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

Recent Launch of AppFabric CAT blog...

Mick Badran — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:50:58 GMT

Hi folks, an email floated across my desk from Tim Wieman today tell me about a new AppFabric CAT blog.

Thanks Tim.
--- snippet ---

Recently as part of building the Windows Server AppFabric Customer Advisory Team (or AppFabric CAT for short). This team brings under one “virtual roof” others like me from the team formerly known as the “BizTalk Rangers”, plus other technology experts in Windows Server AppFabric, AppFabric Caching, WF, WCF, StreamInsight, EF, etc.

The new team blog is our commitment to deliver technical guidance and share best practices with the rest of the world-wide community. We are also working on the AppFabric CAT portal, a brand-new web site that will serve the purpose of the “one-stop shop” for all the great deliverables that our team will be producing for the community going forward (similar to sqlcat.com).

Please check out our team blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/appfabriccat.

TechEd 2010: Mastering Microsoft Integration Solutions

Mick Badran — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:40:00 GMT

Well as TechEd 2010 draws to a close this year in Australia, I had a great time getting away from it all and certainly experiencing a couple of firsts. For me this was one of the better TechEd’s I had been to – the sessions were a little light on, but the labs + exams made up for that big time.

So Scotty and I developed an Integration Pre Conference Training Session aimed at working out which MS Integration technology to run where – unscrambling the mess. We got a great turn out for the training in terms of numbers – we beat SharePoint 2010 dev + admin!!! :)

For all of you whom I had the pleasure of training this week – well done! I hope you enjoyed it and it was great sharing that time with you. The sun, sand, BizTalk and Azure…what could be better?? :)

As promised – here are the slides from those two days.

Keep smiling,
Mick.

Running VMWare with VHDs – Getting rid of the STOP 0x7B BSOD Error…..

Mick Badran — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 07:10:29 GMT

Well folks, after a recent week of performance issues running a SharePoint 2010 VM image (40GB) on Virtual Box (v3.0.14 & v3.2.8) Olaf (a fellow Breezer) and I sat down and put our thinking caps on as how to improve things.

- Hyper-V wasn’t an option due to classroom setups and portability issues.

After scouring the forums, posts, blogs and other to see how to squeeze every last bit of performance from Virtual Box – I’ve come to the conclusion that current versions just don’t take full advantage of Core i7 architectures, hence they run dog slow (1 virtual cpu seems to run better than multiple).

Enter VMWare – I’m relatively new to the world of VMWare, although others on my team swear by it.

So I downloaded VMWare Player (free)

And configured a Virtual Machine (or two)

So the issue is (as I’m sure you’re well aware if you’re reading this), is that booting up Windows 2008 R2 (in my case), the native disks are SCSI and we get the dreaded Inaccessible Boot Device error (stop 0x7B).

(Back in WinXP, Win2000 & Win2003 (I think) there *used* to be a recovery option that you could repair my boot environment and it would ‘rediscover’ all the disks etc and you’d be on your way)

The aim is boot into Windows, allow it to discover, load and install the VMWare SCSI drivers (from LSI…) and then in theory you’re good to go.

After drilling down through the VMWare forums (a foreign place for me), there’s a few articles on ‘injecting drivers’ into the system, startup etc – none of these techniques worked for me (I booted to Repair window and ran regedit to ‘tweak’ some startup registry keys).

Still stuck and after many hours we noticed that CD/DVD (IDE) was an available device on the system as follows:

I thought “I wonder if I can attach the VHD as an IDE??”

After locating the VMWare VM config file – a *.VMX file I saw a couple of entries…

ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.filename = “…MicksBootIso.iso”

So I thought, let me try

ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.filename= "D:\VHDs\VHDs\SharePoint2010_v2_Child.vhd"

Saved and booted up like a bought one!

So for now…this works fantastically AND THE PERFORMANCE is at least 3-4 times faster than Virtual Box for this image. Just really snappy!

Here’s a sample file attached – enjoy.

Windows Server 2008 R2 x64.zip (1.12 KB)

Microsoft Integration Story… When to use what Technologies Where

Mick Badran — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:46:36 GMT

Hey folks,

As we’re all aware there’s more than one road that leads to Rome when dealing with integration. When to use SSIS? For what? What about MSMQ? AppFabric and BizTalk etc.

At TechEd this year I’ve decided to run some preconference training dealing with this exact issue across many different Microsoft Integration Technologies.
(This is one of the biggest questions I get from customers)

If you’re heading to the Gold Coast this year, then this training is before TechEd – get up a couple of days early and then be fully charged and armed with all your questions….

---- here’s the official blurb----

When to use what Technologies Where [LINK is Here]

AppFabric, Azure Storage, BizTalk 2010, BizTalk Adapter Pack, WCF, WF, Oslo, MSMQ, .NET4 Distributed Caching, SQL Service Broker, SSIS and SharePoint 2010 Service Applications...to name a few technologies to be confused about.

There is no silver bullet for application integration. Different situations call for different solutions, each targeting a particular kind of problem. While a one-size-fits-all solution would be nice, the inherent diversity of integration challenges makes such a simplistic approach impossible. To address this broad set of problems, Microsoft has created several different integration technologies, each targeting a particular group of scenarios.

Together, these technologies provide a comprehensive, unified, and complete integration solution.

Come on a 2-day adventure examining each of these technologies and reviewing the When, Why's and How's on each, with their own distinct role to play with integrating applications. When you come through the other side you'll be able to slot each of these technologies into a *practical* use.

This developer workshop is based on real world examples, real world problems and real world solutions.

Join me and be prepared to roll up your sleeves and unravel the maze that awaits....

TECHED LINK

VirtualBox – Win 2008/Win 7 VHDs errors (BSOD) on boot up – new Core i7

Mick Badran — Sun, 23 May 2010 11:53:47 GMT

As you know I’m a big fan of Virtual Box being able to run my x64 VMs on my Win7 machine. Yay!!

So armed with my trusted new Core i7/8 GB laptop – I figured the VMs will be cooking on this new kit…

After installing the lastest VirtualBox (3.2.0) I was away – only to notice the machines were running like a SLUG! (I actually have a cat that has the nick name ‘slug’ and this machine was slower than her)

After waiting a full 20mins (still booting - ‘loading windows files…’ etc) my machine Blue Screened for a millisecond and then rebooted.

So I rolled up my sleeves and started digging – could be the VHD, the bios, the machine, the 1000 and 1 settings…

Firstly I ran a command line command (from under the vbox install dir) -
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/PDM/HaltOnReset" 1

Finally I got a glimpse of the BSOD and it was an error “…STOP…7B…”

I twigged this is an error of “Inaccessible boot device….” which I’ve had several times when the SATA drivers couldn’t be loaded by the O/S during boot up.

Solution: (in my case)
I configured the Virtual Box VM with IDE Storage Controllers and NOT SATA ones for the bootup.(still connected to the same VHDs though)

Win2008/R2 boots up and I’m able to load the SATA drivers in and we’re away.

Back to BizTalk 2010 Beta playing…. :)

BizTalk: Calling SAP RFC_READ_TABLE with the BizTalk Adapter Pack

Mick Badran — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:54:57 GMT

Wow! I'm finally through the other side... what a quest and I thought I'd share some of the details with you.

RFC_READ_TABLE rfc can be used to call into SAP and retrieve table data - *sort of* (and that's a big sort of) like a 'DataSet'.

Using it requires a little work and understanding.

In your either BizTalk project or other project from VS.NET:

Add the SAP bits to your VS.NET project - ready for action
1. select 'Add Adapter Service Reference' (for BTS projects -> Add New Generated Item->Consume Service Adapter...)
2. On the Binding Wizard Screen select sapBinding and configure the appropriate connection string details such as:
  
  string sapUri = "sap://CLIENT=800;LANG=EN;@A/sapsrv/00?GWHOST=sapsrv&GWSERV=sapgw00&RfcSdkTrace=true";
  <You need to stick your own sapURI above - that is more or less a sample>>
3. Click on the Connect and under RFC->OTHER , select RFC_READ_TABLE (or you can type it in the box to search)
4. Click Ok to generate the proxy and other details.
5. Either your BizTalk Project or your non-BTS project has now all the relevant details to communicate to SAP.
  
  I tend to build out all this functionality first in a Console App just so I know what is needed within the BTS environment, also I find it much quicker to test/debug etc. here.
Ok - onto the code. I've got 2 routines for you, one that uses the Proxy Classes built by the wizard in the last step, and a routine from 'first principles'.

One of the things that I really like about the BTS Adapter Pack and certainly in this case, is that depending on the shape of the XML you pass to the adapter, it determines the table and type of operation that it is to do.

