In case you're not up on it, there's a great Sharepoint conference in the winds (well less than 6 wks away actually) - in Sydney at the Hilton

Here's the conference registration details if you're up to come.

I've been asked to present a couple of sessions at the conference which I can now share with you guys:

Session Title: Essentials 2: ASP.NET Web Parts, Master Pages, and Data Rendering
Audience: Developer

I'll be talking about Web Parts and Web Part structure, also how to create your own Master Pages to fully customise your sites (far cry easier than Sharepoint V2.0....but I won't go there......my therapist says I'm doing fine ).

As always the DataView webpart is essential and we can do some pretty phenominal things with the latest version included in WSS V3.0.

Session Title: Essentials 4: Templates, Definitions, and Solution Deployment
Audience: Developer

Have you been getting tied up in CAML, dreamt about it lately? nightmares.......well in V3.0 we want to move far away from it.

Deployment of Sharepoint customisations/sites and your fantastic new webparts generally involve a great number of files and assemblies not to mention App.Config files that may need modifications.

In WSS 3.0 - your next new...sorry best friend should be features!!! These are the best things since sliced bread.......they affect future creation of items as well as current sites, lists etc etc.

Come along and hear the full story........

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

Angus Logan has done (as always) a great job in organising this event and there are some serious Sharepoints heavyweights presenting at the conference as well as the key members from the Prod. Team coming from the US.

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

 Can't make the conference..........get some serious SharePoint Bootcamp Training that we are partnering with DDLS to provide public training all around Australia  

It's been going like wild fire with courses filling up faster than we can put them on.

One thing I can tell you about Sharepoint V3.0 is that it's a huge product. Come and explore it together......

Recharge the batteries and look out for that Rabbit :)

I'm back from Perth survived the 'Red-Eye'

Take care,

Mick.

Today in class (in the beautiful city of Perth :) I was busily going through a class demo in BTS06 R2(Feb CTP) and I created a Project having:

1. BizTalk project
2. Test App
3. BizTalk Wizard Published WCF Service hosted in IIS.

I then needed to give this out to the 12 students in class, so I (some something quick):

• zipped up the project + Test App
• exported the Bindings info (via a MSI)
• Seeing I had made a few changes in IIS to the virtual directory/web app created I decided to use IIS Mgr, select the Virtual Directory, then under 'Tasks....' select 'Export to Config file xml' option
  
  This essentially saves the metadata (that's normally placed in the IIS metabase) into the file - I envisaged the students would be able to 'Import XML IIS Config file' and be done with it..........
  
  nice thoughts......

After all was said and done, the error we got was something like "Receive location /SERVICES/WCFSERVICE/page.svc" could not be found.

All was inplace and worked on my machine.....we did discover what the problem was and moral to this story.....

"/SERVICES/WCFSERVICE/page.svc" is treated differently to

"/Services/wcfService/page.svc"    (this was the actual BTS receive location path settings for the 'basicHttpBinding'.

Solution:

- either change the BTS receive location to capitals....or....recreate the Virtual directory under IIS.....or......modify the virtual directory config.xml file.

Now we know......

What a week this is shaping to be - great bunch of keen students with a willingness to learn.

BizTalk 2006 R2 offers some great value in WCF, EDI, BAM, Adapters....the list goes on.

Just hope my voice will last the distance......got the Red-Eye back to Syd Wed night/Thurs morning :)

Together we have trained over 150 students nationally in Australia with the MOSS 2007 Bootcamps during Feb & March.

It has been a big team effort. Thought I’d share some of the feedback we are receiving.

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/sezai/archive/2007/03/23/moss-2007-boot-camp-in-perth-western-australia.aspx

Thanks for the accolades Sezai!

*** updated ***

p.s. I just noticed Dustin's comment on Sezai's blog entry - I've had no such request to remove the name on their apparent exclusive monopoly use of the word 'bootcamp' (for years) - happy to talk. But I dont know how you can claim that word when so many industry groups use 'bootcamp' for many things - even Marriage Counsellors use it!

