Larry Beck

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Larry Beck — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 04:16:00 GMT

BizTalk Saves the Day

Larry Beck — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 16:49:00 GMT

Jason Turnage has a blog that is hosted on MSN Spaces; it's the first blog I've subscribed to that is hosted there. MSN has taken an interesting approach to blog hosting, and probably one that is much more aligned with the casual, personal blogger than the traditional services.

Anyway, Jason has a great story about how his company was testing a new solution built on BizTalk Server 2004 and when they ran into some last-minute QA problems the were able to leverage the RetryTransactionException feature to have BizTalk automatically rollback and retry on an exception. Great story, good read, and happy endings. Thanks Jason!

Let's hear more about how companies are using BizTalk to enable and extend their businesses.

Contemplating the Future of the BizTalk Adapter Framework

Larry Beck — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 02:11:00 GMT

Let me preface this by saying that I have no insider knowledge on this topic, and that this post represents my personal opinion and forecast - tea leaves and crystal balls, as it were.

I believe that the BizTalk Adapter Framework, as we know it, is approaching end-of-life. Already. With "v2" still six months out.

Why?

Because Microsoft is doing the right thing. They're embedding the foundation technologies into the operating system, where they belong, and as a result BizTalk Server will continue its evolution into a true enterprise application. So how does this impact the BizTalk Adapter Framework, you ask? Not terribly long after BizTalk Server 2006 ships Microsoft will release Windows Vista, and with it WinFX. WinFX will put not only a workflow engine (Windows Workflow Foundation, code-name "WinOE") into the operating system, but also a fully-featured messaging subsystem (Windows Communications Foundation, code-name "Indigo").

Indigo offers the next generation technology that will supplant traditional SOAP, old-style web services, and today's web services extensions (WSE). But more pertinent to this conversation - Indigo is an extensible platform that supports not just traditional "messaging", but a whole range of inter-process and cross-process communication. Out of the box Indigo will support a few protocols and no applications, but the framework has been laid for an adapter platform that is accessible from any application built on top of (or can interop with) .NET Framework 2.0. Imagine if you could utilize the BizTalk Server 2004 adapters that you have today, in a native, reliable fashion, from all of your applications - both desktop and server. Imagine the complexities involved in connecting to your ERP and the legacy systems that could be pushed down the stack into the OS with this architecture. Really. Sit back and think about it.

What you're seeing in your mind can, I believe, be accomplished in the Indigo channel architecture.

By pushing this point of extensibility into the operating system Microsoft will enable commercial and custom development of "adapter" technology to reach a new, broader and far more ranging audience. By developing adapters that operate at the platform stack level ISV's can dramatically increase their opportunity footprint. Corporate developers can begin minimizing the number of application "touch points". And enterprise integration will take on a whole new meaning.

Just imagine...

David Green Starts Blogging

Larry Beck — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 06:07:00 GMT

David Green, the architect of Windows Workflow Foundation, has started his blog. Folks, this guy is brilliant, and I'm sure that anything he has to say is something you'll want to hear. Find him here. His first feature blog - What is Workflow, and why Bother? - closes with the following line:

"But if none of these benefits apply in your scenario, then really, coding is still very cool."

I couldn't have said it better, David. I think there might be a few more benefits that should make that list, but in general I totally agree.

Reflecting on the WCF Messaging Paradigm

Larry Beck — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 20:12:00 GMT

I finally had the chance to meet Steve Maine of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, codename "Indigo") fame face-to-face. While Steve and I actually worked "together" for most of my Avanade career we hadn't met, and it was one of my objectives at the PDC to rectify that.

Thanks to Matt Joe we met at the Ask the Experts session Thursday night and we had an interesting discussion regarding the WCF "messaging paradigm". It came up in the context of a discussion regarding the Service Activity Generator. One of my positioning statements for this utility is that many developers don't want to - or need to - think about the messaging infrastructure that the WCF declarative model hides under the covers. Steve, on the other hand, said that the product team is actually re-thinking this model and may want to have the developer be exposed to more of the messaging paradigm.

Consider the following approach:

>> Construct request message
>> Submit request message to service
>> Receive response message
>> Parse response message to retrieve "interesting" data

vs. the following:

>> Call service method and receive "interesting" data as the return value

Which do you prefer? Particularly when building a composite application, when you're going to use this paradigm dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

I'd like to invite Steve to respond here to see if we can get some interesting dialog going on the topic. Here's your chance to potentially influence a product direction, so jump in!

