BizTalk 2004 is starting to heat up...!

Just received the Release Candidate on BizTalk 2004 (BTSEvalRC - 74367-000-0000007-05479). It sure has been tidied up. Not only that, but there seems to be generally more chatter on the forums and with a lot more material popping up.

Anyway this entry will be a placeholder of references (heres a few for starters):-

• BizTalk PowerToys from luke nyswonger.
  
• El Grego ( i don't know his name) has a sample which shows how to use the Enterprise Instrument Framework to generate an application event (in this case a suspended message caused by a send port retry failure). Although BizTalk generates a plethora of WMI events that can be picked up by MOM (and NetIQ soon).
  
• Martijn Hoogendoorn has a Suspended Queue Listener Windows Service which basically listens out for the WMI event and allows you to then do what you want with it... It works in real-time and batch mode as well... Get it here.
  
• Brian Loesgens has some cool code that implements service windows for send/receive locations. Get it here.
  
• Stephan Bouillon has a real cool component that replaces the standard XML validator used in the BizTalk default pipeline. Rather than the standard behaviour of suspending the message it sends an error to the messagebox, this allows you to have a error handling orchestration that can subsribe to these messages... This greatly improves the end-to-end management of BizTalk, product team why did you not think about this!!?!
  
• Another bright chap Stephen Thomas has some interesting pieces on sequential convoying, etc...
  
• Jeff Lynch is doing some pretty harcore mapping examples, especially around conditional outputs for linenumbers.
  
• Giles Zunino has a good example of how you can archive any messages as they are passing through the BizTalk pipeline. This i see as a standard service that ought to be provided by BizTalk, and perhaps through HAT you can achieve this. However companies may have compliance issues which deem the need for a more legally watertight solution. Anyhow something that i had been thinking about also.
  
• The Core Engineering team from the Biztalk product team are now getting on the case, this really does raise the quality of information coming out. No other vendor can match this openness. Well done Kevin B Smith and Lou Graber
  
• Jan Thielens Blog has some good best practices on BizTalk 2004, particularly around foundation components like error logging, exceptionstions, and XML dis-assembly (since the product documentation only covers CSV)
• Mike Holdorf's been keeping it real with some pains and best practices on BizTalk.
  
• Charles Young from Solidsoft has some interesting articles on BizTalk Orchestrations and Transactions.
  
• Carlo Poli has is having some fun with versioning BizTalk assemblies over here...
  
• A new book on BizTalk 2004 development on Amazon.
  
• Another Christoph has some development learnings on using BizTalk orchestrations.
  
• The Middleware company has released a .NET community for serverside, enterprise specialists, its called strangely enough, theServerside.NET!!
  
• Some early ideas on naming standards for BizTalk orchestrations.
  
• Scott Woodgate who is the programme manager of the BizTalk Server / Jupiter Programme.
  
• An interesting presentation from Claesen Christof on BizTalk 2004 and how it can be used as a Enterprise Service Bus. And another on a simple and easy BizTalk 2004 overview.
  
• Darren Jefford is having some fun with MSMQT and MSI Exception handling at his blog over here.. way to go!
  
• The gotdotnet community has a number of code samples and its own special workspace for BizTalk.
  
• Mike Woods has his own msn workspace which include the hands on labs that was available at TechEd and PDC.
  
• You can find many of the presentations and videos from the PDC 2003 here . (its only here for 6 months so hurry!)
  
• You can find many of the presentations and videos from the various TechEds 2003 here.
  
• Benjamin Mitchell has some interesting things to say regarding Indigo, BizTalk and Yukon (Service broker). More on his comments later.
  
• Microsoft's BizTalk 2004 beta newsgroup.
  
• Microsofts BizTalk public newgroup on all things BizTalk.
  
  More to come soon...

P900 and playing DVD ( using MPEG4)

This is a fantastic example of what you can do with the new Sony Ericsson P900. Its built in MP4 player (actually the p800 has this too, but not a great screen) allows you to play a full-length movie.

To do this, you will need to rip (from dvd to mpeg), encode (convert to mp4), and transfer (to memory stick)

WinFS - Why its a big deal..

The following snippet from Ray Ozzie succinctly sums up why he reckongs WinFS is a big deal. These things take time, but WinFS will open up some really fascinating changes that we can expect in the next 5 years (or so). The 'network-effect' of WinFS, assuming we end up ubiquitously storing primary schemas types about at least our identities and profiles, means we will be able to do some pretty amazing things with personal communication and collaboration. Searching my digital assets, (i.e music, photos, documents) against standard schemas that make cross-referencing, searching and inferencing of my content, and content that i am interested in, extremely easy. IMHO, this makes WinFS the most significant part of Longhorn.