For the record: Breeze Training has been as heavily involved with Sharepoint as we are today right from the inception of the product with SPS V1 (being on TAP+Beta programs) working with Microsoft US + UK creating and deliverying training around Europe.

End result - we work very hard to make sure that you the student, get's the most informed and best possible time spent together. (as everyone's time is precious and we're not in the business of wasting it)

Eric (MS) has been working hard in providing us (loving your work Eric!) with updated BizTalk documentation.
The folks are doing a great job over all of this. This is a massive PDF - a single one which encompasses a great deal of things within it.

Here's the email I got earlier.

------
Hello,
We have provided a new, updated Monster PDF of the BizTalk Server 2006 documentation set.  It is also available off of a link on the BizTalk Server 2006 Developer Center at http://msdn.microsoft.com/biztalk.  Highlights include:

·         The PDF is in a self-extracting zip file that is approximately 57megs.
·         The PDF tips the scales at  117 megabytes and includes almost 20,000 pages.
·         Links are rendered in blue with underlines but do not work. This may be addressed in a future enhancement.
·         Searching may be slow due to the size of the document.
·         Feedback, banners, and other content items have been removed to improve the PDF experience.

If you have any comments including ideas for PDF subset collections or for other content, please send them along.  
Thanks,
Eric

Any day now.....it'll be making it's way to the download area and then refreshed by the web front end servers and then.....viola!!! It will appear as a download.

Some great improvements around EDI (6000+ schemas out of the box)
- WCF + WCF adapters.
- there's a new LOB Adapter SDK that allows us to develop Adapters WITHOUT the need for BizTalk. So your one adapter has legs in many different apps.
- lots more.....

Stay tuned......there's some great WCF channel examples being called by BizTalk in the pipelines.

Should see it under http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/biztalk/2006/default.mspx I guess sometime in the *very* near future.

We're supporting some clients through the R2 TAP program which is always an adventure :)

I ran across this great article if you're looking embark on customising your Sharepoint 2007 menus...from Site Settings through to drop down Actions menus, then here is a great MSDN article to start.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms473643.aspx

--- snip ---

How to: Add Actions to the User Interface 

Using Features makes it easy to add actions to menus of the user interface in Windows SharePoint Services. This example shows how to add actions to various menus through a Feature and how to activate it within the deployment.

Location and Group ID

To define a custom action for a particular menu, you must identify the menu by setting the location to the appropriate Windows SharePoint Services namespace, and by using the ID that Windows SharePoint Services uses to identify the specific location.

For example, to add a custom action to the Site Settings page, set the Location attribute of the CustomAction element to Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings.and specify a particular area within the page through the GroupId attribute.

The following table shows Location and GroupId values that are possible.

Area	Location	GroupId
Display form toolbar	DisplayFormToolbar	n/a
Edit form toolbar	EditFormToolbar	n/a
New form toolbar	NewFormToolbar	n/a
List view toolbar	ViewToolbar	n/a
Edit control block menu (per item)	EditControlBlock	n/a
New menu for list and document library view toolbars	Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu	NewMenu
Actions menu for list and document library view toolbars	Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu	ActionsMenu
Settings menu for list and document library view toolbars	Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu	SettingsMenu
Upload documents menu for document libraries	Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu	UploadMenu
Site Actions menu	Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu	SiteActions
Site Settings Site Collection Administration links	Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings	SiteCollectionAdmin
Site Settings Site Administration links	Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings	SiteAdministration
Site Settings Galleries Links	Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings	Galleries
Site Settings Look and Feel links	Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings	Customization
Site Settings Users and Permissions links	Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings	UsersAndPermissions
Site Actions menu for surveys	Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu

Different actions may require using different CustomAction attributes to identify the menu in which to place a custom menu item. But you may also need to specify other parameters for the action, for example, to specify a version, user permissions required to perform the action, or placement in relation to existing actions in the menu. The custom actions of the following example show a variety of attributes.