Service Activity Generator for Windows Workflow Foundation

Larry Beck — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 19:05:00 GMT

Some of my earlier posts alluded to the announcements that were made at PDC - Microsoft's release of a platform-level workflow technology, known as Windows Workflow Foundation. I was fortunate enough to participate in the early adopter program and be exposed to this exciting new framework several months ago. While there may have been more splash around some of the other product announcements, this one is - to me - the most exciting as I believe it will have the biggest impact on how we utilize service oriented architectures across the enterprise.

I'm announcing here my first contribution to the community; the Service Activity Generator. This utility, currently an alpha release, enables service (WCF) developers to expose their services as custom WWF Activities without doing anything more complicated than adding an additional attribute to the service operation. Download the alpha release, along with a walkthrough that will guide you through building your first automatically-generated Service Activity, and submit your feedback on my blog.

Arrival at the PDC

Larry Beck — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 02:30:00 GMT

Seems I missed the excitement of the power outage today; the cabbie relayed the story to me as we creeped up I405, feeling the after-affects of the heavy congestion that was only worsened by the lack of traffic signals. Unfortunately I had to reserve the my room at the hotel that is the further from the Convention Center, but that Sheraton Universal City is treating me well (better than Scoble at the Westin, it seems, but not as good as Casey Chesnut from the Channel 9 crew).

I'm posting the my schedule below, and bolding the sessions I plan to attend at this point, pending space. You'll see a heavy dose of Windows Communications Foundation and Workflow, which line up nicely with my expanding set of responsibilities.

Be sure to say "howdy" if you happen to see me!

Tuesday
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM
11:45 AM - 12:30 PM	TLNL01 Tips & Tricks: Extending MSBuild with Tasks, Loggers, and Targets 408 AB
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM	COM202 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): A Lap around the Windows Communications Foundation Halls C & D (Petree Hall)
2:45 PM - 4:00 PM	DAT303 SQL Server 2005: Building Distributed, Asynchronous Database Applications with the Service Broker 502 AB
	FUN301 MMC 3.0: Developing Managed-Code Snap-Ins 501 ABC
	OFF303 Groove: Building Enterprise Workgroup Applications 406 AB
4:15 PM - 5:30 PM	TLN404 Visual Studio: Extending Visual Studio with Add-ins and Packages 409 AB DAT405 DAT405 - SQL Server 2005: Deep Dive on XML and XQuery 502 AB
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM
10:15 PM - 11:15 PM

Wednesday
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM	COM200 Applications and Communications Roadmap: Platform Presents and Futures Halls C & D (Petree Hall)
	COM305 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Integrating COM+ and MSMQ Applications 404 AB
	OFF306 "InfoPath 12": Creating Browser-Based Forms for Enabling Data and Application Integration 502 AB
	OFF405 Windows SharePoint Services: Using ASP.NET 2.0 Technology to Extend Pages, Sites, and Server Farms 409 AB
	PRS407 Windows Forms: Occasionally Connected Smart Clients 408 AB
12:30 PM - 1:15 PM	DATL01 Making the Most of RFID in Your Applications 404 AB
1:45 PM - 3:00 PM	COM210 Introduction to Workflow in Windows Applications 150/151 (Hall E)
	COM308 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Developing Manageable Web Services 404 AB
	COM312 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Writing Secure Distributed Applications 403 AB
	DAT209 "WinFS" Future Directions: An Overview 515 AB
	PRS309 Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): Overview of Windows Vista Graphics 502 AB
3:15 PM - 4:30 PM	COM307 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Writing Reliable and Transacted Distributed Applications 403 AB
	COM328 Extending Workflow Capabilities with Custom Activities 150/151 (Hall E)
	DAT310 "WinFS" Future Directions: Building Data Centric Applications Using Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") and Windows Forms 408 AB
	DAT411 Advanced ETL: Embedding Integration Services 411
5:00 PM - 6:15 PM	COM308 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Developing Manageable Web Services 518
	COM318 Developing Rules Driven Workflows 152/153 (Hall F)
	COM416 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Under the Hood of the Windows Communications Foundation Channel Layer 406 AB
	DAT312 "WinFS" and ADO.NET: Future Directions for Data Access Scenarios 515 AB
	DAT314 BizTalk Server 2006: Development and Adapters 403 AB

