All posts by : Micks Breeze Blogs - Biztalk/Sharepoint/...

1 of 54 | Hello World in Oslo - Ever wondered how you might implement "Hello World" in a non-domain specific language such as in the roots of Oslo looks like.........(I found a snippet from one of the PDC Webcasts....) (This is written in a tool/shell that ships as part of the Oslo SDK - Intellipad) The left hand side is the instance document; the middle is the grammar or transformation; and the right is the Output Graph. This is a pretty specific sample - as in fact its very specific and only takes one input - "Hello World" (as dictated on the syntax line) What's so special about all of this?? I hear you ask..... There's a huge amount of power in being able to 'model' your world/data and......

2 of 54 | SharePoint Training Double Header...and...lots for you. -    Hi folks, (I've saved the last couple of places....for you) With the economy being the topic on everyone’s lips at the moment, I have decided to turn my last MOSS bootcamp of the year in to a special week of training where I will show students how to help their business become more efficient during a time of streamlining processes. Whilst I will still cover the main course outline I will be focusing a little more on InfoPath forms and workflow and how students can utilize these tools within a SharePoint environment. Students attending this bootcamp will have an added bonus of being able to attend my seminar on the Wed Evening covering more on this very ......

3 of 54 | IIS7.0 and beyond Web Platform Installer Tool (beta) - Folks - while setting up some IIS servers for a BTS production environment I came across this handy little tool. Basically gives you a Tree View of what things you'd like to install on your IIS Web Server from MS (mother ship). Includes things like Service Packs, etc etc. - handy spot to grab all the new files in one spot. (as opposed to the piece meal approach - of install asp.net, oh you need the .net 3.5 framework - install...oh...you also need SP1 ..with maybe a few reboots inbetween) - single place for all the tools and other components that you'll need. - great way to do them all at once. Here's what you're after - http://www.microsoft.com/web/chan......

4 of 54 | MVP re-Awarded - Big Thanks!!!! - I've been re-awarded my BizTalk MVP - so a big thanks for allowing me to be part of the program for another year (at least :) A focus of mine is the community - sharing and bettering information sources around the technologies we work and play with. So thanks guys hope you're getting value out of my efforts, and thank you for being part of our growing community. This year should be a fantastic year in the SOA/ESB/BizTalk/Oslo/WCF/WF/MOSS/BDC/RFID (did I leave any off?) as we're going to see the emergence of several of these technologies play beautifully together. (we saw this in the last .NET 3.5 Framework - with WCF/WF Services.....stay tuned...for one of my favourite p......

5 of 54 | How Many Remote Desktop Windows Is Too Much?? - Cool FREE Manager Apps - Folks - it's been one of those weeks (I know it's only Tues :) I just got to a point where I was just opening up tooo many RDP connections, managing them - some using Terminal Services Gateways, others not. Configuring BTS boxes/SQL Servers/MOSS/Indexers/Search..... and the list goes on. From client to client or even our network internally - my head was rapidly filling up with these random ip addresses that I wished I didn't have to remember. So I wanted to have a way simply to manage all these windows (a crude version I wrote some years back was simply to drop 6 RDP ActiveX controls onto a web page an knock yourself out). I needed: - to work on Vista and......

6 of 54 | BizTalk SharePoint Adapter Config with WSS SP1 - Error - John Powell has a great article (with piccys) that will hopefully get you out of a pickle. http://blogs.msdn.com/johnwpowell/archive/2008/08/14/error-configuring-biztalk-sharepoint-adapter-on-sharepoint-sp1.aspx Thanks John! ...

7 of 54 | A Great BizTalk Scenario - Two Way Port being Serviced by two one way backend ports - This one came from Paolo Salvatori (a senior PM within the MS Connected Systems Division Team... I know a bit of a mouthful) whom has gotten in touch with his creative side and drawn a picture for all us common folk :) - well done Paolo. The scenario is - a Request/Response Port is published at the 'front end', goes through BizTalk and the work is done by a backend system that operates via a One-Way Send and BTS gets the response via another One-Way Receive. The thing I like about Paolo's piece of work is that he shows all the Message Context Properties required to be set by BizTalk for message correlation. Which makes this a Messaging Only Solution and NO Orchestrations......