URL Tokens

Windows SharePoint Services supports the following tokens with which to start a relative URL:

~site - Web site (SPWeb) relative link.

~sitecollection - site collection (SPSite) relative link.

In addition, you can use the following tokens within a URL:

{ItemId} - Integer ID that represents the item within a list.

{ItemUrl} - URL of the item being acted upon. Only work for documents in libraries. [Not functional in Beta 2]

{ListId} - GUID that represents the list.

{SiteUrl} - URL of the Web site (SPWeb).

{RecurrenceId} - Recurrence index.

Procedures

To add actions to the user interface in a site collection

1. Create a UserInterfaceLightUp folder within the setup directory at the following location: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES.

2. Create a Feature.xml file in the new UserInterfaceLightUp folder to provide the manifest for the feature, such as the following.

   Copy Code

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
   <Feature Id="GUID" 
       Title="Light Up"
       Description="This example shows how you can light up various areas inside Windows SharePoint Services."
       Version="1.0.0.0"
       Scope="Site"
       xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
     <ElementManifests>
       <ElementManifest Location="Lightup.xml" />
     </ElementManifests>
   </Feature>

3. To replace the GUID placeholder in the previous Id attribute, generate a GUID by running guidgen.exe located in the Local_Drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools directory.

4. Create a Lightup.xml file to define elements for the various actions included within the feature. For the sake of example, the URL for each action points to an .aspx file and passes it a value that identifies the source of the request, as follows:

   Copy Code

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
   <Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
   <!-- Document Library Toolbar New Menu Dropdown -->
     <CustomAction Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.DocLibNewToolbar"
       RegistrationType="List"
       RegistrationId="101"
       GroupId="NewMenu"
       Rights="ManagePermissions"
       Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
       Sequence="1000"
       Title="MY DOCLIB NEW MENU TOOLBAR BUTTON">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?NewMenu"/>
     </CustomAction>
   <!-- Document Library Toolbar Upload Menu Dropdown -->
     <CustomAction Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.DocLibUploadToolbar"
       RegistrationType="List"
       RegistrationId="101"
       GroupId="UploadMenu"
       Rights="ManagePermissions"
       Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
       Sequence="1000"
       Title="MY DOCLIB UPLOAD MENU TOOLBAR BUTTON">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?UploadMenu"/>
     </CustomAction>
   <!-- Document Library Toolbar Actions Menu Dropdown -->
     <CustomAction Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.DocLibActionsToolbar"
       RegistrationType="List"
       RegistrationId="101"
       GroupId="ActionsMenu"
       Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
       Sequence="1000"
       Title="MY DOCLIB ACTIONS MENU TOOLBAR BUTTON">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?ActionsMenu"/>
   </CustomAction>
   <!-- Document Library Toolbar Settings Menu Dropdown -->
     <CustomAction Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.DocLibSettingsToolbar"
       RegistrationType="List"
       RegistrationId="101"
       GroupId="SettingsMenu"
       Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
       Sequence="1000"
       Title="MY DOCLIB SETTINGS MENU TOOLBAR BUTTON">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?SettingsMenu"/>
     </CustomAction>
   <!-- Site Actions Dropdown -->
     <CustomAction Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.SiteActionsToolbar"
       GroupId="SiteActions"
       Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.StandardMenu"
       Sequence="1000"
       Title="MY SITE ACTIONS BUTTON">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?SiteActions"/>
     </CustomAction>
   <!-- Per Item Dropdown (ECB)-->
     <CustomAction 
       Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.ECBItemToolbar"
       RegistrationType="List"
       RegistrationId="101"
       Type="ECBItem" 
       Location="EditControlBlock"
       Sequence="106"
       Title="MY ECB ITEM">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?ECBItem"/>
     </CustomAction>
   <!-- Display Form Toolbar -->
     <CustomAction 
       Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.DisplayFormToolbar"
       RegistrationType="List"
       RegistrationId="101"
       Location="DisplayFormToolbar"
       Sequence="106"
       Title="MY DISPLAY FORM TOOLBAR">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?DisplayFormToolbar"/>
     </CustomAction>
   <!-- Edit Form Toolbar -->
     <CustomAction 
       Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.EditFormToolbar"
       RegistrationType="List"
       RegistrationId="101"
       Location="EditFormToolbar"
       Sequence="106"
       Title="MY EDIT FORM TOOLBAR">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?EditFormToolbar"/>
     </CustomAction>
   <!-- Site Settings -->
     <CustomAction 
       Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.SiteSettings"
       GroupId="Customization"
       Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.SiteSettings"
       Sequence="106"
       Title="MY SITE SETTINGS LINK">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?Customization"/>
     </CustomAction>
   <!-- Content Type Settings -->
     <CustomAction 
       Id="UserInterfaceLightUp.ContentTypeSettings"
       GroupId="General"
       Location="Microsoft.SharePoint.ContentTypeSettings"
       Sequence="106"
       Title="MY CONTENT TYPE SETTINGS LINK">
       <UrlAction Url="/_layouts/LightupHello.aspx?General"/>
     </CustomAction>
   </Elements>