"No - the "big deal" about WinFS IMHO isn't Search. Like Web Services - it's about the fact that it's an attempt to get a higher level of interoperability between programs through agreement on schemas. Hopefully, toward the goal of bootstrapping network effects, and unintended/innovative consequences, on the client. WinFS defines an extensible object model and persistence mechanism, as well a rich and extensible "relationship" mechanism that can be used to intertwingle objects with that are somehow related to one another. Some kinds of stock relationships are obvious: common Author, common Artist, common Location, common Priority, etc. Some may be more subtle or domain-specific: common Project, common Client, common Contributors, or even manual and thus not-easily-described ties." More....

The proud owner of an iPod 20Gb

I am now the proud owner of an iPod (3rd generation) 20Gb. Its just quite simply fantastic. Yeah, you can buy cheaper imitations, but they are just that, imitations.

Its by far the slimmest device, thanks to the use of the new 1.8" hdd from toshiba, and seamlessly integrates with USB on my pc.

My next plan is to get hold of the iTrip, essentially, an FM transmitter, which allows me to be my own personal pirate radion station on the move ;-). The reality is that i can hook it up to my car-radio and tune it in.. More on that once ive gotten it working...

Home made Pizza

The trick is to make a good tomato sauce for the pizza base.

- 4 x tomatoes.
- 1tbs Tomatoe puree.
- a big dollop of tomato pesto
- mixed herbs.
- 2 tbs Olive oil.
- 50ml x water.
- 1 clove of garlic.

Reduce in a sauce pan for 15mins..

You can make or buy your own pizza base, its something that i haven't learned to do, but i would like to.

Spread the tomato sauce evenly (but not too heavily) over the pizza base.

Sprinkle liberally with mozarella cheese.

Place in the oven for 12 minutes.

Now, when it comes out, its ready to *serve*. Just add the 2 SPECIAL ingredients. Prosciutto Ham and Rocket leaves.

Place up to 10 strips of prosciutto / parma ham over the pizza. And then sprinkle Rocket leaves over that (lots of it). I like rocket leaves there is something quite rustic and peppery about the flavour and smell.

Finally, sprinkle some sea salt & ground pepper and your ready to eat. trust me its simply gorgeous. :)

So, What EXACTLY is the Matrix!!!??

I came back come from seeing The Matrix Revolutions (yes i know the picture above relates to Reloaded) late on Saturday night, was i the only person who when the lights went up looked around at everyone else and thought, WTF?

Now before i get started, let me say that i did like the Matrix Revolutions. But that is because i can see the 'big-picture' - maybe because as a s/w architect i need to look at the world through many eyes.

RANT
So let me get this off my chest before we proceed. Firstly i have read and heard many reviews of the Matrix movies, and they range from "its got great special-effects, but theres no story" or "NEO is all-powerful its boring watching him fight Agent Smith" or "all the actions seqeunces were just there to fill up the movie" to "I didn't understand a word that the Architect was talking about" to "well i never liked Phantom Menace anyway.." . Jeez!

Get a hold of yourself, and stop trying to be so DAMNED cynical, the problem is that opnions are like arseholes, everyone has one. Its easier and 'smarter' to be critical than to admit that you liked something, or even to attempt to address the subjects that the Warchowski artists were trying to raise in the movies.

'So what other movies does Suresh like?' - i hear you say. Well i liked Solaris, i liked Mullholland Drive, and i liked the Pirates of the Caribbean, its ok folks, you don't lose your street cred for saying that you like this movie, or that you dig Keira Knightly, or thought that Johnny Deppwas excellent.

You see, its ok if you used to fancy Britney, or would like to groove like Beyonce or wish that your girlfriend had a bum like Kylie or youve realised Saira Mohan is such a doll, or you REALLY do think Christina Aguilerra is DIRRRRTY! Its ok, we still love you, the point is, you should see the beauty in what you see, so you don't have to be critical to be accepted, everyone forgives you, you mom still loves you, you weren't the only person that your school music teacher was stern at, and you know what?, you can give a two-finger salute to all those people that said that you wouldn't amount to much, cos they were wrong! Right. Now that i've gotten that off my chest, back to the Matrix movies.