8 of 54 | Using BizTalk Server 2006 R2 with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V - While building up some BizTalk R2 developer images I can across the answer to my question "Is R2 supported on 2008 Hyper-V?" Look no further than here..... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5c5d86ad-5e17-4ff2-abc9-5a81177f4b30&DisplayLang=en ...

9 of 54 | BizTalk HL7 MLLP Adapter Key Settings - A couple of Key registry settings for the HL7 adapter that I thought I'd jot down onto my online diary. Some tweaks to apply under heavy load to the HL7 adapter Create the registry key MLLPSendFlushTimeout Create new registry key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Accelerator for HL7/Version 2.0 with following details: Name : MLLPSendFlushTimeout Value : 0 Set MaxReceiveInterval to 50 ms Open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. Expand Databases node and select BizTalkMgmtDb database. Expand Tables node and open table adm_ServiceClass. Set the value of MaxReceiveInterval to 50ms corresponding to the Name=Messaging InProces......

10 of 54 | BizTalk PERFORMANCE Optimisation Guide - First Edition!!!! - Guys - this document has recently hit the shelves and what a great guide it is. Written and reviewed by a huge team within MMS mostly - the two main authors Ewan Fairweather and Rob Steel (both MS and very much project/client oriented guys - out in the field!) did a superb job. Firstly - grab the Performance Optimisation Guide (checkout Ewan and Rob's blogs as there's some great bits on there, as well as a section dedicated to the BizTalk Performance Explorer) What's the meaty stuff I can expect to read? (I hear you ask...) 1. It serves as 2 things - a prescriptive guidance and two - best practices around optimisation (It's also great to see BizUnit in there for ......

11 of 54 | Working with Global Parties - AS2, EDI 'stuff' - I was recently working on a AS2/EDI project using BizTalk 2006 R2 and came across an interesting question: How do I create 500+ parties? and with the AS2 Properties included (or even HL7 for that matter) After a little digging - there is the BizTalk.ExplorerOM that we could drill into and create the parties through code. However, there's a more hands off approach....using Bindings!!!! (1) Export Bindings from an existing setup including Parties!!! to an xml file. (2) Modify the XML file - particularly the Party information. (3) Import Bindings back into your new environment. There's a great blog post by the BizTalk Team on this subject a while back -......

12 of 54 | .NET 3.5 Framework WebCasts for the Month of July - There's a great line up this month that are too good to keep secret. Some fellow CSD experts are lining up for some great topics to give all around Workflow and WCF!!! Does it get better? Get on and register. For more, check out the Live Calendar  Live Webcasts MSDN Webcast: Transactional Windows Communication Foundation Services with Juval Lowy (Level 200) Monday, July 7, 2008 10:00 A.M.–11:15 A.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: Using Windows Workflow Foundation to Build Services with Jon Flanders (Level 300) Wednesday, July 9, 2008 10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time MSDN Webcast: WCF Extensibility Deep Dive with Jesus Rodriguez ......

13 of 54 | This collection already contains an address with scheme http. There can be at most one address per scheme in this collection - WCF/BizTalk Error - You'll get this error when using WCF/IIS and host headers.....fortunately a fellow colleague Paul Glavich figured it out!!! Well done Paul! (It involves an IIS reshuffle, you may be able to do something within a custom WCF Binding.) Remember: There is a limit on the number of IIS Websites you can have on a single machine. ...