Both of these examples below you could wrap into a functoid/helper/whatever and use directly from code.
Proxy Code - version 1 - here I define some parameters and make a straight call to the table CSKS.
NOTE: Use FieldNames not Field Labels (took me a few hrs on that one ;)

using LOBTYPES = microsoft.lobservices.sap._2007._03.Types.Rfc;>
private static void GetDataFromSAP()
{
     RfcClient clnt = new RfcClient(); //myproxy client
     string[] data = GetAppDetailsForCurrentUser("SAP");
     clnt.ClientCredentials.UserName.UserName = data[0];
     clnt.ClientCredentials.UserName.Password = data[1];
     LOBTYPES.TAB512[] rfcData = new microsoft.lobservices.sap._2007._03.Types.Rfc.TAB512[0];
     LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_OPT[] rfcOps = new microsoft.lobservices.sap._2007._03.Types.Rfc.RFC_DB_OPT[0];
     LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_FLD[] rfcFlds = new microsoft.lobservices.sap._2007._03.Types.Rfc.RFC_DB_FLD[]
     {
         new LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_FLD() {
         FIELDNAME = "KOSTL",
         LENGTH=10
         },
         new LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_FLD() {
         FIELDNAME = "DATBI",
         LENGTH=8
         },
         new LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_FLD() {
         FIELDNAME = "DATAB",
         LENGTH=8
         }
     };
try
{
clnt.Open();
clnt.RFC_READ_TABLE(";", string.Empty, "CSKS", 50, 0,ref rfcData, ref rfcFlds, ref rfcOps);
Console.WriteLine("RFC RESPONSE\r\n\r\nData:" + rfcData.Length.ToString());
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
   Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " + ex.Message);
}
}>
More from first principles so this is to give you more of a BTS picture.
NOTE: The use of the '%' sign to get a wildcard match on a KOSTL field, despite in the SAP Client UI the users enter a '*'

private static void GetDataFromSAPV1()
{
    string[] data = GetAppDetailsForCurrentUser("SAP");
    SAPBinding binding = new SAPBinding(); //A reference to Microsoft.Adapters.Sap is needed.
    //set up an endpoint address
    string sapUri = "sap://CLIENT=800;LANG=EN;@A/sapsrv/00?GWHOST=sapsrv&GWSERV=sapgw00&RfcSdkTrace=true";
    EndpointAddress address = new EndpointAddress(sapUri);
    try
    {
        ChannelFactory<IRequestChannel> fact = new ChannelFactory<IRequestChannel>(binding as Binding, address);
        // add credentials
        fact.Credentials.UserName.UserName = data[0];
        fact.Credentials.UserName.Password = data[1];
        // Open client
        fact.Open();
        //get a channel from the factory
        IRequestChannel irc = fact.CreateChannel();
        //open the channel
        irc.Open();
        string inputXml = "<RFC_READ_TABLE xmlns='http://Microsoft.LobServices.Sap/2007/03/Rfc/' xmlns:ns1='http://Microsoft.LobServices.Sap/2007/03/Types/Rfc/'>"
        + "<DELIMITER>|</DELIMITER>"
        + "<QUERY_TABLE>CSKS</QUERY_TABLE>"
        + "<ROWCOUNT>10</ROWCOUNT><ROWSKIPS>0</ROWSKIPS>"
        + "<DATA /><FIELDS>"
        + "<ns1:RFC_DB_FLD><ns1:FIELDNAME>KOSTL</ns1:FIELDNAME></ns1:RFC_DB_FLD>"
        + "<ns1:RFC_DB_FLD><ns1:FIELDNAME>DATAB</ns1:FIELDNAME></ns1:RFC_DB_FLD>"
        + "<ns1:RFC_DB_FLD><ns1:FIELDNAME>DATBI</ns1:FIELDNAME></ns1:RFC_DB_FLD>"
        + "</FIELDS>"
        + "<OPTIONS>"
        + "<ns1:RFC_DB_OPT><ns1:TEXT>KOSTL LIKE '1234%' AND BUKRS EQ '63' AND KOKRS EQ 'APPL'</ns1:TEXT></ns1:RFC_DB_OPT>"
        + "</OPTIONS>"
        + "</RFC_READ_TABLE>";
        //create an XML reader from the input XML
        XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(new MemoryStream(Encoding.Default.GetBytes(inputXml)));
        //create a WCF message from our XML reader
        Message inputMessge = Message.CreateMessage(
                     MessageVersion.Soap11,
                     http://Microsoft.LobServices.Sap/2007/03/Rfc/RFC_READ_TABLE,
                     reader);
        //send the message to SAP and obtain a reply
        Message replyMessage = irc.Request(inputMessge);
        //create a new XML document
        XmlDocument xdoc = new XmlDocument();
        //load the XML document with the XML reader from the output message received from SAP
        xdoc.Load(replyMessage.GetReaderAtBodyContents());
        XmlNodeList nds = xdoc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//*[local-name()='WA']");
        foreach (XmlNode nd in nds)
        {
                string[] parts = nd.InnerText.Split('|');
                Console.WriteLine("CC={0} From: {1} To: {2}", parts[0], parts[1], parts[2]);
         }
         xdoc.Save(@"d:\sapout.xml");
         irc.Close();
         fact.Close();
    }>
catch (Exception ex)
{
         Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " + ex.Message);
}
}>

BizTalk Best Practice Analyzer v1.2 – BTS 06,06R2 + 09

Mick Badran — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:01:25 GMT

BizTalk Best Practice Analyser is released and available for download.

Download: BizTalkBPA V1.2

As always another very handy tool is the Message Box Viewer (Currently V10) which provides some very detailed information as well.

Download: Message Box Viewer (MBV)

Enjoy your day,

Mick.

BizTalk 2010 –> Move over BTS2009 R2 Name changed!

Mick Badran — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:27:25 GMT

The other day this landed in my inbox. Being on the TAP program and posting various pieces of feedback I’ve been updated that BizTalk 2010 is the only name to remember.

Keeps inline with VSNET2010 etc etc, so anything with a 2010 after its name *should* work with each other. SharePoint 2010 etc.

So far I’ve been playing with the early bits and I’m liking what I’m seeing – copy and paste functoids in a map!!! (for those of you who don’t know the pain….it’s pain let me tell you)

So here’s the official blurb…

Well done BizTalk Team! Working Hard!

------------------------------------------

BizTalk Server 2010 Name Change Q&A

Q: Why was the original name for the release BizTalk Server 2009 R2?

BizTalk Server 2009 R2 was planned to be a focused release to deliver support for Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010. Aligning BizTalk releases to core server platform releases is very important for our customers. Hence our original plan was to name the release as BizTalk Server 2009 R2.

Q: Why did Microsoft decide to change the name for BizTalk Server 2009 R2 to BizTalk Server 2010?

Over the past year we got lot of feedback from our key customers and decided to incorporate few key asks from our customers in this release. Based on customer value we are delivering and positive feedback we are getting from our early adopter customers we feel the release has transitioned from minor release (BizTalk Server 2009 R2) to a major release (BizTalk Server 2010).

Following is list of key capabilities we have added to the release

1. Enhanced trading partner management that will enable our customers to manage complex B2B relationships with ease

2. Increase productivity through enhanced BizTalk Mapper. These enhancements are critical in increasing productivity in both EAI and B2B solutions; and a favorite feature of our customers.

3. Enable secure data transfer across business partners with FTPS adapter

U Updated adapters for SAP 7, Oracle eBusiness Suite 12.1, SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2

Improved and simplified management with updated System Center management pack

Simplified management through single dashboard which enables IT Pros to backup and restore BizTalk configuration

Enhanced performance tuning capabilities at Host and Host Instance level

8. Continued innovation in RFID Space with out of box event filtering and delivery of RFID events

Q: Is there any additional benefit to customers with name change to BizTalk Server 2010?

In addition to all the great value the release provides, customers will benefit from support window being reset to 10 years (5 years mainstream and 5 years extended support). This highlights Microsoft’s long term commitment to BizTalk Server product.

BizTalk Virtual Training Material

Mick Badran — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:20:57 GMT

Hi folks,

Lately I've had several requests from folks whom want to have a play with BizTalk but don't want to setup the whole infrastructure etc.

Here's a great page from MS Virtual Labs that will get you on your way
(some labs are for BTS2006, others for BTS2009, the same principles apply)

Check it out and if you're ever away from a VM, might be handy a fallback plan.

BizTalk Virtual Lab Material

There's 4 pages and here's a snippet from Page 1

--------------------------------------------------------------

MSDN Virtual Lab: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Working with Schemas

After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a new BizTalk project, create an XML schema by using the BizTalk Editor, promote a schema property, create a flat file schema by using the BizTalk Editor, validate a schema and generate a ...

4/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 9/30/2011 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032296903&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Working with Maps

After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a schema map by using BizTalk Mapper, add functoids to a map, validate a map, and build a schema map project.

