Folks - fellow MVP Richard Seroter has written a VERY comprehensive series around this very topic including the new BizTalk Adapter Pack V1.0 (V2.0 is in Beta at the moment).

Over 20+ thousand words + 178 screen shots - all for the love of BizTalk/WCF.

Complete with Source Code!!!

What a champion series - I'm looking forward to in tucking into some of his great material!

The BizTalk community is in debt to you Richard - well done!!!

SERIES SUMMARY FOUND HERE

Hot off the 'Hot-Cross Bun' RFID Conveyor belt (Happy Easter all also!!!) - myself and local Sharepoint MVP funny man - Ivan Wilson will be delivering the sessions...
(How do you have a conversation with more than 3 MVPs in the room??? you don't- they all talk about themselves - that's mine, not Ivan's)
which will be great news....just have to get the content together...shhhhh...you didn't hear me say that

MS Partner Training Schedule in the land of MOSS

This is for an Instructor Led 'Chalk & Talk Session' designed for Pre-sales Technical Consultants, Technical Consultants, Technical Project Managers, Architects and Business Analysts 

Dates First:
Brisbane – April 3 & 4
Melbourne – April 7 & 8
Sydney – April 10 & 11

REGISTER HERE

What is being covered is:

1.     MOSS Capability Overview - a brief discussion of the six major functional areas in SharePoint 2007: o    Collaboration o    Portals o    Search o    Web Content Management o    Business Forms o    Business Intelligence 2.    Understanding the "MOSS Building Blocks" - a description of both the physical and logical components that make up a SharePoint solution. We discuss how they fit together and how you can combine these to ensure your solutions can scale to meet demand 3.    A tour of the Central Administration site - gain an insight into how a SharePoint Farm is administered. 4.    Applications, Site Collections and Subsites - explore the main components used to build any SharePoint site. Learn what capabilities are managed at each level. 5.    Inside a sub-site - now that we understand the high level components we can get into the details of what makes up a subsite. We examine: o    Document Libraries and the SharePoint Document Management concepts o    Lists o    Web Parts o    Security o    Navigation Controls 6.    Search - we look into the rich functionality in MOSS to allow users to quickly locate content that exists inside and outside of SharePoint. We look at how the search capabilities are administered and what options are available to fine-tune the search engine to match your client's needs. 7.    Web Content Management - we look at how SharePoint incorporates Web Content Management functionality. This overview includes: o    Workflows o    Master Pages o    Page Layouts o    Content Deployment o    Variations o    Examples of public sites that use MOSS 8.    Business Data Catalog - the BDC provides a framework to gain access to information stored in third-party products. Learn how SharePoint can make use of this content directly within its own environment

REGISTER HERE

I've now managed to get a moment to share a fantastic experience with you.

What a trip!!! I was away for 2 weeks in total with the first week spent in San Jose at the Office Developer Conference (ODC) 2008 which as good to touch base with some of the Sharepoint folks and see how others solve challenges that drive me up the wall.

Being in a hotel in the middle of 'Silicon Valley' Clayton and I were struggling to find Wireless internet access - the frustrating thing was that everywhere else in the town there were at least 20 networks on offer....except in our hotel room. We found a spot on the window ledge.

Then I flew up to Seattle to meet up with my enthusiastic cousin which resulted in a sneaky trip up to Whistler skiing
The snow was absolutely fantastic!!!!

The second week of my trip turned to the Business end where I had to step up, be prepared and present.
Enter BizTalk RFID Solution Days!!!

The first face I saw when I walked into the Conference was Anush's down in the foyer - Well done Anush for such a great conference!

The way the week was to play out:

• First two days was the conference with sessions and presentations
• The second two days was the training where I had 102 students and fortunately we planned that I was co-presenting with Venkatesh who was the BizTalk RFID Product Architect (he's moved on now and started S3Edge.com). He is a wealth of knowledge and a great person to ask all the 'Why' questions to.
  (he's also related to a great friend of mine here in Australia which was a total surprise!!!)

