Mick's Breeze Blogs - Biztalk/Sharepoint/...

MVP re-Awarded - Big Thanks!!!!

2008-10-01T17:20:47.644875-07:00

I've been re-awarded my BizTalk MVP - so a big thanks for allowing me to be part of the program for another year (at least :)

A focus of mine is the community - sharing and bettering information sources around the technologies we work and play with. So thanks guys hope you're getting value out of my efforts, and thank you for being part of our growing community.

This year should be a fantastic year in the SOA/ESB/BizTalk/Oslo/WCF/WF/MOSS/BDC/RFID (did I leave any off?) as we're going to see the emergence of several of these technologies play beautifully together.
(we saw this in the last .NET 3.5 Framework - with WCF/WF Services.....stay tuned...for one of my favourite pieces - Windows Workflow)

So for me lots of things to focus on, but one main area is doing more information integrating MOSS/SharePoint with BizTalk/InfoPath/RFID....... and of course workflows....... :-)

Stay tuned......

Thank you linesman and thank you ball boys for your hard efforts and major participation!!!!!

Life is short!

Mick.

How Many Remote Desktop Windows Is Too Much?? - Cool FREE Manager Apps

2008-09-30T02:56:18.7252347-07:00

Folks - it's been one of those weeks (I know it's only Tues :)

I just got to a point where I was just opening up tooo many RDP connections, managing them - some using Terminal Services Gateways, others not.

Configuring BTS boxes/SQL Servers/MOSS/Indexers/Search..... and the list goes on.

From client to client or even our network internally - my head was rapidly filling up with these random ip addresses that I wished I didn't have to remember.

So I wanted to have a way simply to manage all these windows (a crude version I wrote some years back was simply to drop 6 RDP ActiveX controls onto a web page an knock yourself out).

I needed:

- to work on Vista and Win2008 as well as the other list of usual suspects.

- be able to set Terminal Services Gateway on some.

They panned out as follows:

Remote Desktops - found in Win2K3 Admin Tools SP1, which is OK as it presents a simple tree view and you're away.
Terminals (currently 1.7) - SENSATIONAL!!! I almost wanted to get VNC etc just to use those bits.
It's got - network tools, port scanners just absolutely brilliant, a well polished application with a very very handy toolbar.
Only ONE problem for me......no TSG support :-( - forums state this is planned..... :)

Check out TERMINALS HERE
Royal TS - Supports RDP Terminal Service Gateway Connections :)
So this one for the moment is one that I'm going with, just downloading .NET 3.5 SP1 as we speak and about to fire this up on Vista (x86).

Does a very good job at managing RDP connections, it doesn't support any of the other clients.

Presents a TreeView allowing groupings of connections (although I had to 'Create a Document' first)

Check out Royal TS HERE

Conclusion:

Terminals *would* be the one I'd go for if it supported TSG connections......have to check back shortly.

BizTalk 2006 + R2 Performance and Optimisation Paper

2008-09-23T16:29:59.2-07:00

Folks - I recently came across a great article on Perf in BizTalk.

I had previous noted a BTS2004 one but always handy to have the updated version.

I thought I'd jot this down before I lost the reference - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc558617.aspx

Enjoy,

Mick.

RFID @ TechEd Wrap Up - "Breeze Event Tracker"

2008-09-11T04:54:16.772875-07:00

The system we built has made it through its maiden event and was still capturing reads well into the later afternoon (until we got round to tearing it down....technically called 'Bump Out'....with all the moving bodies and parts, it's no wonder they call it Bump Out!)

I grabbed a couple of SilverLight screen shots to show what the system is capable of - in the hectic pace of last week I didn't manage to grab some screen captures of the system in action, these screen shots come from the courtesy of Eileen Brown's Blog (she is responsible for running MS Events in the UK + a founder/advocate for Women in IT)

Walk-In Displays - these walk in displays were up on the big screens as delegates entered/exited their sessions. Pretty cool!!!.

These screens are delivered via a browser and are what we call the 'Walk-in' Display. Here you can see 3 people leaving the room with the graph in the background showing some delegate profiling data around attendance of previous TechEds.

Here we've got an enter and a leaving of the session. Something we didn't get time to do at this show was to play on the scope for customisations with these avatars. We had over 120 textures + bitmap type surfaces set for this, but during the show this 'feature' got bumped further down the list. (Hats, scarves, hair type, colours etc. you know the stuff)

We had fun with a couple of names though - '@Coatsy' was one, 'The Stig' was another.

The beauty about these screens was that people outside the conference got real time stats about the rooms and could see the 'Walk-in' displays in near real time. (Late night trouble shooting with my friends in MS Corp - this proved a great tool)

In testing performance of our SL Services over the internet - I had a link to the UK where we had a technician monitoring the various walk-in displays and giving feedback. All worked pretty well.
(At this point we don't have an upper limit on the number of individual 'Walk-in' display sessions that run concurrently - each open browser receiving events in near realtime is an additional WCF Service instance + a SQL connection. Not sure how much benefit SQL Connection pooling will give as these connections are active pretty much all the time)

This screen is from the 'Speaker Charts' which are designed to give the speaker various breakdowns of up to the minute information of their audiences.

Overall the Breeze Boiler room (HQ) got great attendance from the delegates wanting to know the "whats/whos/whys" on the Breeze Event Tracker System.

