Well folks I’ve been greeted with the news that Microsoft Windows Azure will be in 2 geo-replicated places here on Australian soil, coming ‘shortly’.

As an Azure MVP & from Breeze (a leading Microsoft Cloud Partner) perspective we invest heavily in cloud technologies.

What does this mean and why should I care? I hear you ask… good question and I asked the same.

As most of you know I have a passion for Integration, sticking all sorts of things together from small RFID devices, hand made hand-held devices, raspberry PIs through to high end ERP, Financials & many other types of systems. So before I get to the WHY aspect, let me briefly set the context.

There’s some great data coming out of Gartner a report which caught my eye - http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/2240173583/Gartner-Better-collaboration-for-new-era-of-application-integration came out with these:

• Integration Costs to rise by 33% by 2016, more than half of new system development costs will be spent on Integration
• By 2017, over two-thirds of all new integration flows will extend outside the enterprise firewall.

So Integration just took on a whole new face – successful integration is about using the right tools (in the toolbox) for the right task. Now we have a whole new drawer in our toolbox full of Azure goodies & widgets. This functionality is just too compelling to be ignored….

…and now that it’s on Australian soil I’d be thinking that just about every Data center service provider should be giving you cloud functionality.

Some quick cloud advantages:

• scale, provisioning and ease of use
  • Imagine being able to spin up a SharePoint site in the time it takes me to write this article.
    
  • Imagine being able to ask for an extra load balanced highly available Server/Service at the click of a button. Importantly – Imagine being able to give it back again at the end of the weekend/day/next hour.
    
    
• Not wait the typical 12 weeks for a new server to be provisioned, oh and dont mention filling out the right forms. Running an application on those machines and getting a firewall port opened….that’ll be another 2 weeks…and on it goes.
  
• The much beloved Enlightenment for many companies of achieving Single Sign-On – Imagine your customers being able to sign into your applications using their own Ids, Live Ids, + a bunch of other Ids without you needing to provision more services. You can house your identity accounts in Azure, locally or elsewhere – finally you don’t need a Quantum Analyst to setup Single Sign-on.
  
• My experiences in the last few weeks on client sites have been back in the world of old – classic encumbered infrastructure service providers wanting to claim everything, put the brakes on any new ideas and have meetings around such concepts of adding an extra 10gb disk space to existing servers. These guys should be ‘can do’ people – it’s all about choosing the right tool for the job.
  
• Microsoft have done a great job on the developer tooling front from the classic MS toolset through to Apple, PHP, Ruby, Phython etc. all being able to access, develop on, publish and deploy.
  
• We could even give a bunch of HDD drives to Olaf (our gun cyclist @ Breeze) to ride to the Azure Data Center and offload our data, while we wait for the NBN to never come to our area.
  
• There are some great options on the horizon coming down the track.
  

So let’s say we’re keen to explore – how hard/easy is it to get ‘my’ own environment & what does this mean.

The short answer is you get an Azure Footprint which could be running in a ‘Data Center’ in Sydney. Depending on what you’re playing with you could get:

- SQL Databases, Cloud Services, Scalable Mobile Device Services, Load balanced Websites/Services/Restful endpoints…and the list of ‘widgets’ goes on and on.

How do I interact with this environment:

Often the issue around alot of this is that because my beloved ‘servers’ are running somewhere else I’m concerned over how much control we get.

We enter into the Hybrid Integration space – where as you can imagine not *everything* is suited for the Cloud, there will be things you keep exactly as they are. So there will be many many scenarios where – we have something running locally as well as something running in Azure. Some options we have available are to make our servers ‘feel at home’:

• VPN connection – we can have several flavours of a VPN connection that connect our Azure Footprint to our local network. for e.g. local network is 10.10.x.x/16, Azure network 10.50.x.x/16. Full access to all the machines/services and other things you have running. CRON jobs, FTP, scripts, processes, linux boxes, samba shares, etc etc.. (I do realise the integration world is never as easy as we see it in the magazines)
  
• RDP Connections – standard level of service really from any Service provider.
  
• Remote PowerShell Access
  
• Azure Service Bus - Applications Level Web/WCF/Restful Services connectivity. An Application Service can run either locally or in the cloud and this feature allows your Service to be accessed through a consistent Endpoint within the cloud, but the calls are Relayed down to your Application Service. There’s a few different ways we can ‘relay’ but the public endpoint could house all the clients & their device requests, while your existing application infrastructure remains unchanged.
  
• SQL Azure Data Sync – sync data between clouds & local from your databases. So for many clients, come 8pm each day, their local database has all the Orders for the day as per normal, without the usual provisioning headaches as the business responds to new market opportunities to support smart devices.
  
• We even get pretty graphs….
  
  • But wait there’s more…..
  • These details are typical performance monitor counters + diagnostic information. We can use Azure Admin tools to import these regularly and import them into our typical tools.
  • System Center does exactly this – so our ‘dashboard’ of machines will list our local machines as well as our cloud machines. Your IT guys have visibility into what’s going on.

We’ve been using Singapore DCs or West Coast US with pretty good performance times across the infrastructure. 

What does having a local Windows Azure Data Center mean to me:

• Medical Industry – we have several medical clients allowing us to innovate around Cloud technologies using HL7 transports. Faster time to market and higher degrees of re-use.
• Cloud Lab Manager – www.cloudlabmanager.com can run locally for all training providers. Breeze has created an award winning cloud based application that will certainly benefit from this piece of great news.
• Creating a cloud based application is now feasible (this particular one was due to the sensitive nature of information it carried)
• And lastly I can house my MineCraft server – well it’s my 10 yr old sons and half the school I reckon.

So for you…

Ask yourself the question – are you getting all these features from where you currently host/run your hardware?

Lack of infrastructure and provisioning challenges shouldn’t be holding back new ideas & business movement. iPads, smartphones, anywhere, any time access should be the norm, not like we’re putting another person on the moon.

It’s all about using the right tool for the job

Enjoy folks as it’s certainly exciting times for us Aussies ahead!!

Microsoft’s Announcement

There’s a great Centrebet case study  

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows-Azure/Centrebet/Microsoft-Windows-Azure-a-safe-bet-for-sports-bookmaker-s-website/710000000390

• Cloud Connectivity
• Ability to run existing BizTalk applications in the cloud (IaaS)
• Improved Performance
• Simplified Development and Management Experience
• Support for the latest platform and standards

In terms of features, this translates to

• Integration with Cloud Services- BizTalk Server 2013 includes new out-of-the box adapters to send and receive messages from Windows Azure Service Bus, making it easy to build hybrid solutions. It also provides capabilities to host BizTalk endpoints in Azure through the Service Bus Relay providing a simple and secure way to connect external partners and application to BizTalk Server on premises.
• RESTful services- BizTalk Server 2013 provides adapters to invoke REST endpoints as well as expose BizTalk Server artifacts as a RESTful service.
• Enhanced SharePoint adapter- Integrating with SharePoint using BizTalk Server 2013 is now as simple as integrating with a file share.
• SFTP adapter-Enables sending and receiving messages from an SFTP server.
• Other enhancements: The ESB capabilities previously introduced in the ESB Toolkit are now fully integrated with BizTalk Server, Dependency tracking,Improvements in dynamic send ports, XslCompiledTransform, more support for protocol updates (X12, EDIFACT, HL7)

There is also a change in the licensing approach, where BizTalk is now moving to a per-core licensing model.  If you need more information on this, drop us a line.

Happy BizTalking.. :)

“Ding ding” after spending 4 rounds(hours) in the ring with this guy, I’m taking the gloves off and heading for the showers and salts.

I’m in the middle of some BizTalk work (which is nice for a change) and I’m ticking my tasks off.

I’ve got a REST receive port exposed from BizTalk via IIS and published through the WCF Publishing Wizard.

(there’s Operations mappings and extracting variables from the URL to Context Properties under the Configure – omitted for brevity)

Couple of shots of the WCF Service Publishing Wizard:

The issue here is that – once the Wizard completes you’ll get:

http://<servername>/coreapi/customer/Service1.svc as the URL to call.

The task was simple:

I wanted to call URLs such as

http://<servername>/coreapi/customer/123456789/enquire

http://<servername>/coreapi/customer/123456789/verify

etc. 

And not their equivalents of:

http://<servername>/coreapi/customer/Service1.svc/123456789/enquire

The Solution was to use IIS URL Rewrite which looks to be the Swiss Army knife that MacGuyver uses.. (but he only needs a paperclip to take out an entire train).

Lots of samples and numerous examples of solutions that work and people are high-fiving in about 5 mins of starting…alas not for me . The other point to note here also is that a URL Rewrite module exists for:

• Default Web Site
• Each IIS Application under the Root Website.

I wanted to keep things confined to just my IIS Application and not have to have requirements of changing the Default Web Site for instance.

The tricky part was to find out how IIS works and it’s matching.

Underneath CoreApi I have Customer as an Application as in

/coreapi/customer

**The part that URL Rewrite appears to do** (that floored me for a while)

It chunks the FULL REQUEST and passes just the part required to your app.

So take the full URL:

http://localhost/coreapi/customer/1234234/enquire

As you traverse down the IIS ‘Application tree’ the URL that is passed to each URL Rewrite in each underlying IIS Application is *different*, as in:

• /coreapi = ‘customer/1234234/enquire’
• /coreapi/customer = ‘1234234/enquire’

This was possibly the hardest piece to figure out. I’d setup failed request tracing in IIS and those logs, while I feel like I’m walking into the Engineering room of the century with all the logs, pages and info… I wasn’t seeing ‘URL Rewrite failed to apply your rule because …..’  - it just wasn’t appearing plain and simple.