14 of 54 | Silverlight 2, BizTalk RFID, BizTalk Server and WCF PollingDuplexBinding Element - You might be wondering what do all these guys have in common....good question.... :-) We're currently building an RFID enabled System where complex processes are handled by BizTalk Server, and data being pushed down to Silverlight V2.0 clients via a WCF Silverlight 'Eventing System' (which really is polling under the hood, but to us in developer land - it's cool and it's Events) Scotty has the full write up of some of his learning experiences through this - well done Scotty, he's been in that place where there are no manuals, no documentation, no previous code, just a gut feel and a compass to sail the seas. We demo-ed the system at our last user group (or more over ......

15 of 54 | BTSUG: Jun 25th - BizTalk RFID - come and test the System to be used at Tech08 - Hi folks, we’ve got a great night coming up on this Wednesday – Jun25th Wednesday This session we need to do *testing* of our developing RFID Event Tracking system. This planned to be deployed right throughout TechEd08!!!!   Your help is needed – you’ll get Tags, walk through RFID Readers and get hands on with the gear. We’ll show you how it’s being developed, the Silverlight V2.0 Beta 2 Duplex HTTP WCF Services that drive the UI screens.   So if you’re looking at tracking clothes, wheelchairs, beers in the fridge or any sort of warehouse tracking then this is a must see session for you. (RFID is much more than just ‘pro......

16 of 54 | Sliverlight 2 Beta 2 out this week - At TechEd 2008 in Orlando, an announcement Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will be publicly available later this week.  Improvement areas are: UI Framework, including improvements in: animation support error handling and reporting accessibility support keyboard input performance more compatibility between Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation Rich Controls, including: Visual State Manager, permitting the creation of controls as templates text wrapping scrollbars for text boxes Networking Support, including: improved cross domain support security enhancements upload support for web client duplex communicati......

17 of 54 | SPWeb.ProcessBatchData - Getting SharePoint to process Batches - Back in V2.0 we had a Web Service that did this sort of stuff for us, now in V3.0 it's delivered straight from the Object Model. Essentially: We create a batch of XML which could have 'adds, updates + deletes' in there. We call the web.ProcessBatchData(xml) method, handing to it our wishes. This technique is fast, and CAML based :( So if you need to add 100 items to the list - this would be a way to do it. (I've got to check whether this technique fires event handlers on the lists or whether it's a 'back door' thing) Note: in the snippet below, the fields are referenced via their namespace#<name> - you can get the field's details by saving your lis......

18 of 54 | BizTalk 2006 'R3'....starts to form - Christmas has gone, Easter too.....but here's something to smile about. There's some HUGE things cooking on the horizon in the land of BizTalk. We want SQL2008....we want VS2008 and we want the world of connectivity to/from BizTalk to be *easy*. Also as BizTalk RFID goes mobile....we want to go there too! Control, manage, deploy/stop/start processes etc etc. Here's a start.... Steve Martin (heads up the Connect Systems Division - CSD at Microsoft in Product Management) spilt the beans and let me tell you....when are the betas coming out!!!!!!! http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2008/04/23/biztalk-server-platform-updates.aspx &......

19 of 54 | BizTalk 2006 R2 Branch Edition - What's the go? - I get alot of questions about this - for those of you who have been mentally scarred with early editions of BizTalk (haven't we come along way since then :-) there was a BizTalk Partner Edition (lower priced for hub/spoke type implementations) which was limited in some way with the number of Orchestrations/Tradining Partners etc etc. (like 10 Orchs, 2 partners from memory). With BizTalk 2006 R2 we have the Branch Edition which retails for approx USD$1500 and it gives you........ - BizTalk Business Rules Engine (alot of people are wanting to use the BRE as a centralised rule store in a cost effective manner, until now it was BizTalk Standard a......

20 of 54 | MS Partner Training on the horizon - wanna date? - Hot off the 'Hot-Cross Bun' RFID Conveyor belt (Happy Easter all also!!!) - myself and local Sharepoint MVP funny man - Ivan Wilson will be delivering the sessions... (How do you have a conversation with more than 3 MVPs in the room??? you don't- they all talk about themselves :-) - that's mine, not Ivan's) which will be great news....just have to get the content together...shhhhh...you didn't hear me say that MS Partner Training Schedule in the land of MOSS This is for an Instructor Led 'Chalk & Talk Session' designed for Pre-sales Technical Consultants, Technical Consultants, Technical Project Managers, Architects and Business Ana......

