MSDN Blogs

Virtualiser Operations Manager

spapp — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:08:33 GMT

Cela va toujours mieux en l'écrivant, mais il ne s'agit pas d'une position officielle sur le support d'environnement virtualisés. Vous connaissez tous l'histoire relative aux solutions tierces telles que décrites dans les fiches 954958, 897614, 897615, etc.

Dans les différents rôles de System Center Operations Manager, certains sont plus ou moins candidats à la virtualisation.

Les serveurs hébergeant les bases de données sont de piètres candidats, sauf si l'environnement est très petit et après avoir fait des tests de montée en charge. Une position officielle relative à SQL Server dans le cadre d'Ops Mgr serait la bienvenue au-delà d'un simple oui ou non.

Le Root Management Server (RMS) fait un usage intensif de la CPU et de la mémoire, par conséquent, sa virtualisation est un peu plus envisageable, mais avec les mêmes restrictions sur les tests de montée en charge.

Les serveurs d'administration sont, en revanche, de bons candidats, désormais, compte tenu des améliorations récentes des produits de virtualisation et, en particulier, de Hyper-V.

Les serveurs passerelles ne sont jamais que des agents agissant comme proxy. Par conséquent, leur virtualisation est totalement réaliste.

Les serveurs de reporting devraient être virtualisés dans un grand nombre de cas.

XDev 2008 | X-over Development Conference 2008 に登壇します

Tomoharu Nagasawa — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 05:06:12 GMT

こんにちは。Tech・Ed 2008 Yokohama の先の話となりますが、日経BPさんの X-over Development Conference 2008 （通称 XDev 2008）に登壇することになりました。昨年は残念ながら参加しておりませんが、なんでも大変な天候の中でもとても熱いカンファレンスだったと伝え聞いています。そんな熱のあるカンファレンスで登壇できることは私にとってもとても楽しみです。 XDev 2008 については、 XDev 2008 http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/ev/xdev/index.html をご覧ください。私のセッションは、 2A-4: Visual Studio Team System 2008 × チーム開発 Visual Studio Team System 2008 で構築するチーム開発基盤 9月5日 15:25～16:05 と題し、チーム開発基盤をVSTSで構築するとこうなる・・・というのをご覧いただこうと考えています。詳細はサイトでご覧いただければ！！他にもマイクロソフトの社員が登壇するセッションがありますので、そちらもぜひチェックし、ご参加ください。...(read more)

Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting: webcast available live

mthree — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:42:29 GMT

As noted on our website, Microsoft hosts a Financial Analyst Meeting tomorrow (July 24). You can listen in to the action and get the play-by-play as a live webcast will be available starting at 8:30AM Pacific Time. As noted on Bloomberg news today... "Ballmer, along with Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell and the presidents of Microsoft's three businesses, will address analysts and investors tomorrow at company headquarters in Redmond..." Hopefully analysts will get a little more clarity about...(read more)

GNC Review of Access 2007

clintc — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:31:09 GMT

Found this nice review about Access 2007 the other day…

GCN Lab review: The options are endless — and the learning curve is, too — but with Access, you get more bang for the buck than with any other program of its kind.

Access has a reputation for being, well, inaccessible. But with the 2007 version, this seems true only if you’re working on an advanced schema or using advanced features.

One of the best ways to get started with the program quickly is to use one of the included database templates. There are dozens to choose from, particularly if you tap into the repository available online from Microsoft.com.

…

http://www.gcn.com/print/27_16/46621-1.html

Useful Abstractions Enabled with ContinueWith

toub — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:27:08 GMT

In the June 2008 CTP of Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework, we introduced the ContinueWith method on both Task and Future<T>. ContinueWith is, in effect, a callback, very much like events in .NET. With events, a causal action results in the event being raised, which by default triggers all of the delegates registered with the event to be invoked. ContinueWith supports this, but rather than just registering the callback, it also provides back a Task or Future<T> that represents the callback; that returned Task or Future<T>'s lifecycle is tied specifically to the callback and won't be marked as IsCompleted until that callback completes. While at its core this could be considered a relatively simple idea and is useful for general dataflow in applications, it also enables some important patterns and can serve as the building block for a whole host of larger abstractions.

For example, the June 2008 CTP doesn't provide support for mulit-item continuations (is this something you think we should provide in a future release?): you can create a continuation Task or Future<T> for when one Task or Future<T> finishes, but out-of-the-box you can't create one for when all of multiple Task or Future<T>'s complete. Nevertheless, you can use the basic ContinueWith support to implement this additional support. Here's an example of a ContinueWith method you could implement, where you provide it with multiple Task instances, and the resulting Task will only be scheduled and executed when all of the provided tasks complete (I've ommitted parameter validation and the like to simplify the code):

static Task ContinueWhenAll(
    Action<Task[]> continuation, params Task[] tasks)
{
    var starter = Future<bool>.Create();
    var task = starter.ContinueWith(o => continuation(tasks));

