BizTalk 2009
The main subject of my blog
The next issue of BizTalk Hotrod magazine (April 2009) is ready.
This issue has articles about EDI, AS2, Mapping Tips and Tricks, Business Rules, Naming conventions, Tools like BizTalk Terminator and BizTalkCop for Static Code Analysis for BizTalk. As BizTalk 2009 hits the streets 'Hotrod' offers some great help.
Get Hotrod here...
There really is only two ways to integrate a companies applications: Custom coding Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)Tools Custom Coding The default for any small or midsized organisation facing an integration project between large numbers of applications is to write the data transformation and mapping code from scratch using Java or .Net based languages. However, writing custom code may create problems like: Code reusability Visibility into structure of the integration transactions Scalability, ......
Commerce Server 2000 31/03/2006 BizTalk Server 2000 Standard Edition 30/06/2006 BizTalk Server 2000 Enterprise Edition 30/06/2006 Host Integration Server 2000 31/12/2006 ......
This adapter can read eventlogs from a Windows Machine. It will read all the specified eventlogs and submit the EventlogEntries to BizTalk 2004. Then you can use BizTalk 2004 to react to specific events
http://www.gotdotnet.com/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=c2c25edd-eb4f-422a-81c0-c0aaa0f0a49a
Microsoft have announced that their RFID programme has now extended to mobile devices. From the Microsoft beta site the following information has been gleaned: Mobility and Standards Pack - Themes BizTalk RFID on Mobile Devices Support for key industry enablers Run on Handhelds, Forklift readers Better together with BizTalk RFID Server v1 Support for new readers with LLRP Tag Data Translation for richer EPC enabled applications Web Services for Devices for Discovery, Configuration, Initialization ......
Move it: MSIT group has just released a whitepaper on moving from BizTalk 2004 2002 & 2004 to BizTalk 2004 2006. It goes into quite a bit more technical detail than our typical case study particularly in regards to their consolidation onto 64bit hardware. http://www.microsoft.com/te... ......
Walking on the moon: Developing a solid foundation for delivering transaction services Andy James, Chief Technology Officer, describes Solidsoft’s approach to delivering a common architecture for creating end-to-end business processes – the Solidsoft Solution Foundation http://www.valuefromitingov... ......
Sometimes when you use messaging in BizTalk 2004 you want to publish messages in the messagebox. And only if some conditions are met, BizTalk 2004 should react to those messages. But what if those conditions are not met.... Well for sure you could use an orchestration and do some business logic to decide what to do. Unfortunately you will need an orchestration then. And we started out that we only wanted to use messaging..... This is where the NOPE adapter comes in. Just set the Filter expression ......
MSDN Magazine has this great two part article that digs deeply into BizTalk 2004. http://msdn.microsoft.com/m... http://msdn.microsoft.com/m... ......
With the launch of the release versions of Visual Studio 2005, and the gap to BTS 2006 we are in that intresting no mans land where we try to use the oldish and the new. This leads to a whole bunch of opinions such as 'You can't install Viz 2005 with BTS 2004'. Well we are trying and I intend to document the problems and the fixes as we go. Problem 1: BizTalk 2004 Web services publishing tool will fail to generate web services! Fix: Change the following registry key - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE... ......
Well as we all know SQL 2005, Viz Studio 2005 are now released and BizTalk 2004 2006 is launched (sic). Go to the good old MS beta site and you can get the RTM compatible CTP download of BTS 2006. So is the wait worth it? Well most cetainly for both SQL 2005 and Viz Studio. BTS 2006 is a point release but still offers some goodies. SQL has now become a grown up ETL product and add some cute 'integration features'. Viz Studio has just built on itsd already excellent code base ......
This is a recurring theme from a number of PDC 05 attendees. I think the answer is two fold : The first one can be found at : http://msdn.microsoft.com/w... The second is that vNext BizTalk 2004 must be a different beast offering more on top of what now is offered. The designers must be made more friendly (anyone who attended the BizTalk 2004 futres will have seen a glimpse of that), the toolset be increased ......