4/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 11/30/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032296906&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Integrating Business Rules in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

After completing this lab, you will be better able to define business rules, call business rules from within an orchestration, build and deploy the business rules project, and start and test the business rules.

5/7/2008 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 5/31/2011 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032379047&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: New Features for Deploying and Managing a BizTalk Application in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

After completing this lab, you will be better able to assign an application name to a BizTalk Server project, use the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console to create receive ports, receive locations, use the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration ...

4/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 12/31/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032296904&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Connected Commerce with Commerce Server 2007

After completing this lab, you will be better able to educate attendees on integrating Commerce Server 2007 with ERP or CRM systems and external business trading partners by utilizing the new built-in integration adapter for BizTalk Server 2006. Als ...

4/20/2007 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 8/31/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032338959&culture=en-US

TechNet Virtual Lab: Integrating Business Rules in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

4/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 11/30/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: IT Generalist

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032313534&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Creating Schemas using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004

After completing this lab, you will be able to create a new BizTalk project, create an XML schema by using BizTalk Schema Editor, promote a schema property, create a file schema by using BizTalk Schema Editor, validate a schema and generate a sample ...

12/7/2005 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 7/31/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279924&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Publishing a Web Service in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004

After completing this lab, you will be able to configure orchestration properties, create the orchestration to be published, build and deploy the orchestration publishing project, run the BizTalk Web Services Publishing Wizard, and start and test th ...

10/24/2005 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 2/28/2011 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032303224&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Consuming a Web Service

After completing this lab, you will be able to add a Web reference to a project, create a map, create variables for message instances, create the Web services orchestration, and build and deploy the Web services project.

10/24/2005 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 1/31/2011 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032303223&culture=en-US

TechNet Virtual Lab: New Features for Deploying and Managing a BizTalk Application in BizTalk 2006

2/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 9/30/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language: English

Primary Target Audience: IT Generalist

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032296907&culture=en-US

Handy XML Tools – Schema Tools

Mick Badran — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:43:18 GMT

Many times in BizTalk land we work with Schemas that are nested and have several related Schemas that are Imported from URL locations etc.

When you include these schemas and deploy to Production, you find out that the BizTalk server doesn’t access the Internet directly. Hence all the schema Imports fail.

You’ll then go and try hand edit the Imports, downloading the referenced Schema and try and Mash up something that refers to local files and no URL based Schemas. It may or may not work…till the next update…

I recently came across a handy set of free tools that take all the pain out to do with Schemas –>

Xml Help Line

Which has Xml Schema Lightener, Xml Schema Flattener

Another very handy tool not to leave home without.

Enjoy.

BizTalk 2009: Ho Ho Ho.... BizTalk 2009 R2 TAP program announced

Mick Badran — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:07:27 GMT

Folks Christmas and the holiday season has started with the BizTalk Team been busy and are opening up the BTS 2009 R2 TAP program on connect.

If you're a customer (or have customers) that would/could benefit in working with some of the newer BizTalk features - with the prospect of MS being able to have some visibility into the solution, then go for it.

https://connect.microsoft.com/biztalk

I'm looking fwd to the BizTalk Dashboard and a whole bunch of other enhancements.

Here's a snip for you....

---------------------------------------

Welcome to the Microsoft BizTalk Server Connect website

We encourage you to visit this site where we will keep you informed of Technology Adoption Programs (TAP) and other customer pre-release programs for Microsoft BizTalk Server.

We have a number of programs currently underway as well as several that will be starting up in the near future. If you are interested to participate in any of the programs below, please register for the program by selecting the associated link, and return the completed nomination form to btssoacp@microsoft.com .

Current Programs

BizTalk Server 2009 R2
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 SP1 beta

BizTalk Server 2009 R2

What’s planned for the next BizTalk release?

VS 2010 Support

Use of Visual Studio 2010 to develop application for BizTalk Server 2009 R2
Projects developed in VS 2008 can be seamlessly migrated to Visual Studio 2010

Intelligent Mapper

Enhanced user interface for better visualization of maps and to support complex mappings
Background noise reduction using highlight propagation, auto scrolling and sibling coalescing
Support for search
Reusable parts for improved user productivity
Enhancements to the current functoids

Enhanced Trading Partner Management (TPM)

BizTalk Administration Console – Performance Enhancements

This feature aims to improve BizTalk Administration Console performance across the board by more than 60%. Key Scenarios like refresh, addition, deletion of port, enlistment of an orchestration will be optimized. Post Enhancements, the BizTalk Administration Console would be more responsive and address one of the key customer pain-points of Console performance in BizTalk 2009.

BizTalk Settings Dashboard

The BizTalk Settings Dashboard will serve as a one-stop shop for BizTalk Engine settings visualization and modification. This feature will enable BizTalk Administrators to centrally manage BizTalk Settings as admins will be able to export and import settings from one environment to another (for e.g. staging to production). The BizTalk Settings Dashboard is a step forward in consolidating all BizTalk Settings and will incorporate design extensibility to accommodate future addition of settings.

Improved Management Pack

The Improved System Center Management Pack will address key customer pain-points (e.g. high-CPU usage, duplication of discovered artifacts etc.) in the existing Management Pack. The new and improved design will also incorporate enhancement like better visualization of BizTalk Application and Platform Artifacts, Improved monitoring and diagnostics of artifacts like Orchestrations, Grouping of Alerts etc.

RFID OOB Event Filtering and Delivery

The scope for this feature covers providing a set of OOB components for Duplicate Elimination filter, EPC based filter, DWELL filter, posting events from BizTalk RFID to BizTalk Server, Posting events from BizTalk RFID to an EPCIS service and an Event Delivery framework for applications to subscribe and receive asynchronous events. These Out Of Box components address common RFID scenarios and will enable partners to focus solely on business logic hence helping accelerate BizTalk RFID solutions.

FTP/FTPS Adapter

The FTP Adapter in BizTalk is one of the most popular transport adapter in BizTalk server, used in different scenarios. In BizTalk Server 2009 R2, we provide additional features in the FTP adapter that includes the following:

- Support for FTPS, FTP over SSL – Enables to connect to FTPS servers for transferring files securely. Both Implicit and Explicit FTPS are supported.

- Support for read-only FTP servers – Enables configuration to pick up files from a partner FTP server which may provide only read-only permission. The adapter will ensure that each file is submitted only once to BizTalk Server.

- Support for atomic file writing – Can be used to ensure that files are read only after they are transmitted fully to the FTP server.

· Enhanced performance – Re-designed to increase the performance, both while sending files to as well as receiving files from FTP servers. The adapter will be more resilient to server going down.

Dublin finally gets a name "Windows Server AppFabric"

Mick Badran — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:12:32 GMT

We're moving into a public beta of ~~Dublin~~ "Windows Server AppFabric" which you can grab from HERE.

What does it mean - here's a blurb from the site.

So Velocity (distributed caching mechanism) is rolled up into this Beta (previously a MS Partner did some benchmarking on Velocity which you can find a great white paper HERE)

Previously myself and Scotty wrote a hefty technical Dublin Course which the folks at TechEd loved - we did this on some early bits of 'Dublin'. Realtime monitoring + tracking as well as recoverability were some highlights of our 3D Realtime maze process we built up in the labs.

Here's a blurb from the AppFabric server (it's a shame that SP2010 didn't use this framework for it's WF hosting...but that would have impacted delivery)

Enjoy

-------- Snippet ----------

Windows Server AppFabric has these core capabilities:

For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data. This feature was previously codenamed "Velocity"
For composite applications, AppFabric makes it easier to build and manage services built using Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. This feature was previously codenamed "Dublin."

BizTalk: Restarting your BTS Hosts - Powershell Style

Mick Badran — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:54:54 GMT

A while back I created a script that restarts your BizTalk Hosts - pretty simple, here http://blogs.breezetraining.com.au/mickb/2006/10/04/SimpleScriptToRestartAllBizTalkServices.aspx
(also this script didn't pick up your service if it was previously stopped - limitation of the 'sc query' command)

Now with PowerShell it's a one line job:
It goes something like this:
get-service BTS* | foreach-object -process {restart-service $_.Name}

You can also set all your BTS Services to start 'automatic' as follows:
get-service BTS* | foreach-object -process {set-service $_.Name -startuptype automatic}
(I'm actually trying to set the BTS Services to 'Automatic (Delayed)' but haven't been able to do that yet)

Enjoy,
Mick.

BizTalk 2009 – Configuring the SharePoint Adapter Manually

Mick Badran — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:02:11 GMT

Well – after spending *far* too long trying to get a little Red X to disappear from my BTS Configuration tool, so I can have a green light to configure the SharePoint adapter, I thought “There’s got to be an easier way”

Exhibit A – your honour. The SharePoint Adapter Configured.

So – what I did was roll my sleeves up and do this by hand.

