by community-syndication | May 21, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
(it even includes MOSS 2007 BI Dashboards)
This is one of the best BAM posters I have seen to date. As part of your Bat-Utility
belt this is a must.
You could even print it out and stick it on the wall in the office….you never know….that
raise should come sooner rather than later 🙂
Download the poster from HERE
by community-syndication | May 21, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
(it even includes MOSS 2007 BI Dashboards)
This is one of the best BAM posters I have seen to date. As part of your Bat-Utility
belt this is a must.
You could even print it out and stick it on the wall in the office….you never know….that
raise should come sooner rather than later 🙂
Download the poster from HERE
by community-syndication | May 21, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
One of the many new WCF features in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is a mechanism to control whether the built-in WCF test host application (WcfSvcHost.exe) should automatically launch when debugging other projects in a solution. Prior to this release, there was no way to control this without disabling WcfSvcHost.exe by removing the special ProjectTypeGuid that controls this feature from the .csproj file.
Now, you can simply right click on your WCF Service Library and select Properties. Then in the project properties area you should find a tab called WCF Options, which looks like this:
Simply uncheck the box to disable the WcfSvcHost.exe from starting when debugging other projects within your solution (such as your own custom host application). However, if you attempt debug the WCF Service Library directly (as the startup project), the WcfSvcHost.exe will still launch in that case.
by community-syndication | May 21, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
One of the many new WCF features in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is a mechanism to control whether the built-in WCF test host application (WcfSvcHost.exe) should automatically launch when debugging other projects in a solution. Prior to this release, there was no way to control this without disabling WcfSvcHost.exe by removing the special ProjectTypeGuid that controls this feature from the .csproj file.
Now, you can simply right click on your WCF Service Library and select Properties. Then in the project properties area you should find a tab called WCF Options, which looks like this:
Simply uncheck the box to disable the WcfSvcHost.exe from starting when debugging other projects within your solution (such as your own custom host application). However, if you attempt debug the WCF Service Library directly (as the startup project), the WcfSvcHost.exe will still launch in that case.
by community-syndication | May 20, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Apologies for the sparseness of my posting the last few weeks – work and life have been busy here lately. Below is a new post in my link-listing series to help kick things up a little. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I’ve done myself in the past.
ASP.NET
ASP.NET AJAX
.NET
-
Ukadc.Diagnostics: Josh Twist pointed me at a new CodePlex project he is working on that extends the System.Diagnostics features in .NET to include richer logging features (SQL trace support, email support, etc).
Visual Studio
Silverlight
WPF
Hope this helps,
Scott
by community-syndication | May 20, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Apologies for the sparseness of my posting the last few weeks – work and life have been busy here lately. Below is a new post in my link-listing series to help kick things up a little. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I’ve done myself in the past.
ASP.NET
ASP.NET AJAX
.NET
-
Ukadc.Diagnostics: Josh Twist pointed me at a new CodePlex project he is working on that extends the System.Diagnostics features in .NET to include richer logging features (SQL trace support, email support, etc).
Visual Studio
Silverlight
WPF
Hope this helps,
Scott
by community-syndication | May 20, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
In case you didn’t notice, the XML Schema Designer that was made available as a downloadable CTP back in August 2007 made it into Visual Studio 2008 SP1.
It’s now called the XML Schema Explorer. You can read more about it here.
by community-syndication | May 20, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
In case you didn’t notice, the XML Schema Designer that was made available as a downloadable CTP back in August 2007 made it into Visual Studio 2008 SP1.
It’s now called the XML Schema Explorer. You can read more about it here.
by community-syndication | May 20, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I received a recent comment from Paul, asking how I found my "weekend gigs" or freelance development work. That's a pretty good question and the short answer (without sounding too presumptuous) is that God provides! The long answer is "I don't really know, it just seems to happen".
I started my career many years ago as a degreed mechanical engineer, fresh from college and looking for fame and fortune in the "oil business" (which in Texas is correctly pronounced "Awl Bidness"). Unfortunately, I arrived on the scene just in time to watch oil drop from $40 per barrel down to $7 per barrel which left myself and about 100,000 other engineers scrambling for any work we could find. (If you're a history buff or just follow the price of oil, you should be able to place my age within +/- 2 years from this information) Luckily, I landed a real engineering job for a valve manufacturer in Houston. I worked for that company for 18 years and watched it grow from $50 million in revenue to over $40 billion as it was acquired and reacquired over the next ten years. When I began with the company we had 300 employees and when I left the "company" we had over 240,000 employees and our CEO and CFO had just been indicted for tax evasion and securities fraud among other things. Care to guess the name of that company?