Windows Workflow Foundation - (aka Windows Workflow Services, WinOE)
At Long last we ar able to blog about this having been involved for over 9 months....I've extended my blog name in honour of this.
Can't blog now, though, @ PDC listening to the great Don Box perform....
Have a look at this it makes intresting reading.... To quote the article: "Discovery is one of the most important features required by all SOA based technologies. In the Web Services environments there are several technologies to provide discovery support like: WSIL, WS-Discovery and, one of the most popular, UDDI. UDDI is typically associated with Web Services; however its data model permits to represent almost any kind of information. Some technology providers uses UDDI to, for example, discover ......
The W3C have spent a considerable part of their last meeting discussing how to speed up XML - see http://techrepublic.com.com... The main protagonists seem to be going for a 'Binary' for of XML. This seems at odds with the purpose of a 'Markup' format. Futhrermore the stable door may being shut too late with various 'solutions' already in production. Looks like we may be back to multiple formats again. ......
Having recently reviewed an excellent bit of solution architecture from one of our excellent Principle Consultants it struck me thta a key aspect of SOA is the need to provide a registry of services. Now this may sound like a simple list or datadase solution but what really 'lit my fire' was the use of the rules engine as the registry. What a cool idea - we can use the content of the message passing through BizTalk 2004 to decide the services it requires to fullfil its process. So what we end up ......
The answer came form Dave Robinson - one of the great guys at Solidsoft (WWW.Solidsoft.com) In your schema which defines your stored procedure (for insert etc) you need to set the xml body field to a distinguished field. When mapping from your source schema to your sql schema you will map the values that you want and also you have to map a ‘dummy’ entry to the body parameter (because it’s a distinguished field it must be initiliazed). After your map use a message assignment shape ......
Having just attended the RFID PAC it would have been nice to have done a piece on what MS are doing - unfortunately NDA's prevent me. So have a look here:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1766050,00.asp
I will fill in more information as and when I can.
The BizTalk 2004 2004 Adapter for MSMQ provides support for sending and receiving messages using MSMQ 2.0 and 3.0, and takes advantage of the new features in MSMQ 3.0. Major features of the adapter include support for: MSMQ 2.0 and 3.0 Multi-threading option for faster performance Guaranteed delivery when using transactional queues Reading from remote non-transactional queues Dynamic send ports Support for messages up to 2 Gigabytes in size ......
At last how to network together multiple VPC's - hope over to Simon Guest's site : http://blogs.msdn.com/smguest/archive/2005/02/10/370861.aspx
Have you seen http://msdn.demoservers.com? It's simple — no complex setup or installation is required to try out BizTalk 2004 running in the full-featured MSDN Virtual Lab. As part of the MSDN Virtual Lab, you will have full access to BizTalk 2004 through the following modules: Microsoft BizTalk 2004 Server 2004 - Creating Schemas Microsoft BizTalk 2004 Server 2004 - Creating a Schema Map Microsoft BizTalk 2004 Server 2004 - Enabling Message Routing Microsoft BizTalk 2004 Server 2004 - Creating ......
If you're interested in clustering under Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, then this forthcoming webcast on Thursday 10th February 2005 at 19:30-21:00 UK Time (11:30AM - 1:00PM PST) by an expert in Virtual Server, Robert Larson, is a must. Abstract:Looking for an easy way to build a cluster of virtual machines to avoid the cost and complexity of a physical environment? Attend this session to learn how to create a two-node cluster of virtual machines running Windows Server 2003 - a key feature of Virtual ......
My previous blog gave a teaser to the concept of Microsoft and Open Source. This had more than an air of poetic license about it as what is happening is the Governments have realized that they are having to pay for the same bespoke work over and over again when really they should pay once and then only pay a small service charge for repeats of the same. In the UK this is particularly obvious around the NHS project where multiple Hospital trusts are paying for what is basically the same integration ......