This particular install – BTS09 x86, I installed WSS V3.0 with Sp2 and created a local sharepoint web application, site collection and had a whole bunch of SharePoint happiness coming back to me on http://biztalk (my server name).

All good I thought – except the configuration tool didn’t like what it found. I looked at logs, ran network sniffers and even manually ran the tool Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.StsOmInterop3.exe http://biztalk with success:

But still no joy in the configurator.

Here’s how to do it manually:

Setup your local or domain SharePoint Groups
Typically this is the ‘SharePoint Enabled Hosts’ Group – if it already exists on the domain, then great, if not create it. For this I created my group on the local machine.
I also added as members, my biztalk service account and my Sharepoint Service Account.
Configure IIS – BTS SharePoint WS Web Application
1. Within the BizTalk Installed folders – e.g. c:\program files\Microsoft BizTalk 2009\Business Activity Services, you’ll find the set of WebServices to choose from. Select the right one for your SharePoint deployment.
3. As you can see I selected BTSharePointV3AdapterWS (for WSS V2 SP3, select BTSharePointAdapterWS).
4. This is the folder you will point IIS to later.
5. Open this folder and you’ll see a web application with a web.config.tmpl
6. Copy the web.config.tmpl and rename the *copy* to web.config
7. Open up your Web.Config in Notepad and configure as follows:
  1. (you can always go back and tighten security up on this when you’ve got it working).
  2. Note the ‘SharePoint Enabled Hosts’ – local group here.
  3. I’ve also removed the ‘Documentation’ tags so I could get some WSDL to make sure it works within the browser.
  4. Save your web.config within Notepad.
  5. NOTE: make note of the Folder Path to get here as we’ll need it in IIS next.
8. Configuring IIS
  1. Bring up IIS Admin MMC snapin.
  2. Select your SharePoint enabled Web Site, I selected ‘Default Web Site’. Right click when ‘Default Web Site’ is Selected and select ‘Add Application’
    
    note: IIS 7.0 Manager shown.
  3. Configure this as follows:
    
    (Note – the App Pool User should be able to post into BizTalk and SharePoint)
    Physical Path: <path you had previously to either V2 or V3 of your BTSharePointV3Adapter…>
  4. Click OK.
  5. To Test your WS: browse to: http://<your server>/BTSharePointAdapterWS/BTSharePointAdapterWS.asmx
  6. You *should* get this:
    
    You can invoke the IsAlive function and get TRUE back.
  7. If not, then fix your IIS related errors, at this point you’ve got a WS that uses the SharePoint APIs (locally). Some things to check:
    1. Local file security – make sure the Web App Pool acct can access those directories.
    2. Windows Auth is turned on, on your Web App.
    3. Check IIS log files for clues.
  8. You’re done on the IIS side of things, let’s configure BTS Side.
Configuring BizTalk Side
Fortunately the WSS Adapter is installed as part of the BizTalk Runtime configuration – it’s just not configured. So as far as registering the adapter with BizTalk it’s already been partly done.

Install the “I’ve been Configured Registry Keys” – I took these from a previously successful 2009 install.

BTS WSS Reg Keys

Once the registry keys have been applied you’ll need to go and configure the …\TPM key to reflect your setup as follows:

In Particular – configure your SharePoint SiteID to the one you saw in IIS.

How is this Different for a x64 bit Install

The IIS piece is the same.
The BTS Piece – the Perf counters are the same,
but the ..\TPM piece is under HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\ConfigFramework
So you’ll need to ammend 1 of the above 2 REG files.

You’re done!

Why oh why is this so hard from within the Configurator.

NOTE: There *USED* to be a Registry key that told the BTS WSS Adapter where to go looking for the BTSharePoint WS – a URL (..STSServiceUrl). This eliminated the need for a local machine install of SharePoint/WSS. Alas…this is *NOT* the case with WSS Adapter post BTS06.

BizTalk 2009 – Configuring High Receiving Throughput

Mick Badran — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 05:23:52 GMT

While on a current project and having a need to tweak (as always) how well BTS is processing these receives, I came across a Perf document on BTS 2009 Receiving.

This document below deals mainly with netTCP receive locations – oneway ports + oneway Orchs.

Enjoy.

------

BizTalk Server 2009 Performance Optimization Guide

Brief Description

The BizTalk Server 2009 Performance Optimization Guide provides prescriptive guidance on the best practices and techniques that should be followed to optimize BizTalk Server performance.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=24660797-0C8F-4687-9D5F-B76D99B37EC2&displaylang=en

BizTalk 2006 R2 SP1 Beta hits

Mick Badran — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:43:04 GMT

Service Pack 1 Beta

The BizTalk team are pleased to announce the availability of the beta release of Service Pack 1 for BizTalk Server 2006 R2. We would like to offer you the opportunity to download this early preview of the Service Pack and encourage you to test it out and let us have any feedback before we release it to the BizTalk community.

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an update for BizTalk Server 2006 R2. It includes fixes to issues that have been reported through our customer feedback platforms, as well as internally discovered issues. To see a listing of the customer-reported issues that are fixed in this service pack, go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=164985. For a description of some of the other updates included in this service pack, see What's new in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 SP1 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=163958).

A guide for this service pack is also available on the download page. This guide contains important information to read before you install SP1. It also provides installation instructions and a section on troubleshooting installation problems. Finally, it contains a section on known issues in this service pack release.

The service pack can be downloaded from here and any feedback or issues you encounter can be reported here

Thank you in advance!

Regards

BizTalk Product Group

BizTalk Integration with SharePoint Whitepaper published

Mick Badran — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:35:04 GMT

This whitepaper is typically centered around the BTS SharePoint Adapter and WSS V3.0/MOSS 2007.
(I’ll be posting details on SharePoint 2010 integration shortly… :) )

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=dd4e843d-2121-4016-8391-d763d0ff0a08

BizTalk + SharePoint: 1+1=3: Integration Best Practices

Brief Description

The integration of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 and Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 brings a whole new set of capabilities to end users. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server gives BizTalk Server a “face,” providing human workflow features and dashboard functionality.

Improving WebService Security Guide on CodePlex

Mick Badran — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 02:28:13 GMT

Hi folks, came across a great article that talks about WebServices(WCF Services) and Security.

The most common starting point in improving security, is to use TLS (Transport Layer Security of which SSL is a subset). I once spent 9 months working out digital signatures and passing several documents through out of band of envelopes…long story.

There’s a whole bunch of How-To’s also – very good!

With over 26000 downloads since August 1, I think this is a much needed area.
Well done guys – big congrats for your efforts.

Enjoy -

http://wcfsecurityguide.codeplex.com/

---- snip ----

patterns & practices Improving Web Services Security - Now Released

Welcome to the patterns & practices Improving Web Services Security: Scenarios and Implementation Guidance for WCF project site! This guide shows you how to make the most of WCF (Windows Communication Foundation). With end-to-end application scenarios, it shows you how to design and implement authentication and authorization in WCF. Learn how to improve the security of your WCF services through prescriptive guidance including guidelines, Q&A, practices at a glance, and step-by-step how tos. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, WCF team members, and industry experts. This guide is related to our WCF Security Guidance Project.

Parts

Part I, "Security Fundamentals for Web Services"
Part II, "Fundamentals of WCF Security"
Part III, "Intranet Application Scenarios"
Part IV, "Internet Application Scenarios"

Forewords

Chapters

Part I, Security Fundamentals for Web Services

Part II, Fundamentals of WCF Security

Part III - Intranet Application Scenarios

Part IV - Internet Application Scenarios

Checklist

WCF Security Checklist

BizTalk Azure/Cloud Adapters are being born…

Mick Badran — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 01:06:07 GMT

Folks I recently came across this site on codeplex - http://btsazureadapters.codeplex.com

Where a hard working Danny(not sure of further details) has created a send and receive adapter for the cloud.

The adapter surface and publish the required information into the cloud so for e.g. your endpoints show up publically in the .NET Servicebus domain – we can do this through the apis, but it’s nice to have them all wrapped up.

There’s even some great piccys as well (just over look the ‘Microsoft Confidential’ at the bottom :-| - I did ping him over this.)

The adapters are WCF based adapters, meaning they will run in or outside of BizTalk using the .NET LOB Adapter SDK Framework.

As a Plan B to this – you can always use a Custom WCF Adapter with the basicHttpRelayBinding or netTcpRelayBinding to punch through to the cloud.

I reckon this will be a very exciting area going forward…keep your eyes peeled.

Go and grab the bits and start playing… :)

BizTalk Latest Adapter List and Visual Studio Compatibilities

Mick Badran — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:18:30 GMT

A handy couple of articles that have been updated for Biztalk 2009, full article attached at the bottom.

