All posts by : Commonality

1 of 35 | Azuli: A Windows Azure Client - As many have already heard or read, today Microsoft unveiled the Windows Azure Cloud Computing Platform. Besides allowing you to host your own applications, Azure also provides a Blob storage service, a Queue Service and a Table service exposed over REST-based HTTP endpoints. Azuli is my attempt to write a client library for these services in Ruby. Since it’s one of my first attempts at any meaningful ruby code, it’s pretty ugly, but already usable to get started with it. Currently there’s no documentation (except a few tests), but it already has the authentication bits in place for using the default Shared-Key authentication, and som......

2 of 35 | PowerShell V2 & Cmdlet Keyword - In the latest entry in the official PowerShell Blog, Jeffrey Snover leaves a little tidbit about a change coming on the next CTP of PowerShell V2: The cmdlet keyword is going away and we'll just have function. Notice that now you can specify the [Parameter()] attribute on parameters.  When you do that, we treat the function like a cmdlet. I don’t mind getting rid of the cmdlet keyword; honestly, but is the new syntax that much of an improvement? So now instead of an explicit keyword telling you whether something is a function of a cmdlet, you have an attribute spilled around the function parameters? Not sure if that’......

3 of 35 | Encryption Pipeline Component now on GitHub - I’ve been working on organizing the code for my old custom Symmetric Encryption Pipeline Components for BizTalk Server 2006 and I’ve posted the updated code on a new GitHub repository. Be aware that I renamed things a little bit and cleaned other parts of the code. The code includes both the encryption and decryption component, some basic tests using PipelineTesting, and the Windows Forms Configuration Utility that stores the crypto keys used by the components in a custom Configuration Application in Enterprise Single Sign-On. ...

4 of 35 | /dev/null Adapter on GitHub - I’ve just uploaded the source code for my old /dev/null BizTalk Adapter sample on GitHub, which is where I’m posting all my utilities, libraries and tools now. The repository contains both the original version of the adapter, as well as the special BizTalk 2006 R2 version I did that showed how to use create custom configuration dialogs for adapters in R2. The original version is in the ‘master’ branch, while the R2 version is in the ‘R2’ branch. Enjoy. ...

5 of 35 | PipelineTesting v1.2.0.0 Released - I’m happy to announce a new release of my PipelineTesting library! PipelineTesting is used alongside your favorite Unit Testing tool to make it easier to create and test custom pipeline components, pipelines and schemas for BizTalk Server 2006 using Test-Driven Development, or simply to have a set of regression tests to detect bugs arising from code changes. These are the most important new features introduced in this version: Per-Instance Pipeline Configuration: You can now load an XML file with modified settings into a pipeline instance. This relies on the same XML format used by the BizTalk 2006 Admini......

6 of 35 | FixEncoding on GitHub - I just published the source code for my FixEncoding pipeline components for BizTalk Server 2006 to GitHub as well. FixEncoding provides two custom components that can help you resolve issues when resolving charset/encoding issues when receiving or sending messages. I haven't touched FixEncoding in a while, but I still find it very helpful on a lot of projects. You can find the new repository here: http://github.com/tomasr/fixencoding/ ...

7 of 35 | Why GitHub? - Nick Heppleston, a fellow BizTalk blogger and user of my PipelineTesting library, left a comment on a recent post asking why I chose to put the library code on GitHub instead of CodePlex. I think it's a fair question, so let me provide some context. As many of you are probably aware of it by now, there has been much talk lately about Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS), as an alternative to the more traditional, centralized control systems that have been common in the past (and still are). DVCS has gained a lot of traction lately, particularly with Open Source projects because it really suits the already distributed nature of Open Source d......

8 of 35 | PipelineTesting: XML Assembler and E_FAIL - Fellow BizTalk developer Bram Veldhoen was kind enough to send me some suggestions for a future version of my PipelineTesting library, as well as with a question that could point to a potential bug in the library. The problem basically revolves around consuming a stream returned by the XML Assembler component in a send pipeline when testing under a library. What Bram noticed was that executing the pipeline would seem to work, but trying to read the body part stream of the output message would fail with a ComException with error code 0x8004005 (E_FAIL). I was fairly confident this should've been working, based on my own use of the library, but......

9 of 35 | PipelineTesting: XML Assembler and E_FAIL - Fellow BizTalk developer Bram Veldhoen was kind enough to send me some suggestions for a future version of my PipelineTesting library, as well as with a question that could point to a potential bug in the library. The problem basically revolves around consuming a stream returned by the XML Assembler component in a send pipeline when testing under a library. What Bram noticed was that executing the pipeline would seem to work, but trying to read the body part stream of the output message would fail with a ComException with error code 0x8004005 (E_FAIL). I was fairly confident this should've been working, based on my own use of the library, but......

