Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Pro BizTalk 2006

Having recently finished George Dunphy's book Pro BizTalk 2006 I thought it was worth writing a review for it on the Chapters/Indigo site, especially since no one has yet reviewed it! As of this writing, the review has not been posted, so here is the body of it below.

[Edit Nov 23 5:50pm] The review has now been posted! Except they stripped all formatting for some reason...

Link to book on Chapters/Indigo Website:
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/item/books-978159059699/0/Pro+Biztalk+2006

***** (Five Stars)


This book is a great resource for the intermediate to advanced BizTalk user. While the Microsoft team has done a commendable job of refining the documentation for BizTalk Server (compared to 2004), there continues to be many voids with respect to best practices and practical guidance around the tool in large enterprise-class deployments.

While the primary audience of this book is certainly the BizTalk developer, there is much to be gained for the solution architect and technology director. In particular, there is a good breakdown of when to use each of the features included in BizTalk Server 2006 – often decisions about what feature to use and when are misinformed or happen late in the game. There is also a great discussion on what it takes to realistically implement a BizTalk solution (time and resources required) as well as how to setup a robust development environment. The core of the book does however demand a familiarity with the documentation shipped with the product. A new developer would be lost quite quickly, though I would encourage him or her to read this book after gaining some general knowledge and experience.

Included in the authors' thorough descriptions of how to implement advanced integration concepts are many detailed examples and real-world code samples. The authors provide a frank analysis of the toolset, highlighting both its strengths and weaknesses with a view to pragmatism; if something cannot be done or is unsupported in BizTalk, the authors provide guidance as to how best to solve the problem. Further, if there are multiple ways of achieving the same thing, the costs and benefits of differing approaches are provided ( i.e. pipelines versus orchestration).

In many of the discussions in Pro BizTalk 2006, for better or worse, the authors point out the differences between versions 2004 and 2006. While this is very useful for the developer with considerable experience in BizTalk 2004, it may be meaningless or confusing to those who are being initiated with version 2006. Though the book was written for readers with experience (read experience with BizTalk 2004) this point is not moot as developers without that context will still (and should) undoubtedly buy this book. For those like myself that are upgrading their skills from 2004, this book will no doubt give the reader many moments of "If only I had that feature!" and may even spur thoughts on how to re-architect their existing 2004 solutions!

Some of the most valuable sections for myself included the following: a thorough description of the new performance characteristics and configuration variables; complete sample code for creating several reusable pipeline components ( i.e. zip compression, PGP encryption); many examples of implementing messaging patterns in BizTalk; and solid details on monitoring the application using WMI events and tools like Microsoft Operations Manager.

While the book does go into detail on the new install/deploy features of BTS2006 (such as MSI files, btstask.exe) I would like to have seen some discussion on new tools like MSBuild, how to implement continuous integration scenarios, or the automation of deployment to one or more environments. There is also little discussion on the advanced aspects of Business Activity Monitoring, a feature which I believe is greatly underused and not accounted for in the design process early enough.

No matter what the reader's role in integration projects, whether he or she is simply migrating from 2004 or building a new integration practice around BizTalk Server 2006, this book is a must-have. Every BizTalk developer will learn something from this book and should read it, especially in light of the scarcity of good literature on this now mature, yet occasionally overwhelming, product.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Microsoft-isms 2007

Throughout the conference, I heard a few phrases and pronunciations that seem to be used by Microsoft as well as a number of the product partners there.  As is often the case, we will no doubt be using these phrases ourselves within a matter of months and not think about them a second time.
 
v.Next()
This phrase was used by many presenters to talk about the next version, or whatever was coming in the future.  Heh, clever :)  I guess software manufacturers are moving away from incremental naming schemes, this is more accurate than version++.
 
dub *
Since it is apparently too time-consuming to say "double-ewe", the new components of .NET 3.0 are cited as dub-eff (WF), dub-see-eff (WCF), and dub-pea-eff, (WPF).
 
Connect
Not a new word, but the word at Microsoft come the new year.  Someone suggested an MS marketing exec believes MSFT can own the word connect.  No doubt, we will see this word peppered in every marketing campaign next year, from Dynamics, Office, to all Server-based products.  While arguably inane, to MSs credit, the technology demonstrated this past week did indicate a culmination in their efforts towards interop/integration of all MS products.
 
