September 2005 Entries
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...