DIFFERENT LEVELS
These movies can be seen on different levels, and each movie offers us more to think about, more to re-evaluate. I think this movie has since the days of Star Wars, brought to the masses a rare combination of philosophy, religion, mythology, meta-physics with references to buddhism, greek mythology, hindu philosophy, and gnostic christianity that was cleverly spun through a 'post modern-generation Y-ultra-geek-comic book-anime-kung-fu-action-fetish culture-dystoptian future' story, that would otherwise have been ignored by todays generation. (if you thought writing that was hard, just try saying it!!)

SUMMARY
In short, if you liked big guns, kung-fu, or wanted to get past the 'dollar-a-quote, strawberry gum, quasi-religious diatribe' (as ive heard it described!) then you would have got something out of it. The Warchowskis artists should be applauded for achieving this, but i will not sympathise with the person, that is critical, and that was neither entertained, nor wanted to learn or think.

I think the Wachowski Brothers should tackle another Matrix movie, perhaps they can introduce the notion of another human cancer that seems rife in this world, and that is human cynicism and apathy.

IT-Analysis.com - Will the Process Integrators Integrate?

This article by Peter Abrahams is spot on on the current vendors marketplace for ETL/EAI/BPM...

Its exactly what ive been thinking over the last year... Ultimately the application server (read IDE) vendors that will win in this space. EAI and BPM is not a black box solution, so it will be driven by the businesses and the developers implementing the solutions.

LA Universal Studios

A special thanks to Scott Woodgate for enduring a whole evening with us at Universal Studios.

Between Jody, Chris and myself we felt priviliged!

BTW, 1.8 Million lines of code in BizTalk 2004 i was right!

pdc updates

This years PDC was primarily focused on the following:

- Windows 2005 / 2006 (aka Longhorn)
- SQL Server 2004 (aka Yukon)
- Visual Studio 2004 (aka Whidbey)

There was off course a whole load of other things going on at the PDC namely (previews on BizTalk Jupiter and ASP.NET v2.0 - more about this further below), but it was really hard not to get drawn into the thrust of the conference which was the next generation of Windows Server (Longhorn), reckoned by Microsoft, to be their biggest release since Windows 95, and its obvious to see why.

WinFS is pretty cool. A new file system that relies on SQL Server, and sits on top of NTFS that provides an application layer to the file system. Through the definition of schemas, and schema relationships, (Yes were talking MetaData!) WinFS is able to build dynamic views on all object types. Additionally other core appilcations like Contacts become a primary WinFS schema type, with a UI that is bound against it. For example. this means that application vendors can take advantage of this rather than building its own silo based contact list. As Jim Allchin said, "Data is trapped in the application.". WinFS will allow us to get to that data more easily, to build more meaningful relationships across these types, and allow us to search and give us contextual access.

Finally, the task centric view of the desktop will eventually appear, and we will be able to say good ridance to the file based one that we have endured for the 20 - 30 years. And not a moment too soon, given the sheer amount of data we are capturing in our hard disks every day. Its good to see that Microsoft are finally able to execute on the vision of an object oriented desktop, where previous attempts like Cairo, Pink and Taligent back in the very early 90's failed.


As an aside, its reckoned, that within the next decade or so disk storage will become so cheap that we will be able to record every second of our lives from the day we are born till we die... Imagine being able to fast-forward or rewind through ones complete recored life, i kid you not. it will will happen. Anyway, i don't think that WinFS needs to contend with such challenges (just yet).

As an aside, it wil be interesting to see how WinFS/LongHorn compares to the work sponsored by Mitch Kapoors and the Chandler product. Whilst trying to solve simliar problems of Information management on the desktop. Chandler approach takes an e-mail centric way of solving this.

built in rss reader in longhorn - oh yes.

Avalon - a Unified presentation model for web and windows, yes thats right, both!; Microsoft has taken the next evolutionary steps from the .NET framework, which had already unifiied Windows apps (System.Windows.Forms via Win32), Web apps (System.Web via IIS), Web Services (System.Web.Services via WSE) and replaced this all with a new UI framework called Avalon which will will be acessed through the new Windows API (WinFX).

This means for the first time ever, a developer can focus on the functionality of the application, rather than worry about what programming model or skills are required to deploy it.

Now lets be clear about this, the Avalon UI, will be accessilble through the .NET framework(don't know what release it will be called) or through a new XML declarative programming language called XAML. XAML is Microsofts attempt to offer a first class scripting language that is superior to DHTML, that when compiled (or interpreted) will run as managed IL code in the .NET framework. There are intermediary formats known as BAML and CAML (yes!) that allows binary and IL representations of the XAML code for faster over the wire delivery.