Enjoy

BizTalk_Server_2009_Adapter_Datasheet.pdf

BizTalk 2009 Operations Guide Has hit

Mick Badran — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:00:22 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=46a77327-affb-4ca2-9451-67912babbb03

It’s the must have guide to setup a successful BizTalk based operating environment.

Enjoy

A new BizTalk MVP is Born – Thiago Almeida

Mick Badran — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:57:19 GMT

He lives in NZ…he loves Auckland and he successfully got married last year…

Ready to take on the world – I want to congratulate one of the hardest working BTS experts I know…

He puts in a tremendous effort for the local community and is always ready for new ideas.

Well done mate and a big congrats from this Aussie!!!

Thiago Almeida – BizTalk MVP!!!!!

BizTalk Best Practices Analyser V1.2 Released

Mick Badran — Tue, 19 May 2009 03:54:18 GMT

My good friend Chris Vidotto a once fearsome BTS warrior came up with the good oil on this.

The BPA tool now supports bts09, sql08 and win08 in one update, as well as all the previous environments.

The tool will go through and examine your environment in accordance to a predefined set of rules (shipped with BPA) and report back accordingly.

Grab it now… from HERE

Mick.

DLP-RFID1 x64 Drivers running on Windows 7 (well 2008 R2 Actually)

Mick Badran — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:25:01 GMT

Hi folks – from a previous post where I fudged a DLP-RFID1 x64 driver, I’ve now tracked down ‘proper’ 64 bit version of the DLP-RFID1 Reader.

Here it is here -

1. From this page http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm download the CDM 2.04.16.exe which does the trick.

2. Double click on the above EXE to install the drivers (the EXE will detect your OS is x64) – the driver is then installed on the machine, but not auto assigned to your RFID1 device.

3. From Device Manager, right click on the DLP RFID1 Reader and select ‘Update Driver’, select ‘Browse on My Machine’ and ‘Select from a List’ (near where you say ‘have disk’).

4. From the Manufacturer list select ‘FTDI’ and select the very top Driver on the RHS (USB Serial Converter)

5. Unplug and replug your RFID1 Device – and viola! all good.

6. Run this Test app RFID1Demo.exe to make sure all is good from http://dlpdesign.com/rfrdr/

NOTE: On my machine I still have an unknown Serial device in Device Manager, but all works none the less.

BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 now Released!!!

Mick Badran — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:06:12 GMT

Great news folks with the Adapter pack now released.

This is a WCF .NET based set of ‘adapters’ that can be used within BizTalk or in any .NET process – such as SharePoint.
(The visual studio extensions allows you to rapidly create a WCF based Service to host your adapters)

The Adapter pack has:
- SQL Adapter (faster, newer, improved… bionic adapter)
- Siebel
- SAP
- Oracle DB
- Oracle ES

Here’s the links that you’ll need…… – enjoy!

Item	Link
Product
WCF LOB Adapter SDK SP2(pre-req for BAP 2.0)	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147367
Adapter Pack 2.0 120 day Evaluation Version	120 day eval
SQL Adapter SKU Download(For BizTalk branch edition customers)	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147379
Documentation and Samples
MSDN Location of Adapter Pack 2.0 docs	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=149364
Download location for individual CHMs in Adapter Pack 2.0	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147355
Download location for Adapter Pack 2.0 Installation Guide	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147364
Download location for SQL Adapter Installation Guide and CHM	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=147377
Download location for all the samples for Adapter Pack 2.0	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=145144

BizTalk 24*7 Publishes blogs in a structured Index

Mick Badran — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:12:13 GMT

Down at BizTalk 24*7 Saravana Kumar has been working hard to organise a whole collection of BizTalk articles from us in Cyberspace

He's done a great job!

Check it out - http://blogdoc.biztalk247.com/
and yours truly is here - Mick Badran

Another BizTalk HotRod Magazine Published

Mick Badran — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:26:53 GMT

Some great articles around Business Rules, AS2, EDI, Pipeline Components and promoting properties…..

Download your copy now http://biztalkhotrod.com/Documents/BizTalk_HotRod_Issue6_Q2_2009.pdf

BizTalk WCF Custom Adapter – Developing WCF Custom Behaviours

Mick Badran — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:12:03 GMT

As you sink your teeth into the depths of BizTalk 2006 R2/2009 and realise the potential of integrating with the WCF Custom Adapter, a new world opens up.

Then…

Then at one point down the track you’ll want to tweak or customise what is being sent/received. For e.g. changing the shape of the XML transferred over a HTTP transports – maybe compression, maybe minus the explicit XML notation (i.e. takes 5KB to send over 30 chars)

So you’ll then move onto something called a WCF Custom Behaviour.

Two great whitepapers are

Part 1- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc952299.aspx
Part 2- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd379134.aspx

WCF Channel Mini Book - revived

Mick Badran — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:25:56 GMT

You want to know the ins and outs of WCF at a glance – then the mini-book is a winner.
(Just let this puppy fall out of your back pocket in the office and watch the guys instantly want to Sync up their Complete Series of Star Trek with you…)

Seriously – great guide, easy to flick through and welcome to another 8 million lines of code you thought you could live without :)

Thanks to the efforts of Cliff Simpkins and his team for their dedication on this.

6 Chapters + Code….are you man enough?

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=netfxsamples&DownloadId=4962

BizTalk 2009 - all the SQL Bits you need

Mick Badran — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:31:16 GMT

For me there always comes a time when installing BTS 09 or Clients to work on SQL 2008, that I need all the client 'bits' to talk to SQL2008

Also - the classic problem to solve when installing BizTalk 2009 using SQL 2008, "Where do I get Notification Services From???"

Look no further - here's a SQL SP3 goldmine :)

SQL GoldMine!!
Enjoy

BizTalk Adapter Pack V2.0 - x86 or x64 Versions supported

Mick Badran — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:52:58 GMT

Hi - today I came across a handy Matrix that describes the supported versions for the Biztalk Adapter Pack v2.0

Handy reference I reckon :)

---snip---

Compatibility Matrix Between 32 and 64-bit Versions of the Adapter, BizTalk Server, and Operating System

The following table presents a compatibility matrix between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system, adapter, and .

Oracle Database Adapter + BizTalk Server

SAP Adapter + BizTalk Server

Siebel Adapter + BizTalk Server

Oracle E-Business Adapter + BizTalk Server

SQL Adapter + BizTalk Server

Operating System

32-bit

64-bit

32-bit	64-bit
Yes	N/A
Yes	Yes

32-bit	64-bit
Yes	N/A
Yes	Yes

32-bit	64-bit
Yes	No
Yes	No

32-bit	64-bit
Yes	N/A
Yes	Yes

32-bit	64-bit
Yes	N/A
Yes	Yes

Legend

· Yes = Supported.

· No = Not supported.

· N/A = Not Applicable.

BizTalk Adapter Pack V2.0 Beta - Released!

Mick Badran — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:40:57 GMT

Hopefully you've been keeping an eye on this in recent times.

This is a Set of Adapters that MS have built on top of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK (a platform neutral .NET based Adapter framework).

This allows the Adapters to run within the .NET stack almost anywhere - Console apps, Custom WebServices, BizTalk, SSIS, SharePoint etc.

(Build once - run everywhere :-)

The public beta is available as a 120-day d/l from MS Connect.

What to expect with the Adapter Pack

(in addition to a free migration tool to go from the old adapters to the new - e.g. SQL)

Oracle EBS

· 64 bit support

· Synonyms

· Added performance counters

· Notification support

OracleDB

· 64 bit support

· Synonyms

· UDTs

· Notifications

· Polling stored procedures

· Performance counters

SQL Adapter
· 64 bit support and improved SQL

Adapter SDK

· Display complex binding properties

· Display metadata wsdl in web control

SAP data provider

· Support for more operators in Sap Queries

· SAP SSRS support in VS2008

Samples

· New Samples for SQL and Oracle eBiz Adapters

· Repackaged samples for BAP 1.0

BizTalk 2009 training in Beijing and below Zero temperatures

Mick Badran — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:02:41 GMT

What a week it has been folks - I left Sydney in 30C degrees with sun, sand and beaches.....I thought "How cold can it be?" (you never really get that appreciation till you hit the ground)>

Cold....very cold!!! Now I've been skiing many times, but this was just something else.

It caused Beijing to be blanketed in snow and very beautiful - What a fantastic place!!! Definitely a come back place - just nothing like what I expected.

The people so friendly, helpful and always with purpose in their eyes. The food is some of the freshest I've eaten and such healthy diets (steamed cabbage, mushrooms etc etc) - nothing like the 'Western Chinese Resturants' back home :)

On to the reason why I was there - Training

I had approx 50 students coming to hear my Chinese English (which I must say is much better than me listening to them speaking Mandarin) and we covered in-depth BizTalk 2009 agenda

We covered some great material looking into Governance and ESB 2.0 due to hit around the same time as BTS2009 (June-ish I believe, earlier I'm told)

We actually communicated quite well - I played many games and brought over a bunch of Aussie gifts for them (which consequently we found out were made in China!)