URL Rewrite – the rules that won the show

1. Under /coreapi/customer in IIS Manager
2. Started off with a Blank Rule and setup the following:

So the RegEx Rule (at this level) simply states – if the Request begins with a number, then prepend ‘Service1.svc/’ to it.

The key is knowing what the URL being passed to URL Rewrite is at this level in the IIS Application/vdir tree.

What the web.config says at this level:

<rewrite>
           <rules>
               <rule name="CoreApi Rule" patternSyntax="ECMAScript">
                   <match url="([0-9].*)" />
                   <action type="Rewrite" url="Service1.svc/{R:1}" appendQueryString="false" logRewrittenUrl="true" />
               </rule>
           </rules>
       </rewrite>

I hope I’ve saved you a bit of time on your next endeavour.

While getting my BizTalk SWIFT environment prepared on BizTalk, I decided to test the waters by running through the Tutorial – big trouble in little Sydney resulted.

While the tutorial is comprehensive, it’s written for previous versions of the SWIFT accelerator so there’s the few paths (BREConfigurator.exe.config) that need correcting for some of the SDK tools. Which I can live with as their part of the SDK and this isn’t quite baked BizTalk 2013 yet.

The part where I hit trouble is that during the tutorial once schemas + rules are deployed, you are to drop a sample MT103_Sample.txt into a folder and viola – it appears as XML in another folder.

The MT103_Sample.txt is incomplete/incorrect for the SWIFT Schema – I had a whole series of errors. Called upon my trusted SWIFT guru Angelo whom could just look at the message and tell me what bits to remove and I should replace parts with a an Australian Bank who’s code is ‘XXXXSSBCXXX’ (scared me), we almost got the file working.

We decided to settle on this working file MT103 Sample:

Feel free to use it and remove the leading and trailing CRLF in your file.

Mick.

{1:F01SAAJBEBBAXXX0000000001}{2:I103SAAJBEBBXXXXN2020}{4:
:20:TEST000001
:23B:CRED
:23E:SDVA
:23E:INTC
:23E:CORT
:23E:PHOB
:23E:TELE
:23E:PHOI
:26T:AAA
:32A:001118USD3,34
:33B:DEM3,34
:36:1,3456789012
:50A:/34x
SALABEBB
:52A:/C/34x
SALABEBB
:53D:/D/34x
4X35x
:54B:/C/34x
35x
:55B:/C/34x
35x
:56A:/C/34x
SALABEBB
:57A:/C/34x
SALABEBB
:59:4X35x
:70:35x
3X35x
:71A:OUR
:71G:USD1,34
:72:/AAAAAAAA/25x
/A/32x
//33x
/A/x
//x
//x
:77B:35x
2X35x
-}

And here’s the original MT103 Sample.txt working message:

{1:F01BOFAUSNYJXXX4321000123}{2:I103BANKDEFFAXXXN2020}{3:{103:CAD}}{4:
:20:NY20040126000111
:23B:CRED
:32A:040116USD1000000,00
:50K:/987654321
Big Deal Real Estate
Madison Avenue
New York, NY USA
:57A:/654321
NOSCATTT
:59:/1234567890123
I. Buy Buildings
200 Front Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
:70:re real estate purchase
10000 King Street East
Toronto
:71A:OUR
-}{5:{CHK:123456789012}}

Hi folks, I’m just blown away by all the goodies in these 2 releases

1) the SP1

2) the Feature Pack SP1

Both have some pretty big improvements, especially around the SharePoint 2013 <-> SQL scenario and pivot tables, analysis, mining etc.

There’s even SQL Services that continuously copy data from Oracle to SQL – this I’ll have to try on my next BizTalk project.

Check it out - http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35580

Now I’d love to have a single download for them all….

Great news – Jurgen Willis and his team have worked hard to bring Microsoft’s first V1.0 WF Workflow Hosting Manager.

It  runs both as part of Windows Server and within Azure VMs also. It also is used by the SharePoint team in 2013, so learn it once and you’ll get great mileage out of it.
(I’m yet to put it through serious paces)

Some links to help you out…

What is it?

WF Mgr 1.0 – Code Samples

The following main areas for WF improvements in .NET 4.5: (great MSDN magazine article)

1. Workflow Designer enhancements
2. C# expressions
3. Contract-first authoring of WCF Workflow Services
4. Workflow versioning
5. Dynamic update
6. Partial trust
7. Performance enhancements

Specifically for WorkflowManager there’s integration with:

1. Windows Azure Service Bus.

So all in all a major improvement and we’ve now got somewhere serious to host our WF Services. If you’ve ever gone through the process of creating your own WF host, you’ll appreciate it’s not a trivial task especially if you want some deeper functionality such as restartability and fault tolerance.

but…. if you want to kick off a quick WF to be part of an install script, evaluate an Excel spreadsheet and set results, then hosting within the app, spreadsheet is fine.

Let’s go through installation:

Download from here

Workflow_Manager_BPA.msi = Best Practices Analyser.

WorfklowClient = Client APIs, install on machines that want to communicate to WF Manager.

WorkflowManager = the Server/Service Component.

WorkflowTools = VS2012 plugin tools – project types etc.

And we’ll grab the 4 or you can you the Web Platform Installer

The Workflow Client should install fine on it’s own (mine didn’t as I had to remove some of the beta bits that were previously installed).

Installing the Workflow Manager – create a farm, I went for a Custom Setting install below, just to show you the options.

As you scroll down on this page, you’ll notice a HTTP Port – check the check box to enable HTTP communications to the Workflow Manager.
This just makes it easier if we need to debug anything across the wire.

Select NEXT or the cool little Arrow->

On Prem Service Bus is rolled into this install now – accepting defaults.

Plugin your Service Accounts and passphrase (for Farm membership and an encryption seed).

Click Next –> to reveal….

As with the latest set of MS Products a cool cool feature is the ‘Get PowerShell Commands’ so you can see the script behind your UI choices (VMM manager, SCCM 2012 has all this right through). BTW – passwords don’t get exported in the script, you’ll need to add.

Script Sample:

# To be run in Workflow Manager PowerShell console that has both Workflow Manager and Service Bus installed.

# Create new SB Farm
$SBCertificateAutoGenerationKey = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText  -Force  -String '***** Replace with Service Bus Certificate Auto-generation key ******' -Verbose;

New-SBFarm -SBFarmDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=SbManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -InternalPortRangeStart 9000 -TcpPort 9354 -MessageBrokerPort 9356 -RunAsAccount 'administrator' -AdminGroup 'BUILTIN\Administrators' -GatewayDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=SbGatewayDatabase;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -CertificateAutoGenerationKey $SBCertificateAutoGenerationKey -MessageContainerDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=SBMessageContainer01;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -Verbose;

# To be run in Workflow Manager PowerShell console that has both Workflow Manager and Service Bus installed.

# Create new WF Farm
$WFCertAutoGenerationKey = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText  -Force  -String '***** Replace with Workflow Manager Certificate Auto-generation key ******' -Verbose;

New-WFFarm -WFFarmDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=BreezeWFManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -RunAsAccount 'administrator' -AdminGroup 'BUILTIN\Administrators' -HttpsPort 12290 -HttpPort 12291 -InstanceDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=WFInstanceManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -ResourceDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=WFResourceManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -CertificateAutoGenerationKey $WFCertAutoGenerationKey -Verbose;

# Add SB Host
$SBRunAsPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText  -Force  -String '***** Replace with RunAs Password for Service Bus ******' -Verbose;

Add-SBHost -SBFarmDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=SbManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -RunAsPassword $SBRunAsPassword -EnableFirewallRules $true -CertificateAutoGenerationKey $SBCertificateAutoGenerationKey -Verbose;

Try
{
    # Create new SB Namespace
    New-SBNamespace -Name 'WorkflowDefaultNamespace' -AddressingScheme 'Path' -ManageUsers 'administrator','mickb' -Verbose;

    Start-Sleep -s 90
}
Catch [system.InvalidOperationException]
{
}

# Get SB Client Configuration
$SBClientConfiguration = Get-SBClientConfiguration -Namespaces 'WorkflowDefaultNamespace' -Verbose;

# Add WF Host
$WFRunAsPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText  -Force  -String '***** Replace with RunAs Password for Workflow Manager ******' -Verbose;

Add-WFHost -WFFarmDBConnectionString 'Data Source=BTS2012DEV;Initial Catalog=BreezeWFManagementDB;Integrated Security=True;Encrypt=False' -RunAsPassword $WFRunAsPassword -EnableFirewallRules $true -SBClientConfiguration $SBClientConfiguration -EnableHttpPort  -CertificateAutoGenerationKey $WFCertAutoGenerationKey -Verbose;

Upon completion you should see a new IIS Site…. with the ‘management ports’ of in my case HTTPS

Let’s Play

Go and grab the samples and have a play – make sure you run the samples as the user you’ve nominated as ‘Admin’ during the setup – for now.

In the wee early hours of the morning I recently got an email saying I had been awarded a MVP for another year.

This time I got awarded as an Azure MVP coming from BizTalk MVP. My love has been BizTalk for the last 12 years (and even Site Server before that for those that remember back that far…no they didn’t have punch cards ).

As always I don’t feel this is personally my award, but more of an award to you, the community with your hunger and thirst for knowledge to make a difference in your day to day.

And of course thank you to Microsoft for your belief in the MVP program and individuals such as myself.

……

The formal bits out of the way….I’m back for 2012/13!!! Should be a great year…great tour…and huge developments. Stay tuned.

My focus will be How to Integration and how-to integrate to/from Windows Azure.

Now that the dust is settling after WPC 2012, I’m able to catch up on all the emails still coming from the event.

I had a picture taken with John (against a green screen) and is it’s amazing what they can do with modern technology now.

