Its my Place at my Pace….

Announcement

On Friday Sept. 5, Microsoft will announce features for BizTalk Server 2009 and future releases plans to provide customers and partners with further clarification about what to expect.

Details:

Below is an update on plans for BizTalk Server 2009 and provided clarity on the rhythm of future releases following BizTalk Server 2009.   

The two main highlights of this announcement are: BizTalk Server vNext (renaming, timing & features) and future plans (ship rhythm & high-level themes).

1.       BizTalk Server vNext:

o   Naming Change: We have also updated the name of the next release from BizTalk Server 2006 R3 to “BizTalk Server 2009”.  By calling the product BizTalk Server 2009, we can clearly communicate this is a full product release with new and enhanced capabilities and updated platform support for customers to take full advantage of the latest technology wave (Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5).

o   BizTalk Server 2009 Timing: We will deliver a public CTP by the end of this calendar year.  Additionally, BizTalk Server 2009 is on track for availability in the first half of calendar year 2009.

o   Features: We bucket the 2009 release into 5 core feature areas, which are detailed further on the BizTalk roadmap page. These include platform support, SOA & web services, business to business integration, device connectivity and developer and team productivity.

2.       Future Plans:

o   Ship Rhythm: Microsoft’s commitment to maintain a rhythm of releases roughly every 2 years. 

o   High-Level Themes: We outlined priorities for the next couple of releases. Including:

§  Developer productivity enhancements (e.g. complex mapping);

§  Enhanced B2B support (e.g. complex trading partner management, expanded industry standards and schemas);

§  Low-latency messaging enhancements and ESB Guidance;

§  Enhanced device support for cross-enterprise asset tracking, enterprise manageability of devices, and key industry standards;

§  Real-time  business event visibility through BI / BAM Enhancements; and

§  Integration with the latest new platform capabilities (to take advantage of the latest advances in the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and Windows Server).

For more information on the BizTalk Server roadmap announcement please visit the BizTalk roadmap page.

Additional Resources

• PressPass Q & A with Oliver Sharp, GM of BizTalk Server: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass
• BizTalk Website: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/
• BizTalk Server Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/
• Steven Martin, director in the Connected Systems Division Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/default.aspx

Keep watching this space for more information…

Recently, one of my colleagues had a weird error while trying to invoke a webservice from his orchestration. Even though i was not really peeping over his shoulder, i guess he was trying to call .net service/class from orchestration within a scope. He assured me that he marked all his .net classes as Serializable. However, he was getting the following error when he was trying to debug his orchestration in the debugger.

Type ‘CRMService’ in Assembly ‘xyz.Components, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=8c1b08fd9e7f291b’ is not marked as serializable.

Upon further investigation, we found that he was trying to initialise his message with an instance of his XMLSchema class. However, i guess we basically assumed everything in Biztalk to be serializable. However, the XMLSchema class need not be serializable and hence, one has to serialize them seperately using binary formatters.

Also, one needs to be sure all the data before the send shape is serialized as the “Send” in an orchestration, is a persistance point where the data will be serialized before sending it out.

Incase you are encountering this issue before you reach the XMLSchema instance, ensure that all .net classes are marked as Serializable with the Serializable attribute and all classes contain default constructor.

Ta!

Microsoft has recently added another addition to their Poster Series. They have now added Business Activity Montoring Poster which provides an overview of the entire life cycle of a BizTalk BAM implementation. It illustrates the design of the observation model by the business analyst, mapping the observation model to the implementation by the developer, deployment by the system administrator, and the presentation channels of the information for business end users.

You can download this poster from here

Ta!

Well, things are looking better for BizTalk and i doubt if it ever be phased out.

Steve Martin has finally announced the enhancements made to BizTalk’s B2B Functionality in his blog where he states the not so public information that Microsoft has made an agreement with Covast to improve its Biztalk’s B2B capabilities. Find more information on new features and enhancements of B2B from here.

Watch this space for more updates …

Hi All,

I came across some fantastic articles on WCF in codeproject. One that particularly caught my attention was on Null Transport for WCF by Roman Kiss (this article has got a mention from here too).

Other interesting articles on code project are :

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/WCF_Duplex_UI_Threads.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/WCFInject.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/EventDrivenComFoundation.aspx

Enjoy!

Hi,

Microsoft has released a couple of new WCF Adapter Code Samples on MSDN. Get them from here:

Ta!

Microsoft has been putting lot of effort in documentation and it shows when they have recently released Microsoft BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer v1.1 which performs configuration-level verification by reading and reporting only. The Best Practices Analyzer gathers data from different information sources, such as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes, SQL Server databases, and registry entries. The Best Practices Analyzer uses the data to evaluate the deployment configuration. The Best Practices Analyzer does not modify any system settings, and is not a self-tuning tool.

Apart from the above, they have also a while back published BizTalk Operations Readiness guide which is very handy for operations teams especially on how to track, log and detect problems and fix issues with biztalk applications. This highly valuable document from Microsoft can be downloaded from here

Another fantastic piece of information might is the guidelines on how to optimize performance of biztalk server in your applications.Do check out all the information on optimization from here

Good Job MS!