    CountdownEvent ce = new CountdownEvent(tasks.Length);
    Action<Task> whenComplete = delegate {
        if (ce.Decrement()) starter.Value = true;
    };
    foreach (var t in tasks)
        t.ContinueWith(whenComplete, TaskContinuationKind.OnAny,
            TaskCreationOptions.None, true);

    return task;
}

This ContinueWhenAll method tasks two parameters: an Action<Task[]> to execute when all of the provided tasks have completed (supplied with those tasks), and the params array of the Tasks to monitor for completion. It then uses a workaround to create a Task that can be started at an arbitrary time in the future (in the June 2008 CTP, we don't directly support this capability, hence the workaround, but we're planning to in a future release as that capability is useful for a bunch of scenarios, including this one). A delegate is created that will count down from the number of provided tasks every time it's invoked, and when the count reaches 0, it will start the task. ContinueWith is then used to register that whenComplete action as a continuation for all of the parameter tasks. And voila, we now have a ContinueWhenAll method, which can be used like:

Task t1 = ..., t2 = ...;
Task t3 = ContinueWhenAll(
delegate { Console.WriteLine("t1 and t2 finished"); }, t1, t2);

Similarly, a method could be implemented for creating a task continuation for when any of a set of tasks completes (rather than when they all complete):

static Task ContinueWhenAny(
    Action<Task> continuation, params Task[] tasks)
{
    WriteOnce<Task> theCompletedTask = new WriteOnce<Task>();
    var starter = Future<bool>.Create();
    var task = starter.ContinueWith(o =>
        continuation(theCompletedTask.Value));

    Action<Task> whenComplete = t => {
        if (theCompletedTask.TrySetValue(t)) starter.Value = true;
    };
    foreach (var t in tasks)
         t.ContinueWith(whenComplete, TaskContinuationKind.OnAny,
            TaskCreationOptions.None, true);

    return task;
}

This implementation is very similar to ContinueWhenAll. However, the action that's registered as the continuation for each task uses a WriteOnce<T> to store the first Task to complete and to schedule the continuation task when it does. ContinueWhenAny can be used like:

Task t1 = ..., t2 = ...;
Task t3 = ContinueWhenAny(
delegate { Console.WriteLine("t1 or t2 finished"); }, t1, t2);

There are other neat patterns enabled with ContinueWith. One pattern that's starting to become popular with frameworks like the CCR or AsyncEnumerator is to take advantage of C#'s iterator support to make writing code that uses asynchronous operations a bit more like sequential code. While not the primary focus of the Task Parallel Library, ContinueWith can be used to implement such patterns in at least a limited capacity. Consider the following method:

static void RunAsync(IEnumerable<Task> iterator)
{
    var enumerator = iterator.GetEnumerator();
    Action a = null;
    a = delegate
    {
        if (enumerator.MoveNext())
        {
            var next = enumerator.Current;
            next.ContinueWith(delegate { a(); },
                TaskContinuationKind.OnAny, TaskCreationOptions.None, true);
        }
        else enumerator.Dispose();
    };
    a();
}

This method accepts an IEnumerable<Task>. It retrieves an enumerator from the enumerable and uses that enumerator in a delegate. The delegate moves the enumerator to its next element, and if there is a next element, retrieves it and uses ContinueWith to schedule the delegate (recursively, in a sense) for execution when that current Task completes. When the enumerator reaches the end, it's disposed. With that delegate created, RunAsync simply executes the delegate to get the execution started.

Now imagine I wanted a method that would asynchronously read a file, processing it as it's read in. I can implement such a method as follows:

static IEnumerable<Task> ReadFile(string path)
{
    using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(
         path, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read, FileShare.Read, 0x1000, true))
    {
        var enc = new UTF8Encoding();
        byte[] data = new byte[0x1000];
        while (true)
        {
            var pendingRead = CreateFutureFromApm<int>(ac =>
                fs.BeginRead(data, 0, data.Length, ac, null), fs.EndRead);
            yield return pendingRead;
            int bytesRead = pendingRead.Value;
            if (bytesRead <= 0) break;

            Console.WriteLine(enc.GetString(data, 0, bytesRead));
        }
    }
}

ReadFile opens a file stream and continually reads from it asynchronously. The code wraps usage of the FileStream's BeginRead/EndRead methods with a Future<int> (using the example method from http://blogs.msdn.com/8272833.aspx); that Future<int> is yielded from the ReadFile method (which returns an enumerator). We'll execute ReadFile by passing it to RunAsync. When the Future<int> completes, its continuation will be executed, which will cause the RunAsync iterator to MoveNext, thus ending up back in the ReadFile method just after the yield location. The ContinueWhenAll method can be used to allow more complicated asynchronous methods to be written, by wrapping multiple asynchronous invocations and yielding a continuation for when they all complete.

There are a myriad of such interesting patterns that ContinueWith enables. We'd love to hear about any useful ones you come up with.

Events in Space

cburrows — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:01:14 GMT

My last post was many months ago, and I've been pretty busy here since then. Nobody who starts a blog means to neglect it, even though mostly that's what happens. I won't let it go for so long again. =)

Anyway, we were talking about events. Field-like events in particular, and the nastiness of their implementation with respect to the way they use synchronization. Sam, also on my team, has a post that has to do with field-like events, in particular that when you declare them virtual and then override them, you should be a bit careful.