** Now let me just re-iterate, Microsoft has produced a new XML based declarative language which which maps 1-to-1 to the new WinFX UI/Avalon object namesapce for building applications for the web and windows. This is a fundamental change to how people will write UI applications in the future!! **

This is earliest evidence of what Microsoft has been saying for the last few years that to get the full richness of developing applications you need a much richer language than HTML. Writing managed code or XAML to the Avalon UI, means that you are writing directly to DirectX and not GDI, so you will get some pretty fancy looking vecor based user interface on the desktop (much like Macromedia Flash). This is probably earliest evidence that HTML's time is slowly coming to an end.

The benefits are obvious for developers will be able to build applications without worrying about web or windows, which is fine as long as your operating system or browser can render XAML! I suspect we won't be hearing the last about XAML and it may end up changing a bit in the course of the next 2-3 years!

Indigo - boy where do i even start with this... In short its a transport API that will converge the different middleware layers that are Enterprise Services, .NET remoting, MSMQ, COM+/MTS exposed through a web Services framework. This Web Services framework is based on existing work Microsoft has been doing to build a Web Services Architectures (known as GXA or GWA) and their work with OASIS on WS-n standards (where n=("policy" | "security" | "transactions" | "Coordination" ....etc..). Anyhow, my head is still hurting going through Don Box's sessions...entertaining as they may be ;-)

Longhorn identity management is another area which deserved more attention, this will be managed at the OS layer through a simple trust model where a physical exchange (on the phone) of the fingerprint of the users public key is used to establish identity. There is much more to this, but i didn't have time to go through it (just yet!)

BizTalk Jupiter - Well its not exactly Jupiter, but the early signs of how they intend to componentize some of the functionality in BizTalk and make it 're-hostable' in other server products like CMS, Commerce Server. In the demonstrations that they had at the PDC, they showed how the lightweight orchestration engine could be used within Windows SharePoint Server. What was remarkable was the seamless integration between Microsoft Word and SharePoint, with the worflow process being managed both server and client side.

BizTalk Indigo - Additionally, Scott Woodgate's presentation showed the integration points between BizTalk 2004 Server and future products like Yukon (SQL Server) and Indigo (Longhorn). He actually showed us how we could easily bind an indogo adapter to a BizTalk port and and undertake a regular BizTalk orchestration with out having to worry about the complexities of reliability, transactionality, assured delivery of Web Services... Also he showed how in SQL Server (Yukon) you could do control flow process management of a ETL through the SQL Server DTS. The DTS as we know it has changed substantially from the previous version, and offers a palette of orchestration components for managing this process. I preumse this orchestration engine has been embedded in Yukon.

ASP.net 2.0 - From what i understand the design goals for the dev team was to reduce the amount of code written by a developer by 50%. That a pretty phenonmenal challenge, and shows they are making the lives of developers easier (read: redundant). Features include ADO.NET (much less code), Master Page templates, pagination of the grid controls, login and authentication controls, user personalisation, VB.NET debugging improvements. I don't want to elaborate on this too much as there is probably a whole load of stuff out there.

LA fires

l dont know what the cost of an AT&T gprs call from Houston is, but right now i couldnt care!

Ive been waiting at the exec lounges at Continental for the last 6 hours! waiting to get on a flight to LA for this years PDC.

Anyhow, lessons learned from Houston:

1. Belleaire Broiler Burger bar
2. Big trucks
3. carwash for 50 cents.
4. Houstonian hospitality

How the brain thinks - scary!

i found this at Mitch Kapor's Weblog:
"Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat
ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you
can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed
ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

Web services, SOA and Service Bus architectures

This is an interesting article which talks about the roles of Web Services, Services Oriented Architectures (SOA), and the role of EAI.

I have to say that there is a lot new thinking in this area, which a lot of vendors are struggling to come to terms with, its far from clear, many have a legacy to protect, and a vision that they need to articulate.

With all of this, its too easy to look at nirvana and think that we will someday be connected in this enterprise-galactic glue of process managed asynchronous messaging that is location, technology, and vendor transparent!

Whats clear, is that the ideas are much further ahead than where most enterprises in reality are at.

P800 phone blog

"this is a test on my SE P800. cool it works! The Opera browser has done a really good good job in rendering the pages in edit mode.... thankfully the blospot templates are coded in XHTML"

I have since then been doing more research into how i can use my P800/Symbian phone to upload pictures/commentary on the fly... it seemed to me that it would be a great (some would say sad!) idea to be able to use the camera to provide visual commentary supporting my text that is updated to my site...