In the BizTalk 2004 world, well lets be honest, in the world of IT gurus I have been blessed with working with some of the greats....just wanted to express my appreciation for the following guys: Paul Brown AKA Arch Hacker - The Arch Hacker's BizTalk 2004 Blog Charels Young - Charles Young Duncan Milard - Dot Net Dunk All now appearing in The Bloggers Guide to BizTalk 2004 - http://workspaces.gotdotnet... and all contributing daily to my understanding of BizTalk 2004. ......
The BizTalk 2004 Server pipeline architecture opens up a wealth of opportunities by allowing you to plug in you own components. Technically, when developing so called "custom pipeline components", only a few basic principles need to be taken into account. As such, nearly any .NET developer should be able to get away with it within a few hours. In order to even further improve this developer experience, this article aims at explaining and introducing a couple of basic principles and techniques. See ......
Is right to select a non-Micorosoft product simply because its not a 'Microsoft' product? In the UK in the public sector a product called LGOL-Net is being stalked as a BizTalk 2004 replacemnet as it can do everything BizTalk 2004 can. Furthermore its also being billed as free. Now I'm all for open source and I'm all for competion but in this case the challenge is based on two lies. Firstly LGOL does not offer half the features of BizTalk and secondly the support and TCO for the product are far from ......
In recent months after having struggled with the concepts of SOA I have finally come to the view that once I've cut through the hype the vision is simple - instead of building monolithic applications we should break them up into smaller services then aggregate these into a larger solution to meet the business need. When the business need changes we can use existing other services or create new ones and reaggregate. As similar requirements arise we can re-use services to meet the need. Of course the ......
My muse for the week is simple...now BizTalk 2004 has come of age (16 not yet 21) and the major growing pains are over we now have a situation where the product is not just about EAI and B2B. We have a set of tools that facilitate the rapid deployment of Business process using .Net technologies. So what do I mean by that? Well lets start using BizTalk 2004 in application solutions. Orchestration has come of age, the plumbing issue has been cracked and we now have a stonking Rules Engine. This means ......
A great blog from Darren Jefford -
Post to the MessageBox
OK so its over to the 'Dark Side' web site for a rather interesting offering..... The .NET Framework Data Provider for DB2 Universal Database® (UDB) for iSeries in the iSeries Access for Windows product The iSeries Access for Windows beta includes a new .NET Framework Data Provider for DB2 Universal Database® (UDB) for iSeries in the iSeries Access for Windows product. There are many other enhancements in iSeries Navigator; in the data access components, like OLE DB, ODBC, Data Transfer; ......
Why integration..this is an interesting question that can be answered in many ways but for the purposes of this post we are going to consider the following as the de-facto answer. There are a number of compelling reasons for why companies or organizations need to integrate. these are: The need to offer new services to partners and customers The need to streamline and optimize business processes The need to offer new services to partners and customers This is a great driving force for integration. ......
I have nearly finished a demo of using NUnit for testing aspects of the rules engine. I will either post it as an article or if short enough a simple post here - so watch this space!
An unusual use of RSS - Event log monitoring!!!
See here : Event Logs from RSS
How about a bunch of articles around the theme:
BizTalk 2004 for Dummies
Much in the vain of those famous 'dummy' series of books. I suppose it'll have to be called 'BizTalk for the .....' please let me know your thoughts. So far I have had 'BizTalk for the Intellectually Challenged', 'BizTalk for Thickos' and 'BizTalk for the hard of thinking'
The BizTalk 2004 Server 2004 Management Pack is a set of instructions that define how to monitor and manage BizTalk 2004 Server 2004. This management pack enables you to: Identify and measure the health of the system. Monitor critical components and services. Address and correct issues with actionable responses. Understand when to escalate issues. Analyze and troubleshoot the data and information received from BizTalk 2004 Server 2004. Get it http://www.microsoft.com/do... ......