From my research a couple of points:

• Over the last 4 years, approx 200 Worldwide Partner awards have been given – 6 of them Australian Partners! We’re one of 6.
• This is the first time EVER an Australian Partner has been an Application Integration Winner
• This is the first time EVER an Australian Partner has been a Cloud Partner Finalist

See more here

Talk to you soon.

Mick.

Hi folks, BizTalk has some great new features on the horizon and this CTP is jam packed of new and improved features. I believe the CTP is non-public atm, with MVPs etc. able to get access (or if you’re on the TAP program)

I’ve got a VM up and running with the setup and config working a treat – I’m not sure how much I can say, but I’d like to say I’m very pleased with what I’m seeing!

The official feature set blurb goes something like this…

Enjoy.

Details…

Improved productivity with new Microsoft Platform support

Customers can now leverage the latest and greatest platforms, such as Windows Server 2012 RC, SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 RC. All new BizTalk projects will target .Net Framework 4.5 RC by default. The CTP also provides support for latest LOB versions enabling customers to use BizTalk for integrating their applications with the latest versions of SAP, Oracle and SQL Server. The new adapters provide a seamless experience to enable hybrid connectivity, all done via configuration. The CTP provides native support for ACS authentication and is extensible for other authentication mechanisms.

·          Platform support

o    Windows Server 2012 RC, Windows Server 2008 R2

o    SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2008 R2

o    Visual Studio 2012 RC

o    Office 2010

o    Support for latest LOB versions

§   Support for SQL Server 2012

§   Support for SAP 7.2

§   Support for Oracle DB 11.2

§   Support for Oracle EBS 12.1 …

·          Adapters

o    WCF-WebHttp adapter, to consume REST service or expose REST service

o    SB-Messaging, for sending/pulling data from Service Bus Queues/Topics

o    WCF-NetTCPRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to NetTCPRelay end points

o    WCF-BasicHttpRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to BasicHttpRelay end points

Better B2B with schema updates

EDI standards evolve and one of the key investments made in this new BizTalk CTP is to ensure that we support the latest B2B standards natively. This enables you to transact messages based on the latest versions of EDI protocol.

·          B2B enhancements to support latest standards natively

o    Support for X12 5040, 5050, 6020, 6030

o    Support for EDIFACT D06A, D06B, D07A, D07B, D08A, D08B, D09A, D09B, D10A, D10B

o    HL7 2.5.1

We are working on further schema updates such as HL7 2.6, these will be enabled in the BizTalk 2010 R2 Beta.

Improved Performance

The CTP provides performance improvement for certain key scenarios. In case of two way MLLP adapter scenarios where ordered delivery is set, the tests have revealed up-to 5X performance improvement so far in our environments. We have also made enhancements in our engine to improve the performance in ordered send port scenarios.

Building hybrid applications

Today, there is an increase in the adoption of hybrid application scenarios where some components of an application run in the cloud and some other components/LOB applications remain on-premise. It then becomes important to integrate between these components and leverage the richness of both worlds. In this CTP release, we enable hybrid connectivity by providing first class support for integrating with Azure Service Bus Queues/Topics/Relays. We are introducing the following adapters

·          SB-Messaging, for sending/pulling data from Service Bus Queues/Topics

·          WCF-NetTCPRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to NetTCPRelay end points

·          WCF-BasicHttpRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to BasicHttpRelay end points

Integrating with Azure Service Bus entities is now just a few configurations away!

Integration with RESTful services

One of the other prevalent trends in the market today is the proliferation of RESTful services. Almost all new services, as well a lot of services created previously, have a REST interface exposed. For example, all services in Windows Azure, data market place, Salesforce, etc. have support for REST services. With this CTP release, we are making it really easy for you to integrate RESTful services with BizTalk Server using the new WCF-WebHttp adapter. All the REST operations like GET, PUT, POST and DELETE are now supported natively. It gets better. We received community feedback during and post TechEd conference that there should be a way to expose REST services as well from BizTalk. We listened to your feedback. Along with consuming REST services we are also really excited to announce that you now have an early preview to exposing REST services from BizTalk Server as well in this CTP.

BizTalk Server in Azure Virtual Machine role

All the above enhancements are available right away for you to preview with BizTalk Server in Azure Virtual Machine role. Setting up a new BizTalk Server environment usually involves long lead time to procure hardware, get the dependencies in place, set up the server, etc. This means long lead times before you can get started with your new BizTalk Server environment. We are now leveraging the power of the cloud and the richness of Windows Azure to provide an experience where you can get up and running with your BizTalk Server environment in matter of minutes and move your existing applications to the cloud without making any changes. Furthermore, the CTP provide improvements to the BizTalk multi machine configuration and now you can do this using some basic configuration settings with the click of a button in a single machine, without having to go and configure BizTalk Server Group in each of the individual nodes.

I am still in shock over this award and are very humbled in receiving it – over 3500+ entries and our story won. Thank you Microsoft, thank you Breeze team and thank you to our great customers in which all of this would not have been possible without you.

Application Integration

Cloud Partner

So today was the day at WPC2012 to receive the award up on stage here in Toronto. Not nervous at all seeing we had a 2hr rehearsal yesterday.

What a time has this been so far at my first WPC!!! Compared to ‘techie’ conferences the dress standard is higher, different type of events and some great tech demos that are mind blowing (there was one on the keynote today where a partner had developed software around Kinect that created a 3d model of a person by moving the Kinect camera around the person, their software stitched the images together to produce a 3d model. Then the image/model was fed to a 3D printer and presto…out came the 3D person! Very cool)

So after having a photo down under the stadium we were to come out of I was ready to go….

Waiting in the tunnel:

My View from out in the middle:

Your view of the middle:

So all in all it’s been a great day, great time so far and well worth it. I was then fortunate enough to be invited to a Azure Round table discussion with Satya Nadella (President of Server and Tools) and what a lovely lovely lovely guy. He’s very switched on and a refreshing experience was had with myself and 6 others in the room.

He took away our Azure stories and feedback so let's wait and see what transpires – very inspirational stuff! Thank you Satya.

And I think I the Northern Hemisphere could be affecting me slightly…

More filming tonight and then I can relax!!

WPC Day 2.

Hi guys, I gave an online presentation earlier this afternoon as part of Microsoft Readiness on Azure Virtual Networks.

I had the whole presentation prepared until the http://meetwindowsazure.com announcement, where I had to go to the drawing board and just share all this goodness that was pouring out in Azure V2.0.

Thanks to the healthy turnout for those online and to those who registered, then check the emails for a link shortly.

As promised here’s the slide deck guys that I used through my demos

Presentation:

1. How to enumerate and get at each of your TPM Partners.
2. How to create Partners + Profiles within BizTalk 2010.

staticvoid Main(string[]
args) { //enumerate
all the TPM Profiles in BizTalk var builder =new SqlConnectionStringBuilder("DATA
SOURCE=localhost;Initial Catalog=BizTalkDB;"+"Integrated
Security=SSPI;MultipleActiveResultSets=True"); var tmpCtx = TpmContext.Create(builder);
Console.WriteLine("Connected
to BizTalk Global Parties"); var partners = tmpCtx.Partners;
Console.WriteLine("Number
of Parters:{0}", partners.Count()); Console.WriteLine("------------"); foreach (var
ptr in partners)
{ var profiles = ptr.GetBusinessProfiles();
Console.WriteLine("{0}
Business Profiles:{1}", ptr.Name, profiles.Count); foreach (var
profile in profiles)
{ Console.WriteLine("\tProfile:{0}",
profile.Name); } } tmpCtx.Dispose(); if (bCreateProfile)
{ createProfile("Breeze
Partner #"); } Console.WriteLine("Finished");
Console.ReadLine(); }

//
need to do this through a single threaded connection - no MARSprivatestaticvoid createProfile(string partnerName)
{ partnerName += DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMdd-hhmmss") + (new Random().Next(0,
65535)); Console.WriteLine("Writing
a new Profile for {0}", partnerName); var builder =new SqlConnectionStringBuilder("DATA
SOURCE=localhost;Initial Catalog=BizTalkDB;Integrated Security=SSPI"); var
tmpCtx = TpmContext.Create(builder);
var ptr = tmpCtx.CreatePartner(partnerName);
var pname ="Breeze
Profile-#"+ DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMdd-hhmmss") + (new Random().Next(0,
65535)); var bp = ptr.CreateBusinessProfile(pname);
bp.Description ="Created
from Code"; var pcol =new AS2ProtocolSettings("BreezeProtocolSettings");
bp.AddProtocolSettings(pcol); tmpCtx.SaveChanges(); tmpCtx.Dispose(); }

I’m finally back home after a great trip to Seattle and to see some fellow VTSPs from all over the globe. Very switched on bunch.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to present and with Scotty at the demo controls, we steered a pretty good session.

Thanks to ‘all y-all’ whom was in the session and I hope you got as much out of it as I did.

Grab the Public Version of the slide Deck – HERE.

So as promised on the advice of John Brockmeyer here’s some current limitations of the Azure ‘Integration’ Services.

While currently setting up a BizTalk 2010 developer machine, I’ve got to do a couple of others to do also for the team.

I figured ‘we surely can copy/clone this’ – here’s a handy link for SysPrep and we use files from the BizTalk SDK to work the magic.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee358636.aspx

Looking forward to it.

Enjoy.

Scotty & myself have had this error going for over 2 weeks now, and have tried many options, settings, registry keys, reboots and so on.
(we have had this on 2 boxes now, that are *not* directly connected to the internet. They are locked down servers with only required services accessible through the firewall)

Generally you’ll encounter this error is you install Azure SDK v1.6 – there has been people that have revert back to Azure v1.5 SDK when this error has been encountered and this seems to fix most of their problems.

Here I’m using netTcpRelayBinding,BizTalk 2010 but this could just have easily have been IIS or your own app.