   Other common GroupId values that can be used include ViewToolbar, ViewSelectorMenu, and PersonalActions (Welcome menu)

5. Add a LightupHello.aspx file such as the following in the \TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS directory to serve as target for the links created in the previous step.

   Copy Code

   <%@ Page Language="C#"  Inherits="System.Web.UI.Page"%>
   <%
   string clientQuery = Page.ClientQueryString;
   if (clientQuery == "NewMenu")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the new document menu.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery == "UploadMenu")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the upload menu.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery == "ActionsMenu")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the actions menu.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery == "SettingsMenu")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the settings menu.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery == "SiteActions")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the Site Actions menu.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery == "ECBItem")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the document's context menu.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery == "DisplayFormToolbar")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the display item properties form.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery == "EditFormToolbar")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the edit item properties form.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery == "Customization")
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the Site Settings menu.");
   }
   else if (clientQuery.StartsWith("General"))
   {
       Response.Write("You came from the Content Type Settings menu.");
   }
   %>

6. At a command prompt, type the following commands to install the Feature in the deployment, activate the Feature on a specified subsite, and then reset Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) so that the changes can take effect.

   Copy Code

      a. stsadm -o installfeature -filename UserInterfaceLightUp\feature.xml
      b. stsadm -o activatefeature -filename UserInterfaceLightUp\feature.xml -url http://Server/Site/Subsite
      c. iisreset

7. To see the various custom actions that you have added, navigate to the following locations from the home page of a Web site in the site collection:

   1. Click Site Actions to see the new action on the Site Actions menu.

   2. Click Site Settings on the Site Actions menu to see a new action in the Look and Feel section of the Site Settings page.

   3. Navigate to a document library and open each menu on the toolbar to see a new action on each menu.

   4. In a document library that contains items, click the down arrow for an item to see the new action on the edit control block menu.

   5. On the edit control block menu for an item, click View Properties and Edit Properties to see new actions on the Display form and Edit form toolbars.

Walkthroughs and webcast demonstrations on how the new Search works.

Enjoy

SharePoint Server 2007 Presentations: Enterprise Search Deep Dives

yeah baby :)
I wrote before Christmas how these were coming out....grab them here.....


http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/wssapps/templates/default.mspx
--- snip ---
Application Templates Available for Download
All forty application templates are available in English. The twenty server admin templates are also available in ten additional languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese (BR), Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Chinese (simplified), and Chinese (traditional).

Package Downloads

In addition to the following individual download links, you can get the Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 in these three convenient packages. Registration is required for package downloads.

Site Admin Templates: Get all 20 Site Admin templates as a single package download. Available in English only.

Server Admin Templates: Get all 20 Server Admin templates as a single package download. Multiple languages available.

