Adlai Maschiach : EAI

January 2009 CTP of the Windows Azure Tools and SDK released

Adlai Maschiach — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:47:04 GMT

January 2009 CTP of the Windows Azure Tools and SDK released

There was a large crowd in Juval Lowy’s User Group presentation - Special User's Group meeting: Juval Lowy in Israel January 2009 - Introducing the .NET Service Bus. One of the cool things is the fact that he showed is the context and usage of Azure for the regular programmer as well as for architects. That said you should know that a new version of the Windows Azure Tools and SDK CTP of the was announced

In this release both the Windows Azure Tools & the SDK was updated

What's hot in the new refresh?

The problem with VS hanging when you hit F5, this is a huge fix.
Fix regarding the limitation of using special characters in entities, which affected some update or delete operations.
There have also been a bunch of performance fixes, so the overall user experience feels a lot nicer compared to the PDC release.

p.s. I don’t know about you , but I already bought the yuval’s new book as an eBook version

SSIS on Excel 2007 Data Import & Moss2007 :"Excel Source Output" . The column status returned was: "Text was truncated or one or more characters had no match in the target code page."

Adlai Maschiach — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:14:00 GMT

SSIS on Excel 2007 Data Import & Moss2007

One of the crucial stages in moving managers from the “Simple all I want I get from Excel” to a more centralized platform like Sharepoint is moving their data !

Well lately not only have I been a :

“HTML”
“SharePoint Designer 2007”
“Adobe Photoshop CS2” & “Paint.Net” Graphics
“General Specific Site Collection Moss2007 Admin”
“InfoPath 2007 Browser Compatible Developer” (including InfoPath C# Code)
“General Web Service & WCF Programmer”
“Camtasia Studio Video Composer”
“General Web Part Programmer”
“Regular T-SQL Stored Procedure Developer”
“Reporting Services 2005 & 2008 Guru”
AND (!) “SqlServer2005/2008 Integration Services Package Developer”
… Not forgetting the every day Project Management meetings, e-mails and all around needed Project Characterization Documents

Like every project manager the first thought is KISS – “Keep It Simple Stupid”. Well, if you’re like me and you know that this is a one time , or close enough, occurrence ( the import of data ) you can do what I did :

Open Access2007
Import the data from Excel
Save the file as Access2003
And from there on the SSIS Wizard ( Sql2008 in my case ) will do the work

in the process ( in the steps of the wizard ) , you can always check the option to save a local copy of the Package ( without an encryption key ) – your choice :)

for those who still are looking for another solution , a more permanent one that is, here’s a good link

SSIS Excel Data Source: Error with output column “Comments” (5691) on output “Excel Source Output” (5596). The column status returned was: “Text was truncated or one or more characters had no match in the target code page.”

And yes

I know SSIS is more my sister’s ( Ella Maschiach's BI Blog ) area , than mine ;)
I needed that for an InfoPath2007 form, which always can connect to a Moss List ;)

Dublin + .NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ! (part 4)

Adlai Maschiach — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 05:27:19 GMT

Dublin + .NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ! (part 4)

Finally I have a name for what I was talking about – DUBLIN !

With the announcement of Riding the Next Platform Wave: .NET Framework 4.0 and Windows Server "Dublin", and the attached overview of WCF 4.0, WF 4.0, and Windows Server "Dublin" specifications we understand that the unification of “Dublin” and the version of Biztalk that would come after BizTalk 2009 is unavoidable !

Microsoft has laid the foundation ( now we see the true meaning ) of this in the Version 3.0 of the .NET Framework.

Just look at this section from the specification

Q: What Application Server technologies are coming in Windows Server?