Finding the outbound ports and Azure datacenter address space is always the challenge. Ports 80,443,9351 and 9352 are the main ones with the remote addresses being the network segments of your Azure Datacenter.

The problem: “Oh it’s a chain validation thing, I’ll just go and turn off Certificate checking…” let me see the options.
(this is what we thought 2+ weeks ago)

Here I have a BizTalk shot of the transportClientEndpointBehaviour with Authentication node set to NoCheck and None (you would set these from code or a config file outside of biztalk)

We found that these currently have NO BEARING whatsoever…2 weeks we’ll never get back.

Don’t be drawn into here, it’s a long windy path and you’ll most likely end up short.

I am currently waiting to hear back from the folks on the product team to see what the answer is on this – BUT for now as a workaround we sat down with a network sniffer to see the characteristics.

Work around:

1. Add some Host Entries

2. Create a dummy site so the checker is fooled into grabbing local CRLs.

Add these Entries to your HOSTs file.

127.0.0.1    www.public-trust.com
127.0.0.1    mscrl.microsoft.com
127.0.0.1    crl.microsoft.com
127.0.0.1    corppki

Download and extract these directories to your DEFAULT WEB SITE (i.e. the one that answers to http://127.0.0.1/…..)
This is usually under C:\inetpub\wwwroot (even if you have sharepoint installed)




-------------------- The nasty error -------------------

The Messaging Engine failed to add a receive location "<receive location>" with URL "sb://<rec url>" to the adapter "WCF-Custom". Reason: "System.ServiceModel.Security.SecurityNegotiationException: The X.509 certificate CN=servicebus.windows.net chain building failed. The certificate that was used has a trust chain that cannot be verified. Replace the certificate or change the certificateValidationMode. The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline.
---> System.IdentityModel.Tokens.SecurityTokenValidationException: The X.509 certificate CN=servicebus.windows.net chain building failed. The certificate that was used has a trust chain that cannot be verified. Replace the certificate or change the certificateValidationMode. The revocation function was unable to check revocation because the revocation server was offline.

   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.Security.RetriableCertificateValidator.Validate(X509Certificate2 certificate)
   at System.IdentityModel.Selectors.X509SecurityTokenAuthenticator.ValidateTokenCore(SecurityToken token)
   at System.IdentityModel.Selectors.SecurityTokenAuthenticator.ValidateToken(SecurityToken token)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SslStreamSecurityUpgradeInitiator.ValidateRemoteCertificate(Object sender, X509Certificate certificate, X509Chain chain, SslPolicyErrors sslPolicyErrors)
   at System.Net.Security.SecureChannel.VerifyRemoteCertificate(RemoteCertValidationCallback remoteCertValidationCallback)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.CompleteHandshake()
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.CheckCompletionBeforeNextReceive(ProtocolToken message, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessReceivedBlob(Byte[] buffer, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessReceivedBlob(Byte[] buffer, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessReceivedBlob(Byte[] buffer, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartReceiveBlob(Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.StartSendBlob(Byte[] incoming, Int32 count, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ForceAuthentication(Boolean receiveFirst, Byte[] buffer, AsyncProtocolRequest asyncRequest)
   at System.Net.Security.SslState.ProcessAuthentication(LazyAsyncResult lazyResult)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SslStreamSecurityUpgradeInitiator.OnInitiateUpgrade(Stream stream, SecurityMessageProperty& remoteSecurity)
   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SslStreamSecurityUpgradeInitiator.OnInitiateUpgrade(Stream stream, SecurityMessageProperty& remoteSecurity)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.StreamSecurityUpgradeInitiatorBase.InitiateUpgrade(Stream stream)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ConnectionUpgradeHelper.InitiateUpgrade(StreamUpgradeInitiator upgradeInitiator, IConnection& connection, ClientFramingDecoder decoder, IDefaultCommunicationTimeouts defaultTimeouts, TimeoutHelper& timeoutHelper)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ClientFramingDuplexSessionChannel.SendPreamble(IConnection connection, ArraySegment`1 preamble, TimeoutHelper& timeoutHelper)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ClientFramingDuplexSessionChannel.DuplexConnectionPoolHelper.AcceptPooledConnection(IConnection connection, TimeoutHelper& timeoutHelper)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ConnectionPoolHelper.EstablishConnection(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.ClientFramingDuplexSessionChannel.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpClient.RelayedOnewayChannel.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpClient.GetChannel(Uri via, TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpClient.ConnectRequestReplyContext.Send(Message message, TimeSpan timeout, IDuplexChannel& channel)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpListener.RelayedOnewayTcpListenerClient.Connect(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayTcpClient.EnsureConnected(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.RefcountedCommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.RelayedOnewayChannelListener.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelDispatcher.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.SocketConnectionTransportManager.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.TransportManager.Open(TimeSpan timeout, TransportChannelListener channelListener)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.TransportManagerContainer.Open(TimeSpan timeout, SelectTransportManagersCallback selectTransportManagerCallback)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.SocketConnectionChannelListener`2.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.ServiceBus.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelDispatcher.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout)
   at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiveEndpoint.Enable()
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiveEndpoint..ctor(BizTalkEndpointContext endpointContext, IBTTransportProxy transportProxy, ControlledTermination control)
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.Adapter.Wcf.Runtime.WcfReceiver`2.AddReceiveEndpoint(String url, IPropertyBag adapterConfig, IPropertyBag bizTalkConfig)".

Windows Azure cannot perform a VIP swap between deployments that have a different number of endpoints.

Which begs the question – what happens as part of an upgrade if you add-endpoints???

So clearly the VIP Swap operation is not a simple process.

Now off to delete some production instances so I can get the changes through…

Just came across this one – Microsoft of recently released the Storage Client source code.

Could come in handy!

https://github.com/WindowsAzure/azure-sdk-for-net

Cheers,

Mick.

Hi folks, we’ve set a cracking pace into 2012 and are in need of an additional team member.

If you love technology, we love technology and I’d love to hear from you to be part of my team.

You will be stimulated, constantly thinking and challenged – azure, integration, biztlak, sql, windows phone 7 and many other technology areas you’ll be exposed to. Integration is all about the glue we use to achieve the result.

If you’re keen for a chat check out the blurb - http://www.breeze.net/about/jobs.aspx

Cheers,

Mick.

Thought I’d start off the year with a bang around Azure and what’s been happening in the land of Integration.

So I contacted a Conor Brady to see what was cooking.

The user group is meeting next Thursday 19th Jan 2012.

Here’s the blurb…..

-----------------------------------------

'Integration using Windows Azure Application Integration Services'

Local Integration & Training guru Mick Badran CTO at Breeze Training & Consulting and veteran BizTalk Server MVP will present on 'Integration using Windows Azure Application Integration Services'

The presentation will show how to use Microsoft Windows Azure to be the cornerstone of your integration strategy, whether it’s a small piece or larger deployment. Find out what new tools you can use to extend your existing toolbox and the best way to use them.

This session will cover:

- Strategies on complementing your on-premise <-> cloud integration and what tool to use when.

- High availability solutions with a demo of fault tolerance.

- Casting an eye what’s around the corner to new features coming out of Azure Labs such as EAI, EAI Bridges, EDI – azure style and new XML over HTTP endpoints.

------------------------------------------

Here’s the link to REGISTER - http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2739308345

See you there!

Mick.

Well folks – the appfabric labs have come out with a real gem recently.

In CTP we have:

• EDI + EAI processing
• AS2 http/s endpoints
• ‘Bridges’
• Transforms

and of course the latest version of

• ServcieBus, Queues and Topics.

To get the real benefit from this ‘sneak peek’ there’s a bit of setup required. To those familiar with BizTalk there’s a few EDI screens declaring parties/partners and agreements you’ll have seen before.

To get cracking:

1. Update your local bits with the latest and greatest - Installing the Windows Azure Service Bus EAI and EDI Labs - December 2011
   Part of this install is to install the Service Bus Connect component, which installs the BizTalk 2010 LOB Adapter pack.
   
   
   So this is really quite interesting. As the WCF LOB Adapter SDK provides a framework for developers to build out ‘adapters’ to connect systems/endpoints through a sync/async messaging pattern.
   
   The BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010 is the BizTalk Team set of adapters built on top of the WCF Adapter Framework. The BizTalk Adapter pack includes:
   - SQL Server Adapter. Hi performance sql work, notifications, async reads, writes etc.
   - SAP Adapter – uses the SAP Client APIs (under the hood) to talk directly to SAP. Very powerful
   - SIEBEL Adapter
   - Oracle DB Adapter
   - Oracle ES Adapter
   
   These adapters are exposed as ‘WCF Bindings’ with BizTalk or a small amount of code, allows you to expose these adapters as callable WCF Services.
   
   What does this mean in our case here?
   If you think about your on-premise Oracle system, we now have a local means of accessing Oracle and we can then push the message processing (e.g. a new order arrived) into our ‘cloud’ bridge where we have the immediate benefit of HA + Scale. Do some work there, and spit the result out any which way you want. Maybe back down to on-premise, or in a Queue or to Azure Storage.
   
   
2. Sign up to AppFabricLabs – http://portal.appfabriclabs.com and provision your ‘servicebus’ service.
   This provides your EDI/EAI relay endpoints and also provides a way for you to listen/send requests to/from the cloud.
   
3. Here I have used mickservices as my ServiceBus namespace.
   
   (I created a Queue and a couple of Topics for later use – not really needed here)
   Note: grab your HIDDEN KEY details from here – owner + <key#>
   
4. From within the Portal Create a Queue called samples/gettingstarted/queueorders
   
   
   
5. Register at the EDI Portal – http://edi.appfabriclabs.com
   Even though this says ‘EDI’ think of it as your sandpit. It’s where all your ‘widgets’ live that are to run in Azure Integration Services.
   
