Microsoft Technologies Rocks !!!!

BizTalk Azure Adapters

2009-07-20T05:02:00.001-07:00

BizTalk Azure Adapters

BizTalk Azure Adapters SDK 1.0 provides the capabilities to BizTalk Server 2009 to Integrate on-premise application with cloud based applications and services running on Windows Azure Platform.

SDK 1.0 is capable to connect on-premise application with Azure Live Framework and .Net Services.

BizTalk Adapter for .Net Services can Send\Receive messages.

BizTalk Adapter for Live Mesh can Receive Notifications and Mesh Objects.

Adapters can be downloaded here.

BizTalk Server 2009 HIPAA 5010 Schema Pack

2009-06-22T02:29:00.001-07:00

BizTalk HIPAA 5010 Schema pack hotfix has been released from Microsoft under the TAP program.

Please follow the instruction in read me document before installing the setup.

HIPAA 4010/5010 Support in BizTalk Server 2009

2009-06-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

HIPAA Accelerator which was available as an add-in for BizTalk Server 2006/R2 is now available as a EDI feature out of the box in BizTalk Server 2009.

BizTalk Server 2009 supports HIPAA 4010 schemas. Microsoft is working on a hotfix release to support HIPAA 5010.

BizTalk Server 2009 Release

2009-04-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has officially announced BizTalk Server 2009 release date, 1st May 2009.

XML Comments Documentation Builder

2009-04-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

Documenting the code is part of the Software Development Life Cycle. There are many ways to document APIs. Visual Studio XML comments provide an option to document the code (Modules, Class, Interfaces, and Methods) in-line. These comments can be extracted from the code to generate a HTML(.chm) file.

Below are some of the Documenter tools

·Sandcastle- This tool provides high customization but does not have GUI capabilities. Sandcastle can be used along with Sandcastle Help File Builder to have a power of GUI. This is highly recommended as this is supported by Microsoft.

Download Link:

Sandcastle: http://www.codeplex.com/Sandcastle
Sandcastle Help File Builder: http://www.codeplex.com/SHFB

· Doxygen- This is yet another tool for document builder.
MoreInfo:
http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/

·NDoc: This tool is “obsolete”. As they have not updated the tool long time.

BizTalk Hot Rod Issue 6

2009-04-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

BizTalkers,
BizTalk Hot Rod Issue 6 is out today. Here is a link for BizTalk Hot Rod Magazine Issue 6 to download. I see my friend Alex's article on the magazine published :)

Remove Orchestration Instances

2009-03-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

Not able to remove Orchestration Instances from BizTalk Administration Console ?

If you are facing issues to Purge\Remove all Orchestration Instances in BizTalk, then there is one quick and dirty way to do it.
Execute the stored procedure msgbox_cleanup_logic.sql from the location $\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\Schema

Note: Microsoft doesn't recommend to use it on production server as this will delete all instances.

BizTalkCop - Static Code Analysis for BizTalk

2009-03-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

If you are use to FxCop for code analysis for .Net projects and searching for similar tool for BizTalk, then you have a good news, BizTalkCop!

BizTalkCop does a static code analysis on the assemblies. It can be used with BizTalk server 2006/R2. I have not tried with BizTalk Server 2009. I will update shortly.

You can download BizTalkCop from Here.

BizTalk HotRod !!!

2009-02-12T19:18:00.001-08:00

BizTalk HotRod magazine fifth issue is released! Here is a link to download.

BizTalk HotRod magazine fifth issue explains.

BizTalk v/s Dublin – Clear differences and when to go for what?
Unit Testing in BizTalk server 2009 – BizTalk server 2009 supports out of the box APIs for Unit testing no more dependent on BizUnit. Explains how to test Maps, Schemas, and Pipelines.
BizTalk and Sharepoint – Explains a scenario on how both can make the existing systems better. This is targeted at non BizTalk and SharePoint developers.
An example to show how BAM can be utilized for monitoring WCF service- *good one*
SOA governance tools – Explains SOA governance tools such as AmberPoint and CODIt can add a business value

How to debug Windows Azure on the Cloud?

2009-01-13T02:53:00.001-08:00

Is it possible to debug an application running on the cloud?

The answer is NOT the conventional way. It is not possible to attach the debugger to the application running in the cloud as your application could be running on any number of VM's in the cloud.

Then how do I debug an application?

I remember the story said by Sriram Krishnan in the Microsoft PDC 2008 held in Seattle.