21 of 54 | Where in the World is the BizTalk Adapter Pack V1.0 Download - Hi all - in a recent post I came across an updated version of the BizTalk Adapter Pack V1.0. Doing a search on the web will yield you to a bunch of *.CHM files, but still no *download* link! I'm on the hunt - here's a 'close' page, but still no download link http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/adapter/default.mspx The Adapter Pack has RTM'ed and is available on the Standard/Developer + Enterprise BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Editions. Looks like I'll be up for up for a MSDN download or two..... ...

22 of 54 | BizTalk RFID Solution Days Wrap Up (and a some play time) - I've now managed to get a moment to share a fantastic experience with you. What a trip!!! I was away for 2 weeks in total with the first week spent in San Jose at the Office Developer Conference (ODC) 2008 which as good to touch base with some of the Sharepoint folks and see how others solve challenges that drive me up the wall. Being in a hotel in the middle of 'Silicon Valley' Clayton and I were struggling to find Wireless internet access - the frustrating thing was that everywhere else in the town there were at least 20 networks on offer....except in our hotel room. We found a spot on the window ledge. Then I flew up to Seattle to meet up ......

23 of 54 | A good sample at creating a Custom Dialogue for a Custom BizTalk Adapter - Fellow MVP Thomas has provided a sample that delves into the dark depths of BizTalk Server and its Adapter configurations. Check out his Custom Prop Page Sample Thanks Thomas! ...

24 of 54 | WCF LOB Adapter SDK SP1 Available - The new 'Adapter Framework' (in BizTalk speak - this would be the Adapter V2.0 Framework) is now available. This new WCF based Adapter Framework allows developers to build, deploy and execute standalone Adapters - whether BizTalk Server is present or not. The framework is designed very much for standalone application (& can be 'plugged' into BizTalk R2 if desired), and as a .NET developer you can consider this as an additional .NET library that provides the abilility to allow you to build standalone adapters for your .NET applications (e.g. console app, or Word) p.s. The BizTalk Adapter Pack is built ontop of this framework. :-) Grab SP1 below: http://www.microsoft......

25 of 54 | Day 2 - Office Dev Con in San Jose - The conference is going well and it's good to catch up with some familiar faces such as Angus Logan and Andrew Connell. Basically a message that I'm getting out of the conference so far is that to do Development in/for Sharepoint is to grab a collection of 'helper tools' (that each presenter has built or partially built) to do a little bit along the way. Collectively they do things like: Create Feature/Element XML of your current project getting ready for deployment. Packaging a VSNET Project into a Sharepoint Solution Easy Solution Deployment Visual Studio Extensions for Sharepoint 1.1 (should have a VSNET200......

26 of 54 | Office Developer Conference 2008 - San Jose - I'm currently off at ODC2008 here in the heart of Silicon Valley with Clayton James and pre-conference sessions have started. Free WiFi networks are everywhere on the streets and just about everywhere.....except for our Hotel!! Where it seems to be the only place in Silcon Valley where there is no *free* Wi-fi...nearly all the hotels have some kind of free WiFi in their foyers...except ours. Very bizarre..... I had a session about the BizTalk Adapter Pack (blogs.msdn.com/adapters) We're in a session where they mentioned a few 'must' have deployment tools: SPDeploy - gives you a new Sharepoint Project Option, psexec commands......

27 of 54 | Biggest BizTalk Knowledge Center I've seen!!!! - Microsoft have rounded up all the serious BizTalk Bloggers (MVPs + keen MS guys + Teams) and the Connected Systems Division (CSD Team) within Microsoft and produced a valuable aggregator with all this in one spot. Just have a look at the bloggers that are contributing to this - sensational!!! One stop shop for you guys. From WCF to BizTalk, EDI + Custom Pipelines. We all display this logo on our site. Here's the RSS Feed http://biztalkblogs.com/RssDoc.xml Merry Christmas!!!!! ...