We're currently still analysing the results but some interesting numbers are:

(1) In a 16 hr period for one room, we got 345000 reads.......(this maybe picking up the persons in the back row while sessions are on - our business logic takes care of these)

(2) We experienced a very particular 'known' problem (don't you love it when you experience an issue for the first time and describe it, only to be told it's 'known' - well telling us that ahead of time would have been great :). The problem arises from Tags being physically close together, and two tags respond 'around' the same time. In very special circumstances this confuses the Reader and instead of getting 12byte TagIDs we got 16, 18 or sometimes 20 byte IDs where the 2 tagIDs were 'spliced'.

It occurred in very special cases - but we got it. That particular read should be discarded as it fails the CRC check.
In peak time, out of 8000 reads we got around 2 of these cases.

Couple of phone calls to India and our Intel R1000 Provider was 'patched' and as a PlanB we had the current provider being wrapped by another .NET class to catch that particular exception.

(3) SCOM2007 couldn't have worked better!!!! I dropped on the BizTalk RFID Mgmnt pack and it was a breath of fresh air. All the Readers, Devices, Processes, Providers and RFID Servers out on the network appeared as healthy items in lists (mostly). From the mgmnt pack I was able to see the number of Tags Read, settings, when the last heartbeat was heard etc etc. from all the devices over the conference - certainly Mission Control.

(4) We had various 'Show' type issues such as power cords being unplugged; cables being cut; cabinets that housed the equipment in each room collapsing....so all in all it was filled with fun and excitement. We did have a couple of Network issues where at the conference there were several networks implemented for different regions/events at the conference. e.g Public Delegate WiFi; Networks within each of the Break out rooms - we were on our own VLAN and these network layers above us, proved a little troublesome from time to time.

Various Licensing arrangements of this system are available - from the software components through to the hardware. Feel free to ping me for more details.

Here's a video of a screen capture that I *did* manage to do.

YouTube - Breeze Event System - TechEd 2008 WalkIn Display Demo

TOT 334 - Building RFID Solutions with BizTalk

2008-09-07T18:31:22.9985-07:00

From another session Breeze jointly did with Kenetics whom supplied the hardware for the entire TechEd 08.

It was a great session Scotty & myself did around demo-ing the bits that were used to build the system.

TechEd_2008_RFID.zip

TechEd 2008 -SOA 305 - Getting Workflows Running and Talking in Your Applications

2008-09-07T17:47:53.139125-07:00

As promised, the chaos of TechEd has subsided and if there's that thing of normality approaching....we'll I must be close to it.

My Thursday after lunch session went great with a whole series of demos about different aspects of hosting and running workflows (WCF based, .NET 3.5, Tracking, FilePersistence, Obtaining Metadata etc):

Powerpoints
WF Demo Solution

"BizTalk 2009" is shaping up (formerly BizTalk 2006 R3)

2008-09-07T17:03:51.264125-07:00

The main details folks are as follows: (from an earlier email from Corp)

Details:

1. BizTalk Server vNext:

Naming Change: We have also updated the name of the next release from BizTalk Server 2006 R3 to “BizTalk Server 2009”. By calling the product BizTalk Server 2009, we can clearly communicate this is a full product release with new and enhanced capabilities and updated platform support for customers to take full advantage of the latest technology wave (Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5).
BizTalk Server 2009 Timing: We will deliver a public CTP by the end of this calendar year. Additionally, BizTalk Server 2009 is on track for availability in the first half of calendar year 2009.
Features: We bucket the 2009 release into 5 core feature areas, which are detailed further on the BizTalk roadmap page. These include platform support, SOA & web services, business to business integration, device connectivity and developer and team productivity(i.e. VSTS support :-)

2. Future Plans:

Ship Rhythm: Microsoft’s commitment to maintain a rhythm of releases roughly every 2 years.
High-Level Themes: We outlined priorities for the next couple of releases. Including:

Developer productivity enhancements (e.g. complex mapping);
Enhanced B2B support (e.g. complex trading partner management, expanded industry standards and schemas);
Low-latency messaging enhancements and ESB Guidance;
Enhanced device support for cross-enterprise asset tracking, enterprise manageability of devices, and key industry standards;
Real-time business event visibility through BI / BAM Enhancements; and
Integration with the latest new platform capabilities (to take advantage of the latest advances in the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and Windows Server).

More Info:

For more information on the BizTalk Server roadmap announcement please visit the BizTalk roadmap page.

Additional Resources

For more information go to:

· PressPass Q & A with Oliver Sharp, GM of BizTalk Server: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass

· BizTalk Website: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/

· BizTalk Server Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/

· Steven Martin, director in the Connected Systems Division Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/default.aspx

RFID @ TechEd 2008 Update - Your/my Privacy concerns

2008-08-26T08:11:33.9445-07:00

Hi folks - over the last week or so I've had many requests about what's happening around privacy and what does it mean to get a "Tag" this year.

Breeze Event System

Reasons for Building the System
1. Breeze designed, built and owns the 'Breeze Event' System. I am talking first hand (and am happy to share details with you). A variant of the idea originated years back when myself and David McGhee worked on a very cut down alpha variation - together we cut the code and got about 5 mins of RFID activity from the devices we were using before our battery died.

Stepping forward to the current system, once we presented MS with the concepts of what we wanted to do - many folks gave some sensational support (such as Marcy Larsen & Rahul Garg) in integrating this new piece with 'TechEd proper'. We got there in the end and for me - it's a real eye opener to see how big TechEd is and how much planning goes into it.

