At TechEd 2008 in Orlando, an announcement Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will be publicly available later this week. 

Improvement areas are:

• UI Framework, including improvements in:
  • animation support
  • error handling and reporting
  • accessibility support
  • keyboard input
  • performance
  • more compatibility between Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation
• Rich Controls, including:
  • Visual State Manager, permitting the creation of controls as templates
  • text wrapping
  • scrollbars for text boxes
• Networking Support, including:
  • improved cross domain support
  • security enhancements
  • upload support for web client
  • duplex communications (a server “push” model from server to a Silverlight client)
• Rich Base Class Library, including:
  • improved threading
  • LINQ-to-JSON
  • ADO.NET Data Services support
  • improved support for Simple Object Access Protocol (SOA)
• Deep Zoom Support, including:
  • a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles
  • a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom
  • event-driven notification for zoom/pan state

Thanks Scotty for the reference to this.

Check it out from the Silverlight Horse's Mouth

Cheers,

Mick.

I was cracking into getting my machine setup for a Silverlight project that I'm working on and came up with the above error.

Now....I admit....running x64 Windows 2008 on my Fijitsu Laptop mighten be the best combination given the huge support for my laptop drivers that I have.

I installed all the new(er) Silverlight 2.0 Beta bits from http://silverlight.net (VS2008 Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 Bits) and opened up my VS2008 seeing all the new Silverlight project types - cool! (I thought)

Each time I either created or opened an existing project - boom! up came the error.

So I figured the installation didn't complete properly.........after running/re-running/uninstalling/installing countless times the error was still there!!!!

My one solace and saving grace was running the following command line:

devenv /setup

......"I'm on my way, on my way to happiness today.....ah huh ah huh ah huh"........

Hi folks, love to see you there

Check the details out at - http://sydbiz.org/Lists/Events%20Calendar/DispForm.aspx?ID=15&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fsydbiz%2Eorg%2Fdefault%2Easpx

Also one of the things we've been working on in the last month is a Private BizTalk User Group mailing list
oztalk@groups.yahoo.com

This mailing list is 'invite only' and is intended to enhance learning within the community, as well as an avenue to get bts (&related) problems solved - delivered straight to your inbox.

There are currently Brisbane & Sydney User Group members on board (more groups to come shortly)

How to get on:
- an invite was sent to your email address registered on http://sydbiz.org. Through the invite you'll be able to join (you *don't need* a yahoo acct)
- if you misplaced the invite, or want to get on the list - post a comment to this blog entry and I'll send an invite out to you.

Take care,

Mick.

Back in V2.0 we had a Web Service that did this sort of stuff for us, now in V3.0 it's delivered straight from the Object Model.

Essentially:

1. We create a batch of XML which could have 'adds, updates + deletes' in there.
2. We call the web.ProcessBatchData(xml) method, handing to it our wishes.

This technique is fast, and CAML based :(

So if you need to add 100 items to the list - this would be a way to do it. (I've got to check whether this technique fires event handlers on the lists or whether it's a 'back door' thing)

Note: in the snippet below, the fields are referenced via their namespace#<name>
- you can get the field's details by saving your list 'As a template', downloading the *.stp file, renaming to *.stp.cab, opening it and looking into the *.xml file there.

- you could also call the lists.asmx webservice (..\_vti_bin\lists.asmx) and calling the GetListCollection(); method to see a chunk of describing XML.

   1:  "<ows:Batch OnError=\"Return\">" +

   2:              "<Method ID=\"A1\"><SetList>" + myGuid + "</SetList>" +

   3:                  "<SetVar Name=\"ID\">New</SetVar>" +

   4:                  "<SetVar Name=\"Cmd\">Save</SetVar>" +

   5:                  "<SetVar Name=" +

   6:                      "\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Title\">" +

   7:                      "New Manager</SetVar>" +

   8:                  "<SetVar Name=" +

   9:                      "\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Body\">" +

  10:                      "Congratulations to Mary for her promotion!</SetVar>" +

  11:                  "<SetVar Name=" +

  12:                      "\"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Expires\">" +

  13:                      "2003-09-14T00:00:00Z</SetVar>" + 

  14:              "</Method>" 

Here's a small MSDN article on it - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc404818.aspx

Cheers,

Mick.