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

So what do we expect to be the difference ?

let’s start with the word light weight or cheap ( or “Express” )
Did some one said LOB / B2B ? in Dublin , officially Microsoft won’t promise this Functionality , why ? The word “Adapters” comes to mind as the first connotation word. But considering the fact that this would give a great Integration solution with current status of richness in .NET Web Service ( ASP.NET & WCF ) based applications that your company might have – then the missing “Adapters” won’t matter to you really
So you want a more “Visual” comparison ? Do you know the Difference between WSS 3.0 and Moss2007 Enterprise ? BDC ( Business Data Catalog ) , Forms Server and Excel Services are just but a few added values to the amount of available scalability that comes already with the Moss2007 Standard.
On the other hand ! to be a “real” “Dublin” programmer it would be best if you’d be also a BizTalk programmer – why ? because of this section:

The integration server and application server workloads are distinct but complementary; customers want to be able to deploy them separately as needed to support their distinct requirements. For example, customers that don’t need the rich LOB or B2B connectivity provided by an integration server, will deploy the Windows Server application server to host and manage middle-tier applications. Likewise, customers that need to connect heterogeneous systems across an enterprise, but don’t need to develop and run of custom application logic, will deploy BizTalk Server. When customers need both capabilities, “Dublin” and BizTalk Server will work together nicely.
which shows to us that in the end this would help Microsoft in the integration of BizTalk into companies that still don’t work with BizTalk , but use .NET as their development platform. OR companies that required an elevated ( Server ) capability of their business logic which was wrote in .NET 3.x WF/WCF

The King ( BizTalk ) is not dead , he just would marry the princess of the neighboring country ;) , just like MFC Still lives among us , it’s just “Managed” now :D

.NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ? PART3
.NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ? PART2
.NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ?

.NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ? PART3

Adlai Maschiach — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 07:02:00 GMT

.NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ? PART3

Well, what can I say, it all started with a gut feeling, or revelation , which ever you feel more commutable, on an early morning of a Saturday, drinking my usual morning coffee got me thinking , and resulted in this post .NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ?. After a while, the more I thought about it, the more I felt more confident with the idea so I continued my journey with .NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ? PART2. And now, just like the fact that it took some time between DieHard 2 and DieHard 3 ( the 4th would be after the release of .NET 4.0 ), here comes after a while the 3rd part in the series.

So what made me return to this subject ? Well two things :

.NET 4.0, WF/WCF, and Oslo , a post which explains what is expected in the next version of .NET , especially in the context of WCF & WF.
The main sentences I liked were: ".NET 4.0 which will be the next major side-by-side release of .NET Framework since .NET 2.0." and ".NET 4.0 will contain major improvements in both WF and WCF. The two will be integrated seamlessly together from the programming model to the runtime. Workflows and services are tightly coupled and both can be declaratively modeled by XAML." did I just hear BizTalk XLANG in XAML ? does that not just shout out ?
BizTalk Server2009, "Oslo" and .NET my own compilation of the BizTalk Server roadmap which shows a "short" summary of the Next BizTalk Platform.

Now all you have to do is go to the upcoming PDC and when you fly back home you are more then welcome to reflect on why I might be wrong ?

BizTalk Server2009, "Oslo" and .NET

Adlai Maschiach — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:53:44 GMT

BizTalk Server2009, "OSLO" and .NET

Due to expected “collision”, BizTalk2006 R3 (BizTalk Server 2006 R3 Announced) development was integrated into the BizTalk2009 development. Some of us might have suspected that already from the Is there a new logo for the IT Products in Microsoft? post a while ago. As such, we should summarize the current situation:

Where We Are Now

BizTalk 2006 R2

Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services

Enhanced support for messaging based on Web services
Updated SharePoint Server Integration
Expanded Business Activity Monitoring
BizTalk Adapter Pack
WCF Adapter SDK
BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems
Enterprise Service Bus Guidance [ESB]
Enhanced Partner Solutions
Partial Support for Workflow Foundation .NET 3.0

Business to Business Integration

Integrated Support for EDI and AS2 Protocols
Comprehensive RFID Platform Infrastructure

Other Enhancements

Broader Enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO)
Easier updates – BizTalk 2006 R2 includes support for Microsoft Update

Where We Are Going

BizTalk 2009
The next version of BizTalk Server continues to build on the investments made to address the concerns of service oriented architecture and enterprise connectivity.

