My Tech Ed Demos

by Matt Milner 6. June 2008 20:29

Thanks to everyone who came to my session on port binding options in BizTalk Server yesterday.  You can find the demos here including the visual studio solution, binding files for BizTalk and the PowerShell script I used for setting up and running my demos. 

Tags:

BizTalk Server | General Musings

Is support coming for BizTalk builds on TFS?

by Matt Milner 12. May 2008 12:54

According to Brian Harry[1] , he has been working with the BTS folks to get this put in place.  He has been assured that this will be part of the R3[2] release of BizTalk Server that is due out next year.  Finally, automated builds for BizTalk without all the hassle, I hope this definitely makes it into the product, as right now it is one more thing that makes people think BizTalk is not for .NET developers. 

 

[1] BizTalk Support with TFS

[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2008/04/23/biztalk-server-platform-updates.aspx

Tags:

BizTalk Server

Not just a service pack (VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 SP 1)

by Matt Milner 12. May 2008 12:50

Microsoft has rolled out the beta of SP1 for .NET Framework version 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.  Now don't get confused, this is not just a simple set of bug fixes, this thing is big! 

  • Entity Framework and LINQ to entities
  • ADO.NET Data Services (formerly project "Astoria")
  • Dynamic data web sites (highly RAD data driven web sites)
  • Performance improvements across the board (WCF, WPF, AJAX, debugging, etc.)
  • New client profile (not quite the slimmed down CLR of silverlight, but gives you a smaller footprint without server technologies you don't need).  Now, if they could do the opposite and remove the Windows UI stuff so I could run Windows Server 2008 Server Core with IIS and ASP.NET. 
  • a bunch of perf and usability improvements in VS 2008

I think the Entity stuff, plus the Dynamic data and data services is a killer combination for many web site developers to get their data modeled and quickly expose an admin tool for data maintenance  and service endpoints for interaction. 

 

Check out Soma's blog for some high level details and download links:Visual Studio 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 SP1 Beta available now

Scott Gu has details on many of the new features in the IDE and framework: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/05/12/visual-studio-2008-and-net-framework-3-5-service-pack-1-beta.aspx

Brian Harry has the details on the TFS improvements in the SP: Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 Preview

 

A metric b*#&load of enhancements for a service pack - awesome job folks, I can't wait for the released bits this summer. 

Tags:

General Musings | Windows Workflow Foundation | Windows Communication Foundation

Spaghetti Code Podcast - Connected Systems

by Matt Milner 12. May 2008 10:56

I got a chance a few weeks ago to sit down with Jeff Brand at the local Microsoft office and talk about something I love - Connected Systems.  We discussed Workflow and Biztalk, WCF and web services and how it all fits together.  Jeff is fun to talk to and does a good job of asking questions that developers are interested in.  The issues most developers face when building connected systems and trying to pick technologies were especially fun to discuss.  If you are interested, check out the audio - http://www.slickthought.net/post/2008/05/Spaghetti-Code-Podcast---Matt-Milner-on-Connected-Systems.aspx.

You can also check out some of his other podcasts with more Minneapolis folks on a range of topics: http://www.slickthought.net/category/SpaghettiCode.aspx

 

Enjoy!

Matt

Tags:

BizTalk Server | Windows Workflow Foundation | Windows Communication Foundation

Applied BTS R2 in the Windy City

by Matt Milner 10. April 2008 09:00

I've been teaching mostly WF and WCF lately, so I'm excited that in a couple of weeks (April 22) I'll be getting a chance to teach our core BizTalk course again in the lovely city of Chicago.  I'm excited because there is a lot of cool stuff for this particular open enrollment. 

1) R2 - need I say more? I will.  We will be using the latest bits to teach the core course from now on so you'll be learning BizTalk Server fundamentals using the latest and greatest version.  This is still a class for developers new to BizTalk, so if you have taken this class, you might be interested in the R2 features class that Jon is teaching in May and August. 

2) Dual Monitors!  Our crack sales team has negotiated dual monitors from the hardware vendor so you'll be able to see the lab manual and Visual Studio each in full screen glory!

3) It's in downtown Chicago right on Wacker Drive near all sorts of cool stuff for the evenings.

4) It's BizTalk and we'll cover all the three letter acronyms (TLA) BRE, BAM, WCF,WSE,ASMX (ok that's four letters), CSV, HAT, PUB (actually a technical term, but maybe where we'll be in the evenings as well), SUB, EAI, ESB, SOA.  I could go on, but you get the picture. 

5) As if all the above are not enough, we have some seats available and the course is in a week and half, so the sales guys are "ready to deal".  Actually, their just ready to cut you some discounts :) , especially if you sign up two or three people together, but even if you are just signing up one developer.  Talk to our fabulous sales team to get more information or register with a discount.  Just tell them you read about it on my blog. 

Hope to see you there, and once I get back from the class, I promise some more technical content.  I've been working on some demos and samples that I'll be posting over the next couple of months. 