I am really surprised that the Mobile carriers haven't jumped on to this, or then perhaps i shouldn't be surprised as they are only now moving up the protocol stack ( i.e. MMS!) and from their point of view anything that moves into the application stack is a control point for revenue generating services (think DoCoMo). So maybe if they were to bundle anything as useful as a phone-blog software on their phones they need to figure out a way of making money on it.

Companies like Jataayu (another privately held Indian software company) are making inroads with the big telco-carriers by licensing their apps onto their phones... perhaps time to offer them a mobile-blog app? - one for the boys there, i will let you know their response...

India IT superpower by 2006?

India is very likely to become an IT superpower by 2006, according Gartner who were recently quoted at a UK outsourcing conference. For many this may not seem a surprise, although the fact that Gartner believes this powershift in IT will occur so soon may raise a few eyebrows.


Whilst the UK has been slow to get onto the offshoring bandwagon the US has been slowly moving call-centres, back-office functions, and IT infrastructure to India over the past decade. Lured by the number of highly competent engineers that India produces every year, and coupled that with the fact that this english speaking workforce are cheap and have a hardworking and loyal work ethic second to none.

In the UK, there has definetely been a noticeable increase in high profiled announcements of companies striking deals to transfer callcentre and do BPO work in India. Driven by bottom line revenues, this shift, stategically makes sense since these sames companies also get the additional value of the talented IT market.

This of course, is all very depressing if you happen to be a skilled IT worker in the US or the UK, what and how should these workers should adapt is a tough question that i have been thinking about, and i simply don't really know where this is all going to take us. My feeling is that perhaps after 40-50 years of sustained growth in the western world we are seeing signs of a global balance. Try telling my younger cousins from India, who used to be in awe of the fact that i lived/worked in a foreign country, he doesn't feel like that anymore....

So, when the economy eventually picks up (assuming it doesn't suffer the fate of Japan's 10 year depression) things may be fine again, and we may forget about all those jobs that went abroad. Then again.

This time round we may need to bear in mind that the very countries that the UK and US are outsourcing to are expected to be creating much of the economic growth in the next 25 years. The question we must ask is with the loss of intellectual knowledge brought about through outsourcing these jobs may not come back. With the population in India (1.1Bn) and China (1.3Bn) accounting for one-third of the planet, both these countries have the fastest growing middle-class in south-east Asia that will need its time-free money-abundant lives filled.

And where will this leave us?

Will the U.K. become a nation of hedge fund managers and hairdressers? And will the U.S. simply continue in its preserve of Movies, Media, Military, and the high speed delivery of pizza. A laughing matter not.

Tech.Ed03, Barcelona, July 2003 - presentations

Phew...

Just finished posting my ramblings from my recent visit to TechEd 2003. My postings are in the order in which i viewed the presentations, so as you go further forward, you may see some duplication on the material that was presented.

All in all. I enjoyed this years Tech Ed presentations. So what was i able to take back about Microsoft and their products:.

• Windows 2003 just works. They have built on top of the stability of the previous release to offer (i) NLB and improved clustering, (ii) .NET framework 1.1, (iii) Web Services & UDDI, Virtual Shadow Copy, ....and much more im sure!



• Office 2003. I didn't attend any of the seesions on Office, but from what ive read to date. I am impressed. I think the way that they are opening up Word using XML and XSD will really expand the way people will start to build producitivty applications. That coupled with InfoPane, which provides a context sensitive client side panel embedded in Word, which allows developers to build workflow based applications that leverage on XML and Web Services. Additionally they released InfoPath, an XML Forms editor that can be used send XML data to BizTalk... I really don't know where Office 2003 and InfoPath are going... but i think it will really open up new oportunites for building apps... i would recommend taking the time to follow these new developments.



• BizTalk 2004. Of course, you could not go to TechEd without seeing the announcements for BizTalk Server 2004 (which by the way is an absolute darling of a product). This is more a reflection of how how quickly Micrsoft has taken leadership position in the EAI space in a very short space of time. While companies like SAP are making noises of their NetWeaver / SAP XI platform strategy, and IBM still in the process of integrating (and rebranding to IBM WBI) its recent acquisition of CrossWorlds and its ICS Server / Collaborations product... Oh and lets not talk about TIBCO's continual acquisition of products (last one being Talarian?), it sort of makes me think that these companies are really struggling to deliver a cohesive strategy. So I think Microsoft have really stolen a lead, with its organic development, that is in line with its product stack and their Jupiter product strategy. This is additionally supported by Microsoft entering the Gartner Magic Leader/Ability to Execute Quadrant, which means they must now be taken very seriously!