10 of 35 | CreateXmlInstance() with Multi-Root Schemas - The DocumentSpec class in the Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.Interop namespace of the Microsoft.BizTalk.Pipelines assembly is commonly used in custom pipeline components (particularly assemblers in disassemblers) to represent a compiled BizTalk schema (a document specification). This class has one interesting method: CreateXmlInstance(), which can generate an sample instance XML based on the associated schema [1]. Recently I saw a question in the BizTalkGurus forum about how to use this functionality if you had a schema definition with multiple potential root elements. Turns out its pretty easy, once you understand how DocumentSpec works and how......

11 of 35 | PipelineTesting code now on GitHub - I just pushed all the source code for my BizTalk 2006 PipelineTesting library to GitHub. I'll keep this public repository updated whenever I make any changes to the library, so if you're interested in keeping track of the code or forking it, this should make it a lot easier. You can find the clone URL for the new repository is: git://github.com/tomasr/pipelinetesting.git Enjoy! BizTalk Server 2006, PipelineTesting ...

12 of 35 | Controlling BizTalk Orchestrations with PowerShell - Here's a sample PowerShell script/functions to start/stop BizTalk orchestrations. This is an extended version of the Stop-Orchestration VBScript included in the BizTalk 2006 SDK, which I hope someone finds useful . The script can be used to start or stop either a specific orchestration or a group of orchestrations defined in a BizTalk assembly. For example, to stop and unenlist all orchestrations in a given assembly, you could use this: stop-orch -assembly 'MyProject.BizTalk, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=50b7b2906e3f8aa5' -unenlist Here's the code for the script: ......

13 of 35 | BizTalk Filters not Getting Imported - ... or how automatic formatting of XML files can make you miserable. During the last few days I've been helping out a client get ready for deploying a BizTalk solution. One of those things this involved was taking the existing BizTalk Binding XML files and making minor edits to them so they would match the new environment. I did the changes, and the BizTalk Administrator used the updated Binding Files to import them into the new BizTalk Servers. They imported without any errors at all. A couple hours later he noticed some test messages were getting incorrectly routed to the wrong send ports (there's a lot of messaging only stuff in this solution)......

14 of 35 | PipelineTesting 1.1.3.0 Released - I just uploaded a new update to my PipelineTesting library. This one comes courtesy of Gregory Van de Wiele, who kindly made me aware of a nasty bug: The library wasn't handling schemas with no targetNamespace correctly when adding them to the pipeline context. Because of this, you needed to specify the documentSpec name as "#root" instead of simply "root". This has now been fixed in this version and I added a new unit test to make sure it doesn't come up again. Thanks a lot Gregory! As usual you can download the updated code/binaries from here. BizTalk Server, Testing ...

15 of 35 | Vim Scripts - Someone recently asked me what Vim scripts and plug-ins I use on my Vim setup. There are literally hundreds of plug-ins on the Vim site, some of them quite complex and interesting. Though I've customized my own Vim setup quite a bit, I don't use all that many plug-ins. Here's what I normally use: Plug-Ins Calendar: Displays a calendar in a Vim buffer. Though not as complete as the functionality in Emac's calendar, it is still pretty useful . Camelcasemotion: This one adds word-movement navigation motions that are aware of the casing of characters inside words. So, for exampl......

16 of 35 | Registering Null Adapter on 64-Bit Machines - Shashikant Raina was kind enough to share with me an issue he ran into while trying my /dev/null Adapter for BizTalk Server on a 64-bit machine: After creating the adapter registry keys using the included .reg file, he noticed that the adapter would not appear listed in the BizTalk Administration Console when trying to add the adapter to BizTalk. Here's how Sashikant fixed it: On 64 bit machine, when you simply click on a registry key file (i.e NullAdapter.reg) it creates entries in default registry editor on that machine. When you then go to Biztalk admin and try to add Null adapter, you can't see it is ......

17 of 35 | PipelineTesting v1.1.2.0 - I've just uploaded a new version of my PipelineTesting library. This one contains just a few minor modifications: A few improved unit tests, and new methods to make it easier to create multi-part messages to use as pipeline inputs. Here's an example of the last one: IBaseMessage message = MessageHelper.Create(    "<body>This is the body part (part1)</body>",    "<body>This is the part2</body>",    "<body>This is the part3</body>" ); Assert.AreEqual(3, message.PartCount); The new MessageHelper.Create() method takes a params array of strings as argument. Ea......

