Hey folks, I've been flat chat lately burning the candle at both ends getting ready for my sessions at TechEd/Deep Dives.

In a *spare* moment - I am asked to do a Channel9 GeekSpeak session - talking about Workflow and BizTalk Integration.
(I've had my xbox360 confiscated for 1 month to help me get through this month - that's a story for another time :)

This session is on tomorrow morning - so for those of you feeding babies, can't sleep etc. I'd love to have you along for moral support as this will be my very first session in Geek Speak.

So if you're up for a 5am - 6am start Thursday morning I'll see you there. Put something Aussie in your nick name!

Update: The Results have come in.......well this was done at 4am my time in the morning and all I can say is thanks to the folks that attended for being understanding :)

Customer satisfaction scores are based on a scale from 0 to 9 points.  
The average score for a webcast is 7.8.

Usefulness of Information: 8.0
Speaker Presentation Skills: 7.8
Effectiveness of Demonstration: 8.0
Overall Presentation Rating: 7.8

Link to see the webcast over and over again
 Looks like I got around the average at 4am in the morning.....I'm amazed I even made sense!!!:)

Hi folks, I'm busily preparing for TechEd2007 and one of my session is developer focused  about Workflow in Microsoft Sharepoint.

This will be where all my slides and sample code will be shortly :)

See you soon.....

If you're like me and run a few virtual machines each day, then running them with ease is key I reckon.

Generally I've found on dual core machines etc. virtual server makes better use of multi-cpu based hosts than what Virtual PC2007 does (VMWare vs VPC is another debate :)

The only draw back is that I've always had to setup this IIS based website and it gets painful, particularly on a laptop etc. when all sorts of things get installed and uninstalled etc. IIS sites sometimes stop working and thus your only lifeline to the running virtual machines.

Well VMRCplus is the answer! (This used to be an internal MS tool which it looks like they've released to the public)

YOU DO NOT NEED IIS with this baby - it uses the COM Api behind the scenes.

Grab it here........

VMRC PLUS

Some features to wet your appetites:

• Direct control of local or remote instances of the Virtual Server service. IIS and IE browser are no longer required!
• Tabbed interface to quickly jump between Virtual Server hosts and guest VMRC sessions.
• Reusable saved states: this feature allows users to preserve a particular saved state and return to that state at any time.
• Multiple guest selection supported for startup/shutdown/save/display.
• Browse button navigation for media, hard disk images, ISO images, .VMC files, etc.
• Drag and Drop support for .VMC files, ISOs images, VHD and VFD files.
• Resizable desktop support for guests running Virtual Machine Additions (maximize VMRC window supported).
• Limited cut and paste of text from host to guest (only).
• A built-in utility to take JPG screenshots of running guests. Useful when filing bugs.
• Built-in error notification with Virtual Server eventlog viewer.
• A Virtual Networks Manager and Virtual Disks Manager that cover all features.
• Keyboard shortcuts (e.g. Ctrl-S to save state a guest).
• Create multiple guests at once.
• Create guest from parent (or multiple guests)!
• Automatic reconnect to a designated Virtual Server host.
• Toolbars in both Guest and Console Manager for quick access.
• Unlimited number of guests.
• Maximum of 32 Virtual Server hosts.
• Sorting on columns of guests so you can sort based on status and multi-select.
• Automatic detection of Virtual Machine Additions and notification.
• Detection of Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

There's the whole suite of products on here now! From 2004 to R2 (you thought I was going to say BTS2000!!!! ....I try to push that out of my mind)

http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/roadmap/default.mspx

Whether it's BTS04 or 06 - you can always generate the schema behind the magical binding file from the following command (courtesy of Mark Berry):

xsd.exe "C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006/Microsoft.BizTalk.Deployment.dll" /type:BindingInfo

-Mark Berry

Pretty cool - thanks Mark. (obviously change '2006' to '2004' if on BTS 2004)

You now have an XSD that corresponds to all the options in your Binding File.

Enjoy!

We've got a decent PDF IFilter from found on the MS IFilter Blog.

