With BizTalk 2006 R2 rounding the corner into the home leg, the folks in the CSD (Connected Systems Division - Biztalk, .NET, WCF, WF) have been very busy!! :)

We're looking down the telescope at BizTalk 'vNext'.

It's current name is 'BizTalk Internet Services' which offers a bunch of services for the 'cloud' (aka internet based wcf services). My personal favourite is the relay service.

Alot of functionality that previously existed in BizTalk has been pushed down into the .NET framework 3.x/4.x (WCF Services etc.)....allowing the BizTalk team to focus on some really cool new BizTalk features.

Here's an email I got earlier from Marjan from MS.

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As you may have heard, for the past year the Connected Systems Division has been incubating a set of building-block services that will shape the next generation of application development.  On Tuesday the 24^th, we will open the incubation of BizTalk Services to the public by inviting developers from all over the world to use the services and provide feedback. 

BizTalk Services will be available via labs.biztalk.net.  (UPDATE: OPENS 24th Tues - US TIME)

What are BizTalk Services?

These services, which have been in internal incubation for the past year, represent hosted versions of some technologies developed in the Connected Systems Division.  Included in this set of services are:

o Message routing – think of this as firewall friendly B2B messaging (Available now)

o Simple publish/subscribe event brokering – Pub/Sub at Internet scale (Coming soon)

o Simple federated identity and access control  (Available now)

o Workflow processes – Simple templates for cross-organization integration and the orchestration of business processes interacting with multiple services (Coming soon)

(Just had to stick 'The cloud' image in :)

Through the MOSS/WSS v3.0 TAP program and the early betas, there was a whole bunch of 'debug' type messages being logged.

I've always loved the MOSS/WSS V3.0 log files - under ...\12\Logs\.... as there's some very funny error messages. Here's such one

04/23/2007 04:50:51.09 w3wp.exe (0x152C) 0x1650 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1n High An SPRequest object was not disposed before the end of this thread. To avoid wasting system resources, dispose of this object or its parent (such as an SPSite or SPWeb) as soon as you are done using it. This object will now be disposed. Allocation Id: {65D8E0A2-C330-418A-8871-C597A7C612C9} To determine where this object was allocated, create a registry key at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\HeapSettings. Then create a new DWORD named SPRequestStackTrace with the value 1 under this key.

I recently got an email to inform me I was able to participate in the CSD Technology Advisors program.........

Basically I can sit down and give MS feedback on what works, what doesnt - "the button should be moved over 2cms".....
Specifically about BizTalk, WCF, WF, .NET 3.x, 4.x oh and did I mention BizTalk??

I've had an interesting discussion this week with some of my fellow BizTalk MVPs and also a few MS folks.

Here's the crux of my beef.
1. Stop a Send Port or Orchestration - it is still Enlisted but in the Admin Console it's stopped. (at this stage - you're stopped and my 'stopped' are the same)
2. Shoot a message into BizTalk destined for the stopped Send Port or grab one of the queued up Suspended-Resumable messages and say "Resume" (mind you, you do have other options here of Resume in Debug Mode etc)
3. Guess what happens?? BizTalk Queues the message up as it knows the corresponding Send Port is stopped???? NO!!!!! BizTalk will send the message through the STOPPED send port - (bang head against wall)
4. This 'feature' IS useful for when BizTalk receives a flood of msgs and an issue arises downstream (backend system or so) and you can 'trickle feed' A msg to the back end system.
5. I think this functionality should be tied into some sort of 'Resume for Debug' type wording. Something to indicate that it's an 'unusual' circumstance.
6. The terminology within the Admin Console is what I have an issue with. The port is Stopped, an NT Service is STOPPED, an application is 'stopped' - so these terms of stopped differ in the biztalk world.
7. Outcome of the week's discussion: MS are looking into changing the terminology within the Admin console.