18 of 35 | Distant Shores - A Visual Studio Color Scheme - I created this color scheme a while ago but had not posted it yet. Distant Shores is a low-contrast color scheme with a dark background. I've been using it for a while now and it's fairly usable (particularly on a bright screen); though it is a bit different than most of my other themes. It's (loosely) based on the Stormy Seashore color palette, with a few additions for contrast and provide basic coloring to user types in C#. Code: XML: As usual in most of my schemes, this one is using Dami......

19 of 35 | BizTalk Send Adapters and Failures - I've spent part of the weekend playing with some code for a BizTalk 2006 Send adapter, and while looking at the failure handling code, remember something that always struck me a bit odd about the model. BizTalk supports a several different ways of implementing a send adapter, depending on the complexity of the adapter and the capabilities it provides. An adapter can made to handle a single message at a time (but with likely multiple messages in parallel), or handle batches of messages. An adapter can also handle messages synchronously or asynchronously. Synchronous adapters are not really very desirable in general terms, unless the adapter it......

20 of 35 | Minor Update to PipelineTesting - I've uploaded a new update to my PipelineTesting library, a tool for creating automated tests for BizTalk Server 2006 pipelines and custom pipeline components. Read more about PipelineTesting, and download the code here. The only change on this version is that the IPipelineContext.GetEventStream() method now returns a stub implementation BAM EventStream instead of returning null as previous versions did. This makes it easier to execute pipelines that require access to BAM. BizTalk Server, PipelineTesting ...

21 of 35 | What Irks Me About Visual DSLs - There's a lot of talk about Domain Specific Languages lately. The exact definition of what a DSL is, however, might change depending on who you ask. Microsoft itself tends to favor significantly Visual DSLs, that is, domain specific languages that are made of visual components (as opposed to Text-based DSLs that are made of some kind of text driven representation). Frankly, I don't expect MS to change their direction, nor am I sure it would be the wisest decision given their target audience, but I do tend to favor text-based DSLs myself, for several reasons: Text-based DSLs work best during development. We have a significant amount......

22 of 35 | Port VS2005 Color Schemes to VS2008 - Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) handles some of the Font and Colors settings differently from VS2005. While Orcas can import .vssettings files generated its predecessor, there are a couple of problems: Custom colors for User Types and C# @" " strings don't get imported. This is because the name of the settings in the exported files changed between versions. For example, the setting for Delegates was named "User Types (Delegates)", but it is now called "User Types(Delegates)" (notice the missing space!). Visual Studio 2008 introduces a whole new set of settings for XAML. This seems like a pretty needless thing to me, because all but three......

23 of 35 | BAM EventStream in PipelineTesting - Last night someone brought to my attention that the current versions of PipelineTesting always return null from the IPipelineContext.GetEventStream() method. This is expected to return an EventStream object so that pipeline components can write to BAM, but I never had bothered looking it up before. I've now fixed this so that the property returns an EventStream-derived class that simply swallows all calls to it silently, to avoid tying the library to having any specific BAM infrastructure in place, and this will be included in the next version of the library. Is this good enough? Is there anyone who would prefer to have a way to override this......

24 of 35 | BasicHttpBinding with Transport Security - This is just something to remind myself next time I need to implement a WCF service using the BasicHttpBinding with transport-only security (SSL + client certificates)': WCF expects that the "Require SSL" option in IIS is enabled. If Metadata Exchange is needed, configure the MEX endpoint with a custom binding with the right settings; otherwise the service won't start. Remember to set httpsGetEnabled="true" option in the <serviceMetadata> service behavior instead of the usual httpGetEnabled attribute. WCF does not understand the "Accept Client Certificates" option in IIS. It treats it the ......

25 of 35 | Silverlight Xunit.net Test Runner - A couple of people have asked if I could share the code for my experimental Xunit.net silverlight v1.1 test runner. Actually, the stuff I did was fairly simple and not very polished, but I'll should get someone else started on building a real runner out of it You can download the code here. Some things to keep in mind: The zip doesn't contain all the code. Only the silverlight specific parts: The sample test HTML page and its JS scripts The silverlight control XAML The TestRunnerView, a Canvas derived class that implements the actual silverlight control This means you still need to go and ......

26 of 35 | Desert Nights: A VS2005 Color Scheme - This is my latest Visual Studio 2005 Color Scheme: Desert Nights. This one features a dark background that isn't quite black (it has a slight hint towards brownish/greenish), and colors that stand from the background but without being too bright (most of them, at least). Code: XML: I've been using this one for the past three or four weeks and I'm liking it quite a bit so far, and it is certainly different from the ones I've made before. Download. Color Scheme, Visual ......