All 40 Application Templates : Get all 40 Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as a single package download. Package only includes English versions.

Site Admin Templates

Board of Directors

Business Performance Reporting

Case Management for Government Agencies

Classroom Management

Clinical Trial Initiation and Management

Competitive Analysis Site

Discussion Database

Disputed Invoice Management

Employee Activities Site

Employee Self-Service Benefits

Employee Training Scheduling and Materials

Equity Research

Integrated Marketing Campaign Tracking

Manufacturing Process Management

New Store Opening

Product and Marketing Requirements Planning

Request for Proposal

Sports League

Team Work Site

Timecard Management

Server Admin Templates

Absence Request and Vacation Schedule Management

Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects

Bug Database

Call Center

Change Request Management

Compliance Process Support Site

Contacts Management

Document Library and Review

Event Planning

Expense Reimbursement and Approval

Help Desk

Inventory Tracking

IT Team Workspace

Job Requisition and Interview Management

Knowledge Base

Lending Library

Physical Asset Tracking and Management

Project Tracking Workspace

Room and Equipment Reservations

Sales Lead Pipeline

Hey folks - just when you wondering what to do MOSS and when should you jump on board and get cracking....

Microsoft has this great event in Sydney.

Angus Logan is chief organiser and doing a great job....here's a snippet from his blog

--------------------snip-----------------

The Conference

This exclusive Microsoft event is the third and final of three global SharePoint Conferences, following Seattle and Berlin. This world-class, two-day conference, to be held at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney from May 15-16, will showcase the latest innovations, features and functionality for the 2007 SharePoint products and technologies.

The conference will provide an unprecedented opportunity for customers and partners in the Asia Pacific region to meet and network with Microsoft Office System product development teams, fellow IT professionals and architects, and partners.

With only 500 places available, this event is not to be missed!

Expert Presenters

SharePoint experts from the Asia Pacific region and members of the SharePoint product group such as Derek Burney (General Manager), Mike Fitzmaurice and Joel Oleson (both Senior Technical Product Managers), will provide attendees with technical information and demos for the latest release of SharePoint products and technologies: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and Office SharePoint Designer 2007.

And for the first time in Australia, information on Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server 2007 will be presented.

Brand New Deep Dive Content

Multiple tracks focused on specific solution technologies including Collaboration, Enterprise Search and Portals, Business Intelligence and Enterprise Content Management will be offered. Plus, there will be additional opportunities for attendees to learn about, and get hands on experience with, SharePoint products and technologies.

Technical “how to” breakout sessions covering subjects such as architecture, security, integration, deployment, migration, management and scalability, will help attendees develop, customise, integrate and build powerful, enterprise-ready solutions with SharePoint products and technologies.

** UPDATE - Plug about the Cabana Sessions **

Instead of just the normal "break out" sessions we will be running cabana sessions during the lunch break. These will typically be run by Microsoft partners about solutions or problems they have overcome - hopefully really cool stuff in good 30 minute sessions.

Event Details

Dates: 15-16 May 2007
Venue: Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia
Cost: $549.00 for two days (includes registration, Welcome Night, conference sessions, and evening entertainment event)

Save the Date

Registrations for this conference will open soon (look for an announcement on this blog), and seats will be strictly limited. Block off May 15-16 on your calendar right now, so you won’t miss out!

What about Partner Sponsorship?

** UPDATE FROM Nick Mayhew ***

"If you are an Australian Gold/Cert partner then you can contact your account manager. If you are a partner HQ'd outside Australia, and interested in hearing about sponsorship packages, then you should contact one of my team, Tina Thalmeier. Tina dot Thalmeier AT the usual microsoft.com"

Well I'm making my way back from the MVP Summit and we got to spend nearly 2 days bending the ears of the BizTalk product team - the correct term now is The Connected Services Division (CSD) which includes todays technologies of: BizTalk, WF, WCF, .NET Framework and Orcas - so all these things are just 'going' to work going forward.

