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

More Variation support, more standard document support, more bug fixes and an upgrade checker (to make sure you can apply SP2)

Should keep those sites happier for longer…

Details from http://blogs.technet.com/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2009/04/23/service-pack-2-for-the-2007-microsoft-office-system-available-today.aspx

Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office system available today!

We're pleased to announce the release of all languages for Service Pack 2 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, the 2007 Microsoft Office servers, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. As promised, this post contains a list of the products that are patched by SP2 with their corresponding knowledge base articles, information on how to obtain the packages, and links to additional SP2 resources. We hope you'll find this to be one of the best service packs produced by the Office team ever!

How to obtain SP2

Recommended Method: Microsoft Update

We recommend using Microsoft Update to apply SP2. Microsoft Update's detection will determine the products and languages you have installed and update your machine all at once.

Optional Method: The Download Center

If you choose not to use Microsoft Update, the SP2 packages are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. Please click here to find links to the downloads.

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

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

As I’m looking into sizing up systems currently for a project, the question that you always ask “Is my CPU choice any good?” “Should I go Dual Quad Core or Quad Dual Core?”… and the questions just keep on coming, even in your sleep sometimes

I recently came across a gem of a site that gave me all my answers. There’s a bunch of other CPUs and options available also. Check it out.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=%5BDual+CPU%5D+Intel+Xeon+E5420+%40+2.50GHz

Well folks, hot on the heels of the MMA Contender Series....here's another Series which I'm sure will cause a stir.

Check out part#1 and part#2 below

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Hi guys,

If you're looking to get into how to host WCF Services on Azure, showing some cool graphics, then these samples are for you.

Silverlight v3.0 (beta), and important samples showing how to take your existing WCF Services and hosting/housing them in Auze (there's a few gotchas - and these samples have work arounds :) )

Grab them here -

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wcfazure

Yep - hot off the press thanks to Stephen a friend of mine (who brought this to my attention)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42

Don't leave home without it.

Hi folks - thanks for those that turned up last night (virtually and in the flesh)

Here's the recording for last night's session that Brett and David did.

Brett Raven is happy to field questions around InRule.

Quick points I picked up - All built on .NET incorporating WCF, .NET based SDK to roll your own, several different rule hosting and execution models.
Very nice merging of Documentation + the Rules World = InRule.

Check it out folks.
https://www311.livemeeting.com/cc/mvp/view?id=MWD25P

You can register and download an Eval version of InRule - http://inrule.com/products/productEvaluation.aspx

Cheers,
Mick.

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

At Remix09 there’s been news at the station.

Silverlight v3.0 is hitting the scene…I wonder whether the Adobe Flash support made it in… will dig through the details.

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx#whatsnew