Updated Platform Support

New Application Platform Support
BizTalk 2009 supports the latest Microsoft platform technologies, including Windows 2008, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SqlServer 2008 and the .NET 3.5 SP1. These platform updates enable greater scalability and reliability, and many advances in the latest developer tools.
New Hyper-V Virtualization Support (BizTalk / Moss Virtualization Issues [Hyper-V])
BizTalk 2009 now takes advantage of the latest virtualization improvements included as part of Windows 2008 Hyper-V, which can lead to reduced costs through lower hardware, energy, and management overhead, plus the creation of a more dynamic IT infrastructure.
Improved Failover Clustering
By taking advantage of Windows 2008 clustering, BizTalk Server is now able to be deployed in multi-site cluster scenarios, where cluster nodes could reside on separate IP subnets and avoid complicated VLANs.

Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services

New Web Services Registry
BizTalk 2009 includes a UDDI 3.0 registry which provides support for registry affiliation, extended discovery services, digital certificates and extensibility for a subscription API.
New Line of Business Adapters
BizTalk 2009 provides two new adapters for Oracle E-Business Suites and SQL Server, plus additional improvements have been made to the existing set of adapters.
Enhanced Host Systems Integration
BizTalk 2009 adds a new WCF WebSphere MQ channel by providing the transport, data formatter and encoder to integrate directly with WebSphere MQ via WCF and a new WCF Service for Host Applications has been added to expose the traditional Transaction Integrator to .NET Framework developers. Additionally, BizTalk 2009 includes updated platform support for the most recent versions of CICS, IMS, CICS HTTP transport, DB2, DB2/400, DB2 Universal Database, and WebSphere MQ.
( as well as TIBCO Chooses Microsoft .NET WCF & Silverlight )
Enhanced Business Activity Monitoring
By expanding the out of the box BAM functionality with SqlServer 2008 Analysis Services, BizTalk 2009 provides support for UDM cubes and scalable real-time aggregations which enhances support for Microsoft PerformancePoint Server 2007.
Enhanced Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Guidance
ESB Guidance 2.0 delivers updated prescriptive guidance for applying ESB usage patterns, improved itinerary processing, itinerary modeling using a visual Domain Specific Language (DSL) tools approach, a pluggable resolver-adapter pack, and an enhanced ESB management portal.

Business to Business Integration

Enhanced Support for EDI and AS2 Protocols
BizTalk Server 2009 provides support for multiple message attachments, configurable auto message resend, end-to-end filename preservation, improved reporting to address new features, and Drummond re-certification for AS2.
Updated SWIFT Support
By building on a rich SWIFT foundation, BizTalk 2009 updates all message schemas and business rules for compliance with SWIFTReady Financial EAI Gold certification, as a result adds support for SWIFT FIN Flat File message types and business rules, BIC Plus IBAN interface, and Extensibility to support SEPA Routing.

Device Connectivity

New Mobile RFID Platform and device management
BizTalk 2009 delivers a new lightweight platform for a variety of mobile devices, which simplifies the development of mobile applications that expose relevant, real-time business information. BizTalk RFID Mobile includes support for enhanced device management, Powershell support for administration of edge infrastructures and the ability to monitor RFID infrastructure using System Center Operations Manager 2007.
New RFID industry standards support
Support for key industry standards (including LLRP, TDT, TDS, WS Discovery and partial EPCIS support).

Developer and Team Productivity

New Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) support
BizTalk 2009 provides support for Team Foundation Server (TFS), and allows development teams to be able to leverage the integrated source control, bug tracking, support for team development, Project Server integration and support for automating builds via MSBuild.
Enhanced Developer Productivity
BizTalk 2009 introduces a number of improvements have been made to the underlying Visual Studio based BizTalk project system which enhances debugging support for artifacts such as BizTalk Maps (XSLT), pipeline components and XLANG Orchestrations, and enables support for unit testing via Visual Studio Test.

Other Enhancements

Messaging
BizTalk 2009 improves recoverable interchange processing of validation failures by providing support for recoverable interchange processing for disassembly (DASM) and a validation stage within the pipeline. The WCF Adapter has been enhanced to provide support for configurable transactions and the ability to choose the transaction isolation level in the WCF-Custom Send Adapter.
Administration
By continuing to build on the improvements to the BizTalk Management Console made in BizTalk 2006 R2, two new query types have been added for tracked message events and tracked service events which consolidates all queries – tracked/archived data, live data and specialized EDI reports, into a single tool.