The usual areas of BizTalk were little used previous by students - SSO, Rule and BAM. For so little effort there's so much mileage in these guys.

Training Results
For the training the average mark I received was 8.5/10 across nearly 50 students, which for my first time in China I was very happy with. The most important thing for me though is not the marks, but what the students walk away having learnt!

Not all work Play Time
As luck would have it I had an extra day to play on my trip this time - so in negative degree temps I went to the Center of Beijing and put on my tourist hat and went to the Forbidden City (& surrounds).

Lastly I learnt many things from my students this week with

1. KFC is a 'top class' resturant in Beijing
2. Starbucks is a 'romantic' place (where couples go for dates)

If we were on Mythbusters right now....... compared to Sydney - these are Busted!

Adapters Supported By BizTalk 2006 R2

Mick Badran — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 10:15:08 GMT

A handy table that lists the versions as well - I've always needed something like this when doing proposals :-)

Adapter	Supported Editions
BizTalk Adapter Pack 1.0	----
SAP	SAP R/3 4.x, R/3 6.20 (Enterprise), and SAP ECC 6.0
PeopleSoft Enterprise	PeopleTools Versions 8.17.02, 8.43, 8.45, 8.46, 8.47, 8.48, and 9.0
JD Edwards OneWorld XE	8.10, and 8.11, and 8.12 with Tools Release 8.93, 8.94, 8.95 and 8.96
JD Edwards EnterpriseOne	8.10, and 8.11, and 8.12 with Tools Release 8.93, 8.94, 8.95 and 8.96
ODBC Adapter for Oracle Database	Oracle 8i (8.1.6.0), 9i (9.2.0.1), or 10g
Siebel eBusiness Applications	7.0, 7.5., 7.7., and 7.8.*
TIBCO Rendezvous	7.3, 7.5.4, 8.1.1
TIBCO Enterprise Message Service	4.3, 4.4.3, 5.0
Host Applications	IBM CICS TS for VSE/ESA V2R3 IBM CICS TS for z/OS V2.2, V2.3, V3.1 IBM IMS V8.1 with IMS Connect 2.1, 2.2 IBM OS/400 V5R2, OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS V5R4
IBM DB2	IBM DB2 V7 and V8 for z/OS IBM OS/400 V5R2, OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS V5R4 IBM DB2 UDB for Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris V7.2, V8.2, V9
Host Files	IBM DFM V1R4, V1R5, V1R6, V1R7 IBM OS/400 V5R2, OS/400 V5R3, i5/OS V5R4
WebSphere MQ (Client Based)	5.3 with Fix Pack 10 or higher and 6.0 with Fix Pack 1.1 or higher
WebSphere MQ	5.3 with Fix Pack 10 or higher and 6.0 with Fix Pack 1 or higher
MSMQ/MSMQT	2.0 and 3.0
Base EDI	Not applicable
FILE	Not applicable
FTP	Not applicable
HTTP	Not applicable
POP3	Not applicable
SMTP	Not applicable
SOAP	Not applicable
SQL	Not applicable
Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 2.0	WSE 2.0
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)	.NET Framework 3.0
Windows SharePoint Services	Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

BizTalk Adapter Pack V2.0/WCF LOB Adapter SDK Poster

Mick Badran — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:34:32 GMT

BizTalk Adapter V2.0/WCF LOB Adapter SDK Poster is available
Another of those things to stick up around the office... :)

Download From HERE

BizTalk 2006 R2 Exam available - 70-241

Mick Badran — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:00:33 GMT

Certification for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 is available, at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exams/70-241.aspx.
Apparently it came out last October.....anyone done it? let's go there!

I'll post back shortly and let you know how I went.... :)

Exam details...

Overview

This exam is intended for candidates developing business solutions using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2.

Audience Profile

A candidate for this exam will have experience developing, deploying, and testing Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 solutions across multiple real-world projects. The candidate should have a solid understanding of fundamental BizTalk concepts and familiarity with extended R2 capabilities.
The candidate should also have experience using the Microsoft .NET Framework, XML, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server, Web Services, and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) while developing BizTalk integration solutions.

When you pass Exam 70-241: TS: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions by Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s):MCTS: BizTalk Server 2006 R2
Exam 70-241: TS: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions by Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2: counts as credit toward the following certification(s):

Note This preparation guide is subject to change at any time without prior notice and at the sole discretion of Microsoft. Microsoft exams might include adaptive testing technology and simulation items. Microsoft does not identify the format in which exams are presented. Please use this preparation guide to prepare for the exam, regardless of its format.

Skills Being MeasuredThis exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below.The percentages indicate the relative weight of each major topic area on the exam.

Configuring a Messaging Architecture

Set up and manage ports.
This objective may include but is not limited to: add a map, ordered delivery, send ports, send port groups, starting vs. enlisting, receive ports, receive locations, subscriptions
Plan for and implement secure messaging.
This objective may include but is not limited to: certificates, signing, encryption, port authentication, encoding
Configure core adapters.
This objective may include but is not limited to: HTTP, SQL, POP3, SMTP, FTP, File
Configure content-based routing.
This objective may include but is not limited to: set a filter that uses a promoted property
Implement messaging patterns.
This objective may include but is not limited to: normalizing/canonical messages, splitter, large messages

Developing BizTalk Artifacts

Create schemas.
This objective may include but is not limited to: create a flat-file schema, create a property schema, enveloping, promoted/distinguished properties, MessageType, schema re-use (import/include)
Create maps.
This objective may include but is not limited to: functoid scripting, XSLT, pass a parameter to a map, multiple schemas, looping
Create pipelines.
This objective may include but is not limited to: disassembling, create a custom pipeline, create a pipeline component, XML validation
Develop orchestrations.
This objective may include but is not limited to: work with transactions and persistence, integrate with Microsoft .NET assemblies, parameters, shapes
Configure orchestration bindings.
This objective may include but is not limited to: direct, dynamic, self correlating
Configure correlation.
This objective may include but is not limited to: listener shape, parallel shape, correlation sets
Construct messages.
This objective may include but is not limited to: multi-part, untyped, construct messages in .NET, construct messages in orchestrations, context properties
Implement orchestration patterns.
This objective may include but is not limited to: convoys, aggregator, splitter

Debugging and Exception Handling

Handle exceptions in orchestrations.
This objective may include but is not limited to: compensation, scope shapes, throw exceptions, long-running transactions
Route errors.
This objective may include but is not limited to: port configuration, recoverable interchange
Debug orchestrations
Validate and test artifacts.
This objective may include but is not limited to: schemas, maps, pipelines

Integrating Web Services and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services

Configure a WCF adapter.
This objective may include but is not limited to: WS*, custom bindings
Expose orchestrations by using publishing wizards.
Consume services.
This objective may include but is not limited to: Web port type, add a Web/Service reference, consuming from orchestrations or pure messaging
Handle Web exceptions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: delivery notifications, catching SOAP exceptions

Implementing Extended Capabilities

Create and deploy Business Rules Engine (BRE) components.
This objective may include but is not limited to: work with the Business Rules Composer, deploy Business Rules policies, call from an orchestration, develop vocabularies
Develop EDI solutions.
This objective may include but is not limited to: trading partner setup, batching, acknowledgments, importing schemas
Configure AS2.
This objective may include but is not limited to: party configurations, pipelines, ports, certificates
Implement an RFID solution.
This objective may include but is not limited to: handle events, configure RFID devices, manage and configure event sink endpoints
Plan and implement Business Activity Monitoring (BAM).
This objective may include but is not limited to: BAM alerts, tracking profile editor, BAM workbook, activities, views, deployment

Deploying, Tracking, and Supporting a BizTalk Solution

Install and configure a multi-server BizTalk environment.
This objective may include but is not limited to: trusted vs. untrusted environments, Active Directory groups
Deploy BizTalk applications.
This objective may include but is not limited to: MSI deployment, versioning, resources, multiple staging environments such as development, test, and production
Partition a BizTalk solution.
This objective may include but is not limited to: hosts, host instances, handlers, groups, multiple message boxes
Export and import binding files
Configure tracking.
This objective may include but is not limited to: orchestrations, schemas, ports, pipelines, policies
Manage BizTalk solutions by using the Administration Console.
This objective may include but is not limited to: query for instances, terminate, resume
Audit BizTalk solutions by using Health and Activity Tracking (HAT).
This objective may include but is not limited to: querying, saving messages, creating custom fields, policy execution

Plan now for this year - Get the BizTalk 2009 Documentation (beta)

Mick Badran — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:38:33 GMT

As my good friend pointed out - Rahul Garg, the BizTalk 2009 documentation is available for public download.