2. As a speaker/delegate/MVP at many TechEds and other conferences my motivation was all about giving you the Delegate (& myself as a Speaker) a better TechEd experience. Taking the pain out of a lot of things. For example:

TechEd to me is about experience technology, not just hearing about it. Here's your chance to play and experience some cool technology.
Being able to see when rooms over capacity before you get there only to be told to go away
Be given online evals just for the sessions you attended (currently we set 'attended' to be at least 15 mins within the session)
I might be a new developer, what sessions do I go to? You could have information such as 80% of other 'new developers' went to SessionX. Great I might go to that one.

A big one for me is that at the end of the conference Delegate's get a boxed DVD Set of sessions in other TechEds with thousands of hours of material on it. Wouldn't it be great to be given such things as '80% of other new developers have these sessions/webcasts etc as their top 10 list' - that way I've got targeted viewing.
As a speaker - they will know the cross section of interests and technology tracks in the room. (there's a chart display we've created). So the classic question of 'How many developers are in the room? How many ITPros?' no longer needs to be asked AND as a Delegate the speaker will be able to have more information to tailor their material to the interests of the audience (hopefully reducing the amount - 'that just went over my head')
Planning - future conferences/sessions and material will now have direct influence by the Delegates. What sessions you valued, and got the most out of.
More...

As you can see, we've designed the system with us (delegates & speakers) in mind.

I digress.....Ok onto the main items......

Privacy Concerns - yours and mine

I wanted to fill you in as much as possible about the system (this is eating into my sleeping time :) so there is a clear understanding about the what is going on.

Some Details on How the System Works

1. Your tag - holds a number e.g. 1234 (we printed it on the plastic surface of your tag) end of story. Nothing else. These tags are 'EPC Gen II' UHF Tags and operate between 920-926MHz.

Here is the actual Tag itself (it will be stuck onto a card to make it look beautiful :)

Some facts:

The tag is known as a Dog Bone by the way the metal aerial is shaped. Just above the barcode, there's the number and above that there is an indent the size of a 'pin head' in the middle - this is the chip.

The tag is a passive tag (as opposed to active - such as your E-Tags in cars) which means radio waves need to be sent to it, to excite the tag and so the tag can transmit its number. This distance in our case is around 2-3m. If there's no waves, then nothing is transmitted.

What this generally means is that you should be able to walk straight through into sessions, rather than people scanning your individual barcodes as was in previous years.

The Barcode is there so we can integrate with your established Registration process. We printed the barcode there as a fall back mechanism.

The barcode number is the only piece of information written onto your tag. (Printing the barcode + printing to the Tag at the same time doing around 5000 tags took a bit of development and H/W)

In other Systems, things like temperature readings are frequently written to the tag, so that when the fish is delivered to the restaurant, they know the freshness and quality of it.

Generally speaking in RFID based solutions there will be no sensitive information written to the tag (if it gets lost, crushed, drowned etc etc)

Tidbit - the amount of data you can write to these tags is in bytes (like 96 bits), but other tags can store around 64KB!!!! (that was the total sum size of my Apple II as a kid!!)

2. Readers - come in many shapes and sizes for different purposes. Our Readers have a read range of 2m. There will be white pizza shaped 'boxes' mounted and these are the antennae. The reader is connected to local pcs that drive the system.

There will be 56 Readers and 118 antennae mounted around Session/Breakout rooms doorways and as I mentioned they have a range of 2m. This is designed to reduce the queues (with reading a barcode) getting into rooms as you should be able to just stroll through.
(there have been some ski resorts in Europe implementing RFID ski passes - ski straight on/off)

Shot of the Antennae

3. Local PC - each room with have one a PC where all the Readers are connected to. We designed our system so that if we have a network meltdown, each room will (hopefully :-) still be running. In fact each Local PC runs our solution on top of BizTalk RFID Server to drive the walk-in and chart displays.

4. Network - there will be a dedicated network for the RFID component @ Teched where these Local PCs and us will be connected to in isolation to the rest of the network.

5. The Information captured - the information that your tag number associates with in the back end is essentially the Conference profile information you entered as part of the Registration process.

This enables things like 60% of people like Jazz in this session.....ideally we're really interested in aggregates of information to help improve your experience.

(I'm hoping to get MS and MVP information as well - so you as a Delegate may be notified when a Windows2008 MVP is in the house)

Just quickly - we're using SQL Replication to frequently replicate the information from each Room back to our servers centrally.

Sneak peak....

Cause you read to the bottom of this post....here's a reward.....
Now according to my team - this information is available on All Rooms, or by Individual Room.
(my current challenge is how to expose these screens to you guys (approx 500-700 concurrent connections) without causing grief to our system.....nothing like a challenge a week out from TechEd......)

Looking fwd to a very different TechEd....see you there....nighty night.

BTSUG Aug27th - A4SWIFT and BizTalk

2008-08-18T07:42:17.828268-07:00

Hi folks,

Have I got a deal for you.... no seriously we’ve got a great night planned leading up into TechEd. I’m really looking forward to it.
(ok let me get my dates right)

On August 27^th Wednesday night (Wednesday week from now) we’re lucky enough to get....