28 of 54 | Sharepoint DataFormWebPart overriding the SetDataSourceProperties method - Well firstly - I've got to say this comes off the back of a great Sharepoint MVP and collegue of mine Ishai Sagi. Big THANKS Ishai!!! Typically my experience with the DataFormWebPart has been through the eyes of Sharepoint Designer - open pages with webparts on them and looking at the XML configuration of these parts. It look pretty ugly AND very site/web specific - IDs all over the place etc etc. Ishai the wealth of knowledge came up with this solution - by overriding the SetDataSourceProperties method, you can effectively create a datasource from anywhere!!!! Forgetting the IDs etc that cause all the pain. I've marked the 2 i......

29 of 54 | BizTalk R2 just got that much smarter - Flat file resolver!! - Just to let you folks know - you no longer have to create special pipeline components, cases etc. for handling flat files. R2 will resolve (dynamically) the schema from those that are deployed!!! (c.f. to xml) To set it up: - create a custom pipeline + add a FFAsm component to it. - leave the schemas properties blank. - BizTalk will now use dynamic resolution for the incoming schemas. This is great news!!!! I can now throw out my 'dynamic FF schema resolver custom component' Enjoy! ...

30 of 54 | Volta: Smart and Intelligent Tool coming to you from the Connected Systems Division - Finally the word on the street is out with Volta finally being announced (cool name). What is it? What can it do for me? (lately :-) Here's an example scenario: - you write a classic .NET Winform/Client App. - put your 'Volta' hat on and nominate sections, routines etc. of your app and which tier/layer you would like the components/classes/sections to run on. - You then nominate Web Layers or classic CLR client layers etc. - Volta crunches your design and boom!!! You've got your SENSATIONAL multitier app from your original single whole app. In fact - check out this great Walkthrough for the 'Hello World app' ......

31 of 54 | What a great account of publishing an Orchestration as a WCF Port - Rahul (MS BTS TS in our parts - great guy and is hugely knowledgeable in both Java integration technologies as well as MS) has been hard at work again weaving his magic... I just couldn't go past his post without sharing it with you guys. Great step by step instructions Rahul! Well done. ...

32 of 54 | .NET 3.5 Framework has landed - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en Live and very available. One of the biggest benefits I see is the WorkflowHostService class - a class that provides the glue between the WF world and the WCF world....very nice! Enjoy! ...

33 of 54 | CodePlex Sample - distributed Pub/Sub model - I recently came across - Distributed Pub/Sub Project up on CodePlex (judging by its date/time stamp this project has been there for a little while) What is interesting is to see where MS are looking to take these sort of systems and why - the whitepaper is a *must* read. Coming from the land of BizTalk where we typically eat/sleep/breathe pub/sub - here is a 'new' prototype project designed at building a low latency distributed pub/sub eventing system (but I won't mention ESB .... I promise :) ) Check it out - I'd love to know your thoughts Cheers, Mick. ...

34 of 54 | BizTalk 2007 LoadGen hits the streets..... how fast can you go?? - I came across a previous comment on my blog from Thiago and noticed his sensational and very comprehensive article in setting up Load Gen on a BTS project (equipped with pictures!!!). Grab LoadGen here and check out his great Article here - ahhh if only all the manuals were this easy :) Well done Thiago - keep it up! ...

35 of 54 | Biztalk beyond the Ages... - Nice post Dan and it's all true....wow what a roadmap from there until here, or then until now. Hope you're all well and kicking goals like the Arsenal the Aussie rugby team . I thought you should know.....recently announced at the big BizTalk conference known as the SOA and BPM conference at Redmond (put that in your wish list to attend - it would be great!) was the next version of BizTalk - vNext code named 'Oslo' (...checking the north wall.....kccck...clear!.....south....kccck...clear also). Great to have a plan I reckon! So here's the low down of it..... Oslo will be: - timeframe 2009+ - services enabled and model......