   The registration form had me stumped for a little bit. Here’s the details that work.
   
   
   
   Notice my servicebus namespace – just the first word. I previously had the whole thing, then variations of it.
   Issuer Name: owner
   Issuer secret: <the hidden key from above>
   
   Click save/register and you should be good here.
   
6. Once this is done – click on Settings –> AS2 and Enable AS2 message processing (which is EDI/HTTP – you might be lucky enough to get the msgs as XML, but most times no). This will create some endpoints for you b2bgateway… style endpoints.
   
   
   
7. At this stage, have a look under Resources and you’ll notice that it’s empty. But…they have Schemas, Transforms and Certificates. We’ll come back to that later.
   
8. Let’s head to Visual Studio 2010 with the updates installed and open up the Sample Order Processing project.
   
   I installed my samples under c:\samples
   
   
   If all opens well you should see:
   
   
   Note: there’s a couple of new items here: (expand out artifacts)
   *.bcs – Bridge. There’s a MSDN Article describing these – I was like ‘what???’. Basically these are a ‘processing pipe’ of which various operations can be performed on a message in stages. These stages are ‘atomic’ and they also have ‘conditions’ as to whether they *need* to be applied to the said message. So a bridge could take a message, convert it to XML and broadcast the message out to a Topic.
   
   Opening up the designer – it gets pretty cool I must say!!!
   
   
   Note the ‘operations’ on the LHS. I must have a play with these guys  
   Another thought – how extensible is this? I’d bet we could write our own widgets to throw on the design surface as well.
   
   By double clicking on the BridgeOrders component, you can see the designer surface come up with the ‘stage processing’.
   
   
   
   Here you can see the ‘bridge’ (I wonder if that term will last till the release) will accept only 2 types of message schemas – PO1 + PO2. Maps them out to a more generic PO format.
   The map – XMLTransform from my initial testing only applies one map, the first one that matches the source schema (this is the same as BizTalk).
   
   Close the bridge view down and leave the BridgeConfiguration open.
   
9. Click anywhere on the white surface of the BridgeConfiguration and set your Service Namespace property from the Properties window (this guy was hard to find!!)
   Put <your service namespace> you created originally.
   
   
10. Save and click Deploy and a Deployment window comes up – put your details in from above.
    
    
    After deployment completes, keep an eye on the Output window as this has all the URLs you’ll need for the next step. In particular the BridgeOrders.
    
    Feel free to go back to your Azure Portal –> Resources and see your deployed bits in there, Schemas, Transforms etc.
    
    
11. Running what you’ve built – sending a message to the ‘bridge’ (here I’ve borrowed info from the ‘Readme.html’ in the sample project folder)
    We don’t need to setup the whole EDI Trading partner piece. – just send messages to a restful endpoint – aka the bridge.
    

1. From the samples folder locate the Tools\MessageSender project. (you may have to build it in VS.NET first)
2. from a command prompt run messagesender.exe
   
   
   In my case it looks like this:
   
   
   
   Took me a little to get this originally, make sure all your VS.NET stuff is deployed properly.
   
   So effectively we have sent PO1.xml to our ‘Bridge’ and it’s been accepted, validated and transformed into ‘something else’ and popped onto a Queue called Samples/gettingstarted/QueueOrders.
   
   We will now get the message Reader to Read it.
   

From a command prompt at that location, run the following to Listen to the queue

Wrapping up -

Here is obviously a quick walk through of what’s possible, performance, scale and throughput are other measures that we haven’t got here – given it’s CTP/Labs we’re not quite ready for that conversation.

BizTalk adapter pack will expose out for e.g. your SAP system to a wider audience and imagine having restful WCF services to call that provide you customer data in the format you want…or better still…deliver it straight to you!
(currently in BTS 2010, the adapter pack is licensed separately, it’s part of BTS standard or enterprise. BTS2009 it *was* licensed separately for RRP $5K. Maybe we’ll see this as a separate component again.)
Or you could do like the SharePoint team and write a brand new WCF Adapter (‘connector’ in their terms) – ‘Duet’ and spend 18 months doing so.

Some things I’d like to see here is a Rules Processor or Engine – being a long long BizTalk fan, the rules engine is a massive strength of any loosely coupled solution. The majority of BizTalk solutions I come across don’t employ any rules engines…or better still, Windows Workflow 2,3+ (but not 4 or 4.5) has a rules ‘executor’ which is very powerful in it’s own right. Who’s heard or used the Policy shape?

Given that this is a sneak peak at what is on the horizon, this is definitely a space not to miss.

Get those trial accounts going and enjoy!

In particular I’d like to call out Rick’s Article (well done Rick!) for a great read on this space also.

Mick.

Hi folks, as you may/may not have been aware these are the core corner stone technologies of the MS Integration Stack.

The teams have been busily plugging away and coming up with the new versions – 4.5 corresponding to .NET 4.5 framework.

Here’s some links that describe what’s new from MS Santa & his elves:

1. What's New in Windows Communication Foundation 4.5

1. New Items I found of note are:

• New Service Transport Default values – keep an eye on these.
• Improvements from VS.NET 2011 – validation , better intellisence support.
• Streaming improved – true async (yay!)
• WebSocket support – through NetHttp(s)Binding
• Single WSDL file generation with ‘?singleWSDL’ (which is pretty handy)
• Self hosted + II hosted allow you to get to ServiceHost from code for dynamic configuration.
• Binary Encoder supports compression!! – this is generally gzip compression.
• My personal favourite – UDP support
  

1. New Items of note are:

• New Activites – NoPersistScope (possible previously but we needed to write code)
• WF Designer improvements – several here, but the ‘Outline view’ looks to be easier to work with.
• C# Expressions – where’s the F# ones ??
• Designer Annotations – add your own comments to keep control of the jungle that is built.
• WF Versioning – use WorkflowIdentity & DefinitionIdentity to define the version. WorkflowServiceHost supports multiple versions of the same WF. All pretty cool.
• WF Designers can still be rehosted – I’ve used that many a place.
• Contract First Development – ticks the boxes.
  

1. Will have to check out perf in this new land on these rules.
   

Async CTP – while this didn’t make the ‘whats new’ list, it certainly does deserve a mention here.
Over the last year I’ve built some pretty serious F# projects, and F# has the async support through and through the language. After over coming the challenge of learning it, the Async functionality is absolutely brilliant!!! F# does a great job in being able to turn a non-async chunk of code/method/class into an async one with by using the keyword async and a !. It’s straight forward from that aspect.

It’s great to see the C# & VB.NETs being able to use the same fundamentals (albeit not as slick IMO ). – see a previous POST - http://blogs.breezetraining.com.au/mickb/2011/04/26/EasierAsyncProgrammingComingToCVBSoon.aspx

As developers we sit here and say – what do I need this for? My code runs fine as it….and yes for the most part of what we do on our machine it does. This technology really comes into it’s own when you want consistent throughput from a solution with 1 person or 10000 concurrent people using it. That’s the difference.

To use it:

1. Get VSNET 2011 (as it requires a new compiler)
2. Use ASYNC CTP (refresh3) with VSNET2010 SP1
   

Did this just sneak up on you too???

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2011/12/08/biztalk-server-2010-r2.aspx

So your SQL 2012 is US$6.8K/core which roughly equates to 4 cores = a SQL 2008 Ent license.

How many DB servers have 4 cores? I wonder if there’s a way now to limit the cores then that SQL 2012 will use on for e.g. an 8 or 12 core machine.

Will this change by RTM?? I wonder.

(on a side note – way back when ‘hyper threading’ originally came out, when 1 CPU looked liked ‘2’ to the O/S, MS wanted to license per visible CPU. Intel & AMD at the time said if you do that we’ll take the feature out…nowadays we call them ‘CORES’ and looks like the discussion has come full circle)

Hi folks, from a previous set of posts, we’ve been running a series of Azure Training Sessions.

Here’s the online links to the recordings that many of you have asked me about. Enjoy.

The links below should take you to the landing page, from the click on the View Online button.

A recent project my team has worked hard on has come to fruition . This was a challenging project in these key areas:

• High volume – benchmarks of 20000 concurrent requests/sec through the system.
• Low latency – time is critical as price and market changes going through.
• Scalable – different data centers, different regions in the world.

Seemed like a great challenge…. and we built some great componentry through it, utilising the best of many worlds.

Centrebet have released a press release about their Microsoft Azure Cloud, Application Integration solution. This is a tremendous success story for such a well-known Australian brand.

Centrebet deploys app integration platform

http://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/11380

We had an action packed 2 days hammering ‘Azurey’ (Azure) discovering all the concepts and most importantly I was trying to get the Why point across.

Why??

Why should we use Azure? When should we use it? Do I *need* to use it? Where can it help me for little effort… etc.. etc..

The students walked out with a trial Azure account which enabled them to continue working on their environment as and when they could.

We had some great discussions and some good fun was had by all.

I thought I would make my slides available – http://bit.ly/oQ0Zcv UPDATED - (case sensitive) – ENJOY!

What a place…the Gold Coast!!!

Any chance to get back there… and this year is looking to be a fantastic 2 day pre-conference training together.

In the training there’ll be no MS speak!! I promise “We’re all in…” …(washing mouth out with soap).

First things first – everyone you speak to will pronounce ‘Azure’ differently (I once had 3 martial arts instructors all speak their own flavour of ‘Korean’ to me).
You’ll get:
1) ‘Aaaaaazzzzre’
2) ‘Azzzz-cloud’

Now here in Australia we’re standardising (our English-Australian) to Azurey!

Azurey is our official term, which fits alongside ‘Timmy’, ‘Barbie’ and ‘Daveo’… but not Shazza.

What I want to explore with you are all the different options and components that you could utilise. Having been through several cloud based solutions and building a cloud based solution over the last 2 years.