From the conference (2 days prior to training) I caught up with a buddy of mine Scott Allen (Microsoft App Plat TS - BI, BTS, SQL guru) who has just successfully completed building a 'RFID Lab' within Microsoft NZ. I've got to check it out sooner rather than later - sounded fantastic.

Scotty inspired me with his take on BizTalk RFID - he said "If you tell clients we've got a show on BizTalk RFID, they think they need to have supply chains and infrastructure - it becomes very specialised they feel. If you pitch BizTalk RFID at something around How to reduce the carbon footprint of your production line or increasing production efficiencies then the whole world comes running"

That said - he was getting huge amounts of CEOs from the big end of town to these sessions with a tour of the BizTalk RFID Lab. Well done Scotty!

So Anush grabbed center stage at the beginning of the conference and there were some great messages coming out of the speakers. One of the most noticeable messages for me was "Everyone is waiting for the Wallmart mandates to drive the RFID space, that may have been the case 2 yrs ago. Now we have reached enough critical mass in the industry to really see the explosion in RFID that is occurring"

Australia has been using RFID for years in cattle, lifestock, shipping and now wheat. What Microsoft BizTalk RFID has done is to 'domesticate' the whole process of getting connected and responsive. I was talking to a local CEO of a International Meat exporting business on the weekend - he was very interested in the BizTalk RFID story as his main concern facing his company is traceability. Everyone involved in the supply chain wants traceability - by the time the consumer sits down and uses the product, they want to know everything about it. In this case the meat.

Onward to the Training Arena (held on the MS campus) - training 102 people on Microsoft BizTalk RFID I needed to be prepared the best I could which involved a couple of trips to the MS Technical Services Group (TSG) to get things 'just right' for classroom setup.

Firstly - I want to say "WELL DONE TO ALL THE CREW who sat the course". In 12+yrs of teaching, I was amazed at your ability and enthusiasm!!!
(We actually created the RFID course from scratch and it's amazing to see what's in your head play out better than you expect)

I made a pledge to the class from the outset - From 102 students, I was going endeavor to help get 102 students across the line so they all had working BizTalk RFID Solutions in front of them.

What a great class - I enjoyed it as much as what they did. Out of 102 students I fully expected some students to come up to me by lunch time on the first day and say "Mick, you know this course - it's not what I envisaged etc etc" - 102 completed the course!!!

Let me share some interesting facts:

1. 102 students started.... 102 students completed a working BizTalk RFID end-to-end solution.
2. Some students had 1+yrs experience in BizTalk RFID.....others were seeing it for the first time.
3. One lady hadn't cut a line of code in 15yrs and was very excited.
4. Many different industries were represented in the room, from medical foundations to services to agricultural.....
5. I had to run around with a USB key only once - fortunately I had help.
6. One the first day students were still doing labs at 7pm.
7. Two days is not long enough :)
8. It was absolutely fantastic to have the major players from the BizTalk RFID Product group there in the room and on hand. Anush, Sudhir, Rama and of course Venkatesh (who has a great needed sense of humour for a trainer) - big thank you guys. Wouldn't have been the same without you.
9. Reporting Services reports worked really well.....note - getting the right connection string is key.
10. Mick - please connect power to your laptop when presenting and running VPCs off it.....otherwise we all get an early coffee break

Fantastic and a big thank you to all that were responsible for much making it better than I imagined!!!

Well we've just finished our first MCT Summit in Australia for a long time.
I and other fellow MCTs I had a chance to catch up - thought it was a great event.

I gave 3 sessions including one on Using Silverlight from within Sharepoint.

Am I sold on Silverlight? Oh YEAH!!!! It's sensational with a huge range of content delivery options.

Firstly here's my slide deck from:

Basic Steps to get Cracking in Silverlight 1.1 (aka Silverlight 2.0)

• Grab VS2008 Beta/RC+ (I used RC)
• Visit Silverlight.net and download Silverlight 1.1 Alpha (or later) - there are some API changes between versions, but it should settle down.
• You're ready to get cracking and start building your webparts.
  
