BizTalk Blog by Chris Han

social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7programs/thread/663f1293-9e83-4683-9534-ff4b60612dbf

It all started with letting iTunes "organize" my video files. For some reason, it decided to create a subfolder for each of my files. Errrrrrr!

Now I'm looking for a way to copy the files in subdirectories back to a single directory. By some online searching and error-trial, here's my solution:

For /r %d "C:\source dir" in (*) do copy "%d" "E:\dest dir"

It's different than a suggested solution I found online something like:

For /r %d "C:\source dir" in (.) do copy %d\*  "E:\dest dir"

However the period character doesn't work for me. According to the explaination, the (.) means all subdirectories, so the %d\* means all files in each subdirectories. But reality is it added a \.\ in the fully path name of the source, the result like this:

copy "C:\source dir\.\video.mp4" "E:\dest dir"

while it should be:

copy "C:\source dir\video.mp4" "E:\dest dir"

Any way, this format works for me, hopefully, same you some time.

For /r %d "C:\source dir" in (*) do copy "%d" "E:\dest dir"

What is Ontology?

Quote from Wikipedia "is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations....ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences"

Quote from other web-site "In ancient times, Ontology referred to study of Being and fell into disrepute in modern times, but Edmund Husserl revived the idea of the study of different forms of Being and Phenomenology and Existentialism have given rise to a new concern with Ontology, the central problem of which is the age-old problem of Mind and Body."

Quote from Zachman web site  "a theory of the existence of a structured set of essential components of an object for which explicit expressions is necessary and perhaps even mandatory for creating, operating, and changing the object"

What is Typology and Taxonomy then?

I fund so far the best explaination is from the web site http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/t/a.htm:

Taxonomy and Typology are two opposed methods of classification. Typology classifies according to the sensuously given attributes of the thing; Taxonomy classifies objects according to the genesis of the thing.

At a given stage in the development of a science, when as yet the genesis of the object is not known, typology is the only possible method of classification. Classification into types and classes aids sensuous perception. Once a notion of the genesis of the object is gained, the types must be re-ordered and objects which appear to belong to the same type, fall into different species and genre of the new taxonomy and vice versa, objects of different type are found to be of the same species.

Typology and taxonomy are necessary stages in making sense of the world, which aims to revealing the inner connections between things.

My Conclution:

Typology and Taxonomy are the types of Ontology. You usually start with Typology by observing the world and you can only confirm that your Typology is a Taxonomy when most of people conclude that it's true.

Analyzing the objects and classify them in a Taxonomy is always the first step we build and operate on their 'right' perceptions - the architecture of a enterprise system and even a software system.

This is also the way called 'frame it' in the book 'THE MCKENZIE WAY'.

Michael zur Muehlen just posted an paper on The Business Process Analytics Schema:
http://www.bpm-research.com/2009/02/22/the-business-process-analytics-format-bpaf/

The state-oriented appoach makes perfect sense to me. It is a straight forward shema design you can easily incorperate into your own process exception handling framework. You can also extend it by adding more fine-grained sub-states for your process minning needs.

There is a minor issue I think can be improved to make it more elegant mapping between this schema and its object oriented representation. Here is the exact comment I left to Michael:

I think it’s better to move bpaf:DataElement node under an additional node called bpaf:DataElements - an explicit collection-type node. This way, we will be able to map this schema to a object model elegantly. You can easily model a class hierarchy representing that an Event class has a collection-type memeber called DataElements which consists of DataElement-type items. You can’t directly model an Event class that has an ambiguous number of DataElement described by maxOccurs=”unbounded” attribute. I believe this will ease the adoption of this standard in practice.

I was trying format my dropdown list to should the decimal numbers as pecentange. But the MSDN article is not completed.

It turned out that {0:P2} is what I'm looking for. Here is the full list regarding the string format:

Data Formatting for DataTextFormatString

Custom Format Strings string.Format

If the standard numeric format specifiers do not provide the type of formatting required, you can use custom format strings, in effect, drawing a picture of the format using special characters to indicate number positions and precisions. The characters used to build a format string are shown in the following table.