Here's the things that I'm allowed to talk about....

MVP Summit Day 1 - Registration

• for the previous 4 days I had been skiing up and around Whistler in some fantastic snow with my cousin. What an experience!!! First time there.
• Seattle, cold and raining but it's fantastic to be here as there's a buzz in the air. A thought did cross my mind of "How are we going to have a conversation at this Summit if there are more than 1 MVP in the room?" - if you've ever been 'lucky' enough to have 3 or more MVPs in a room....I'm sure you'd be able to finish all your lunch before you could get a word in edgeways.
• Met up with some great fellow BizTalk MVPs (Alan Smith and Charles Young). Charles and I worked together when I was back in the UK and it's great to hear that he's stalking his 12 yr old daughter boyfriend and the deeply troubled when the words "I love you" came out during a phone call he was listening in on. :) - looks like I've got all that ahead of me :)
• Caught up with MVP Borty and the crew and we went to our APAC regional dinner that evening.
• One of the highlights of dinner was all the Korean MVPs did a Taekwondo demonstration (I'm sure it's on YouTube by now) of breaking boards. There was also some karaoke going on in Japanese (I think) - this one guy was great. It was sort of a 'Red Faces' night. We then crashed the Windows Mobile MVP Party at Gamesworks.....get's fuzzy from there

MVP Summit Day 2 - KeyNote + Joint Sessions

• what an experience! Bill Gates gives a keynote on MS and all things, then opens up the keynote to 1 hour of Q&A to all the MVPs.
• Bill copped a couple of Salvos from MVPs (who I reckon wouldnt be MVPs next year :) but in true Bill style put his poker face on and smiled and answered the questions. Not flustered at all.
• The group all called him "Bill", some called him "Mr Gates" and the Japanese MVPs called him "Mr. Bill" during all the Q&A.
• He fielded questions like "What's your favourite product?", "What hasnt performed...". Something that sticks out in my mind is when a guy came to the microphone and thanked Bill for enabling him to have a career in computers so he could provide for his family (I'm thinking where's the question..). He then says "while cleaning out the garage he came across a computer manual that his dad had when he was 8" - the manual as it turned out was the very first manual for the pre-cursor to MSDos that Bill's then company had created. You could even get Bill on a support number in there! (I'm thinking that's gotta be worth a fair bit) The MVP then ASKED BILL TO SIGN his book!!!! Bill couldnt refuse and $$ just turned into $$$$$ for the book - very funny.
• For the next session I attended the Developer Division Roadmap delivered by the Program Group VP - S Somasegar (Soma). Soma spoke about Orcas, .NET 3.5 and additional plans for TFS capturing more business data/information within the process.
  Soma then talked about WPF/e and the Friction free deployment capabilities. Brian Goldfarb then jumped up and did a great demo on WPF/e with inking and working with rich content within WPF all delivered down via the browser. Some very cool things in the future are instore. One thing I will say - regardless of how it's delivered and what you do with it.....you still need good original content in the first place. Videos, Images etc. They can be manipulated easily, but originally it needs to be there.
  All in all a great session filling in alot of the medium-long term visions.
• I then caught a session on LINQ with Anders Hejlsberg. Anders then showed us some of the up and coming XML features with C# and VB.NET 9.0 - autogenerating LINQ code from XML! All very nice.
• We all then went to the Museum of Flight that night where we got to play in flight simulators and go for a walk back in time. I spent some time getting to know a fellow BTS MVP Alan Smith - he's based in the UK and does a fair bit of travel spreading the news in the land of BizTalk.