The IFilter team have been busy and while this IFilter is by a third party, I believe it has under gone some internal MS testing.

One of the things I've had trouble with in the past has been Native Adobe Compression within PDFs. In the later versions of PDF writer/distiller etc. when outputting a PDF, one of the options is to select the amount of compression (a slider bar from memory).

I was onsite and noticed that out of the 400 PDFs in our 'test' folder, around 50 were not being properly indexed (only filename, filesize, location etc were 'extracted').

All of these 50 documents had PDF compression set to 'high' (there were 4 different compression settings)

You may or may not have to add the work around below - Foxit have updater their installer.

---- snip ------

Long awaited 64-bit PDF IFilter finally available.

Finally we have a 64 bit PDF IFilter - surprisingly the solution is not from Adobe or Microsoft, but from a company called Foxit Software.The IFilter is compatiable with the following Microsoft products: Windows Indexing Service, MSN Desktop Search, Internet Information Server, SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), Site Server, Exchange Server, SQL Server and all other products based on Microsoft Search technology.

 There's one simple workaround to get the filter running on 64 bit MOSS 2007. The steps are given below.

1. Install Foxit 64bit PDF Ifilter. http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/ifilter/

2. Add a pdf extension in MOSS search settings

3. Open regedit, locate [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf]

4. Change the default value to {987f8d1a-26e6-4554-b007-6b20e2680632} .

5. Recycle the search service: net stop osearch
                                              net start osearch

6. Start a full crawl to index your pdf documents :)

Years ago we struggled when clients surfed to web pages, to try and get any sort of information out about them.

To get more info, we would present a little page with some client script to determine ('mine' being the operative word) their capabilities (cookes, script, even had access to Navigation History etc etc)

I was recently contacted by a site and part of the request I was presented with my User_Agent string for my initial request.

HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; Tablet PC 2.0; InfoPath.2; FDM)

Who can determine the most out about this machine?

So your default User Agent strings *do* tell alot about the software you're running. We can modify this, but you run the risk of websites etc. not interacting fully with you (and I know how much we all love our Ajax!)

Over the times parents have named their kids many things...but I do feel sorry for this little girl being called Vista.

A father called his daughter Vista....does this mean the son will be called 'LongHorn' and who knows about upgrades, boyfriends and remote offsite camping trips.

Wonder no more why so many people change their names over in the US.

Monday's tidbit.

MOSS and reporting services integration......

After installing SQL2005 SP2 and SharepointRS.msi (Sharepoint 'extensions') you're left to do a 'small' amount of configuration. Basically telling the MOSS environment where to find the Reporting Services Server.

Previously this has been a difficult step - almost a journey of discovery. Here's the answer.

From Central Admin->Web Application->Reporting Services Configuration Integration

From below the 1st box always gives grief - the label title and the description seem to indicate different things.

So just to put this to bed - the Web that you have ReportingServices installed - point off to the ReportService WebService - you're good to go!

Wow what a night planned!!! WF 101 (even good for managers! :)); BTS hosting WF and making it all happen under BizTalk Labs (that's next after R2)

Check it out and looking forward in seeing you there......

-------- Details ---------

Examine Windows Workflow talking to BizTalk R2 and BizTalk Labs.

Firstly a BIG thanks to those that enjoyed the exam cram we did last month (we had to order additional pizza!) and I’ve since heard that several of you have sat and passed the EXAM!!! Well done!!

With R2 just around the corner......I decided to tackle the Windows Workflow(WF) question.
The message is usually BTS vs WF, never BTS AND WF.

We’ll cover:

1.      Workflow 101 (you should be able to bring your manager along to this one J)

2.      Hosting Workflow’s within BizTalk with the new BizTalk extensions for WF SDK

3.      BizTalk Labs – life after R2....and where we are heading.....

Meeting details:

When: July 4th Food at 6pm, kick off 6.30pm. Finish up around 8pm.
Where: Microsoft
1 Epping Road
Riverside Corporate Park
North Ryde NSW 2113 Australia. (parking available)

WF Session Focus Details:
1.First up we will look at the fundamentals of Workflow; what makes them run; communications; and how do we host them.
(WF is the technology that is brightly coloured in VS.NET and comes with .NET 3.0) – you could even workflow your toaster if you wanted to.

