One of the most useful things I came across when doing the asp.net project that i wrote about in my last 2 posts was this article and sample solution by Jason Bock on mocking the HttpContext session state in .net 1.1 and 2.0. Actually this is not a ‘mock’ interface in the sense of mock […]
Over the past month I've been working really hard on our new BizTalk Expert Series class for Business Activity Monitoring. I have to say that I'm really excited to start teaching it. In the class we manage to cover almost everything one could want to know about BAM in three days. The most interesting part of it for me is the data consumption lab. I've never been very fond of the BAM Portal. It's nice but certainly not something that I'd like to parade in front of a CEO of a big company, don't get me wrong, the capabilities are awesome, but the way it looks and some of its behaviors aren’t the best. In the consumption lab, we examine how to create custom consumption models for BAM data using PerformancePoint, SQL Reporting Services, and an AJAX based web site. I'd never worked with PerformancePoint before and I was surprised by how easy it was to create a dashboard based on the BAM OLAP cube.
The next Auckland Connected Systems User Group meeting has been confirmed.
AS2 and EDI support in BizTalk R2 by David Hall
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Abstract: A new feature introduced in BizTalk R2 is native support for EDI data exchange and AS2 data transport. David goes through the basics, demos, the business value, and some tips and tricks picked […]
While investigating some BizTalk performance issues ata client I noticed that several of their receive ports, sendports, and orchestrations were tracking the message bodies.
After enquiring around we came to the conclusion that nobody there expects message bodies to be tracked, andthat they are getting purged by the DTA SQL Server job. This is just adding […]
This week had a few videos and a new article go up to MSDN this week:
The TechEd Online videos were recorded at the TechEd 2008 Developer Conference [North America] in June. The first two videos were interviews done by Ron in the TechEd fish bowl, and the third was done by Rob Bagby.
The deck and demo come from a talk this week done by Kirk Evans. This week, at the Microsoft TechReady conference, Kirk did a chalk-talk discussing patterns that typically come up within WF scenarios. The scenarios were well received, attendees of the chalk talk scored it well, and I thought it was a great idea for a chalk talk. And, everyone thought it was a grand idea for Kirk to post it up on his blog and share it with the world. 🙂
Additional Web Items of Note
The Windows SDK team posted a couple surveys, and they’re looking for customer input on SDK improvements/changes – and how it interfaces with Visual Studio.
The two surveys that they’re looking for input on are:
To close on a down note, we missed getting the third installment in Michele’s WF Deployment Scenarios series – Workflow Services – posted up this week. It’s done and edited, but Friday afternoon isn’t the best time to try and move an article through the MSDN publication process. Look for it to show up on the site early next week.
When using orchestration breakpoints, make sure you clear them all when you want to build and redeploy the solution. Any existing orchestration breakpoints will make it impossible to unload the associated assemblies from the GAC. As long as there are any breakpoints in an orchestration the updated assemblies will not be used.
This is really a bug and should be addressed.
On my return home from Jordan last week I diverted through Dubai, because I was “in the neighborhood” and have long been curious about it. Several people that knew I was going have asked me about it, and as it’s such a technology hotspot, I thought I’d do a short post as most people reading my blog are probably curious about it.
My executive summary: “Like Vegas, only more so”. More buildings, more money, more construction, and a very strong drive to be the first/biggest/tallest/fastest/best at everything. It was really eye-opening.
My first experience was on landing we were told it was 44 degrees C outside, and humid (in Fahrenheit that works out to “really really inhospitably hot”, 112-ish). No problemo. I’m a desert person, and I’d been warned by several people (“whatever you do don’t go during the summer”).
I stayed at 5-star hotel, and hung out in the executive lounge for happy hour, so maybe my experience was not a typical cross-section of the population, but the snippets of conversation I overheard were fascinating. Everybody was negotiating *something*, even though it was the weekend. Dubai is a haven for type-A personalities, overachievers that’s don’t have an off switch or pause button. About 80% of the population is non-UAE, many of whom are just working there for a while and moving on. The feel of business in the air was palpable, and was everywhere I went. They’ve taken what I think was once a sleepy trade port and turned it into a technology and financial hub. Everybody who’s anybody wants to be there, all major companies and banks have operations there.