"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.

from the BizTalk Server roadmap

InfoPath & SAP WebServices Intergration

Adlai Maschiach — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:42:24 GMT

InfoPath & SAP WebServices Intergration

We have to admit that we’re not alone, that said, the SAP Global Alliance team has recently announced about a New Whitepaper about InfoPath and SAP. The direct link to the paper is http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/0/2/a023924c-86c5-42ac-8bfb-0f31cf3c7467/Integrating_MS_Forms_with_SAP_V1.pdf. Those of us who Have both Moss2007 Enterprise Edition and SAP can now enjoy the productivity of both worlds with seamless intergration :)

BizTalk 2006 R2 - PPT's, HOLs, & Demos

Adlai Maschiach — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:38:13 GMT

BizTalk 2006 R2 - PPT's, HOLs, & Demos

Jeff Barnes was kind enougth to publish BizTalk 2006 R2 University - PPT's, HOLs, & Demos from the Free Tech*Ed ]inbetween[ event

Which Contains From His Sky Drive:

Thanks jeff :)

"BizTalk" without BizTalk

Adlai Maschiach — Sun, 18 May 2008 12:10:35 GMT

"BizTalk" without BizTalk

Ok , with this kind of opening Title you would have a high expectations of the Article, sorry this would be short.

I'll summarize in two samples :

Udi Dahan's nServiceBus is one of the most interesting thing I have come accross in the last months. Ever since he's lecture about performance considerations in building WebSites - that has caught my eye , and I've been wanting to learn more about the subject and the way of thinking on which it is based.
The reason for this post is Tom Hollander's blog post on Building a Pub/Sub Message Bus with WCF and MSMQ which caught my eye just as Udi Dahan's nServiceBus did - but from a different perspective.

I encourage you all to investigate further more about the availability of Publish-Subscribe architecture on existing NON-BizTalk Architecture , I have the felling that at some point Windows Workflow Foundation would cause Microsoft to re-write completely BizTalk.

TIBCO Chooses Microsoft .NET WCF & Silverlight

Adlai Maschiach — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:22:22 GMT

TIBCO Chooses Microsoft .NET WCF & Silverlight

Tibco has just announced in TIBCO Advances Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) with Closer Microsoft Integration that TIBCO's:

Work on an EMS (TIBCO's Enterprise Message Service™ platform) Transport Channel for WCF (Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation) !
Selection of Microsoft Silverlight for RIA (Rich Internet Application development)

read the rest here TIBCO Advances Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) with Closer Microsoft Integration.

ESB Guidance PPT resources

Adlai Maschiach — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:59:28 GMT

ESB Guidance PPT resources

ESB Guidance Architects User Group Presentation PPT
Best Practices For Integrated SOA Governance Automation [www.mssoaandbpconference.com/SOAPPT/SA400_Wasznicky_11012007_SOA.pdf]
Best Practices For Integrated SOA Governance Automation [www.mssoaandbpconference.com/SOAPPT/IA400_Wasznicky_110207_SOA.pdf]
SOA-05: Building an Enterprise SOA Using ESB {Dave Chappell - Sonic, Old but good !}

I'm sure there are more , so I'll update this post , or build a ESB Resources page ;)

Webcast: ESB Guidance - Prerequisites, Install, Config and ESB Portal

Adlai Maschiach — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:08:00 GMT

This Webcast is a Full circle of the Install and Config of the ESB Guidance from Microsoft. It is devided to the following parts : Step 0 - Prerequisites - download and install, Step 1 - Install The MSI, Step 2 - Configuration, Step 3 - Install and Config the ESB Portal. ...(read more)

http://www.codeplex.com/CoreToolkit - Mazal Tov

Adlai Maschiach — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:51:26 GMT

http://www.codeplex.com/CoreToolkit

Ok , my first CodePlex project ( I have a 2nd one in queue ). The library is a Toolkit for easier programming when connection to using inerop and windowsHocks to other clients / applications on the same machine.