As a side note, there is apparently to be a large public marketing campaign for BizTalk Server 2006, the scale of the recent Dynamics campaign.  I don't know how accurate this statement is, but if it is true, we may see a large increase in demand from customers.
 
 

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Cool things in Visio 2007

Visio 2007 will obviously host many new features including new stencils, shapes, an improved "auto-connect" system. What is most intriguing is the focus on connecting a diagram (particularly Business Process Diagram)

By defining a data connection to a diagram and respective shapes, you can pull visual information about the analysis for a business process. So if you model a BP in visio, and then collect information about that BP in, say, Excel or Access, you can connect the two. Say for each BP step you have collected metrics on cost, average duration, total resources required etc, once connected you can have visual representations of each of those metrics tied to each process shape and thus have a bird's eye view of the BP, quickly identifying the targets of improvement.

They introduce the notion of a Pivot Diagram too which looks like it could be a replacement of Pivot Tables (for some applications). Taking your data-linked business process shapes, you can drill down into those same metrics using the familiar concepts of dimensions and data items. Very appealing to a potential customer.

Finally, using a partner tool, they demonstrated how you can tie Visio into BizTalk in both directions. The analyst develops the BP model in visio, exports it to a BizTalk orchestration (using XLANGs) at which point both developer and analyst can collaborate on essentially the same artifact. Changes to the process diagram, once exported, are reflected in the BTS Orchestration. Though they did not have time to demonstrate this piece, once deployed and BAM is in place, those metrics defined in BAM are then brought back into the BP model to update the metrics displayed there. Very slick. I wouldn't be surprised if this partner tool is purchased by Microsoft or otherwise bundled into post 2007 releases.

SOA and BPM Conference Day One Summary

Some interesting things came out of yesterday's sessions, particularly around Office 2007 and other 2k7 releases:

To clarify:
.NET 3.0 (formerly WinFX) is the amalgamation of .NET 2.0, Windows Communication Foundation (Formerly Indigo), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly Avalon), Windows Cardspace.

A new tool called Office Sharepoint Designer allows the information worker to design workflow that will be 'run' on the WF (apparently pronounced dub-eff). Instead of a visual tool like the orchestration designer, this will be based on the Office Rules Wizard allowing the IW to determine the workflow using a set of rules.

Useful links for SOA:

www.microsoft.com/architecture
www.microsoft.com/practices
www.microsoft.com/webservices

The Architecture Journal
www.architecturejournal.net

HP is doing some great benchmarking and performance analysis of BizTalk Server 2006 as well as creating reference architectures to help answer customer questions like "how well does BizTalk perform?". They have sizers as well, for determining what architecture/license structure will be necessary given a set of usage/volume requirements. As yet, they do not provide one for BizTalk, but it will come soon.

www.hp.com/go/activeanswers
www.hp.com/dspp

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

SOA Conference - Day One: Morning

It's 8am PST and I've just eaten my hot breakfast outside the conference rooms.  I've been proven wrong.  Scrambled eggs at large functions aren't all bad.  These ones were pretty damn good.
 
The other nice thing about conferences is the free stuff.  No cheap highlighter, no dinky keychain.  All attendees get an mp3 player.  I'm not so much excited about the chance to play mp3s (and WMAs, can't forget that at MS) since my palm already does that, but the fact that it records.  Small feature but one I hope to take advantage of.  The manual says it has an FM tuner too, but it would appear not on this model.
 
On a real note, I have learned that all sessions will be recorded and all participants will receive a DVD compilation with all sessions.  So, I don't have to be upset that I am missing one or more concurrent sessions that tore my decision making.  Further, I can then share that with key people at the office (and of course saves me from the times I may have a faulty memory).
 
This should be fun!

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Microsoft SOA And Business Process Conference

I will be attending a conference on SOA and BP hosted by the BizTalk Server group at Microsoft. My first conference! My first visit to Seattle! It will be great fun and very interesting. I will try to post a few times while I'm there.

Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference

Tuesday, October 3-6, 2006

www.impactevents.com/biztalkconference