2.Next – we’ll take a Workflow and use WCF under the covers to act as the communication medium between BTS R2 & WF. Very nice.
So now in BTS R2 we can host WF (through a small ‘Orchestration wrapper’) meaning that when BTS persists, WF does too – WF is now running inside BTSNTSvc.exe.
(cross off the list – ‘find a place for my WF’s to live’)

3.Thirdly – Imagine being able to call our creation from anywhere and behind umpteen firewalls between caller/sender.....enter into the ring
BizTalk Labs!!! Very exciting – labs.BizTalk.net.
(what communications do you think we use.......WCF......hmmm....seems to be a common thread here!)
So it’s a night on WF/R2 wrapped up in WCF – wow what a great set of technologies!!!!

See you there and let me know your coming
Mick Badran.
p.s. I’ve fallen in love with Microsoft Surface.......wow!!!

What a name....talk about the pinnacle of TLA's at the height of a great technology field.
Can you imagine being at work/meetings etc.
and say "Hold on, I've got to grab the WCF LOB Adapter SDK for my BTS Messaging Hub"
(at this point I'm sure it would clear the floor if you were at a party and people would be looking at each other thinking that someone hasn't taken their vitamin B12 this morning)

So we really do need to come up with a sexier name than this (when I was 4 my parents read me a great book about a kid called "Tikki-tikki-tembo-no-sarembo" and he fell into the well - you could say I was scared off long names as a kid)

What does this thing do for you? It will change the way you develop adapter for use with/without BTS. Sensational!!!

WCF LOB Adapter SDK

Enjoy!!!!

p.s. you don't necessarily need BizTalk to build adapters with this framework. There are BTS06 R2 'extensions' to this framework - the BTS 'strand' of this SDK is currently called the BizTalk .NET Adapter SDK

There's some very cool things ahead.....stay tuned......

MS have been busy in this space and we've now got the following (or soon will have :)

1. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Evaluation Edition
2. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Branch Edition
3. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Developer Edition
4. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Standard Edition
5. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Enterprise Edition

Most are pretty self explanitory except for the Branch Edition (BE) - for those of you that remember the BTS Partner Edition (phased out with the introduction of BTS2006), BE is comparable with it.

There are some restrictions on this though (as currently determined by the powers to be...):
- the BE must connected to Enterprise Edition.
- two or more BE's can't talk directly to each other, must go through a Enterprise Edition

There's a document available that discusses upgrading to BTS06R2 - it's still a work in progress but it's a good start -
MS Upgrade Document

In particular there is a great image that gives a good outline of the dependencies (taken from the document):

Food for thought folks - there's some very exciting times ahead.

Finally it's here - there was some talk internally within MS about an adapter being built to communicate to WF Runtime, thus allowing hosting of WF workflows within BizTalk.

At the moment we're at cross roads with BizTalk 2006, as the Orchestration/Business Process designers and technologies is built on a language called XLANG which is compiled into C# and executed.

On the other side, we have WF workflows, XAML, XML, .NET based, extensible and looking good.....but it needs to find a home. It's homeless but always keen to meet up with a host. The question of hosting WF Workflows is not taken lightly as scalability, availability, durability etc all come into the equation (the 'hello world' WF console application just doesnt cut it :) )

So let's get the best of both worlds - I previously did a MSDN webcast on this around the time when the message from MS was "for small stuff - use WF. For bigger things use BTS" - but why cant the 2 worlds live together?

Now - they can!!!!

Microsoft WF Team have released 'BTS Extension for WF' where there is 'no BizTalk code required' (hmmm....maybe I should stop my mission of finding BizTalk people and look at WF people).

Go and register on the connect site/fill in a quick survey and get downloading!!!!

Grab the BTS Extensions for WF here

Happy playing........it's wabbit season...no duck season....no wabbit season....