Angelo Laris from Decillion(seasoned member of our user group) lined up to talk to us about A4SWIFT (which is basically what Angelo and Decillion roll out). Decillion are formally recognised by Microsoft as being experts in this area and are also a member of the Microsoft BizTalk Virtual Technology Specialist Program.
(I’ve also got a couple of house keeping tasks to mention…..first the great stuff…)

Angelo sent me through his outline:

1. Introduction to SWIFT 5min

2. What is a SWIFT Message. 5min

3. The Schema Definitions. 10-20 min

4. The HTML Form Generator (Young Youn will present or help me out here) 20min

5. The Business Rules Engine – HOW to validate a SWIFT Message. 30-60min

6. The Message Repair using Infopath and BAS.30-60min 30-60min

Looks fantastic – what you are going to see is how BizTalk can be extended, Angelo is talking about a mature product base and it’s great to see just how others are using and extending BizTalk while adhering to industry standards.

One of the main questions I get is “What can I use the BizTalk Rules Engine for?”…..ask no further.

What is in store for our Aug 27th Session

Where:
Microsoft, North Ryde
1 Epping Road

When:
6pm - Beer + Pizza
6.30pm - Kick off

Aug 27^th -

Feel free to forward this to any of your colleagues/friends I may have missed (tell them to register on the Sydbiz.org site to be included)

Other Business:
* TechEd 2008 – We’ve finally got RFID end-to-end at the conference (See my blog post here – had the media interested and lots of interviews, Breeze got the green light 40 days out from TechEd......no pressure)
Some quick stats:

1. Over 70 RFID Readers (fixed + windows mobile based) with 118 Antennas.

2. Lots of Intelligent information surfacing.

3. BizTalk Server, BizTalk RFID, BizTalk RFID V1.1, MOSS + good old Silverlight 2 b2 is pretty much running the show.

4. We’re ‘printing’ (or encoding is the tech term) over 5500 tags – the hardest part was to actually print a corresponding barcode so other systems can handle the badge.

5. I’m due for a holiday at the end of this.....(this is why I couldn’t squeeze a meeting in last month)

So A BIG THANK YOU for those that helped out with the testing of the system (fingers crossed on show day) at previous user group meetings.

* Call for Speakers/Other People to take Tyre Kicking Sessions
If you’ve got any aspect of BizTalk (& related) that you want to share with us....let me know, love to hear what you’ve got to say.
* Don’t forget – we’ve launched an email forum group ‘oztalk@groups.yahoo.com’
Great to see a lot of you already joined – it’s a *private* group open to BizTalk User Group members (we currently have Brisbane, Auckland and Sydney on)
Invite only – send me an email if you want to join and I’ll send you out an invite. (Thanks to all the guys on it so far)

Love to see you there – and reply to this email to let me know for catering.
Cheers,

Mick Badran (MVP - BizTalk) | Microsoft Readiness Instructor
Collaboration and Integration Specialist

Breeze Training Pty Ltd | m: +61 404842 833

http://blogs.breezetraining.com.au/mickb

BizTalk SharePoint Adapter Config with WSS SP1 - Error

2008-08-13T16:56:03.186375-07:00

John Powell has a great article (with piccys) that will hopefully get you out of a pickle.

http://blogs.msdn.com/johnwpowell/archive/2008/08/14/error-configuring-biztalk-sharepoint-adapter-on-sharepoint-sp1.aspx

Thanks John!

TechEd 08 - see you there - RFID and Workflows....

2008-08-08T02:36:10.66325-07:00

Register - here

Folks I hope you're heading to TechEd this year - it's a brand new breed! Why....????

Because myself and my team are covering the entire event with RFID tags, we'll give you tags - enabling you the delegate to 'live' the technology!!! (seen Tron lately) we'll set up some great RFID interactive capabilities.

Sample card TechEd tag

It all started when... I went to MS and said..."I've got an idea...." and the teched committee(s) saw the plan and loved it (there were some sleepless nights there as well :).

I've been to over 10+ yrs of TechEd (sometimes 3 a yr, US, Oz + NZ) and I figured it should be a chance to play with the technology! Hands on - get dirty. Build, break, play + learn...all that stuff.

As a MS Ptr Readiness trainer/Regular teched speaker - I appreciate the value of sessions but as a delegate I would be looking for the show me/talk to me/let *me* see how it's done.... a bit like plasticine to mould and meld the way that I (as a delegate) would need it!!!!!

So in light of this - Breeze is providing a (huge) BizTalk RFID based RFID Event System that you guys can interact with/we'll walk you through the making of, setup & how the system is put together. We're getting some posters made up and myself as a trainer, would want to share the knowledge around this system.

Let's see what the system does.....(as of 5pm today...nothing like moving targets... :)

The vision we have is:

You walk into a room and the welcome screen will say "Hi Paul" (and you'll fade out, do something special...we've got a couple of ideas here). This component actually is a 'real-time visual display' of out in the field events. In our case it's people walking past readers...or it could be boxes, trucks, palettes etc. Built in Silverlight 2 harnessing the WCF Eventing Services in real time. (We've been able to crank our code up to 150 people walking past *exactly* the same spot)

Fellow Breezer.... Scotty (a member of the BizTalk Virtual TS team) has a blurb on some of the details on the initial RFID/Silverlight nuts 'n bolts

(we've also got a webcast on how this is created)
So you guys as an interactive experience as you walk in the room with various graphs (developers in the room, it pros...) and charts - some DRAFT IDEAs
All done in Silverlight

We've actually got MS Shane Morris on the case here - he never gives up a chance to get down and dirty with Silverlight.
Check out his thoughts at the moment - big thanks Shane :)

