BizTalk

Buzzwords in Practice…

microsoftian — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:31:12 GMT

Its been quite long time I haven't wrote much due to lot of travelling and non-core area related work (non connected systems, SOA & BPM work).

Now, I am back and the good news is I will be drinking, eating and breathing some of the buzzwords..(because of the solutions I am concentrating and architecture of current project I am in)

So, Some Buzzwords I am really gonna look/work and more deep dive areas are mentioned below…

1) SOA – Service Oriented Architecture, The most controversial Architecture name in current IT world

2) ESB – Enterprise Service Bus, One of the SOA Infrastructure Component, thinking of exploring more from Microsoft technology stack

3) BPM – Business Process Modeling, Love to see something really in BIG action…

4) EDA – Event Driven Architecture, considered to be the next generation of SOA

5) CEP – Complex Event Processing

6) Oslo – Code Name for Modeling platform from Microsoft

7) Azure – The BLUE cloud coming from Microsoft

8) Dublin – Code Name for the Forthcoming Application Server from Microsoft for WF and WCF Services hosting

9) Governance – Widely used across different technology stack like MDM, SOA etc..

10) MDM – Master Data Management, this is also one more BIG Buzz word like SOA and criticized across the industry

11) Web 2.0/RIA and beyond – Next Generation Internet/Rich Internet Applications, I started my career as a UI guy and then shifted more towards middleware. I would like to see my footprints future. so this still being one of my favorite area all time!

12) and finally SharePoint 2010 is also on my list :) (Google Wave in this list too…)

13) Android/iPhone platform – my techie gadgets are based on these two. (myTouch and iTouch). (ChromeOS and open source are in the parking lot)

14) A.R.Rahman – my favorite music composer who just got into Hollywood and got 2 Oscars for his debut Hollywood flick (Slumdog Millionaire). I am looking forward for more of these in future..(both Oscars and compositions )

I am sure there are many more keywords/buzzwords like REST, SOAP, BI, SOI, SLAs …and hell..from the above 13 elements and beyond..

Currently thinking of stopping with this Buzz now…!

OK, now you might think of a great phrase (At least I could think of…) “Jack of all trades is master of none!”

and of course, my intensions are also not to master everything from the above list, but it is interesting to see these buzz words coming in my current projects and I really like to see them in action.

So, I am also looking forward to see some thoughts from my side through next couple of years and beyond (Don't know what BUZZ I will hear next!, fed-up with lot of stuff already :))

BizTalk 2009 Virtual Labs

microsoftian — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:20:58 GMT

I found 4 BizTalk 2009 Virtual Labs. It seems more on way (because, the virtual labs cover only the very basics of BizTalk solution).

ESB 2.0, UDDI, new B2B capabilities, Enhanced BAM capabilities are yet to come I guess.

For now, here are the 4 virtual labs

MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009 Building your first BizTalk Solution

MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009 Processing Flat Files

MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009 Working with Maps

MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2009 Working with Schemas

If you haven’t installed the BizTalk 2009 RTM yet, this is good opportunity to take a first look in these virtual labs.

Atleast for beginners, these 4 labs are enough to get started with BizTalk and understand how it works in the messaging world.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk 2009

Watch Microsoft SOA Conference 2009 sessions online!

microsoftian — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 19:25:00 GMT

If you ever dream of attending SOA conference 2009, which happened in Seattle this January, now you should feel lucky!

More than 30 videos/Presentations are online on Windows live spaces. Check them out @ http://soaconference2009.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

Key things to observe are..

· BizTalk 2009
· ESB Guidance 2.0
· Oslo, Dublin and Cloud platform
· Some good SOA scenarios/case studies and best practices (patterns & practices) using Microsoft Application platform (Please try to adopt these if you gone through similar business cases)

The conference is basically divided into 3 tracks and you can find the slide decks here…

BizTalk 2006 R2 Certification

microsoftian — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:13:18 GMT

BizTalk 2006 R2 certification is now available, to which I was a part of exam developer.
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exams/70-241.aspx
happy test taking and measure your BizTalk skills.

Future of BizTalk -- My perspective

microsoftian — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:19:29 GMT

I am a BizTalk developer since BTS 2004 came. And recently did BTS 2002 Migration too
Recently I have been observing few Microsoft announcements and which made me to say this...
First look at what I have observed...
Look at Microsoft Application Server Roadmap-->Dublin
Look at the Microsoft Future Modeling related articles-->Oslo

Wow, it seems Microsoft is all over Europe..