Some time back NASA launched Pathfinder to Mars. After Pathfinder landed in Mars, It kept sending the photos to earth. All of a sudden it stopped sending photos to earth!! Chief scientists in NASA broke their head to figure out what went wrong in their software! It's not feasible to bring Pathfinder back to earth, debug the software and resend it. Also, it's not possible to attach a debugger to the Pathfinder in the Mars. Only thing what helped them in fixing the issue was the Tracing which was fortunately turned on! Scientists analyzed the trace information and sent a patch update to Pathfinder to make it work!

Windows Azure cloud here is analogous to the Mars we can't download the cloud to local system nor attach a debugger to it. All we need to do is to have a log system in the application on the cloud and if something goes wrong analyze the logs, simulate it locally and re-deploy the software to the cloud.

You need not keep looking at the log all the time for an error. A Windows Azure alert helps you when there is an error.

How to debug Azure Storage locally?

Windows Azure CTP comes with the tools that fabricate the Azure Storage locally similar to the way running in the cloud.

Windows Azure Links

2009-01-11T23:11:00.000-08:00

Here goes the cool links to keep up with happenings in Windows Azure cloud computing.

http://www.azureusergroup.com/

http://lifetracks.cloudapp.net/

Cool Video on Microsoft Global Datacenter vision

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=b4d189d3-19bd-42b3-85d7-6ca46d97fe40

Pick the technology when it’s in baby form and grow as it grows. Do not be late to start working on Windows Azure Cloud computing.

Windows Azure SQLExpress Not Found

2008-12-10T13:40:00.000-08:00

Recently i started digging into Windows Azure. When i started my first project i ran into an issue. I did not had SQL Express 2005 on my machine instead i had SQL server 2005 full edition.

I got a below error while running Windows Azure.

"The SQL Server instance '.\SQLExpress' could not be found. Please verify that SQL Express is installed and running"

Azure seems to be configured to SQL Express in CTP. This needs to be changed to SQL server 2005 connection string.

I did a change in DevelopmentStorage.exe.config at C:\Program Files\Windows Azure SDK\v1.0\bin

After changing the connection string and dbServer it started working fine.

Power Toys for .Net development

2008-11-16T01:11:00.000-08:00

Below is the link for some of the useful tools for effective .Net software development.

Power Toys Pack Installer. This tool lets you see the latest Power toys for Visual Studio and other developer oriented tools.

http://www.codeplex.com/PackInstaller

C# Programming Tools

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336818.aspx

Ten Essential Tools for every .Net developer

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc300778.aspx

MS CRM 4.0 BizTalk Adapter

2008-10-09T00:13:00.000-07:00

Today I got a chance to look into the latest updated version of MSCRM 4.0 BizTalk adapter for integrating MS CRM 4.0 and BizTalk.

MSCRM 4.0 BizTalk adapter is one of the coolest adapters provided by Microsoft for integrating MS CRM 4.0 and BizTalk. This adapter is not developed on WCF LOB adapter framework.

If you are thinking to write your own adapter for integrating BizTalk and MS CRM think again by exploring the features of this adapter. This adapter is used to Send the data to MS CRM from BizTalk for Create, Update and Delete operations. This adapter can be used in a very similar way as File adapter. Auto generate schema for the entities (includes custom entities) is the coolest thing. This saves a lot of time for building the schema and validating the message.

Lacking features

1. Cannot Publish the data from CRM. This adapter can be used as Send Only. Adapter cannot handle call outs of MS CRM. This can be done by developing the Custom App and Integrating to it.

2. This adapter cannot do multi- create\update. Need to use Orchestration to create individual message for incoming multipart message.

Follow the link to download the adapter

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=abd3bb9e-a59a-4eb6-8de8-fb25b77926d7&DisplayLang=en

Migrate WorkItems from TFS to TFS

2008-10-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

There is a way to migrate Work Items from one TFS to another TFS. This requires TFS to support Office 2007.

Please follow the below steps to migrate WorkItems(fox ex:Bugs) from TFS1 to TFS2 server.

1. Export the WokItems to MS Excel from source TFS from Team explorer

2. Open the WorkItems in destination TFS in MS Excel

3. Go to Add-Ins and choose the columns to export

4. Copy the WorkItems from source excel to destination excel

5. Click on Publish(From Add-In tab) to Insert the WorkItems to destination TFS

6. On successful Publish, ID appears back on excel

You can also upload the attachments for each bug through excel.