  Some great sites to check out also:

http://premium.quiksilverlive.com/
Silverlight Data View Web Part
Media Player Webpart for Sharepoint
Sharepoint Silverlight Document Browser
Silverlight Display Web Part

As part of the RFID end to end course we decided to get the students to create a RFID provider. Or more specifically this is Scott's little brain child - he's a human dynamo on this stuff. Talk about an idea and this is what he produces....

A little while ago I fielded a question on one of the internal D/Ls around
“Can you write a provider that interfaces with ‘sensor’ type equipment for BizTalk RFID?” – so now you create a provider that demonstrates how to do that.

This comprehensive provider (these aren’t the course lab notes – just a quick readme that Scott did) is based on a Folder on the File System. As part of the management APIs the Provider goes searching for ‘Antenna’ which are sub-folders.

When files are dropped into these folders that acts as a ‘Tag Read Event’ and the Provider also supports Tag Writes/Prints.

Thought you might enjoy it ahead of time

Well done Scotty!!!

Talk about exciting times - we were developing a great course started pre-R2 launch and were just working out some of the finer details on this, when the folks at MS came along and loved the course and asked to provide a version for them.

"Why not?", I said and away we went.

Here's the course outline with MS Training dates scheduled in Sydney, Singapore, Beijing + Redmond in the near future (I guess we'll have great frequent flyers :))

We decided to call it 'BizTalk RFID End-to-End' which implies we take the student right from the hardware in your face layer, to watching 'enriched data' pop out in BizTalk Server and BAM, while consuming some WCF Services along the way.

Also in the RFID space I did a joint interview with Steve Sloan (MS BizTalk team - great down to earth guy) and a PodCast (first one :))

Interview - Australian Manufacturing

Podcast - Australian Manufacturing Podcast 
(this brought back some of my past comedy routines when I performed on stage.....)

Enjoy!

If you're thinking of getting into RFID then you can't go past Microsoft BizTalk RFID Services.

Low cost standard, scalable solution - it's brilliant. You can get it as part of the BizTalk 2006 R2 Branch edition.

As far as training goes and a course to suit your needs...myself and my team have been working hard to develop not just 'a course' but a fantastic course that takes you from the low layers in RFID to integration and implementation.

During the course

- the student will get their OWN 'developer' RFID device to play with on the course AND take home!!!! (I'm the sort of person that learns by doing - so I needed that)
- you install, create + implement RFID based processes
- make synchronous calls to WCF based services.
- enrich the data travelling through the process.
- implement Business Rules in the BRE engine.
- Then we use BizTalk + BAM + Performance Monitoring using Operations Manager 2007 +........
(being a BizTalk MVP....we decided to put in a BizTalk Server piece)

.....but one of the Best things about this course is.....
it's been bought by Microsoft and will be used for their deliveries (we have Sydney, Singapore, Beijing and Redmond on the map with scheduled dates so far....)

Here is the course Outline - love to hear what you think!

 

BizTalk RFID Workshop – End-to-End

The aim of this 2 day hands-on course is to take the student from the “nuts and bolts” of BizTalk RFID to enriching and utilizing BizTalk RFID information streams as part of Business Intelligence. The course also teaches the students how to integrate with external systems, create and call Business Rules, as well as put in place proactive monitoring around the end-to-end solution.

 

As part of the ‘student pack’ for this course, each student is provided with a real (non virtual) BizTalk RFID compatible RFID Reader that will be used throughout the course, which the student can take home at course completion.

 

The course will teach students how:

·          Develop and implement low level BizTalk RFID Interfaces in implementing their own BizTalk RFID Providers and Process Components.

·          Develop and incorporate Business Rules to help drive the BizTalk RFID process.

·          Active solution Monitoring using Operations Manager 2007 and the BizTalk R2 Management Pack.

·          Create and call an exposed WCF Service synchronously.

·          Integrate with a BizTalk 2006 R2 environment.

·          Enable End-To-End Business Activity Monitoring.