So there may be an 'Avatar' thingy that gets displayed up on the screen (as Shane mentions).....a quiet secret .....you want to 'pimp your avatar'???? Come and see the Breeze room and we'll make it happen...only those who rock up - I've got a Windows Mobile App that will do it for you.....
Some other areas that may/may not make the final show are having things like:
1. 'Information Points' - areas that you could simply be standing near, talking to someone and a screen may show where your collegues are, or what you may have in common with the person you're talking to. e.g. belong to community User Groups; where the next sessions of interest are for you.
  These may be distributed throughout the conference.
2. As you go to a session - if you stay longer than 15 mins (for e.g.) the system contacts Commnet and makes a session eval available for you to fill out (could be done while you're sitting in the session :-)
3. Breeze will have a room that will be driving all this - be sure to come and see us. Our guys will be more than happy to take you through 'the bunker'
4. No more hold ups at the doors (hopefully :) with people individually reading your barcodes, you can just walk straight in (imagine if skiing chairlift lines were like that :)
The other major component to the system is an Exhibitor System which is run on a PDA equipped with a Kenetics RFID Reader built on BizTalk RFID 1.1 Mobile (still in beta - nervous who me?). The Kenetics crew have been very helpful and when I embarked on this application I was given the H/W and a C++ DLL....."What..you don't know C++?" - not since uni folks....developed the RFID component in 4 days!!!
1. The application is for when exhibitors on the floor, they scan your RFID Tag and you can continue the conversation. The scan range is around 2-10cms.
2. There is also local SqlCe storage, with store/fwd capabilities. I'm using SqlCe merge replication to keep the data safe centrally - which proved to be interesting.
3. Currently - the MS Stand and the HP stand will have the devices, the RFID Reader + this mobile App (the other exhibitors are still reading barcodes)
TechEd Event information is to be made available through Analysis Cubes so you guys can pull up a pivot table (looks impressive to your boss) and play with the event data. Things like attendance in sessions, audience breakdown by interest or by technology etc. - it would be great to do something like an 'Amazon' - such as if you're a .NET developer having.... "Other people who are also .NET developers went to these other sessions...."

So as a delegate I can get a 'group feel' for what sessions I should be seeing next - sometimes there's a time where non of the sessions are on my immediate agenda, it would be great to have this information available to help me make my decision on what session I should see in that time slot.
(e.g. 85% of SQL developers chose this session....)
There's a whole bunch of H/W coming from Kenetics which we'll be giving a session at TechEd on how we built it all!!!
Lastly I thought I'd just mention a quick blurb on the RFID info.
- there *may* be some apprehension about a delegate getting a 'tag' and the whole "big brother is watching" thing. Let me dispel a couple of rumours
1. tags are similar to barcodes - they simply contain a number. read differently but from that respect the same (imagine if you could go into your favourite sporting store, and say "I'll have a new shoes" and they knew your size, your brand, and whether it's in stock instantly - now you could even have a self-serve kiosk around that as well!!!)
2. Your tag can't be read from satellites - lots of physics comes into play here...namely a big one of power. If you think about when TV stations need to broadcast to space, they have a large dish somewhere, 50 guys peddling bikes to generate the power and then they transmit bursts.
  
  So...no. - simply cover the tag with your hand and you can't be read. (water and radio waves don't go that well)
3. My vision is to make this *your* teched - as you can see we're being transparent and open about the system and how it works. Any time drop in and we'll show you through.

ON ANOTHER NOTE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT - my workflow session I'm delivering - you've got rare oppty....

SOA305
Getting Workflows Running and Talking in Your Applications
04/09/2008 2:00PM-3:15PM

Once you understand the basics of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and can put together a workflow using the built-in activities, you will need to know how to get that workflow running in a variety of hosting environments and communicate between the workflow and the host application or the outside world. This session gives you a solid foundation to get started with these techniques. Gain a better understanding of how workflows exist in a hosting process and how to control the hosting services. Learn about the various forms of communication that can exist between a running workflow and the hosting application as well as with outside Web and WCF Services. Also, learn about the persistence and tracking features of WF.

- I've got a technical session on Workflow Foundation.
- Of course you're planning on seeing my session :) - WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO COVER? WHAT DO *YOU* WANT TO KNOW ABOUT?

(You've got the opportunity to provide feedback and while I'm still 'building' the session - hopefully I can incorporate your needs!)

More later and I'd love to hear your thoughts on above with a comment or two.....be great to see you at TechEd!!!!

Over and out

Mick.

BizTalk RFID Printing: Successfully adding your Zebra Printer to RFID Manager

2008-08-07T20:20:25.757-07:00

There I was with the a new toy - Zebra R110Xi Printer and a 600 page instruction manual, including a 300 page Zebra programming language reference and an RFID section........so do you spend time with the manual? or unwrap and plug it in and see what happens.

I did the latter - I wasn't printing on labels (yet) where some care needs to be taken, loading unloading etc.