So we can use a combination of the available technologies to alleviate some of the in-house problems (e.g. firewall settings, h/w order and provisioning, server space) while still maintaining *very* good ownership over it.

One thing is clear right now – with this new landscape the focus has returned to the Developer to be mindful of what resources they use and HOW they use them.

The price of your solution starts right now from the ground up with the Developer!
(Previously we’ve had limitless memory, disk, cpu, connections, sockets, select * from customers… – developers rarely care)

So the cost model – What do you get charged for?
(short answer – nearly everything)

If you can design a solution with:
1) no use for SQL Azure –as it currently costs a bomb to host a DB.
You could use – SQLCE locally or Azure Storage (Table, Queue, blob) which is cheap as chips.

2) limit your Service Bus Connections – both client and server count as a connection. The connections are averaged out over a day/month and are sampled every 5 mins, but you certainly don’t want to rack up 100s of connections. A cheaper alternative is to expose a WCF Endpoint (via a worker role) and have a process communicate with the Servicebus endpoint handling the requests. This counts for 2 connections (1 client, 1 server) and is well within the 5 pack.

3) Only data out is charged – not in.

4) Compute VM sizes limit bandwith – across all your compute VMs e.g. small, there is bandwidth limitations that is enforced whether you have 1 or 10 VMs. Be mindful of that.

5) We can ‘monitor’ our cloud machines and even get back perf counters on each – just to give you that feel good feeling.

Well anyway I must go tweak some F# (best thing I’ve seen in a long while…another story)

Here’s the official story @ TechEd – hope to see you there folks!

http://australia.msteched.com/preconferencetraining

Official Blurb!

How “the Cloud” can help you integrate – Microsoft for Developers

With the excitement of technology moving towards “the Cloud” come and learn exactly what this means to your business and how your development projects can leverage the Windows Azure Platform without re-architecting your environment. Should you invest in private cloud, move your application to the public cloud, choose a hybrid approach or keep the application on-premise?

This two-day development workshop led by renowned Integration Experts provides delegates with an early opportunity to gain insight and hands-on experience with the Windows Azure Platform including Windows Azure AppFabric, SQL Azure, Windows Server AppFabric and BizTalk AppFabric Connect.

This developer workshop focuses on maximising your existing integration technology investment for an on-premise solution, including architectural design considerations, real world tips and techniques and hands-on experience with using the integration tools available today.

Delivered through workshop style presentations and hands-on lab exercises, this technology focused pre conference training will assist with designing and developing your company roadmap to the Cloud.

The product team have been busy folks, pick up the update after the milk and eggs….

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalkcrt/archive/2011/06/01/announcing-biztalk-2010-cu1.aspx

Hi all, the BizTalk team has been busy and now the BizTalk 2010 exam has been officially released.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?ID=70-595

I’m going to sit it in the next few weeks and get a taste of it.

Good luck all and what a great day this is – well done Team!

Snippet…..

Audience Profile

Candidates for this exam typically work as a BizTalk developer in an organization that has a need to integrate multiple disparate systems, applications, and data as well as the need to automate business processes by using BizTalk Server.

Candidates should have a solid understanding of fundamental BizTalk concepts around the core messaging engine and building business processes using orchestrations.

Candidates will have some exposure to larger-scale multi-server solutions and deployment/management familiarity. This core knowledge is required for BizTalk 2006 R2, 2009, and 2010. In addition, core knowledge of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is also required.

Candidates should also have at least two years’ experience developing, deploying, testing, troubleshooting, and debugging BizTalk Server 2006 and later solutions across multiple projects and have experience using the Microsoft .NET Framework, XML, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft SQL Server, Web services, and WCF while developing BizTalk integration solutions

Credit Toward Certification

When you pass Exam 70-595: TS: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions by Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s):

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010

Note This preparation guide is subject to change at any time without prior notice and at the sole discretion of Microsoft. Microsoft exams might include adaptive testing technology and simulation items. Microsoft does not identify the format in which exams are presented. Please use this preparation guide to prepare for the exam, regardless of its format.

As you may/may not know native Restful support is a little lacking in BizTalk 2010.

A ‘little’ massaging is needed.

By plugging in a couple of classes into the WCF stack, BizTalk sits in the middle quite nicely.

Netin Mehrotra from MS has come to the rescue – he provides a great walk through article and sample code to boot.

Here’s the REST SAMPLE CODE

Here’s the REST ARTICLE

Enjoy guys.

The alternative is to create your own WCF Service in Windows Server AppFabric hosted in IIS and then you’ve still got the problem of ‘how’ to talk to BizTalk.

Choices…choices… :)

Hey folks, Alan Smith and myself (much more Alan this time :) have brought the series back for another version and another year!
Myself and many other Biztalk MVPs and some great BizTalk-ers with fantastic real world experience share their knowledge.

As always the webcast series is designed to be an easy watch, level 200 ish and I’ve even had some folks reporting they watched the needy webcast on the way to clients to talk about for e.g. an EDI solution.

BizTalk 2010 Light And Easy Series – here’s where you’ll find the series http://www.cloudcasts.net/Default.aspx?category=BizTalk+Light+and+Easy
(Alan is in the process of uploading them)

  integration with BizTalk 2010 using the BizTalk WSS Adapter.

I created a 2 part episode – the first one deals with explaining the SharePoint 2010 environment, and the 2nd one deals with integration from BizTalk.

Here’s my recordings, PPTs and sample files.

Title	WebCast	PPT	Description
Integration to SharePoint Part 1	Part 1 (110MB)	(2MB)	You will be taken through how SharePoint works, what a user sees, lists and investigating the new APIs present with SharePoint 2010. This webcast talks about different techniques and how to integrate with SharePoint 2010 efficiently.
Integration to SharePoint Part 2	Part 2 (60MB)	(2MB)	This webcast deals with the installation and setup of the OOTB WSS BizTalk Adapter; examining various Send and Receive configurations within BizTalk and finally you’ll be introduced to a Custom SharePoint 2010 Adapter that uses the SharePoint ClientOM to talk to SharePoint 2010.
Sample Code	Source Files	for Part I and II

Enjoy!

Over the past months I’ve been reviewing a new BizTalk 2010 book – BizTalk 2010: Integrating Line of Business Systems

There’s a high caliber line up of Author’s all busily sharing their knowledge.

Kent’s got all the details here - http://kentweare.blogspot.com/2011/02/new-biztalk-2010-book-unveiled-line-of.html

Looking forward to when it hits the shelves.

Well done guys – looking great from what I’m reading :)

I hope you’ve all been well over the break and enjoying the ‘thinking time’ – I’ve been keeping one ear to the ground and just on the lookout for new bits. Here’s one….

The BizTalk team have been busily working hard over the break and produced another issue of BizTalk at it’s best – BizTalk Hotrod.

http://biztalkhotrod.com/Documents/BizTalkHotrod11_Q4_2010.pdf

Specifically this issues talks about:

• Async communication with BizTalk across WCF-Duplex messaging.
• Calling SAP RFCs from BizTalk – all you need to know.

Guys – the biztalk hotrod mag set is some of the best technical biztalk discussions around, grab the previous issues and add them to your internal networks. A must.

Enjoy and talk to you soon.

Mick.

There I was the other day slowly building up a new bts project in VS.NET.

You know the way it goes, add some schemas, maybe maps and before long you have a couple of helper assemblies and maybe a custom pipeline component or 2.

The problem is that the C# Assemblies don't automatically get added to your BTS Application in the BTS Admin console.

Usually I'll drag down one of my mammoth powershell 'build all' scripts from a previous project and customise this for the current project. 2 days later I usually stick my head up to see which day it is, and typically as we developers do, build a ferrari for something that a skateboard would do.

So simply put - add the following line to your Post Build Events section on your project in VS.NET.

btstask AddResource -ApplicationName:"Micks Demo App" -Type:System.BizTalk:Assembly -Overwrite -Options:GacOnInstall,GacOnAdd -Source:"$(TargetPath)" -Destination:"%BTAD_InstallDir%\$(TargetFileName)"

Ahhh...too easy.

Enjoy only a few more sleeps till Santa!

Mick.

Today I decided to crack open the BTS 2010 SharePoint WS Adapter to see if it takes advantage of the great new interfaces exposed by SharePoint 2010, specifically Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll.

At a glance, the benefits of this new Client APIs are:

1. Runs on a non SharePoint installed box.
2. Lightweight and flexible – only get back what you ask for. As opposed to the classic SP Server API that populates the SPWeb collection (for e.g.) only if you just want the title field and not 10MBs worth of other data.
3. Batch approach – load up several commands and batch them over the wire when needed.
4. Supports both read/write from the client back to SP Server.
5. Uses XML and JSON over the wire – small and fast.
6. We can’t do *everything* we can on the Server Side – e.g. Service Application management, i.e. kicking off a search index crawl.

A little piccy of what’s going on:

Some classic piece of code to achieve document library reading:

            

              
               1
              static
              
              
              void
               Main(
              string
              []
args) 
               2
               { 
               3
               ClientContext
ctx 
              =
              
              
              new
               ClientContext(
              "
              http://intranet
              "
              ); 
               4
               Web
web 
              =
               ctx.Web; 
               5
               List
docs 
              =
               web.Lists.GetByTitle(
              "
              Shared
Documents
              "
              ); 
               6
               ListItemCollection
items 
              =
               docs.GetItems(CamlQuery.CreateAllItemsQuery()); 
               7
               ctx.Load
              <
              Web
              >
              (web); 
               8
               ctx.Load(docs); 
               9
               ctx.Load(items); 
              10
               ctx.ExecuteQuery(); 
              11
               Console.WriteLine(
              "
              The
list has {0} items.
              "
              ,
docs.ItemCount); 
              12
              
              
              foreach
               (ListItem
item 
              in
               items) 
              13
               { 
              14
               Console.WriteLine(
              "
              Item:{0}
              "
              ,
item[
              "
              Title
              "
              ]); 
              15
               } 
              16
              
              
              //
              delete
an item. 
              17
              
              
              //
              items[1].Update(); 
              18
              
              
              //
              items[1].DeleteObject(); 
              19
              
              
              //
              ctx.Load(items); 
              20
              
              
              //
              ctx.ExecuteQuery();
              
              
              21
              
              
               Console.ReadLine(); 
              22
               }
            
          

Note: Line 10 is where all the magic happens – if you imagine, we load up the client OM classes and the props etc. are all ‘blank’ until we do an ExecuteQuery() which then populates what we ask for.