Thursday
10:00 AM - 11:15 AM	COM415 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): A Deep Dive into Best Practices Using the Windows Communications Foundation 515 AB
	COM417 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Under the Hood of the Service Model Layer 402 AB
	PRS418 ASP.NET: Developing Portal UI Architectures with Web Parts 403 AB
	TLN311 Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Software Architects and Future Directions in Modeling Tools Halls C & D (Petree Hall)
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM	OFF415 Windows SharePoint Services: Developing Custom Workflows 408 AB
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM	PRS420 ASP.NET: Future Directions for Developing Rich Web Applications with Atlas (Part 2) Halls C & D (Petree Hall)
1:00 PM - 1:45 PM	TLNL09 Tips & Tricks: Productivity Tips for the Visual C# 2005 IDE 152/153 (Hall F)
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM	COM322 Developing Event Driven State Machine Workflows 515 AB
	DAT319 Future Directions: Beyond BizTalk Server 2006 502 AB
	FUN316 Windows Vista & "Longhorn" Server: Publishing and Consuming Events 411
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM	COM325 Workflow + Messaging + Services: Developing Distributed Applications with Workflows 150/151 (Hall E)
	COM424 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): A Deep Dive into Extending the Channel Layer 406 AB
	FUN315 Windows Vista & "Longhorn" Server: New Performance Counter Infrastructure and Data Collection 411
	OFF319 ''InfoPath 12'': Developing Forms for the Smart Client and the Browser 502 AB
5:15 PM - 6:30 PM	COM326 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Web Services for XML Programmers 150/151 (Hall E)
	COM327 Hosting and Communications Options in Workflow Scenarios 402 AB
	OFF321 Surfacing Your Application's Line-of-Business Data and Actions within Enterprise Portals 502 AB
9:00 PM - 10:00 PM
10:15 PM - 11:15 PM

Friday
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM	ARCSYM01 Architecture Symposium: Connected Business, Connected Systems Halls C & D (Petree Hall)
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM	COM430 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): A Deep Dive into Extensions for Security and Identity 403 AB
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM	COM429 Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): A Deep Dive into Extending the Service Model Layer 406 AB
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM	PRS334 Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") + Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo") = Magic 150/151 (Hall E)
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM	ARCSYM02 Architecture Symposium, continued: Connected Business, Connected Systems Halls C & D (Petree Hall)
12:00 PM - 12:45 PM
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM	COM413 IIS and Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): Hosting Services 408 AB
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM	PNLARC The Art and Practice of Connected Systems Halls C & D (Petree Hall)

Week of Webcasts

Larry Beck — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 12:25:00 GMT

I've been working with a new Workflow technology that Microsoft is planning to announce - and demonstrate heavily - at PDC. However, if you're not registered to attend PDC (and it's sold out!) then you can find out more by viewing the Week of Webcasts; in fact, I'd suggest you add Paul Andrew's blog to your morning read, as he's the the Technical Product Manager.

As soon as the announcement is done and I get back from PDC I'll have a new toy to post for everyone that gets beta bits at PDC.

BizTalk Performance Tester Extensibility Guide

Larry Beck — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 20:01:00 GMT

The most common question that I received on Beta 1 of this application was about testing with transports other than File. While it is not my intent to write all of the implementations that may be necessary I did provide an extensibility model for the community to do so. However, it was buried in the Help File and not very explicit about how to go about writing your own extensions. Therefore, I have published the BizTalk Performance Tester Extensibility Guide to provide more guidance on how to extend the application.

BizTalk Performance Tester Beta 2 Released

Larry Beck — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 15:34:00 GMT

I've uploaded Beta 2 of the BizTalk Peformance Tester (yes, I've changed the name) to GotDotNet. This release fixes the following reported bugs:

Added configuration menu item to support post-install configuration changes via the UI
Fixed bug in configuration UI where the delete timer value was being misrepresented
Updated the documentation with a run-time screenshot of the configuration dialog
Scripted the creation of the required SQL Server database during installation

Please uninstall the previous release before installing this release. You may wish to also delete the configuration files to perform a completely fresh install (note that the config files are backwards compatible so this step isn't required).

Bugs or Wishes for the BizTalk Throughput and Capacity Tester?

Larry Beck — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 15:15:00 GMT

I've been watching the download counter on the BizTalk Throughput and Capacity Tester and it reached 120 this weekend. Wow!! I hope that all of you are finding this tool useful. What I'm wondering if anyone has any bugs to report. I'm sure there have to be at least a few in there! :-) I'm also interested in any wishlist items you may have. Please post your feedback into the comments here.