 

The course is aimed for developers and solution architects

 

Module 1 – Introduction to BizTalk RFID

  

This module introduces Microsoft BizTalk RFID and typical solutions it provides to common business problems. The module also looks at the BizTalk RFID architecture and discovers how BizTalk RFID operates under the hood.
 

Specifically this module covers:

• Introduction to RFID and innovative industry solutions
• BizTalk RFID architecture
• Topology – How BizTalk RFID services operate
• LAB: Design and discussion lab that highlights the key factors in determining small, medium and high Microsoft BizTalk RFID Services topologies (paper based - class discussion).

 

Module 2 - Installing BizTalk RFID

 

This module describes the types of installations supported, and guides us through installing BizTalk RFID for the first time. There is also a walk-through of the RFID Services Manager, which highlights the difference between physical and logical devices.

 

Specifically:

• BizTalk RFID components (e.g. RFID Server, RFID databases, RFID Manager)
• Planning security
• Types of installations and pre-requisites
• Troubleshooting and repairing an installation
• LAB: Installing and identifying the default settings of Microsoft BizTalk RFID
   

Module 3 - Examining Physical Devices

 

This module will explore the various types of RFID devices available. We will install your very own RFID device and get it up and running on your machine.

Specifically:

• Types of devices
• Installing physical devices
• Developing against device API’s
• LAB: Installing, configuring and testing your RFID Device. Also some sample code on complex read/write of tags using device’s native API – this will serve to highlight later the ease of writing tags through the DSPI layer.

 

Module 4 – BizTalk RFID Device Providers Explained

This module will look at the device provider’s role in the BizTalk RFID stack. We will look briefly at the DSPI and examine how it provides a unified way for our business applications to manage, configure, and communicate with various physical RFID devices. The module will show sample code using BizTalk RFID object model.

Specifically:

• The role of device providers
• Types of device providers
• Device Service Provider Interface (DSPI)
• Registering device providers
• Testing and monitoring device providers
• LAB: installing, configuring and testing the Device Provider for your RFID Reader. Reading and writing your first Tag using the BizTalk RFID Object model outside an RFID process. Examining the Read Tag Event structure.
  Lab extension: Building your first DSPI provider class within Visual Studio (we will look into creating a provider that wraps a file system folder and exposes it as a ‘Provider’. Drop a file into the folder and this will simulate a Tag Read etc.)

Module 5 - Building RFID Processes

 

In BizTalk RFID we manage logical groups of components in RFID processes. In this module we will examine the types of components that make up an RFID process, understand the difference between logical and physical devices, and see how we use bindings to connect them. We will learn what an event pipeline is and take a look at the various out-of-the-box components that ship with BizTalk RFID.

 

Specifically this module covers:

• Components of a BizTalk RFID Process
• OOTB Components
• Binding BizTalk RFID Processes
• Starting a BizTalk RFID Process
• Deploying RFID Processes
• LAB: Creating, testing and logging your first RFID Process. Capturing the Read Tag Event. Writing to a DB table using the OOTB Sql Sink component.
  Lab Extension: Create a SQL Reporting Services report to report on Tag event data in sqlsink db and display the enriched data (cool!)

 

Module 6 – Creating Custom RFID Event Handlers 

This module will focus on the event processing pipeline, as we learn when and how to create our own event handler components to filter, enrich, and process tag event data.

We will examine the following topics:

• Asynchronous Event Processing - terminating, continuing components
• Filtering, Enriching, and Terminating event data
• Error Handling
• Deployment and registration
• LAB: Creating a simple custom component to enrich tag event data using a DB Lookup while adding custom properties to the tag Event data. The enriched data will be made available for downstream consumers. This lab highlights the importance of keeping the TagEvent data structure within these processes.

 

Module 7 - The Role of Business Rules

 

The Business Rules Engine allows for externalising key decision process points. This allows RFID processes to be more flexible and highly repeatable. In this module we will examine the OOTB rule engine policy executor component as well as looking at how we can call business rules from our custom event handlers.

The focu