MVP Summit Day 3 - Deep Dive Sessions around BizTalk and Connected Systems

• For this day we were off the Microsoft Campus and for the most part I was based in the Adams room within building 43. We setup camp there for the day.
• The first session was delivered by Sonu Arora and Jesus Rodriguez talking about the new LOB Adapter SDK based of WCF Services. Essentially creating 'adapters' had been an exercise repeated in multiple application environments.....but!! not anymore. The adapter creation process has been pushed down into the .NET Framework and 'adapters' are available for all applications......this means.....using the LOB Adapter SDK you dont even need BizTalk to use it!!! Sonu demonstrated some great demos and one of the major differences I picked up here from a traditional WCF Service is that these new adapters have the capability to perform dynamic schema lookups. Essentially have one WCF Service that is able to return multiple contracts (many hundreds in some cases). A very good session.
• The next session was delivered by Gruia Pitigoi-Aron. He focused on extending this new adapter framework with a couple of Custom WCF Channels that BizTalk communicates to throughthe WCF Custom Adapter in R2. By controlling the WCF Channel (c.f. to a pipeline where we have an entry...then an exit) we are able to loop, correlate and send out multiple request/responses within one channel. All while BTS is calling an Adapter. I'll have to start looking into this 'out in the wild' to get the true gist of what's going on. It's a step closer for BTS to play harmoniously with WCF. One thing I do remember from the way WCF Channels are called through the custom WCF Adapter is that BTS will call the Async Channel methods of BeginRequest, EndRequest + the sync of ProcessRequest.
• The next session was given by Marty Wasznicky and advanced DR for BizTalk. He had a great setup on his laptop, 5 servers, 2 biztalk, 2 sql and an SSO. Through the demo he stopped and started various services to simulate the failing of various components within BizTalk.  At this point in the game, SQL 2005 database mirroring is not supported as this doesnt play nicely with distributed MSDTC transactions native to BTS. Some good indepth stuff on messageboxdb, how instances are locked by a MessageAgent running in various instances.
• Lunch :)
• We then had a session from Tapas Nayak demonstrating a real life implementation of the SAP Adapter based on the LOB Adapter SDK. The main take away from this was that there was over 300 different contracts that the SAP adapter could return for consumption from the client. Dynamic contract lookups and caching services came to be the focus for better flexibility and performance. Very cool adapter framework.
• Then Pravin Indurkar gave us an insight into the next Gen WF and WCF which will be part of .NET 3.5. The integration between these two technologies is made seemless now. There is a WorkflowHostService and things just get easier from there. WorkflowInstanceID is now part of the native WCF Operation Context that gets passed between the two worlds.....makes life very easy. This allows for 'conversations' to be had between WCF Services and WF workflows. Also long running WFs can find a return path back out of the service even if the channel/connection is closed. If I was a betting man I'd be saying that alot of the underlying functionality here, has been modelled off BizTalk
• Next my good friend was Paul Andrew was up, a MS product manager, spoke about WF vs BTS. It's always and either/or type message, never a 'you know what, these two technologies can live in harmony!'
• Next session was delivered by Brad Paris and Tiho Tarnavski - "WCF and WF BAM interceptor extensions in R2". The essence behind the new interceptors is that they piggyback off the WF tracking infrastructure. Which is similar to BTS and the TDDS Service controlling the movement and population of BAM information from within BizTalk. Once again to use these interceptors we dont need BizTalk. When creating a BAM EventStream using the BAM Client APIs, we usually pass a connect string to the MessageBoxDB. With these new interceptors we pass a connect string to the BAM Primary Import Database. The streams that WCF and WF use are DirectStreams and not buffered Event Streams. At this point there is no support from the TPE (or equivalent tool) so we have to hand craft a large XML file to get the Interceptor configured. I look at it and think....I reckon I'll just use the BAM APIs directly......but I suppose that's not the point :)
• When I was preparing RFID bits for the BPM Conference last year in October I got well timed help from Anush Kumar. I met Anush for the first time face to face - genuinly a great guy! He gave a great presentation on RFID and the new Microsoft RFID Services framework. He also told me that fish in Malaysia may be RFID tagged!!
• That evening I went to the MS Company Store and cash in some chips - very nice. Then we had dinner with the product team which was great to kick some tyres with the crew. Great to see all you guys.