Things such as:

runtime engine
mapping
Orchestrations
Adapter V1.0 Frameworks
BizTalk Applications
BizTalk Deployment of Applications

Have all generally (obvious fixes and improvements as needed) stayed the same.

Whereas, a quick summary of things I'd be looking for in the documentation:

Incorporating BizTalk Project builds into automated tested suites (TFS etc) - Biztalk 2009 projects can now be built through MSBUILD as a regular project in the solution.
Individual components such as Schemas and Maps can be formally unit tested (previously we wrote our own helper classes to make this stuff happen) - although, at the moment when testing a schema, I haven't been getting back details of the error...just a pass/fail.
BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 (Sql, Oracle x 2, SAP, Siebel...) - based on WCF channel stack...very nice! (can be standalone if needed)
WS Federated bindings
and the list goes on.....

Download a Searchable BizTalk Help File - very handy to have when planning your upgrades or migrations.

BizTalk 2009 Database Infrastructure Poster

Mick Badran — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:05:14 GMT

How to look cool at work.... Stick this poster by your desk, people will walk past and say "Hmmmm......" - guaranteed to reduce the amount of questions you get each day :-)
(Then you could start talking about the 'flux capacitor' and people will believe......)

The MS folks in Connected Systems Division (CSD) have done a superb job!!! Great comprehensive poster.

One thing to say about the poster - remember that the 'Tracking Host Instance' and the 'InProc Host Instance' are generally within the same Host Instance (it's good practice to separate these out)

Enjoy

BizTalk 2009 Poster

Complete List of BizTalk Errors and their EventIDs

Mick Badran — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:09:53 GMT

Hi folks,

Just in case you want to be able to get an excel spreadsheet listing all the possible errors or so, for monitoring and managing your production BizTalk environment (great for rules and monitoring from MOM for e.g.).

I came across this - http://blog.paul.somers.com/blog/_archives/2007/4/27/2909713.html

Written by fellow BizTalk MVP - thanks Paul!

Installing BizTalk RFID on a DC!!! Oh at last!!!

Mick Badran — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 03:18:43 GMT

“The product cannot be installed on this machine since it seems to be a domain controller”

What a start to 2009!!! – the above dreaded message when trying to (in this case) install BizTalk RFID on a DC.
For me – this happens quite a bit, as I’m building up a proof of concept, a demo, something to show and present with.

I always…always….forget to install BizTalk RFID bits before I promote to a DC (this technique can also cause security acct issues after the machine has been promoted to a DC – depends on how the authentication is setup etc)

NOTE: BTW – Installing BizTalk RFID on a DC is NOT SUPPORTED (had to put that one in their – keeps both sides happy)

For love or money I’ve bounced this question around for a while and come up empty, until…today!!! Niklas Engfelt a senior MS support engineer came to my rescue (he famously provided those thoughts from left field which were on the money! Big thank you Niklas)

He suggested grabbing Orca from the Platform SDK and having a browse through – I’d used HEX editors, disassembled files, attached process monitors during installs and looked through any config file with a fine tooth comb…but I’d never tried a MSI Editor.

The steps to Enlightenment: (changing the installer validation conditions)

Grab a download of Orca from here (I didn’t have the platform SDK currently installed and wasn’t about to install 1.2 GB worth either) and follow default install prompts.
If you haven’t done so already copy the RFID_x86 or RFID_x64 folders off the install media to a temp folder nearby (note: sometimes on Win2K8, the system prevents copied files from being accessed until an admin comes along and says ‘these are ok’ by going into File->Properties on each file. It’s weird I know, but I get it every now and then)
Locate the RFIDServices.msi under the RFID folder and you’re ready to go.
Launch Orca and open RFIDServices.msi to get something like:
Under the Tables Column select LaunchCondition and drop the 2nd Row as follows:
Drop the Row and Save the MSI file again.
Run Setup.exe as per normal.

Oh what a sweet day!

p.s. I’m sure you’d be able to employ this technique onto other MSI’s causing grief.

Mick

2008 coming to a close.....so Just how is BizTalk doing out there??? Gartner Reports

Mick Badran — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:09:26 GMT

I recently came across a Gartner report talking about all things to do with 'App Integration with Back End Systems' (in a nutshell... the report goes into detail)

The end result of several pages within this report is a graph (we like graphs :) showing Microsoft as a leader with a high ability to execute.

The Microsoft Technologies that fell under the microscope here are:

BizTalk Server
Windows Communication Foundation
SQL Service Broker
SQL Integration Services
Team Foundation Suite
Oslo + Azure

The graph looks as follows (snipped from the report):

Get the whole report HERE

BizTalk Server 2009 Beta now available!

Mick Badran — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:55:57 GMT

On the 8th of December 2008 - Microsoft announced general availability of BizTalk 2009 Beta.

Here's the details

Public beta of BizTalk Server 2009. Available at https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=218

1. This beta is community supported. The TechNet forums will be the primary place for support - http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1470&SiteID=17

2. General availability of BizTalk Server 2009 is still scheduled for the first-half of 2009 - we don't have a further update at this time.

Availability of BizTalk RFID Mobile for all new customers and current customers with SA
ESB Guidance 2.0 will also be available - http://msdn.microsoft.com/esb

For more information go to:

BizTalk Website: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/
BizTalk Server Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/
RFID Website: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/rfid.aspx
Steven Martin, Senior Director, Developer Platform Division blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/default.aspx

Key Areas

BizTalk Server 2009 Beta:

BizTalk Server 2009 is Microsoft's core enterprise connectivity solution, which releases on schedule of every two years, and continues to extend capabilities to core process management technologies both in and outside of the corporate boundaries.> >
Microsoft continues to listen to its BizTalk Server 2009 customers and will optimize feedback from the beta release for future BizTalk Server releases
RFID Mobile:

BizTalk RFID Mobile extends RFID to the mobility industry to demonstrate strong customer support with RFID intelligence on devices running on Win CE/Win Mobile enabling businesses to make decisions in real-time.

FAQ

Q: What did Microsoft announce today?

A: Today at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration (AADI) Summit, Microsoft Corp. announced the general availability of BizTalk RFID Mobile and BizTalk RFID Standards Pack, as well as the first public beta of BizTalk Server 2009 for download and an updated version of its architecture patterns and practices guidance, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Guidance 2.0. Microsoft has made these investments in the BizTalk Server product family to enable customers to more efficiently connect applications and to provide customers with a clearer, actionable view into their day-to-day operations.

Q. When will the products be available?

A: The BizTalk Server 2009 public beta and ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP are available now at http://www.codeplex.com/esb for community feedback. The final products are slated to ship in the first half of CY09. Evaluation versions of BizTalk RFID Mobile and the BizTalk RFID Standards Pack are available at http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/rfid-mobile.aspx and http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/rfid.aspx respectively.

Q: What new functionally will be delivered in BizTalk Server 2009?

A: BizTalk Server 2009 supports the latest Microsoft platform technologies, including Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. These platform updates enable greater scalability and reliability, and many advances in the latest developer tools.

This BizTalk Server release will also deliver additional customer-requested capabilities around enterprise connectivity, including:

New web service registry capabilities with support for UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) version 3.0
Enhanced service enablement of applications (through new and enhanced adapters for LOB applications, databases, and legacy/host systems)
Enhanced service enablement of "edge" devices through BizTalk RFID Mobile
Enhanced interoperability and connectivity support for industry protocols (like SWIFT, EDI, HL7 etc)
SOA patterns and best practices guidance to assist our customer's implementations

You can find more details about BizTalk Server 2009 at http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/roadmap.aspx

Q: What is next for BizTalk Server after BizTalk Server 2009?

A: The charter of BizTalk Server remains consistent - it allows the Microsoft application platform to connect and interoperate with other kinds of systems - LOB systems, legacy systems, smart devices (RFID), and B2B integration (SWIFT, EDI, etc.). This has been the focus of BizTalk Server since it was initially released back in 2000 and continues to be its charter going forward.

At this point it's too early to comment on the specific features that will be part of the BizTalk Server "7" release; however, you can find details about general priorities for BizTalk Server at http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/roadmap.aspx. We're in the middle of early planning on BizTalk Server "7" and will have more information to share about the specific scope of that release.

Q: What is BizTalk RFID Mobile?

A: BizTalk RFID Mobile is an RFID platform for Windows Mobile and CE. BizTalk RFID Mobile consists of a runtime engine, tools, and components to develop, deploy, and manage RFID solutions on mobile devices. In combination with BizTalk Server RFID, the mobility release provides a platform for real-time decision making. BizTalk RFID Mobile extends management and event processing to mobile devices and allows communication between the server and mobile platforms.