Nothing happens at a small scale in Dubai. They are putting up the Burj Dubai tower (photo below), but for competitive reasons have not announced what the final height will be. Every few months they just say “yup, we’re going up a few more floors”. They’re building a monorail that will serve the entire city, and it looks like they’re doing it all at once. No 5 mile pilot projects here, it seemed like 50 miles or so at once.
Here’s the Burj Dubai tower from afar, with the monorail in the foreground and lots of other cranes (I suspect that the cranes breed at night when nobody is watching :)). If you zoom in you’ll see how many cranes there are, and this is just ONE PART of Dubai.
This was one of the highpoints of my whirlwind tour. Three days a week, and the city’s main mosque, a volunteer group does a 2-hour presentation for anyone that wants to attend on Islam and what it means to be Muslim. The reason why they do this is all about building bridges between cultures, I thoroughly enjoyed it, learned a lot, and am very thankful that they’re doing their part to try to help make the world a better place. I am very glad I went and would HIGHLY recommend this if you visit Dubai.
I visited the “Chill Out” lounge, where everything is made of ice. Inside temp was -6 deg C (21F), while outside was 40+C (105+F). Everything you see is made of ice, and the place was full of ice sculptures. They serve drinks in glasses made of ice.
I went on a “desert safari”, which was “dune bashing”, night in the desert, Arabian BBQ, belly dancing, etc.
Trade has always been an important part of Dubai’s history. I went on a boat ride on the Dubai creek, where a lot of “Dhows” like this dock. They are actively in use, the docks were stacked high with cargo.
I did the mandatory trip to the Mall of the Emirates, which is the largest shopping mall outside the US (I’m not a shopper, I went to 2 of Dubai’s biggest malls, and the week before did both of Amman’s biggest malls, and bought, in all….. nothing). Dubai is not really a walking city, particularly in the summer, so if you want to walk, you go to a mall. And, if you want to ski, you go to Ski Dubai at the Mall of the Emirates. Here’s a picture (poor quality because it’s through a window, I didn’t feel a need to go in having already seen a lot of snow in my lifetime :)) of the ski lift.
And, in case you’re wondering what an indoor ski hill in the desert looks like from outside:
In a place where they build ski hills indoors, what else might they do? Well, how about air-conditioned bus stops (and, they really need them)?
This is the Burj Al Arab hotel, the (self-proclaimed) world’s only 7-star hotel, where you’re assigned a butler when you check in. The round platform is the helipad, they offer a helicopter limo to the airport. This is on the same part of the coast where they’re building all the man-made islands.
I visited a local “souk” or market, a maze of alleyways that most tourists don’t seem to brave. I went in deep, and bargained masterfully with a spice merchant (I think I won because he seemed quite annoyed with me). The photo below shows the entrance, once you go in there, you could get lost for hours.
Here’s another angle of the main downtown. It’s pretty much impossible to take a picture where without getting construction cranes.
Lastly, I got a chuckle out of this, as it pretty much sums up what Dubai is all about. In near where I live in California, we have things like “Stagecoach Park”, and “Dog Beach”. In Dubai? “Gold and diamond park”!
In my previous post, i talked a bit about using the Model View Presenter in the ASP.NET project im doing and the videos of Jean Paul Boodhoo and others that gave me the necessary material to do the work.
The thing that most impressed me with JPB’s videos was the use of Mock Objects. I have […]
Whew!! This has been a long time since i managed to put pen to paper as it were and post anything here. I’ve been spending a few weeks away from Biztalk in the murky world of ASP.NET. Its been an exhausting time but a great learning experience and lots of fodder for a set of […]
A bunch of sessions were posted up to the PDC2008 session list very early this morning. While I understand this isn’t breaking news, it is quite exciting nonetheless.
Posted CSD sessions that I find of particular interest include:
It’s always exciting to see Don Box and Chris Sells up on stage – plus a few of our program managers (Matt Winkler; Kenny Wolf; Ed Pinto) will be there to talk about a lot of the goodness coming out in 4.0. There’s a lot of excitement to show you guys what the team has been working on – and we think you’ll be very pleased.
From the look of the session counts, I would expect that to see a lot more sessions flow to the site over the next month or two. But the session list so far looks like there will be a lot of fun to be had in Los Angeles.