Poka-yoke (mistake-proofing) is a technique for mistake-proofing in process design. It's trading the flexibility for less variance. There is a similar concept in software called defensive design or defensive programming.

Yesterday, I just experienced a good example of how important defensive design is. I was trying to plug my external hard-drive to my laptop via USB port. As you know the USB port actually has some sort of defensive design - the connectors in the metal enclosure is actually located only at the lower half. It supposes you can not plug the male connector into it at all if flips it upside down. The problem I see is the implementation of this defensive design on my laptop. The plastic connector is not strong enough to proof a determined idiot like myself. The consequence is serious – the laptop’s power unit is damaged. I guess I have to change the mother board or rather throw away the whole laptop.

Am I too 'Paka' to be a good user? If you use DFMEA method to calculate a Risk Priority Number (RPN) in this case, I'd say hell no. It gets a pretty high score on my calculation:

Severity: 10
Occurrence: 2
Detect and prevent: 5
RPN = S*O*D = 100 

Although it's highly unlikely happens, it is sure one of the failure modes both hard to detect and cause fatal damage. I like the IEEE 1394 (Firewire) socket better at this account. Like at it shape - reduced occurrence; and it's metal - hard to push through. 

 PS. I just realized that USB has a Mini version. It's much closer to 1394's design idea. It's better.

I was working a project schedule with MS project. I started by estimate the duration in 'months' using PERT, and later I decided to switch to 'days'. The I run into the duration format convertion trouble. I fund the set the 'Duration is entered in' drop down list in option menu didn't really do the job. See the full solution:

geekswithblogs.net/chrishan/archive/2008/07/18/123879.aspx

This is part of my school work at Steven Institute of Technology. The assignment is to come up with a definition of a system architecture by my own words. Here it is: 

A system architecture is the organization of a set of components forming up a system. It provides a plan that arranges the responsibilities of each internal component in the system and their interactions to each other as well as the interactions between the system and the external environment it resides and/or being operated in.

The last point about methodology is what I learned from my work experience, and inspired by the architecuture from civile engineering.

I haven't written any thing for a while. Part of the reason is because I'm now back to school - Stevens Institute of Technology.

As my career advancing, I'm more and more focusing on Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management. Of course, as an EA, you'll never hand off on technologies. So as a Microsoft guy, I'm always curious about what Microsoft will offer to BPM.

I'm a little suprised when I talk to my professor Dr. Michael zur Muehlen (his blog: bpm-research.com). He sees Microsoft as just a vender of System Integration Solution. And it seems Gartner is agreeing with him. Check out this gartner BPM Magic Quadrant 2007(free with registered user). I also find that Sandy Kemsley had a chance to closely examine Microsoft's tech stack, and shared with on her blog column2.com.  

But I still remain curious on what are the commonly agreed criteria of a qualified BPM solution. I agree that BizTalk is not a complete business architecting to automatic execution solution, but can we at least say it's a workflow system than a simply EAI/ESB? I mean, it got BPEL engine, rule engine, BAM....

Is that because the lack of 'human-centric' features that BizTalk is not recognized as a BPM player? I'll find out, later.

It used to be a joke when there was some software design flaws caught at the test phase. It is amazing to see that the joke presents a truth by reading this new from MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21112810/

If you put the hybrid car as an architect, one of the most important questions you should have asked yourself as an architect is 'how it will interact with the environment it resides?'

You thought the noise of the gasoline car is something unwanted? Think again. It is really depends on which stakeholder you are talking about. Blind people are in deed participating in the traffic - the architectural environment your system interacts with. To them, the noise indeed is a feature!

Now ask yourself, do you think vibration is a feature of the car or rather a technical constraint?

I'm running 64 bit Visa and trying to install my new phone toos software 4.5.1c. After get this error, I have to exchange the 4.5.1.c with a 4.5.  After install v4.5 and let it update itself to 4.5.1.c online, everything works.

Hope this will help ohters Moto owners.