Let's get this puppy into RFID manager I thought...... you'd think "grab the provider and away you go".....you'd think...... :-)

1. Grab the Zebra provider from here - http://www.zebra.com/id/zebra/na/en/index/rfid/rfid_microsoft_biztalk.html?WT.mc_id=1778 (at the bottom of the page)
2. Expand out the Zip and in there is some documentation about installing SNMP networking services on the RFID Server - do this pretty straight forward step (it seems the Zebra provider uses SNMP to gather more info about the printer)
3. Install the Zebra Provider in the usual manner.....outlined in the install document.
4. Next Add a Device through the RFID manager. You will need the IP Address of your printer and the Port number - default 9100
5. I got a FAILED to COMMUNICATE to Device ....tried again and again...here we go I thought.......maybe those 600+pages are looking promising?
6. I then did a quick hunt and found that the printer had a Web Interface (instead of trying to set 6 million properties through the front panel and a <- and -> key) - cool. The web was the go!
7. http://10.1.0.55 (temp IP address of my device) brought I a great Zebra Home page and I knew I was at the right place.
8. I checked out a few settings but as soon as I wanted to look into 'Printer Settings' etc. I was prompted for a password.
9. I was forced to head into the manual and the default password is 1234.
10. So I entered this password in AND...the skies parted, the rays of light shone through......Mr. Zebra replied with

"Access Granted. This IP Address now has admin access to the restricted printer pages. Please Click here to proceed."

11. Hey I thought........does this mean.....and BOOM - RFID MANAGER WORKED A TREAT - added the device and got access to the 'admin' pages on the printer.

12. Uploaded some *.ZPL templates and ready to tackle the next stage.....actual printing.......

Setting up SqlCe Merge Replication with ISA Server in the middle.

2008-08-06T07:37:05.663-07:00

Wow! I had to venture into the 'cave' and solved this problem - talk about a character building experience!

I'm currently building a Mobile BizTalk RFID 1.1 solution for TechEd08 that runs on a PPC with a Kenetics CFUHF Reader.

*** Early Screen Shot *** :)

So in building out this application the details always bring unforeseen challenges to light:

1) The application houses all the BizTalk RFID pieces (providers, device proxies etc) so registration, and starting/stopping providers/device discovery and applying properties to the device needs to be all taken care of.

2) I built an RFID Mobile Provider for the Kenetics device - I worked with their support engineers solidly for a week to build what I needed. I took a trip down memory lane and have had enough pinvoking to last till Christmas.

3) The app also manages a several local SQLCe databases - one for my app, the others for the operation of BizTalk RFID Mobile locally on the device (mainly for it's OOTB store/forward mechanism).

After weighing up several options in this solution and how to get data to/from the device reliably I decided to go with SqlCe Merge Replication as we needed to push/pull data from several tables and schema changes.

4) Which leads me onto one of the most little known items......

How do I setup SqlCe Merge replication? it's a mine field, change something here and boom over there.

The picture

Phase 1:

Forget ISA for the moment. If you can, aim to get replication running in a local environment first (e.g. Local LAN on same network, through VPNs etc)

Getting the SQL bits Setup
Ok - the pieces to the initial puzzle.....

Sql Server Side
1. Sql Server and it's additional Sql Mobile Replication Bits - download from here.
2. IIS to expose a replication 'end point' where the remote devices will connect to and replication will take place through. IIS can be separate out onto a different machine.
3. As in my case, somewhere that the 'snapshot' DB information will live to merge down to the devices. Mine was a UNC share - SQL created this after I completed the Publication wizard.
4. Installation -You want the SQL Server Compact 3.5 Server Tools installed on BOTH the IIS AND SQL Machines (if these are one and the same, then you only need it once)
  The server tools has two main components - one being the bits that drive IIS and the other being a wizard that configures the exposed virtual directory and sets security onto it.
  If IIS and SQL are on separate machines, the easiest way to go is:
  - get SQL to publish the snapshot to a UNC share e.g. \\sqlserver\data
  - On the IIS box, run the Configure Web and Synchronization Wizard (installed with the above server tools) and a later screen will ask you where this data is coming from - simply point to the UNC share.
Mobile Device Side
1. The equivalent SQL Mobile Replication tools need to be installed (above and beyond just normal SqlCe database components install) - SQL Server Compact 3.5 for Windows Mobile
  *** NOTE: make sure that the bits on both the Mobile + Servers all match ***
Server Side Security - For this let's work backwards, from the publication through to the exposed endpoint.
1. Publication Security - this is set through the Publication Access List within SQL Mgmnt Studio
  The group in question is the ExhibitorsGroup
  
  Create a publication within the SQL Management Studio
  
  (Publication General Properties)
  
  (Snapshot Properties - note the file location)
  
  (FTP Snapshot + Internet - I've just used Internet and no IIS server name as this is configured in the Mobile Wizard)
  
  (Publication access list - I've blanked out sensitive info, but you can see the BETDEV\ExhibitorGroup being manually addded to the list)
  The rest of the publication settings are defaults - for me anyway.
2. Let's go to the UNC share - = C:\Public\Exhibitor.SqlCE.FileShare
  This is the UNC share that IIS repl component will connect to at the back end.
  Note: the BETDEV\ExhibitorsGroup obviously needs r/w access to this folder.
3. Let's run the 'Configure Web and Synchronization Wizard' to configure the IIS component.
  (you'll find it off the tools menu after you've installed the Mobile Server Tools from the links above)
  Note: one of the interesting things I found here is that after running the wizard, I normally go a tweak a few things in IIS - directory browsing etc. As a rule of thumb, if you want to change something with the Virtual Directory that is created at the end of this wizard, re-run the wizard to do it!!! :)
  
  Press next if prompted with the welcome screen note my options here - SQL Mobile and press Next.Cool
  
  Select the site and Create a Virtual Directory (I'm re-running the wizard so I'm going to select Configure Existing). Press Next.
  