I held a number of engineering, product management and sales & marketing positions in that 18 year period and finally got tired of all the politics and corporate ladder climbing. So I asked the IT Director (a good friend) if he could find a position for me somewhere in the IT programming or operations area so that I could explore my love of computers, software and e-commerce. My friend and new boss gave me the opportunity to learn, do, and learn by doing and we had a blast. We put together that company's first web site, first e-commerce site and first B2B system using pre-release versions of Microsoft's SQL Server, BizTalk Server and Commerce Server. Over the next two years, with the help of some great people at Microsoft (yes, the Blue Monster really does have some great people) we designed and built a world-class B2B e-commerce system for (you guessed it) Tyco. One that has transacted literally hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions and is still in use almost ten years later.
My boss and I left Tyco, formed our own B2B consulting firm and as we had hoped, got Tyco as a client. The first year was great. We had lots of projects, worked 70 hour weeks and made good money. The second year taught us the lesson that most consultants come to call "going from feast to famine". We called it something else (mostly unprintable) but learned several valuable lessons from the experience. I learned that I'm not cut out to be a full-time consultant and for me, it's tremendously important to see "the fruits of my labors". Which is why I work for a great medium-size "private" company today and do my "freelance" work in the evenings and on the weekends "as my time and energy permits".
How do I find the work? I don't really. It just seems to find me somehow, but I can give you a few tips to get started!
- Do volunteer work! It's good for the soul and opens you to all sorts of opportunities.
- Give back to the community! Share your best work, start a blog or two. Post in the community forums.
- Answer your email and every (non-spam) blog comment! It's amazing how word gets around the Internet.
- Try something new! Life is way too short to always take the safe road. Learn a new programming language. Hell, learn a new language period.
- Be courageous! Buy a Mac. Become a fanboy! Put an Apple sticker on your car.
Currently listening to Diana Krall's "The Look of Love".
by community-syndication | May 20, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I received a recent comment from Paul, asking how I found my "weekend gigs" or freelance development work. That's a pretty good question and the short answer (without sounding too presumptuous) is that God provides! The long answer is "I don't really know, it just seems to happen".
I started my career many years ago as a degreed mechanical engineer, fresh from college and looking for fame and fortune in the "oil business" (which in Texas is correctly pronounced "Awl Bidness"). Unfortunately, I arrived on the scene just in time to watch oil drop from $40 per barrel down to $7 per barrel which left myself and about 100,000 other engineers scrambling for any work we could find. (If you're a history buff or just follow the price of oil, you should be able to place my age within +/- 2 years from this information) Luckily, I landed a real engineering job for a valve manufacturer in Houston. I worked for that company for 18 years and watched it grow from $50 million in revenue to over $40 billion as it was acquired and reacquired over the next ten years. When I began with the company we had 300 employees and when I left the "company" we had over 240,000 employees and our CEO and CFO had just been indicted for tax evasion and securities fraud among other things. Care to guess the name of that company?
I held a number of engineering, product management and sales & marketing positions in that 18 year period and finally got tired of all the politics and corporate ladder climbing. So I asked the IT Director (a good friend) if he could find a position for me somewhere in the IT programming or operations area so that I could explore my love of computers, software and e-commerce. My friend and new boss gave me the opportunity to learn, do, and learn by doing and we had a blast. We put together that company's first web site, first e-commerce site and first B2B system using pre-release versions of Microsoft's SQL Server, BizTalk Server and Commerce Server. Over the next two years, with the help of some great people at Microsoft (yes, the Blue Monster really does have some great people) we designed and built a world-class B2B e-commerce system for (you guessed it) Tyco. One that has transacted literally hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions and is still in use almost ten years later.
My boss and I left Tyco, formed our own B2B consulting firm and as we had hoped, got Tyco as a client. The first year was great. We had lots of projects, worked 70 hour weeks and made good money. The second year taught us the lesson that most consultants come to call "going from feast to famine". We called it something else (mostly unprintable) but learned several valuable lessons from the experience. I learned that I'm not cut out to be a full-time consultant and for me, it's tremendously important to see "the fruits of my labors". Which is why I work for a great medium-size "private" company today and do my "freelance" work in the evenings and on the weekends "as my time and energy permits".
How do I find the work? I don't really. It just seems to find me somehow, but I can give you a few tips to get started!
- Do volunteer work! It's good for the soul and opens you to all sorts of opportunities.
- Give back to the community! Share your best work, start a blog or two. Post in the community forums.
- Answer your email and every (non-spam) blog comment! It's amazing how word gets around the Internet.
- Try something new! Life is way too short to always take the safe road. Learn a new programming language. Hell, learn a new language period.
- Be courageous! Buy a Mac. Become a fanboy! Put an Apple sticker on your car.
Currently listening to Diana Krall's "The Look of Love".