpoints, right…It stores models of endpoints, services, workflow's or your custom processes etc. These could all be reused across your organization.

Does this mean Models == Service or perhaps SOA has grown to MO or MOA? And another thing that will blow your mind, put your Repository in Windows Azure, and share your models across organization boundaries …

BTW…The slogan for PDC 2008 was "Think WAY out side the box"