  I created an alias of SqlCERepl directory and accepted a sub-directory under the SqlMobile dir.
  (you can change this, but looking around the forums it was a source of grief - I could do without :) )
  
  Here - I selected HTTP and not HTTPS access to the VirtualDirectory (and SQL Service agent).
  I did this as if you remember the diagram at the top of this post, ISA will serve as the HTTPS endpoint and will fwd the request via HTTP to our IIS/SQL box.
  IF you do want to change from HTTP to HTTPS or visa versa - re-run this wizard. Save you about 4 hrs of head banging.
  Click Next when ready.
  
  On this page - I selected 'Authentication required' and not anonymous. This has something to do with the data that I'm replicating as I'm using a Filter based on 'UserName'. So in my case, the username that the devices connect with will be my differentiator (I looked into using something like 'deviceID' but didn't get too far)
  Click Next.
  
  Select the type of authentication to be made against IIS - I selected NTLM (basic is fine also - but you need to be mindful that we're using HTTP at this point)
  Quick note on Security: So far, we've got 2 areas that need authentication.
  1) the IIS virtual directory and 2) accessing the actual SQL Publication in the UNC share and SQL Publisher Access List.
  
  So if the two machines are separated (IIS + Sql), NTLM will no transverse these machines (known as the 'double-hop' problem) so I'm assuming Basic or Kerberos is the safer bet.
  Click Next when ready.
  
  On the Directory Access Screen note the presence of the ExhibitorsGroup and also this publication is accessing the UNC Share we created earlier.
  Next to continue.
  
  UNC path specified - here you can see how this could be pointing to this SQL Share sitting on another machine as in the 2 machine hosted scenario.
  Click Next and Finish to see something like:
  
  You're virtual directory is now configured.
  To test your configuration so far go to:
  http://<server>/sqlcerepl/sqlcesa35.dll?diag - diagnostics screen to get something like:
  You should be prompted to login - enter account details that have access.
  
  This is our fallback screen - next we will configure the ISA component and come back to our test screen to make sure.
  You're done - here. :)
Configure ISA Server
ISA server will be the bridge between our public SSL access and our internal IIS/SQL Server. We would effectively like ISA to simply route the request and pass it through without to much tampering with our good packets.

ISA Server is on IP address: IP:Y_Internal
The Internal Server here is : 10.1.0.191
The public Interface on the ISA Server is for our purpose known as IP:X_Public
and it's FQDN is : demo.micks.org (in otherwords - this is the public DNS name that will point to the public interface of your ISA box)

NOTE: Make sure you have your SSL cert ready - I created an inhouse cert from a standalone cert server.
You need at least a 'Server Authentication' Certificate to apply within ISA.
(I'll show you a little trick in the mobile app to get round the fact that the certificate is from a non-trusted Cert. Authority by default)
The friendly name on the cert should be - 'demo.micks.org' (without the quotes)
All this keeps SSL happy.
1. Create a publishing rule in ISA 2006 that will effectively route all requests coming to the public interface to our internal IIS/SQL Server.
2. Fire up the ISA MMC and create a New Web Server Publishing Rule - I've called this sample rule, "Public to Internal IIS/SQL Repl"
  
  Click Next when done.
3. Rule Action - set to Allow
  
  Next
4. Publishing Type=Single Web
  
  Next
5. Server Connection Security - SSL.This means that SSL is going to be used over the public network.
  
  Next
6. On the Internal Publishing Details - I tend to hardcode the IP address in, just to reduce any ambiguity.
  Note the IP address - internally acessible only. 10.x.x.x
  
  Next
7. Further settings on the Internal Publishing Details
  NOTE: the option of fwding the original client host headers to the internal IIS/SQL (I found a variety of incomplete HTTP Header details errors attempting to sync if I cleared this checkbox)
  
  We also can restrict the access on this rule by specifying the path of /SqlCeRepl/* (this is obviously the Virtual Directory created earlier)
  
  Next
8. Fill in your public DNS name - don't worry that the wizard screen is showing http://demo.micks.org and NOT https://demo.micks.org
  
  Next
9. Create a listener (if you need to ) as follows:
  (I've modified the screen shot slightly - from my listener)
  Note the ports: 8443 that SSL requests is coming on. You can use 443 if you prefer, I had other things on those ports)
  Also - I setup NO Authentication and replication works. You *could* try setting up Basic Authentication here and using Delegated Authentication (ISA server will login to the IIS/SQL box on your behalf with the inputted security credentials).
  
  I've also supplied the Certificate here as well (add your cert to the machine store ahead of time)
  
  A way to test if your auth is going to work - fire up your browser and try http://<server>/sqlcerepl/sqlcesa35.dll?diag
  
  You should be prompted for login details ONLY ONCE. If you need to supply them twice and then you see the diagnostic page, your mobile application replication will fail :-(. Once and once only.
  
  Next.
10. Authentication Delegation- we want the client to auth. directly against the backend (routed through ISA of course :) )
  
  Next.
11. User Sets - because we don't have authentication here, ISA can't determine users, so All Users is our only option.
  
  Next.
12. What a glorious site....almost done......
  
  Click Finish to complete the wizard.
13. Right click on the rule just created and select Properties - we need to change the Link Translation to OFF
  
  This was the major source of my grief - I kept getting 'HTTP Headers malformed...' ERROR:28035 when trying to sync from the Device - yay!
  
  I was fortunate to be able to contact a friend of mine Darren Shaffer (Mobile MVP) that explained what was required to be sent back/forth in the headers during the conversation - big thanks there Darren!
14. You should be able to browse to https://<yourserver>/sqlcerepl/sqlcesa35.dll?diag - it should WORK :)
  If not - resolve before moving on. (you may get IE grumbling about the Certificate being invalid if it's an inhouse cert)

Configure the MOBILE replication piece!!!

