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
  
2. What's New in Windows Workflow Foundation in .NET 4.5
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.
  
2. WF Rules – still didn’t make the cut. There is a sample for WF4 using a custom Activity calling back to WF 3.5 Policy4 it’s called. It uses ‘interop’ back to WF3.5 and is found here - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd797584(v=VS.100).aspx
1. Will have to check out perf in this new land on these rules.
   
3. 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
   
4. Check it out from here - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/gg316360

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

Well folks it’s week 5 of a 12 week program where the great Can Too swim coaches train you and put you through a challenge.

I signed up for a ‘2.5km’ ocean swim – Palm beach to whale beach. Which for me is well off my map and out of my comfort zone – so it’s a challenge for me mentally and physically, but really only a small price to pay for the challenges that cancer sufferers.

My endeavor is raise money for cancer research – you have the chance to make a tax deductible donation through my page - http://cantoosydneyswimprogram.gofundraise.com.au/page/Mick_Badran
(my target is $1250 in total)

My pledge is that I will swim 4 times a week, rain hail or shine (just so I don’t drown in this swim) – feel free to come and join me if you’re in the area. Early week – at Wileys Baths (near Coogee), later in the week Clovelly laps.

So what can I offer you as incentive – as an MVP each year I get a MSDN Subscription “Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN” (many thanks Microsoft).
Check out the versions - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/subscriptionschart.aspx

To whomever donates the most I will give you this! I’d also really like to put this subscription to good use.

You maybe starting out, starting up, or whatever – you will have all MS Products at your development disposal.

I challenge you for cancer research, good luck and Merry Christmas!!!

Important: You can contact me on twitter on - @mickba

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)

The Azure team has been busy and what a nice email for a Friday.

So that means no inbound charges (ServiceBus could be the exception) and they’ve just dropped the outbound charges.

Bewdy!

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While wrestling with SharePoint 2007 SP2 today, I got a great error message.

“SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wiza” – Wizzzzzaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!
(this sits nicely with Shazza, Mappa, Timmy, Kimmy, and on it goes…”)

Now to sort the problem out…

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.

Hi folks we’re delivering Azure sessions on behalf of Microsoft over the next coming weeks…

Here’s the official timetable, come along they’re free for you!!
(All times are in Australian Eastern Standard Time)

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