Is BizTalk dead?

One of the frequently asked question - Is BizTalk Dead?

The question arises with the announcement of Dublin able to makes long running workflow implemented in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) persisted in SQL Store, sounds like Biztalk.

More details at A First Look at WF 4.0, “Dublin”, and “Oslo” http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd200919.aspx

I have implemented BizTalk projects in multinational organizations with industry standard like SWIFT, my personal opinion is, no doubt WF, Dublin and Oslo are evolving technologies in application development, but BizTalk still playing as a strong leader in Integration technologies for EAI and B2B, reason being are

• B2B industry standard like EDI, SWIFT, RosettaNet contains hundred to thousand schemas and only available in BizTalk as Accelerators. I do not think developers can create all these schema parser easily within short time frame
• BizTalk has many built in Network, Data and Application Adapters like MQ, MSMQ, SAP, Oracle, FTP, and etc and all these can be easily tested by BizTalk engineer, without BizTalk, this will need to develop by developers, I believe this is not a difficult task but also not a straight forward task for developer, and how to unit test all these protocol adpaters required sophisticated knowledge, is our developer have all these knowledge to work with different kind of network, data and application protocols?
• BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is a good integration analytical tool can be easily implemented by Business Analysts, Administrators and Developers, without BizTalk, can developers built this tool?
• Last but not least, from the business point of view, BizTalk has been sold to many multinational organizations and implemented successfully, will Microsoft stone themselves by killing BizTalk?

I foresee BizTalk will continue evolve by combining WF, Dublin and Oslo instead of deprecated, and this is clear in BizTalk roadmap:-

BizTalk Server and "Oslo" and .NET

"Oslo" is the codename for Microsoft’s forthcoming modeling platform. Modeling is used across a wide range of domains and allows more people to participate in application design and allows developers to write applications at a much higher level of abstraction. "Oslo" delivers a new integrated platform for connecting across modeling domains, including a new "Oslo" modeling tool, an "Oslo" modeling language, and an "Oslo" repository. As we gathered feedback from BizTalk customers, they indicated they would prefer to take a disciplined, evolutionary path to adopting some of these newer platform technologies. We have thousands of customers that have deployed mission-critical applications on top of our BizTalk Server architecture; they want to decide for themselves when to move to newer versions of the platform.

Therefore, it’s an important guiding principle to our planning efforts that we preserve our customers existing investments in their BizTalk Server infrastructure. In fact, you won’t need to upgrade BizTalk Server to take advantage of "Oslo" – current BizTalk Server 2006 R2 or BizTalk Server 2009 customers can benefit from "Oslo" by being able to leverage and compose existing services into new composite applications. BizTalk Server today provides the ability to service enable LOB systems or trading partners as web services (using WCF supported protocols), which can be composed with the "Oslo" modeling technologies.

This principle applies to advances in the .NET Framework as well, such as Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). In response to customer feedback, we are committed to continued support for BizTalk Server’s XLANG orchestration technology - the existing BizTalk orchestration engine. Additional support for WF will be prioritized for the coming releases based upon customer demand and scenarios.

Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server

BizTalk Server (BTS) is a great product from Microsoft and it solves a lot of integration challenges, I have shared this technology with patterns and best practices to many experience BizTalk engineers and developers at Kuala Lumpur.

Course 2933A:
Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

Module 1: Introduction to BizTalk Server 2006
Module 2: Creating Schemas
Module 3: Creating Maps
Module 4: Deploying a BizTalk Project
Module 5: Routing BizTalk Messages
Module 6: Creating Pipelines
Module 7: Integrating with Adapters
Module 8: Creating a BizTalk Orchestration
Module 9: Automating Business Processes
Module 10: Creating Transactional Business Processes
Module 11: Deploying and Managing BizTalk Applications
Module 12:Integrating with Web Services
Module 13: Integrating Business Rules
Module 14: Enabling Business Activity Monitoring
Module 15: Integrating Trading Partners

http://www.metricsthatmatter.com/iversona54

Connect WSS internal database Microsoft##SSEE using SSMS

Default Windows SharePoint Services internal database can be connected successfully using this connection from SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS):-

\\.\pipe\mssql$microsoft##ssee\sql\query

1) Start SSMS and key in the connection

2) We can access the Microsoft##SSEE now!

ASP.NET populates Excel data without Office installed - DSOFile

Do you have any requirements to generate online Excel form from server without Office installed?

Why not download DSOFile from Microsoft website?

The Dsofile.dll files lets you edit Office document properties when you do not have Office installed

Sample Code in C#:-

DSOFile.OleDocumentPropertiesClass d = new DSOFile.OleDocumentPropertiesClass();
string file = Server.MapPath(@"Files\I9.xls");
d.Open(file, false, DSOFile.dsoFileOpenOptions.dsoOptionOpenReadOnlyIfNoWriteAccess);

foreach (DSOFile.CustomProperty cp in d.CustomProperties)
{
if (cp.Name == "Name")
{
object objValue = "YB test on " + DateTime.Now;
cp.set_Value(ref objValue);
}
}

d.Save();
d.Close(true);

System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(d);

Response.Write(file + " [Name] field has been updated successfully");

Offshore Development with Agile Software Process

No requirements can get 100% in software development, the better Software Development Process is Agile compared to Waterfall, especially in Offshore Development Business.

This article from Martin Fowler is a good one:-

Using an Agile Software Process with Offshore Development

Documentation in Agile is much lesser compared to Waterfall, but the most important in Agile is user participation.

Community Launch for Heroes

I have presented LINQ to SQL Introduction on 28 June 2008 (Saturday) at Microsoft Auditorium, details at http://www.microsoft.com/malaysia/events/communityheroes/

BizTalk WCF Oracle Dynamic Send Port

How to implement WCF Oracle Dynamic Send Port? There is an example in Microsoft BizTalk Adapter 3.0 for Oracle Database Documentation:-

Request2(BTS.OutboundTransportType)="WCF-Custom";
Request2(WCF.Action)="http://Microsoft.LobServices.OracleDB/2007/03/SCOTT/Table/ACCOUNTACTIVITY/Select";
Request2(WCF.BindingType) = "oracleDBBinding";
Request2(WCF.UserName)="SCOTT";
Request2(WCF.Password)="TIGER";
SendPort(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.Address)="oracledb://adapdoc/";

If you deployed the code may hit the error:-
Event Type: Error
Event Source: BizTalk Server 2006
Event Category: BizTalk Server 2006
Event ID: 5754
Date: 7/3/2008
Time: 11:21:31 AM
User: N/A
Computer: AMSDC1-S-7538
Description:A message sent to adapter "Oracle" on send port "OracleDynamicSendPort_1.0.0.0_OracleDynamicSendPort.OracleSend_Port_DynamicOracle_beec5c3523602cdb" with URI "oracledb://TNSNAME/?PollingId=1" is suspended. Error details: Value cannot be null.Parameter name: s MessageId: {A7F0A852-C315-4521-9B63-E0BFE221F4AE} InstanceID: {FF53A23E-3F21-4098-A02B-8381E6C3D851}

The solution is to add additional line in the code above:-

SendPort(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.TransportType) = "WCF-Custom";

Then this exception will be resolved.

NOTE: to use the WCF Oracle Dynamic Send Port, the Adapter's default send handler, i.e. the BizTalk hosts must be running.

New Web Site created

Just created a new website http://www.kuala-lumpur-guide.com to share what is Kuala Lumpur included dark side information