I don't know who wrote the manual for CodePlex Client , but I highly recommend to re-write it , or at least make a Webcast about it ( I know I might do one ). The upload of the source code reminded me of my Unix/Linux years (in the Bad sense of it). Command prompt tools is one thing, but command prompt tools with "missing" documentation is a different ball game!

I won't tell you much about my other project , but can guess it's related to BizTalk =)

BTW in my past I was ( among other ) a Java programmer , and in one of the startups I worked , we worked with the diamond industry , here in Israel, point is that in this industry you don;t have to sign a caontract, all you have to do is shake the other person's hand and say "Maval Tov"

Webcast: ESB Guidance Installation Process, STEP1 - Install the MSI [EN]

Adlai Maschiach — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:34:00 GMT

Webcast: ESB Guidance Installation Process, STEP1 - Install the MSI [EN]

( for s full circle of the install goto Webcast: ESB Guidance - Prerequisites, Install, Config and ESB Portal , it's in english )

With the Microsoft ESB Guidance - Release , major step in the architecture level has reached maturity. After the success of my previous Webcast : ESB Guidance, STEP 1 - Install the MSI which was in Hebrew , I have decided to create a equivalent ( but much better ) Webcast on the same subject , but in English . This we cast includes the configuration section which was missed in previous Hebrew Webcast , as well as my check list of the prerequisites.

Hope you'll enjoy it, thanks

View Video

Download it for offline here.

Microsoft SOA and Business Processes Conference Videos

Adlai Maschiach — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:49:00 GMT

Microsoft SOA and Business Processes Conference Videos

For those of us who weren't in the Microsoft SOA and Business Processes Conference , in Redmond from the October 29th to November 2nd , here is the link for the videos
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/event.aspx?id=84

.NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ?

Adlai Maschiach — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:42:13 GMT

.NET Framework 4.0 = "BizTalk/SOA Express Framework" ?

Ok, let me first say that this is MY OWN current mashup !

Well lets look at the current status:

In the year 2005, Microsoft have released the .NET Framework 2.0. In it was the FREE ( as opposed to the "you have to buy" ) products: ASP.NET 2.0 WebParts, ASP.NET 2.0 Memebership provider (a "Forms Authentication component") and SqlServer Express 2005 = what you got is the ability to write you own "SharePoint 2005 Express Edition", great no ?

In the year 2006, Microsoft have released the .NET Frameowrk 3.0. In it was the FREE products: Workflow Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation and CardSpace = What we got is a base for Sequential/State Machine/Data-Driven Workflow [WF] which can communicate, with support in Transactions, with all most any thing [WCF] in a secure way [CardSpace]. Well all of these have created a way to build a "partial SOA platform". Why do I say partial? mainly because SOA is Message based, and some one has to build and process Inbound and Outbound Messages in a fastest and with least code manner, just like what we have in BizTalk - Pipelines , Adapters.

Today, in 2007, we have the new and shiny .NET Framework 3.5, which has just now been released. One of the main architectural aspects that came along with the .NET Framework 3.5 was the LINQ concept. LINQ has become the current buzzword, and for a very good reason, with LINQ we have among other the XLINQ, DLINQ and PLINQ. Using these we would be able to communicate with any Data[DLINQ] / XML[XLINQ] message in a the fastest way [PLINQ]. But as all things, even components have to mature in the industry, and the industry waits for a "SP1" of the product. By the time "SP1", in this case .NET 4.0, would mature, the long waited Entity Framework would be complete, thus completing the circle for creating a Framework which has the ability to go side by side with Microsoft's next SOA platform - BizTalk 2009.

The plans for 2009, the expected release year of .NET Framework 4.0, is still unknown. But, as an example, if we look at the history of VC++ 6.0 , with the release of .NET Framework 1.x, MFC was not thrown away, just future development was put into a halt. The same I expect to be in our case, BizTalk Orchestrations would be able to live side by side with WF Workflows. On the same level Adapters and Pipelines would be able to be replaced with WCF and LINQ components

Just look at the pictures below, and do the math ( each picture has a link )

from the The BizTalk Server 2006 Messaging Engine

from the: Developing Adapters Using the Adapter Framework

from the: An XML Guru's Guide to BizTalk, Part 2