There's a couple of great MSDN articles around performance tuning and high availability.

Very nice - don't leave home without them :)

1. BizTalk RFID: Capacity Planning and Performance Tuning

Performance Metrics

2. BizTalk RFID: Clustering BizTalk RFID for High Availability

(it even includes MOSS 2007 BI Dashboards)

This is one of the best BAM posters I have seen to date. As part of your Bat-Utility belt this is a must.

You could even print it out and stick it on the wall in the office....you never know....that raise should come sooner rather than later :)

Download the poster from HERE

Clayton sent through a great picture that explains what the main placeholders are on SharePoint Master Pages.

Well done CJ - thanks!

Hi folks,

While freezing in NZ (this week) I came across this this great MSDN article discussing some of the lower level implementation details around .NET 3.5 Framework.

The part that interests me is the Presence information (right at the end of the article) where once a connection is setup, you can get presence information about the other party - right from the .NET 3.5 framework.

If you've ever had to try and develop for that other ways i.e. by talking straight to communicator, or messenger or... etc.

You'll realise that they each have a slightly different API set, (some accept SIP, some don't, some require it, some don't...) and it's opening up trouble - cause on the target deployment machine...can you imagine the production guys when you say "hang on, I've just got to go and download Messenger (from Live)...."

Anyway - here's the article.

Enjoy - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163356.aspx

It's a page that's hidden away and difficult to land on from a Search....so I thought I'd list it here for us all

http://www.pc-ap.fujitsu.com/support/drv_lb_vis64_t4215.html

After much trialling and not much success.....Skype would install on my Windows Server 2008 x64 no problems, but at the sign-in screen the app would crash.

This happened in many different ways over many different Skype install permutations.

I think I've cracked it with an older version being the goods:

http://www.oldapps.com/download.php?oldappsid=SkypeSetup_3.0.0.190.exe

Cheers,

Mick.

Hey folks - while flying through different timezones and working away on my VPCs I came across the problem below.
Basically no further work could be done on the Application within the BizTalk Admin Console.
Couldn't stop/start, undeploy...delete etc. 

The only thing I had done was to adjust my time to reflect local time....which as I found out causes the problem.

I adjusted my clock back to Sydney time and we're good to go!!!

Trap for young players......

SSO AUDIT
Function: SetConfigInfo
Tracking ID: df1dd0b0-c9d5-4012-bb97-336aa8df78b3
Client Computer: BTS06-Platform.contoso.com (mmc.exe:1884)
Client User: BTS06-PLATFORM\Administrator
Application Name: {D2241406-0767-4C13-98EB-43EECE80F8A0}
Error Code: 0xC0002A40, The external credentials in the SSO database are more recent.

UPDATE: Running this script against your SSODB cures this problem.
update SSODB..SSOX_ExternalCredentials set ec_timestamp = dateadd(m,-1,ec_timestamp) where datediff(hh,ec_timestamp,getdate())<>0

We've now got official Management Pack support for R2 and the newer things in R2 such as EDI and RFID.

I've had many students come up to me and say "Mick - what in the world are you talking about?"
(mind you I get that at home as well - but let's not go there)

Have you ever asked the question:
I wonder how our BizTalk (et. al.) servers are going?
(this is where you could send the work experience kid around to all the servers gathering details and report back to you by lunch.....but not all of us have work experience kids)

The answer to this is relatively complex - as you'll need know things like:

1. Services - stopped, started, uptime. BizTalk Services, SQL Services, WCF/IIS Services etc.
2. Database sizes, Spool table lengths
3. Queue Lengths - disk etc.
4. Memory details
5. BizTalk Orchestration details
6. Messaging Details
7. .... and the list goes on.
   

SCOM2007 with the management pack gives you that - in near enough realtime with all sorts of graphs and charts.

One of the *best* things I like about SCOM2007 is that you install the Management Pack(s) only on *one* machine - usually the SCOM2007 Central Administration machine, and as more applications are installed on servers on the network, the appropriate management bits are 'auto-deployed'.

Grab it here -

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=389FCB89-F4CF-46D7-BC6E-57830D234F91&amp;displaylang=en&displaylang=en