36 of 54 | BizTalk RFID Training - Microsoft commission Breeze to provide a course - Talk about exciting times - we were developing a great course started pre-R2 launch and were just working out some of the finer details on this, when the folks at MS came along and loved the course and asked to provide a version for them. "Why not?", I said and away we went. Here's the course outline with MS Training dates scheduled in Sydney, Singapore, Beijing + Redmond in the near future (I guess we'll have great frequent flyers :)) BizTalk RFID End To End Course Outline > We decided to call it 'BizTalk RFID End-to-End' which implies we take the student right from the hardware in your face layer, to watching 'enr......

37 of 54 | BizTalk RFID Training is about to hit the planet! - If you're thinking of getting into RFID then you can't go past Microsoft BizTalk RFID Services. Low cost standard, scalable solution - it's brilliant. You can get it as part of the BizTalk 2006 R2 Branch edition. As far as training goes and a course to suit your needs...myself and my team have been working hard to develop not just 'a course' but a fantastic course that takes you from the low layers in RFID to integration and implementation. During the course - the student will get their OWN 'developer' RFID device to play with on the course AND take home!!!! (I'm the sort of person that learns by doing - so I needed that) ......

38 of 54 | Comphrensive list of WSS/MOSS Resources - A friend of mine Sezai spent a great deal of time putting together a great list of WSS/MOSS articles. Thought I'd share them with you - thanks Sezai!!! SharePoint Products and Technologies 2007 Customization Policy http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=92311&clcid=0x409 Deploying and Supporting Enterprise Search with MOSS 2007 at Microsoft - White Paper http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/5/3/253f0074-5c2c-4b45-a1c6-62c2c288c6eb/deployingandsupportingenterprisesearchtwp.doc 2007 Office System Document: Bringing Web 2.0 to the Enterprise with the 2007 Office System http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.a......

39 of 54 | BizTalk: Operations Manager 2007 BizTalk converted MOM Pack!! - Hi guys, if you've ever embarked down the 'hey I want to monitor my bts system through Operations Center 2007', you'll realise that there is a fair conversion process to take the original BTS2006 MOM Pack from *.AKM format to the newer *.XML format. Essentially you do: 1) Install a conversion tool on MOM 2005 SP1 machine 2) run the conversion process 3) take the exported file to your Operations Manager 2007 4) Import the *.XML to Ops Mgr 2007 to generate the classes. Or........ you could download the ready made version - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=389FCB89-F4CF-46D7-BC6E-57830D234F91&displayl......

40 of 54 | Lee leaves us with a secret in BizTalk 2006 R2 - http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_core_engine/archive/2007/03/31/hidden-gem-in-biztalk-2006-r2.aspx The instances table in the msgbox has a newly added column (in R2 only) to that shows the shape on where the Orch is blocked on. So if there's a stack of Dehydrated Orchs in your system, you know what they are waiting on rather than use Orch Debugger. Thanks Lee, you'll be missed! Mick. ...

41 of 54 | BizTalk 2006 R2 Who's your 'MOM-y' Management Pack - Monitoring tends to be one of those areas that's overlooked until you hit Defcon 5 in production, servers are melting all over the floor, people are suddenly disappearing and cashing in on their time owing, and there's not one business process in site...... sound familiar? I've always been fascinated at given the price of MOM (mega cheap) why people don't have effective monitoring solutions in place - it's not rocket science to setup.....or you could have the work experience kid watching the lights on the front of the servers to make sure they're on! :) Here's some details from the R2 Management pack....check them out. http://msdn2.m......

42 of 54 | I got that out early for once :) - Early is good I'm told - for the User group notification. See you at the next User group meeting :) An interesting tidbit: Q. When running Biztalk 'artifacts' on a BizTalk Server - *must* we GAC them all? ...answer soon.....if you haven't figured it out.... ...