Make sure you have installed the SQL CE 3.5 Core + Repl CABs at least.

On the mobile device, I tend to have routines to Add and Remove DB Subscriptions as I found that if any publication changes on SQL Server happened - e.g. a field was modified, or a table added/removed from the Publication, then Merge Repl would fail even though it previously was working.

Easier to Remove the Subscription on the local SQLCE db, and then add it again.

Note: InternetUrl = https://<yourserver.com>
Username + pass must be a user that has access to all the bits we configured above. In my case, someone who is a member of the ExhibitorsGroup.

The code looks like this:

 1:  public void AddReplAndSync()

 2:  {

 3:  //using System.Data.SqlServerCe;

 4:  bool bAddRepl = false;

 5:  try

 6:  {

 7:  if (DoDBLookup("SELECT
count(*) as cRow FROM __sysMergeSubscriptions WHERE Subscriber='ExhibitorSubscription'", "cRow")
!= "1")

 8:  {

 9:  bAddRepl = true;

 10:  }

 11:  }

 12:  catch

 13:  {

 14:  bAddRepl = true;

 15:  }

16:

 17:  SqlCeReplication repl = new SqlCeReplication();

 18:  repl.InternetUrl = AppSettings.Settings.ReplServer
+ "sqlcesa35.dll";

 19:  repl.InternetLogin = AppSettings.Settings.ReplUser;

 20:  repl.InternetPassword = "XXXXXX";

21:

 22:  repl.Publisher = AppSettings.Settings.ReplPublisher;

 23:  repl.PublisherDatabase = AppSettings.Settings.ReplPubDB;

 24:  repl.PublisherSecurityMode = SecurityType.NTAuthentication;

 25:  repl.Publication = AppSettings.Settings.ReplPubName;

 26:  repl.Subscriber = AppSettings.Settings.ReplSubName;

 27:  repl.SubscriberConnectionString = string.Format("DATA
SOURCE='{0}'", ESDAL.GetDBPath());

28:

 29:  try

 30:  {

 31:  if (bAddRepl)

 32:  repl.AddSubscription(AddOption.ExistingDatabase);

 33:  CloseAllDBConnections();

 34:  repl.Synchronize();

 35:  }

 36:  catch (SqlCeException e)

 37:  {

 38:  MessageBox.Show(e.ToString() + e.NativeError.ToString());

 39:  }

40:

 41:  }

42:

 43:  public void ReplRemove()

 44:  {

 45:  CloseAllDBConnections();

 46:  SqlCeReplication repl = new SqlCeReplication();

 47:  repl.SubscriberConnectionString = string.Format("DATA
SOURCE='{0}'", ESDAL.GetDBPath());

 48:  repl.InternetUrl = AppSettings.Settings.ReplServer
+ "sqlcesa35.dll";

 49:  repl.InternetLogin = AppSettings.Settings.ReplUser;

 50:  repl.InternetPassword = "XXXXXX";

 51:  repl.Publisher = AppSettings.Settings.ReplPublisher;

 52:  repl.PublisherDatabase = AppSettings.Settings.ReplPubDB;

 53:  repl.PublisherSecurityMode = SecurityType.NTAuthentication;

 54:  repl.Publication = AppSettings.Settings.ReplPubName;

 55:  repl.Subscriber = AppSettings.Settings.ReplSubName;

 56:  try

 57:  {

 58:  CloseAllDBConnections();

 59:  repl.DropSubscription(DropOption.LeaveDatabase);

 60:  }

 61:  catch (SqlCeException e)

 62:  {

 63:  MessageBox.Show(e.ToString() + e.NativeError.ToString());

 64:  }

 65:  }

66:

 67:  private void CloseAllDBConnections()

 68:  {

 69:  if ((_dbCon != null)
&& (_dbCon.State != ConnectionState.Closed))

 70:  {

 71:  _dbCon.Dispose();

 72:  _dbCon = null;

 73:  GC.Collect();

 74:  }

75:

 76:  }

Trick to deal with Inhouse generated certificates -
Within your mobile app we create a class that essentially returns True when asked 'Is this Cert. valid?'

Somewhere upon starting up your app - e.g. Form_Load - insert LINE#1 below.

LINE#3 onwards describes the class 'MyCustomSSLPolicy'

 1: System.Net.ServicePointManager.CertificatePolicy
= new MyCustomSSLPolicy();

 2: ......

 3: using System;

 4: using System.Collections.Generic;

 5: using System.Text;

 6: using System.Net;

 7: using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;

8:

 9: namespace MicksDemos.Utilities

 10: {

 11:  public class MyCustomSSLPolicy
: ICertificatePolicy

 12:  {

 13:  public bool CheckValidationResult(ServicePoint
srvPoint,

 14:  X509Certificate certificate, WebRequest request, int certificateProblem)

 15:  {

 16:  return true;

 17:  }

 18:  }

 19: }

Closing note:

Hope you find this useful - I've done this a few times now and am amazed with the lack of info around this especially through ISA.

If you get any errors around "Can't contact SQL Reconciler..." etc errors - GENERALLY try and rebuild the snapshop server side, then try syncing again.

Nighty night!

BizTalk & WCF - the answers are here!

2008-08-05T18:06:02.9445-07:00

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