I hope to incorporate any fixes, and maybe some enhancements, into the final 1.0 release in the next month or so. So let me know what you're finding!

The purpose of (this blog's) life...

Larry Beck — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 22:57:00 GMT

Just wanted to take a second to clarify my purpose in having this blog. It's not my intent to use this is a news distribution service. A few of the bloggers that I read often focus on news dissemination and they have their place - it's just not the place that I want for this blog to live. I want to publish original works, including papers, position statements, and utilities that may be of interest to others in the Connected Systems community.

That said, I do leverage the work of lots of others in the blogging community and as such will occassionally link to their original works. Please check out any cross-links that are of interest to you.

Building and Executing a BizTalk Single Sign-On Scenario

Larry Beck — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 23:32:00 GMT

One of my favorite BizTalk gurus is Richard Seroter. Richard is one of the those talented, visionary guys that I've always enjoyed working with and around. While he recently left Avanade to join Microsoft, we stay in touch and I read his blog religiously.

He just published a great step-by-step example of Building and Executing a BizTalk Single Sign-On Scenario; I recommend you read it if you see a SSO opportunity in your near future, and bookmarking it you don't (sooner or later you're going to need it to pass a security review - the question is not if, but when). And regardless, I highly recommend subscribing to his blog!

Throughput and Capacity Tester Beta 1 Released

Larry Beck — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 12:13:00 GMT

The Beta 1 release is now available here. A description of the tester is available here, and the application installs a Word document that describes how to use it. Please post any bug reports or feature requests to this blog entry.

Throughput and Capacity Tester

Larry Beck — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 03:32:00 GMT

At least once per week I'm asked about how to size a BizTalk Server implementation. While there are several published sources on performance metrics and sizing, the problem is that every BizTalk application has its own performance characteristics and as a result there is no formula or guideline that will provide developers with a reliable answer to their question.

But I've always been concerned that we were asking the wrong question, and performing our testing in a fashion that does not truly represent the maximum sustainable throughput of our BizTalk applications. When Wayne Clark published his blog article "Understanding BizTalk Server 2004 SP1 Throughput and Capacity" in April I finally realized what was wrong with our performance testing approach, and decided that I would write a testing tool to help our developers produce consistent, reliable capacity and throughput analysis on their implementations.

The result is the BizTalk Throughput and Capacity Tester, a standalone application that enables developers to produce a steady load of messages for consumption by a BizTalk solution and to monitor the proper system performance metrics during this testing. The application follows the guidelines outlined in Wayne's blog and is intended to answer the question "What is the maximum sustainable load that my BizTalk implementation can reliably process?" Before trying to run the application I highly recommend that you read Wayne's article to understand the metrics being analyzed and the performance testing approach used; anything short of a full understanding of the metrics and the approach could result in an invalid perspective of the results and might produce false performance expectations.

The application is nearing a Beta 1 release; I've issued two Release Candidates to a limited audience of developers within Avanade and fixed all reported bugs. I expect to post the Beta 1 release later this week and will make it available for download here at that time. But if you're like me you just have to see a screenshot to understand the application.

Here you see the main UI which displays a large graph of the relevant performance metrics of your implementation. The graph displays seconds across the Y axis (the 180 represents 3 minutes), 0 to 100 on the X(1) axis to repesent either 0 to 100 percentage or 0 to 100 in quantity, and 0 to 10,000 on the X(2) axis to represent 0 to 10,000 in quantity. In the middle of the chart the list of metrics you are currently monitoring is displayed. At the bottom is a tab control that allows the user to control various settings of the chart (such as refresh interval for the chart and the overall duration that the chart displays), the file production (including the number of files to produce per second, the output path for the files, and the path where processed files can be found and deleted), and to display details about the metric currently selected in the list above the tab control.

The following metrics can be monitored with the application:

CPU Utilization
Disk Utilization
SQL Lock Timeouts
SQL Lock Wait Time
BizTalk Messages Received
BizTalk Messages Processed
BizTalk Spool Depth

All of the metrics are WMI performance counters, but this complexity is hidden from the user. You simply select the metric you wish to add to the list, pick the server to be monitored from the domain list, and the list of instances will be presented. Select an instance, and then set the line color and style for the chart.

This beta will be considered feature complete for release 1, but I'm interested in feedback on additional features you feel you would need to appropriately determine throughput and capacity testing for your applications.