43 of 54 | Oct31st - SydBTSUG Meeting: Designing and Developing a Reusable BizTalk Framework - It’s been a little while since we’ve got together with TechEd, APEC + the launch of R2...but I’m pretty certain we’re all in a great space going forward J The launch of BizTalk 2006 R2 was a pretty special event. – What’s new in R2 (ms technet article) for more info. Big thanks to those of you that came along, hope you got alot out of it (not to mention a copy of Vista Ultimate). What was the best part for you? For me personally was the fact that so much of the BizTalk product team made the trip across and was there. There to talk to and listen. Hope you had an opportunity to make the most of that. What’s cooking this month for the group? ......

44 of 54 | Which BizTalk Version is right for you - check the chart - I recently came across this and thought I'd share it with you - keep it handy for those planning meetings :) Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2  Editions - Comparison Chart SKUs Microsoft BizTalk Sever 2006 R2 Editions   ......

45 of 54 | Getting started on MS RFID Services development - The good thing is - this should take you days and not weeks or months! Brilliant.....absolutely brilliant. It's not all about reading and writing tags and watching the tracking of......to me RFID Services is all about what do you do with it next? From a BizTalk perspective, RFID services is another msmq/wcf endpoint that provides rich tag data. From here you can then process the tag read through biztalk - and as was the case in my demo, sent out to Sharepoint to be viewed by InfoPath. One of the most exciting things around this is that we can get BAM involved to see how we're tracking, tag fulfillment, reading, processing - when ......

46 of 54 | MSDN and where for art thou BizTalk 2006 R2 ?? - Hands up who's feeling like a second class citizen? R2 launched weeks ago. Where's the version I can sink my teeth into?? The 120 day Trial Edition is so yesterday....so what's cooking....??? The MSDN Developer edition will be available on/from Wed 26th (US Time), so Thurs morning or so for us. ...

47 of 54 | BAM -> BTS -> BI -> Performance Point...cool - In transit with a little time to spare I thought I'd share some thoughts around an area that is set to boom in the near future - 'Business Activity Monitoring' I know you must be thinking - What? why? who....? what's Mick on about. Let's have a quick chat on my thoughts: Within the next 3 yrs there is going to be even less 'custom raw code' being written and more 'integration code' within the MS product stack. Of course there will be specific needs, but in general across the board for business related applications - why build it from scratch? will be the reasoning. We can see this today heavily with the Sharepoin......

48 of 54 | MOSS: Accessing the Crawler ranking parameters - a little stsadm extension - I had a little time this week and thought I'd write a quick stsadm extension to enumerate and set index ranking parameters, when querying MOSS indexes. My main motivation was so you could change the ranking order of XLS files over PPT files etc. There seems to be a ancient art in setting these values. So what's included: 1. an XML file that needs to be copied to the \12\Config folder. Tells stsadm about the new commands and what class to run. 2. A .NET assembly that needs to be GAC-ed so the stsadm doesn't have to look too hard to try and find the class. Creating an extension is a pretty easy thing -......

49 of 54 | BizTalk 2006 R2 Launch in Sydney - recap - What a great event - BizTalk, BizTalk and more Biztalk. It was great to see all those who attended and especially those from the user groups (Sydney, Brisbane and Melb) I personally had a great day - the weather was great. It was sunny, it hailed and then in true fashion the sun was out again. So this means that BizTalk 2006 R2 is now RTM - grab it from here Scott (another BizTalk super hero) & I put together a great RFID Demo (I can say *great* being not too bias). Come 2am the morning before the launch Scott & I were wondering 'was there going to be a demo?'. In true show style it all came off on the day :) I'll......

50 of 54 | 10 bits of BTS Trivia that you *should* know.... - I got an interesting piece of BizTalk trivia for you all from folks at Corp........ Factoid Source 12 of the 15 largest Retailers in the World run Microsoft BizTalk Elsevier Food International, September 2006 (sourced from PlanetRetail database) 5 of 10 largest Hotel Chains in the World with over 2 Mill......