Ok, here is my observation from what I heard, looking at these kind of announcements

BizTalk 2009 might be the last XLANG based Microsoft BizTalk Product.
In future Process Server/WF/WCF going to replace the capabilities of current Biztalk (but interestingly BizTalk magic word might get propagated).

What made me to think like this..because, the Process Server (a.k.a code name "Dublin"), WF and WCF provides almost similar capabilities of BizTalk..Look at following table

Windows Communication Foundation 4.0

Windows Workflow
Foundation 4.0

Windows Server
"Dublin" technologies

RESTful enhancements

· Simplifying the building of REST Singleton & Collection Services, ATOM Feed and Publishing Protocol Services, and HTTP Plain XML Services using WCF

· WCF REST Starter Kit to be released on Codeplex to get early feedback

Messaging enhancements

· Transports - UDP, MQ, Local in-process

· Protocols - SOAP over UDP, WS-Discovery, WS-BusinessActivity, WS-I BP 1.2

· Duplex durable messaging

Correlation enhancements

· Content and context driven, One-way support

Declarative Workflow Services

· Seamless integration between WF and WCF and unified XAML model

· Build entire application in XAML, from presentation to data to services to workflow

Significant improvements in performance and scalability

· Ten-fold improvement in performance

New workflow flow-control models and pre-built activities

· Flowcharts, rules

· Expanded built-in activities – PowerShell, database, messaging, etc.

Enhancements in workflow modeling

· Persistence control, transaction flow, compensation support, data binding and scoping

· Rules composable and seamlessly integrated with workflow engine

Updated visual designer

· Easier to use by end-users

· Easier to rehost by ISVs

· Ability to debug XAML

Provide standard host for WF and WCF applications

Pre-built developer services

· Message-based correlation

· Message forwarding service

· Content-based message routing

· Compensation service for long-running transactions

Greater scalability and easier manageability

· Enable scale-out of stateful workflow applications

· Persisting and rehydrating state for high scalability

· Enhanced management and monitoring functions

· Tracking store for workflow events

Supports “Oslo” modeling platform

Now, do you agree with me or not?!

Microsoft announced Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0

microsoftian — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:22:28 GMT

Day after tomorrow, I am about to talk about Oslo at my company internal meeting.
Now, I have something to add to that session.
Microsoft, Today announced Visual Studio 10 (Rosario) and .NET framework 4.0
You can find the press release here! and more information here!

So, Microsoft says there basically 5 focus areas with these two new products...

   1) Riding the next-generation platform wave (Modeling platform with an eye towards SOA )
   2) Inspiring developer delight (New tools like visual editor, ALM manager, MOSS, TFS, System   Center improvements)
   3) Powering breakthrough departmental applications
   4) Enabling emerging trends such as cloud computing (Interent Service Bus (ISB), SSDS etc)
   5) Democratizing application life-cycle management (ALM)

I am looking forward to see following things in action

1) Visual Editor of Visual Studio
2) Process Server for Hosting the applications
3) New modeling language
4) New capabilities of WF/WCF
5) The power of Repository

So, Get Ready!

BizTalk 2006 R2 Certification (70-241)

microsoftian — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:14:06 GMT

Recently to I have been to Redmond to participate in BizTalk 2006 R2 Certification exam (70-241) development.
It was wonderful experience being at Microsoft and working with the fellow BizTalkers.

Microsoft has greatly improved the exam development process. The questions will go through several stages to make sure they meet the product objectives and technical accuracy without any ambiguities in the answers. Also it's more closer to what we do with the product in day-to-day development as SMEs from the industry involve in this process.

Overall, for every BizTalker its a worth writing exam to get to know more about the product capabilities and making sure that they are product technology specialists.

Happy BizTalking...

Oslo/BizTalk Bloggers Guide

microsoftian — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:43:42 GMT

Alan Smith launched a new community site "bloggersguide.net" a community site that will host resources for BizTalk Server and the up and coming Oslo technologies.

If you have lot of questions regarding BizTalk and Oslo technologies...go there..almost everything answered!
You can find the latest bloggers guides (Oslo and BizTalk) in the download section.

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