The above sample is pretty simple showing how to connect to a document library on a ‘remote’ server (security allowing – I didn’t add a ctx.Credentials=… line in the above, but all possible).

So let’s move on a crack open the BTS 2010 SharePoint WS Adapter…

Just before we go there I’d like to point out that the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll (aka Server API) has the ability to connect to remote servers, although the code needs to be executed on a machine that has a local SharePoint install.

e.g.

SPSite site = new SPSite(“http://remoteserver.acme.com”);

SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb();

…

What I am trying to avoid with the BTS SharePoint adapter is the need to have the ‘BTS Web Service’ component installed on remote Farms. Just complicates the issue far too much with the SharePoint admins.

The BTS 2010 Story

I setup and installed the BTS SharePoint WS Adapter through the Configuration.exe tool successfully.

Essentially this tools runs a ‘web site check’ to make sure SharePoint is successfully setup and installed.

To make this happen, the configuration tool runs either:

1. Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.StsOmInterop3.exe – for WSSv3
2. Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.StsOmInterop4.exe – for WSSv4

to determine the site as follows:

Note: The URL and note the URL in the BTS Configuration above. Here I’ve already configured the adapter and I’m just showing the commands that the configurator runs behind the scenes.

Once configuration is complete you will see a new virtual directory added  to your selected site e.g. http://intranet.

As shown in IIS Manager.

Depending on the SharePoint version this virtual directory will map to:

1. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010\Business Activity Services\BTSharePointV4AdapterWS
   or
2. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010\Business Activity Services\BTSharePointV3AdapterWS (previous bts2009 adapter)

A Basic BTS/SharePoint picture

Essentially the BTS SharePoint Adapter consists of 2 parts:

1. A BTS Adapter that talks to the BTS SharePoint WS. This is a ‘classic’ adapter and does not talk the newer WCF framework (which does have advantages and disadvantages)
2. A BTS SharePoint WS – this does all the work against the SharePoint library and talks local SharePoint APIs.

Let’s look closer at the BTSharePointV4AdapterWS folder

- this folder, or addition needs to be available locally to whichever SharePoint site you are calling through the OOTB BTS SharePoint adapter, even though the SharePoint APIs support remote Servers.

- the bin folder has the Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.WssV4Adapter.WebService.dll which is 78kb.

I wanted to find out whether this DLL used the new SharePoint Client APIs when meant having a peek at the ‘references’ of this DLL in IL.

Dissassembling Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.WssV4Adapter.WebService.dll

Using .NET Reflector I was able to get this picture…

NOTE: on this list there is Microsoft.SharePoint, but not Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll
(this is not looking good…could be late bound, but… I doubt it)

Digging into the actual WssAdapter class we get the following of note:

The GetDocuments(string, string, string, Int32, DocExtOfficeIntegration)… is a key method.

The APIs show that the 1st parameter is a siteUrl (and following the implementation code through) which has the potential to point to another SharePoint server to make the connection (in the RequestInfo class if you’re going to dig yourself :))
Note: the PREVIOUS version, BTS2009 has the same Interface/Method signature and it requires the BTS SharePoint Adapter WS to be deployed on the remote SharePoint Server, even though the signature looks as though it will support the remote server.

So in conclusion the BTS SharePoint Adapter WebService has:

1. NOT got any newer SharePoint Client API code within in.
2. The ability to contact a remote server through the WebService APIs.
3. But depends on whether the BTS Adapter will pass the ‘remote’ URL to the ‘local’ WS, or will the Adapter try to contact the remote SharePoint Server directly looking for a WS there???

I’m thinking it’s the latter…

A little more to unravel the SharePoint mystery…

BizTalk 2010 hit the stands this week and quite prominently up on the BizTalk 2010 site there’s info about vNext.

The team has been busy and The BizTalk 2010 Developer Edition is free! - http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/developer.aspx

Lots of info up on the site – What’s New http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/whats-new.aspx

• During this What’s new, you’ll see that there is ‘enhanced Trading Partner Management’ which typically gets flagged under EDI based solutions. In a later post I’ll show you how to work with Trading Partners from any solution, and the bit that has me excited is that we now can store an arbitrary set of name/value pairs against each Trading Partner (and their individual agreements).

Initial Training – BizTalk 2010 Training Kit - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=35c8fb51-a1e3-496e-841a-b48701a80c40

The BizTalk Server 2010 training kit includes labs and training videos to help you learn about the new features of BizTalk Server 2010.
This training kit contains the following content:
Hands On Labs

• Creating BizTalk Maps with the new Mapper
• Consuming a WCF Service
• Publishing Schemas and Orchestrations as WCF Services
• Integrating with Microsoft SQL Server
• Integrating using the FTP Adapter
• Developers - Create a Role and Party-based Integration Solution
• Exploring the New Settings Dashboard
• Monitoring BizTalk Operations using System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2
• Administrators - Create a Role and Party-based Integration Solution

Enjoy and stay tuned for the integration unraveling in the near future… :-)

Well as TechEd 2010 draws to a close this year in Australia, I had a great time getting away from it all and certainly experiencing a couple of firsts. For me this was one of the better TechEd’s I had been to – the sessions were a little light on, but the labs + exams made up for that big time.

So Scotty and I developed an Integration Pre Conference Training Session aimed at working out which MS Integration technology to run where – unscrambling the mess. We got a great turn out for the training in terms of numbers – we beat SharePoint 2010 dev + admin!!! :)

For all of you whom I had the pleasure of training this week – well done! I hope you enjoyed it and it was great sharing that time with you. The sun, sand, BizTalk and Azure…what could be better?? :)

As promised – here are the slides from those two days.

Keep smiling,
Mick.

As you know I’m a big fan of Virtual Box being able to run my x64 VMs on my Win7 machine. Yay!!

So armed with my trusted new Core i7/8 GB laptop – I figured the VMs will be cooking on this new kit…

After installing the lastest VirtualBox (3.2.0) I was away – only to notice the machines were running like a SLUG! (I actually have a cat that has the nick name ‘slug’ and this machine was slower than her)

After waiting a full 20mins (still booting - ‘loading windows files…’ etc) my machine Blue Screened for a millisecond and then rebooted.

So I rolled up my sleeves and started digging – could be the VHD, the bios, the machine, the 1000 and 1 settings…

Firstly I ran a command line command (from under the vbox install dir) -
VBoxManage setextradata VMNAME "VBoxInternal/PDM/HaltOnReset" 1

Finally I got a glimpse of the BSOD and it was an error “…STOP…7B…”

I twigged this is an error of “Inaccessible boot device….” which I’ve had several times when the SATA drivers couldn’t be loaded by the O/S during boot up.

Solution: (in my case)
I configured the Virtual Box VM with IDE Storage Controllers and NOT SATA ones for the bootup.(still connected to the same VHDs though)

Win2008/R2 boots up and I’m able to load the SATA drivers in and we’re away.

Back to BizTalk 2010 Beta playing…. :)

Wow! I'm finally through the other side... what a quest and I thought I'd share some of the details with you.

RFC_READ_TABLE rfc can be used to call into SAP and retrieve table data - *sort of* (and that's a big sort of) like a 'DataSet'.

Using it requires a little work and understanding.

In your either BizTalk project or other project from VS.NET:

1. Add the SAP bits to your VS.NET project - ready for action
   1. select 'Add Adapter Service Reference' (for BTS projects -> Add New Generated Item->Consume Service Adapter...)
      
   2. On the Binding Wizard Screen select sapBinding and configure the appropriate connection string details such as:
      

      string

      sapUri = "sap://CLIENT=800;LANG=EN;@A/sapsrv/00?GWHOST=sapsrv&GWSERV=sapgw00&RfcSdkTrace=true";
      <You need to stick your own sapURI above - that is more or less a sample>
   3. Click on the Connect and under RFC->OTHER , select RFC_READ_TABLE (or you can type it in the box to search)
   4. Click Ok to generate the proxy and other details.
   5. Either your BizTalk Project or your non-BTS project has now all the relevant details to communicate to SAP.
      
      I tend to build out all this functionality first in a Console App just so I know what is needed within the BTS environment, also I find it much quicker to test/debug etc. here.
      
2. Ok - onto the code. I've got 2 routines for you, one that uses the Proxy Classes built by the wizard in the last step, and a routine from 'first principles'.
   
   One of the things that I really like about the BTS Adapter Pack and certainly in this case, is that depending on the shape of the XML you pass to the adapter, it determines the table and type of operation that it is to do.
   
   Both of these examples below you could wrap into a functoid/helper/whatever and use directly from code.
   