Tags:

BizTalk Server | General Musings

Elegant Code Podcast

by Matt Milner 17. March 2008 06:22

Last week I had the pleasure of teaching a class for Healthwise in Boise, and while there met David Starr.  David has a website called Elegant Code and we got a chance to sit down for a podcast during the week.  We chatted about WF, WCF, BizTalk, "Oslo" and being a Pluralsight instructor.  Have a listen if you are interested, and check out the rest of the site while you are there. 

David also organized the Boise Code Camp, which I, sadly, missed by just a day.  From the sound of it, this was a huge success and a pretty large event, even by west coast standards.  I'm sorry I missed it.

Tags:

General Musings

Minneapolis Developer Roundtable - REST and stuff

by Matt Milner 13. March 2008 17:22

I recently got to sit down with some local smart guys here in Minneapolis and we chatted about REST versus SOA.  It wasn't any kind of religious discussion, but it was fun to talk to people who build apps and work with developers every day to hear what they think about this topic. 

You can find the audio over on Jeff Brand's blog.  Enjoy!

We do these periodically and are looking for other folks that might be interested in joining, so if you live in the area, contact Jeff through his blog and let him know. 

Tags:

General Musings

Disappearing BizTalk Add Generated Items wizard with SQL adapter

by Matt Milner 12. February 2008 22:59

I've run into this in two different places now so I figured it was time to blog about it and hopefully help someone else out since I didn't see much about this on the web when searching.  What I experienced was that when I would try to add a schema for a table in SQL Server, the wizard would get part way through allowing me to configure it, and then it would just disappear (usually when I hit the next button after specifying the select state or when I was about to choose the tables for an updategram) with no errors in the UI or in the event log.  I have seen this in two different cases. 

In the first case, and easiest to fix, I was trying to access tables to create an updategram, but all of the tables names belonged to a schema other than the DBO schema.  Every time I tried to create the updategram, I would say I wanted to do the updategram and then wizard would crash.  In this case, I was able to duplicate the database tables in another database (using scripting of the sql from the sql management tool) and put it in the default namespace.  Then I updated the schema by manually changing the node in the updategram that corresponded to the table name so that it contained the schema name.  After making this change, the updated schema worked fine against the database.  So it seems like the adapter can handle the non-standard schemas at runtime just fine, but not at design time. 

I should note that the above scenario was with BTS 06, not the R2 release.  I haven't determined if this is still an issue in the latest bits. 

The other scenario where I ran into this problem was with a BizTalk solution that had been created in BTS 06 and which I was now opening with BTS 06 R2.  In this situation, I was creating a receive location and after I entered the select statement, the wizard would bail on my with no warnings or errors.  I'm still not sure why this one was happening, but here is what I did to get it working. I created a new empty BizTalk project in a brand new solution and used the wizard to generate the items, which worked fine for some reason.  Then I went back to my old solution and tried again and it worked.  I'm surmising that running the wizard once on a new project allowed the problem to be fixed, some update or reg setting tweaked with the new project type, but I don't really know, it could have been a fluke of some sort for all I know.  The end result is that now my wizard appears to be working fine with new and updated projects. 

Tags:

BizTalk Server

Microsoft live labs projects

by Matt Milner 6. December 2007 22:51

Several people are starting to blog about the introduction of the Volta project on live.labs.com.  This is a pretty interesting research project and points to an interesting development at Microsoft.  I get a little frustrated at times b/c I hear developers complain that a) Microsoft isn't agile enough and it takes them too long to release stuff, and b) there is too much stuff coming out of Microsoft for me to keep up.  Well which is it!

The stuff on live labs is really early stuff that is only interesting if you want to see what Microsoft is thinking about long term and provide feedback.  If you are going to get frustrated when you can't use this stuff in 6 months in production, then it is not for you.  That being said, looking at the list of projects out there, two really stick out for me: Volta and Deep Fish.  Volta is a really intesting project to me in that it potentially allows me to write client code once and have the framework take advantage of the richest platform on the client.  I think that is where it really shines, where I can create the UI and it will use Ajax on clients that don't have .NET, and use something richer like Silverlight 2.0 when it is there.  I think that is more compelling than figuring out architecture/deployment later on.  I watched a Channel 9 video a this summer about Volta: check out part 1 and part 2 to hear more about the ideas from

Jeff was just complaining about the fact that IE mobile has not evolved.  I look at the Deepfish project and it gives me hope that someday my Windows Mobile device will have a browser half as cool as the one on the IPhone. 

Tags:

General Musings

Minneapolis Roundtable on RIA

by Matt Milner 6. December 2007 21:56

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of participating in a roundtable event with some really smart folks from around the Minneapolis area.  Jeff Brand, our local evangelist and .NET sex symbol (self-proclaimed) organized the whole thing and recorded it using a very cool device from Microsoft that came out of their research group.  It is a panning video camera that can react to the voices and capture video of the person speaking.  I think Jeff had some problems getting it working just how he wanted, but it is still pretty cool stuff and I'm sure we'll get it ironed out for future chats. 

Jeff has some posts with the links to download the conversation if you are interested.  Unfortunately, I was in NC at the time teaching a class so I had to participate via phone and Live Meeting.  While it gave me a remote user look at the experience with the Roundtable device, it was less than optimal way to be an active participant in the conversation.  I'm looking forward to the next conversation when I can hopefully be in town. 

Tags:

General Musings