27 of 35 | Bandwidth Usage - My website usually has fairly low traffic, given that much of it (or this weblog, for that matter) isn't all that well known and I host few big files. Normally, the monthly bandwidth usage for winterdom.com is between 4.5 and 6 GB. However, bandwidth usage during october jumped to 16.28 GB! That was a surprise, so I started looking at what might have caused it. From my adsense stats and my usage of Google Analytics, I knew that traffic had increased a bit during this last month on the weblog, but not on the rest of the site, which is normal given that I don't update it often and it is mostly used to host the downloads for my samples. Also, the RSS subscriber base hasn't c......

28 of 35 | Color Schemes in SQL 2005 Management Studio - As many of you know, I spend time every now and then coming up with new color schemes for Visual Studio 2005. It's fun, and having a good color scheme can make all the difference in the world to your eyes when spending long times in front of your screen writing code. I use dark backgrounds, so it was always painful to switch to SQL Server 2005 Management Studio to write SQL code, because I had not configured a custom color scheme there. I also didn't want to have to spend more time doing so, particularly since Management Studio has no Import/Export Settings wizard. Enter VSColorsToSql This is a simple utility I wrote last night that will port your current VS2005 Fonts......

29 of 35 | Archiving Original Messages in BTS - Siva Ram asks in a comment on a previous post: "How to Archive/(copy to another location) the Source file as it is , Before the biztalk picks up the file?" I think what he's really asking is how he could archive an exact copy of the original incoming message (possibly for regulatory compliance, auditing, or simply to provide easier tracing of problems). This is a common question, and the truth is there are several ways to approach this in BizTalk server. Here are some options: Double Hop: A fairly simple option is to do a double hop when processing the incoming message. Instead of parsing and processing the message right away, receive it through a pass-thru pipe......

30 of 35 | Custom PropPage in R2 Sample - As promised, here's a sample managed adapter implementing a custom adapter configuration dialog for BizTalk Server 2006 R2. It isn't a fancy sample, just a new version of my /dev/null adapter with a simple, custom dialog. It should be enough, however, to illustrate the basic details needed to get you up and running quickly. Here's a snapshot of the configuration dialog when invoked from the BizTalk Administration Console: Some things I discovered that complement my previous article on the topic: COM Registration: The class implementing IPropertyPageFrame needs to be registered with COM. However, you won't be able to use the "Register for COM interop" option in......

31 of 35 | Custom PropPages in Adapter Configuration - OK, time to post some technical content again If you've used BizTalk server 2004/2006, you've probably seen the configuration dialog where you enter the adapter-specific settings on a send port or receive location. Have you noticed how some adapters simply have a property grid with values, while others have a full-blown set of custom property pages with custom dialogs? Ever wondered why? The standard property-grid based settings dialog is provided by the BizTalk Adapter Framework by default, all you need to do have your adapter's MgmtClass provide the proper XML Schema (XSD) that defines the adapter options. In a lot of ways this is very good, as it makes adding d......

32 of 35 | BizTalk MVP + 1 - I was just awarded for the second time as a BizTalk Server MVP . Pretty cool, and thanks to Fernando Garcia and all the great people in the MVP program and Marjan Kalantar and the rest of the BizTalk/CSD team for talking such good care of us! BizTalk Server, MVP ...

33 of 35 | SvcUtil Generated Config - Scott Seely seems to object to my previous comment on being careful about the defaults used by svcutil.exe. Scott goes on to describe in detail how svcutil figures out what should get written in the default configuration, which is pretty useful. But, seems to me like Scott may have misunderstood my comment. Yes, I do know how svcutil.exe works and even why it chooses the defaults it chooses. I'm not arguing against it configuring default values (even for all binding properties, as cumbersome as that can be). I'm arguing against the rationale of the default values themselves, as they make little sense for a client side proxy. Don't get me wrong, I fully agree with Scott'......

34 of 35 | WCF Tips - My good friend Sam Gentile pointed me to David Pallmann's set of WCF tips. Lots of good stuff in there, and I found myself agreeing with most of the stuff David brought up. One that particularly resonated with me was Tip #4 on default settings. One of my biggest gripes with svcutil.exe is that it generates a default client-side proxy configuration that is fairly useless, because it initializes all binding properties explicitly with values that are too small to be useful in many cases. What's worse, you may not realize the consequences of this during initial testing and may only notice the problem later on. In particular, message size and encoding quotas have default values t......

35 of 35 | BizTalk 2006 R2 Dev on MSDN - BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Developer edition (RTM) is now (finally!) available on MSDN downloads for MSDN subscribers. Downloading! BizTalk Server 2006 R2 ...