Q. What is the price and licensing for BizTalk RFID Mobile?

A: BizTalk RFID Mobile is available to all BizTalk Server 2006 R2 customers with Software Assurance as well as new BizTalk Server 2006 R2 customers who purchase licenses with Software Assurance. Our customers and partners told us that mobile RFID offerings are used in conjunction with a server product. As a result, we included BizTalk RFID Mobile with each edition of BizTalk so that our customers can achieve the benefits of RFID mobile solutions without incurring undue costs. For BizTalk Server customers with Software Assurance this is a great opportunity to adopt a new product that can deliver an economic value today. When BizTalk Server 2009 becomes generally available, the customers will be able to acquire BizTalk RFID Mobile without software assurance.

Q: Is BizTalk RFID Mobile dependant on BizTalk Server? Can't I just use a free solution that's available rather than use BizTalk Server?

A: BizTalk RFID Mobile and BizTalk Server are better together. Using BizTalk RFID Mobile and BizTalk Server in tandem you can capture data on a mobile device and then send the RFID data back to BizTalk Server for filtering and the application of business rules. There is no need to rewrite complex event filtering and business rule logic on the device as that functionality is already provided by BizTalk Server. We have taken a platform approach that will ensure that you can write your mobile applications once and run them on multiple devices in addition to local device management, store and forward, and SQL Sink capabilities, which reduce your TCO.

BizTalk RFID Mobile and BizTalk RFID Standards Pack are a standard part of all editions of BizTalk Server 2009. Given the intense interest in these offerings from our existing and new customers we decided to make them available now to BizTalk Server 2006 R2 customers with software assurance as well as new BizTalk Server 2006 R2 customers who purchase licenses with Software Assurance.

Rather than charge a per device fee, we included BizTalk RFID Mobile with all editions of BizTalk because we wanted to make it easier for customers to adopt mobile RFID solutions. RFID is a fundamental enabler for business processes and should not be viewed as an isolated silo, which is why we have included our fixed and mobile RFID offerings standard in all editions of BizTalk.

Q: What is ESB Guidance?

A: The Microsoft ESB Guidance (first released in November 2007) provides architectural guidance, patterns, practices, and a set of BizTalk Server R2 and .NET components to simplify the development of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform and to allow Microsoft customers to extend their own messaging and integration solutions. For additional information on the current 1.0 version please see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc487894.aspx.

We are announcing today the first public CTP release of the Microsoft ESB Guidance 2.0 for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009. It incorporates many new and expanded features include the following:

New samples:

SSO Configuration provider for Enterprise Library 4.0
Multiple Web Service Execution Sample
Exception Handling Service Sample

New ESB Web services:

Generic Itinerary Services ( no itinerary header required)
New core features:

Alignment with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 ( Beta )

ESB Configuration tool
Centralized itinerary store
Itinerary resolver components
Itinerary forwarder pipeline component
Itinerary selector pipeline component
Itinerary designer
Centralized configuration uses Enterprise Library 4.0 Configuration Block
Centralized caching uses Enterprise Library 4.0 Caching Block
Multiple service invocation using both messaging and orchestrations
Itinerary BAM tracking
Improved ESB Core engine and itinerary execution

Complete PDC08 List of Sessions and Powerpoint Decks

Mick Badran — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:48:17 GMT

UPDATED - thanks to Luciano Evaristo Guerche he's come through with the super trump of all of this - grab the slides/sessions with his easy technique -
http://weblogs.asp.net/guerchele/archive/2008/10/29/how-to-download-pdc-sessions-using-downthemall-firefox-addon.aspx

You get session titles and the whole works.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A big thanks to my good friend Thiago (runs the NZ CSD User Group) as he provided us on the OzTalk mailing list (list dedicated to BizTalk/CSD user group members) with a list of URLs to grab all the sessions + ppts.

Load these URLS into something like Free Download Manager and go surfing :)

Thanks Thiago! My ISP isn't happy with me at the moment.....over my limit....wonder why :-)

Keep an Eye on PDC 08 here

Mick Badran — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:11:12 GMT

Hi guys - there's a bunch of stuff going on right now at PDC 08 in LA.

What's hot:

(If you're on a PDA/Mobile - grab a the PDC from here - http://www.microsoftpdc.com/mobile/)

Here's a select set of recorded sessions up on Channel 9- http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/PDC08/
OSLO

Oslo” is the code name for our platform for model-driven applications. The goal of “Oslo” is to provide a 10x productivity gain by making model-driven applications mainstream with domain-specific models, languages and tools.

Public Oslo(BizTalk vNext next) Site - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/oslo/default.aspx
Oslo Downloads here - http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/oslo

WCF 'REST' Services

MSDN WCF REST-ful Starter Site - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/netframework/cc950529.aspx
I've got no idea what REST is -REST WIKI, A great article outlining REST
WCF REST Starter Kit(on CodePlex at the moment) - http://www.codeplex.com/aspnet/Wiki/View.aspx?title=WCF%20REST

So if you can't sleep then there's going to be some interesting reading coming up for us all. :-)

Enjoy.

BizTalk 2006 + R2 Performance and Optimisation Paper

Mick Badran — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:29:59 GMT

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"

Mick Badran — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:54:16 GMT

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

Mick Badran — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:31:22 GMT

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

Mick Badran — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:47:53 GMT

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)

Mick Badran — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:03:51 GMT

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

Mick Badran — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:11:33 GMT

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.

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

Recent Launch of AppFabric CAT blog...

TechEd 2010: Mastering Microsoft Integration Solutions

Running VMWare with VHDs – Getting rid of the STOP 0x7B BSOD Error…..

Microsoft Integration Story… When to use what Technologies Where

VirtualBox – Win 2008/Win 7 VHDs errors (BSOD) on boot up – new Core i7

BizTalk: Calling SAP RFC_READ_TABLE with the BizTalk Adapter Pack

BizTalk Best Practice Analyzer v1.2 – BTS 06,06R2 + 09

BizTalk 2010 –> Move over BTS2009 R2 Name changed!

BizTalk Virtual Training Material

Handy XML Tools – Schema Tools

BizTalk 2009: Ho Ho Ho.... BizTalk 2009 R2 TAP program announced

Welcome to the Microsoft BizTalk Server Connect website

Current Programs

Dublin finally gets a name "Windows Server AppFabric"

BizTalk: Restarting your BTS Hosts - Powershell Style

BizTalk 2009 – Configuring the SharePoint Adapter *Manually*

BizTalk 2009 – Configuring High Receiving Throughput

BizTalk Server 2009 Performance Optimization Guide

Brief Description

BizTalk 2006 R2 SP1 Beta hits

BizTalk Integration with SharePoint Whitepaper published

BizTalk + SharePoint: 1+1=3: Integration Best Practices

Brief Description

Improving WebService Security Guide on CodePlex

patterns & practices Improving Web Services Security - Now Released

Parts

Forewords

Chapters

Part I, Security Fundamentals for Web Services

Part II, Fundamentals of WCF Security

Part III - Intranet Application Scenarios

Part IV - Internet Application Scenarios

BizTalk Azure/Cloud Adapters are being born…

BizTalk Latest Adapter List and Visual Studio Compatibilities

BizTalk 2009 Operations Guide Has hit

A new BizTalk MVP is Born – Thiago Almeida

BizTalk Best Practices Analyser V1.2 Released

DLP-RFID1 x64 Drivers running on Windows 7 (well 2008 R2 Actually)

BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 now Released!!!

BizTalk 24*7 Publishes blogs in a structured Index

Another BizTalk HotRod Magazine Published

BizTalk WCF Custom Adapter – Developing WCF Custom Behaviours

WCF Channel Mini Book - revived

BizTalk 2009 - all the SQL Bits you need

BizTalk Adapter Pack V2.0 - x86 or x64 Versions supported

BizTalk Adapter Pack V2.0 Beta - Released!

BizTalk 2009 training in Beijing and below Zero temperatures

Adapters Supported By BizTalk 2006 R2

BizTalk Adapter Pack V2.0/WCF LOB Adapter SDK Poster

BizTalk 2006 R2 Exam available - 70-241

Plan now for this year - Get the BizTalk 2009 Documentation (beta)

BizTalk 2009 Database Infrastructure Poster

Complete List of BizTalk Errors and their EventIDs

Installing BizTalk RFID on a DC!!! Oh at last!!!

2008 coming to a close.....so Just how is BizTalk doing out there??? Gartner Reports

BizTalk Server 2009 Beta now available!

Complete PDC08 List of Sessions and Powerpoint Decks

Keep an Eye on PDC 08 here

BizTalk 2006 + R2 Performance and Optimisation Paper

RFID @ TechEd Wrap Up - "Breeze Event Tracker"

TOT 334 - Building RFID Solutions with BizTalk

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

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

RFID @ TechEd 2008 Update - Your/my Privacy concerns

BizTalk 2009 – Configuring the SharePoint Adapter Manually