3. Proxy Code - version 1 - here I define some parameters and make a straight call to the table CSKS.
   NOTE: Use FieldNames not Field Labels (took me a few hrs on that one ;)
   
   

   using

   LOBTYPES = microsoft.lobservices.sap._2007._03.Types.Rfc;

   private

   staticvoid GetDataFromSAP()
   { 
        RfcClient clnt = newRfcClient(); //myproxy client
        string[] data = GetAppDetailsForCurrentUser("SAP");
        clnt.ClientCredentials.UserName.UserName = data[0];
        clnt.ClientCredentials.UserName.Password = data[1];
        LOBTYPES.TAB512[] rfcData = new microsoft.lobservices.sap._2007._03.Types.Rfc.TAB512[0];
        LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_OPT[] rfcOps = new microsoft.lobservices.sap._2007._03.Types.Rfc.RFC_DB_OPT[0];
        LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_FLD[] rfcFlds = new microsoft.lobservices.sap._2007._03.Types.Rfc.RFC_DB_FLD[]
        { 
            new LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_FLD() {
            FIELDNAME = "KOSTL",
            LENGTH=10
            },
            new LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_FLD() {
            FIELDNAME = "DATBI",
            LENGTH=8
            },
            new LOBTYPES.RFC_DB_FLD() {
            FIELDNAME = "DATAB",
            LENGTH=8
            }
        };
   try
   {
     clnt.Open();
     clnt.RFC_READ_TABLE(";", string.Empty, "CSKS", 50, 0,ref rfcData, ref rfcFlds, ref rfcOps);
     Console.WriteLine("RFC RESPONSE\r\n\r\nData:" + rfcData.Length.ToString());
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
    {
      Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " + ex.Message);
    }
   }
4. More from first principles so this is to give you more of a BTS picture.
   NOTE: The use of the '%' sign to get a wildcard match on a KOSTL field, despite in the SAP Client UI the users enter a '*'
   
   

   private

   staticvoid GetDataFromSAPV1()
   {
       string[] data = GetAppDetailsForCurrentUser("SAP");
       SAPBinding binding = newSAPBinding();  //A reference to Microsoft.Adapters.Sap is needed.
       //set up an endpoint address
       string sapUri = "sap://CLIENT=800;LANG=EN;@A/sapsrv/00?GWHOST=sapsrv&GWSERV=sapgw00&RfcSdkTrace=true";
       EndpointAddress address = newEndpointAddress(sapUri);
       try
       {
           ChannelFactory<IRequestChannel> fact = newChannelFactory<IRequestChannel>(binding asBinding, address);
           // add credentials
           fact.Credentials.UserName.UserName = data[0];
           fact.Credentials.UserName.Password = data[1];
           // Open client
           fact.Open();
           //get a channel from the factory
           IRequestChannel irc = fact.CreateChannel();
           //open the channel
           irc.Open();
           string inputXml = "<RFC_READ_TABLE xmlns='http://Microsoft.LobServices.Sap/2007/03/Rfc/' xmlns:ns1='http://Microsoft.LobServices.Sap/2007/03/Types/Rfc/'>"
           + "<DELIMITER>|</DELIMITER>"
           + "<QUERY_TABLE>CSKS</QUERY_TABLE>"
           + "<ROWCOUNT>10</ROWCOUNT><ROWSKIPS>0</ROWSKIPS>"
           + "<DATA /><FIELDS>"
           + "<ns1:RFC_DB_FLD><ns1:FIELDNAME>KOSTL</ns1:FIELDNAME></ns1:RFC_DB_FLD>"
           + "<ns1:RFC_DB_FLD><ns1:FIELDNAME>DATAB</ns1:FIELDNAME></ns1:RFC_DB_FLD>"
           + "<ns1:RFC_DB_FLD><ns1:FIELDNAME>DATBI</ns1:FIELDNAME></ns1:RFC_DB_FLD>"
           + "</FIELDS>"
           + "<OPTIONS>"
           + "<ns1:RFC_DB_OPT><ns1:TEXT>KOSTL LIKE '1234%' AND BUKRS EQ '63' AND KOKRS EQ 'APPL'</ns1:TEXT></ns1:RFC_DB_OPT>"
           + "</OPTIONS>"
           + "</RFC_READ_TABLE>";
           //create an XML reader from the input XML
           XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(newMemoryStream(Encoding.Default.GetBytes(inputXml)));
           //create a WCF message from our XML reader
           Message inputMessge = Message.CreateMessage(
                        MessageVersion.Soap11,
                        http://Microsoft.LobServices.Sap/2007/03/Rfc/RFC_READ_TABLE,
                        reader);
           //send the message to SAP and obtain a reply
           Message replyMessage = irc.Request(inputMessge);
           //create a new XML document
           XmlDocument xdoc = newXmlDocument();
           //load the XML document with the XML reader from the output message received from SAP
           xdoc.Load(replyMessage.GetReaderAtBodyContents());
           XmlNodeList nds = xdoc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//*[local-name()='WA']");
           foreach (XmlNode nd in nds)
           {
                   string[] parts = nd.InnerText.Split('|');
                   Console.WriteLine("CC={0} From: {1} To: {2}", parts[0], parts[1], parts[2]);
            }
            xdoc.Save(@"d:\sapout.xml");
            irc.Close();
            fact.Close();
       }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
            Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " + ex.Message);
   }
   }
   

BizTalk Best Practice Analyser is released and available for download.

Download: BizTalkBPA V1.2

As always another very handy tool is the Message Box Viewer (Currently V10) which provides some very detailed information as well.

Download: Message Box Viewer (MBV)

Enjoy your day,

Mick.

Hi folks,

Lately I've had several requests from folks whom want to have a play with BizTalk but don't want to setup the whole infrastructure etc.

Here's a great page from MS Virtual Labs that will get you on your way
(some labs are for BTS2006, others for BTS2009, the same principles apply)

Check it out and if you're ever away from a VM, might be handy a fallback plan.

BizTalk Virtual Lab Material

There's 4 pages and here's a snippet from Page 1

--------------------------------------------------------------

MSDN Virtual Lab: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Working with Schemas

After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a new BizTalk project, create an XML schema by using the BizTalk Editor, promote a schema property, create a flat file schema by using the BizTalk Editor, validate a schema and generate a sample instance message, create a strong name and assign it to an assembly, and build a schema project.  ...

4/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 9/30/2011 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032296903&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Working with Maps

After completing this lab, you will be better able to create a schema map by using BizTalk Mapper, add functoids to a map, validate a map, and build a schema map project.

4/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 11/30/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032296906&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Integrating Business Rules in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

After completing this lab, you will be better able to define business rules, call business rules from within an orchestration, build and deploy the business rules project, and start and test the business rules.

5/7/2008 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 5/31/2011 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032379047&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: New Features for Deploying and Managing a BizTalk Application in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

After completing this lab, you will be better able to assign an application name to a BizTalk Server project, use the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console to create receive ports, receive locations, use the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console to import port binding information, bind orchestration ports to physical ports, export a BizTalk application to an MSI package, import a BizTalk application from an MSI package, and finally, use the Group Hub to manage suspended messages.  ...

4/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 12/31/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032296904&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Connected Commerce with Commerce Server 2007

After completing this lab, you will be better able to educate attendees on integrating Commerce Server 2007 with ERP or CRM systems and external business trading partners by utilizing the new built-in integration adapter for BizTalk Server 2006. Also, you will learn how to utilize the new Orders, Inventory, Catalog, and Profile BizTalk Adapters in detail to achieve high-performing, reliable connectivity between Commerce Server deployments and other external systems.  ...

4/20/2007 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 8/31/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032338959&culture=en-US

TechNet Virtual Lab: Integrating Business Rules in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

After completing this lab, you will be better able to define business rules, call business rules from within an orchestration, build and deploy the business rules project, and start and test the business rules.NoteBy registering for this virtual lab, you will receive a one-time follow up call from a Microsoft representative to inform you of special discounts and offers related to products and services presented in the virtual lab.  ...

4/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 11/30/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   IT Generalist

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032313534&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Creating Schemas using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004

After completing this lab, you will be able to create a new BizTalk project, create an XML schema by using BizTalk Schema Editor, promote a schema property, create a file schema by using BizTalk Schema Editor, validate a schema and generate a sample instance message, and build a schema project.  ...

12/7/2005 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 7/31/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032279924&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Publishing a Web Service in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004

After completing this lab, you will be able to configure orchestration properties, create the orchestration to be published, build and deploy the orchestration publishing project, run the BizTalk Web Services Publishing Wizard, and start and test the published orchestration.  ...

10/24/2005 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 2/28/2011 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032303224&culture=en-US

MSDN Virtual Lab: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Consuming a Web Service

After completing this lab, you will be able to add a Web reference to a project, create a map, create variables for message instances, create the Web services orchestration, and build and deploy the Web services project.

10/24/2005 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 1/31/2011 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   Pro Dev/Programmer

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032303223&culture=en-US

TechNet Virtual Lab: New Features for Deploying and Managing a BizTalk Application in BizTalk 2006

After completing this lab, you will be better able to assign an application name to a BizTalk Server project, use the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console to create receive ports, receive locations, use the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console to import port binding information, bind orchestration ports to physical ports, export a BizTalk application to an MSI package, import a BizTalk application from an MSI package, and finally, use the Group Hub to manage suspended messages. NoteBy registering for this virtual lab, you will receive a one-time follow up call from a Microsoft representative to inform you of special discounts and offers related to products and services presented in the virtual lab.  ...

2/3/2006 12:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)- 9/30/2010 11:59 PM | Duration:90 Minutes

Primary Language:   English

Primary Target Audience:   IT Generalist

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032296907&culture=en-US

Many times in BizTalk land we work with Schemas that are nested and have several related Schemas that are Imported from URL locations etc.

When you include these schemas and deploy to Production, you find out that the BizTalk server doesn’t access the Internet directly. Hence all the schema Imports fail.

You’ll then go and try hand edit the Imports, downloading the referenced Schema and try and Mash up something that refers to local files and no URL based Schemas. It may or may not work…till the next update…

I recently came across a handy set of free tools that take all the pain out to do with Schemas –>

Xml Help Line

Which has Xml Schema Lightener, Xml Schema Flattener

Another very handy tool not to leave home without.

Enjoy.