Examining and Building an R2 Adapter using the New R2 Adapter Framework 

Wednesday, 2nd May 2007
6:00 PM Food and Drinks, 6:30 PM Kick Off
1 Epping Road, Microsoft
North Ryde, Sydney

Hi all on our Post Anzac Day Wednesday meeting and I hope two-up was (will be) kind to you. This month we’re at Microsoft North Ryde with a presentation on Adapters, Adapters and more Adapters. The new BizTalk Adapter Framework is called The Line Of Business Adapter Framework SDK (LOB Adapter SDK between friends) and is based on Windows Communication Foundation(WCF). As you can imagine, WCF adds a ton of functionality around the way we do messaging.

With BizTalk 2006 R2 comes many new features and improvements we examine R2 .NET Adapters (WCF Based) and also look at new WCF and WF BizTalk BAM Interceptors, allowing you to post to BAM directly from WCF or WF.

I've provided a calendar appointment for your calendars so join me.

Presenter:

Mick Badran, BizTalk MVP who specialises in Microsoft Technologies as a Solutions Architect/Developer. With over 15 years consulting experience and 12 years as a Microsoft Certified Trainer provides in depth real world knowledge.

Session Details

So what is the story with Integration and Adapters in BizTalk 2006 R2? This session covers the roadmap going forward in building BizTalk .NET Adapters (those based on WCF) in the new Framework. It will discuss all the benefits of the new framework and explain options on where to host these adapters.

We will also examine the relationship between BizTalk and the WCF based adapters with respect to Message Contexts, and multipart messages.

The Session details are as follows:

1.     R2 WCF Adapters Explained – including the new BAM Interceptors for WCF and WF

2.     LOB Adapter SDK framework explained

3.     Building a new Custom Adapter using the LOB Adapter SDK

As always love to hear from you and what's been getting you excited at work.

Who Should Attend?

If you're looking to get additional business related information out of your Biztalk processes then this session is for you.
This session is technically focused for Biztalk developers and System Architects.

Please be sure that you RSVP so we know how many to expect. Reply with a yea or ney to mickb@NOSPAMbreezetraining.com.au

Looking forward to seeing you there at Microsoft Premises - North Ryde
Mick and Mark 
Ph: 0404 842 833 (Mick's mobile)
SydBiz.Org

Earlier this week I received an email from Anil Sanagavarapu who firstly is crazy about Cricket and the World Cup.

He mentioned that his company Iris Software is embarking on a cool RFID Services project.....

So we got chatting and I've just seen what they're doing around RFID using Microsoft RFID Services, was fantastic.

Specifically their solution implements:

1. Sync/Async reading of Tags
2. Enrichment of Tag data within MS RFID Services Environment, supplimenting Tag Info with data coming from external datasources in a high performance environment.
3. Optional emails of various tag events as the items go about their merry way.

The guys are looking to bring out some Video Content around their solution and project based on their experiences. They will provide a Walk through of Microsoft RFID Services, how to develop and implement solutions.

Looking fwd to that - great work guys!

Cheers,

Mick.

With over 6000+ EDI schemas and a brand new home grown EDI engine that WORKS!!!! (like BTS2000/2002 days)

Here's a great article that talks about the support for various schemas from the BizTalk Team.
http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalkb2b/archive/2006/10/14/edi-support-in-biztalk-server-2006-r2.aspx

---snip ---

EDI support in BizTalk Server (BTS) 2006 R2

Hello all:

BTS2006 R2 provides for design and run time support for six encoding standards and includes over 8000 ‘standard’ XSD schemas 'in the box' ready for implementation. Please do understand that these schemas will only operate with EDI systems in BTS 2006 R2 and are not compatible on Base EDI Adapter (BTS 2004 and 2006 versions). In forthcoming topics I will include documentation on how to modify/customize these schemas.

One of the most asked question is the on a listing of the Version/Release schemas supported in BTS2006 R2 – Microsoft EDI. So here goes:

            * included in Beta 2 release.

NOTE: VICS and UCS will not be included in BizTalk Server 2006 R2.

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........

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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.

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 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......

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 :)