I want to bring up something else about events, which is their performance in space--how much of it they use. On a per-instance basis, each field-like event you declare takes up at least the size of a delegate field. Is that the best you can do?

WinForms doesn't think so. Take a minute and reflect over System.Windows.Forms.Control and look at the events. There are 68 of them. I won't list them all here, but they're things like "Click," "GotFocus," "KeyDown," etc. Now, Control is the fundamental base class for pieces of WinForms UI, and so there are likely to be a lot of instances around. If these events were all field-like, then every piece of UI would be bloated by 68 delegate fields. That'll add up quickly, but the important bit is that it's almost all a waste. It's not the case that control events are frequently subscribed to. Mostly they're not. You create a button and then you listen for Click and maybe one or two others, but you're not adding 68 events on the thing.

So what did they do? Well, you can look at the events. They implemented their own accessors, and those accessors, instead of dealing in terms of delegate fields, deal with a list of delegates that have been used so far in that instance.

This strategy allows the list to be sparse.

See, if no one ever calls add for a particular event, then it never gets a list entry. If someone does, then it has a list entry and the total footprint grows by that amount for your instance, but that's ok. You're paying for what you're using!

This is a really good idea, if you're in the same boat. Of course... you're probably not. Just having a handful of events won't warrant this amount of attention, since the container is going to have overhead. And if you implement a lot of events but they're always used, or if you don't have a lot of instances, you probably also don't want to do this. Oh, and if you're going to try an optimization like this, test it to see if it gets you anything. You don't want to wind up with an implementation that's worse than you started with (which is actually not that unlikely--an obvious implementation here uses a Dictionary, but Dictionaries have quite a lot of overhead). You can see that the particular implementation used by System.Windows.Forms.Control has a tiny, hand-crafted list.

So that's another reason sometimes not to use field-like events.

Update on Microsoft Insurance Value Chain + Sizzle

allandcp_ms — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:00:02 GMT

eek! The webcast is online for your viewing pleasure in case you missed it. I thought it was very well done - I learned a few things *and* it was less than 60 minutes (my attention span max)!

The abstract: Microsoft's Insurance Value Chain (IVC) pioneered Services Oriented Architecture, Web Services, and standards-based integration in the insurance industry. At ACORD LOMA 2008, Microsoft released a number of technical assets to accelerate customers and partners who want to build next generation software to plug into the IVC. This webcast will follow up on that announcement and will explain the IVC concept and demonstrate new tools and components that help speed the development of Connected Experiences for customers, employees, and partners. The components include a .NET web services messaging framework for ACORD P&C and L&A; a next generation web reference user interface based on a Software plus Services model; and finally an Office Business Application example showcasing each piece working as part of a unified solution. You also will hear from Virtual Earth and how they are changing the game by enabling organizations to create immersive experiences for their clients to easily search, locate, and visualize business locations and other locally-relevant information.

Regular Expression Flat FIle Source

mmasson — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:52:27 GMT

The RegEx flat file source is one of the new community samples for SQL Server 2008 we’ve published to Codeplex. It uses regular expressions to extract values from a text file. It works similar to the flat file source, except that it’s not limited to CSV-type files (I saw a demo where the developer who created the sample used it to extract class names from a source files).

Note, when I ran the installer for the sample, it didn’t put the RegExFlatFileSource.dll file under 100\DTS\PipelineComponents. It only put the source down. We’ll either update the installer, or update the docs on the site. To get the component, I opened the project in Visual Studio, and ran a build. The project has a post build step which places the DLL under the PipelineComponents directory, and runs gacutil.exe to place it in the GAC.

Once the sample is installed, you can add it to your toolbar in Visual Studio.

The component has two outputs – one for matches, and one for rows without matches.

We’ll start off with a simple flat file example. My data looks like this:

value 1,1,2001-01-01
value 2,2,2002-02-02
value 3,3,2003-03-03
value 4,4,2004-04-04
value 5,5,2005-05-05
value 6,6,2006-06-06
value 7,7,2007-07-07
value 8,8,2008-08-08

Columns are defined using groups. If I want the component to behave like a regular CSV parser, I can use a regular expression like this:

(\w+),(\w+),(\w+)

If I click on the Column Mappings tab, I can see four columns have been defined.

Like with regular expression matches, the first match (column 0) is the entire pattern (which is the whole line in this case). The next three columns are the groups I defined in my regex.

I can also provide default names for my columns by naming the groups. This regex is a little more specific, and adds names to the groups using the ?<name> syntax supported by .NET.

(?<text>.*?),(?<number>\d),(?<date>\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})

If I look back at the Column Mappings tab, I can see the columns now have names.

You’ll notice that the component provides two outputs – one for rows that match the pattern, and one for rows that don’t match. The non-matching row output will always have a single string column which contains the entire line.

Adding a data viewer to the Match output, I can see all of the column matches it made:

I really like this sample because it opens up a lot of data sources, like log files, that used to require custom parsing using a script component. I think it has a lot of potential!

Information Management in the 21st Century

Hong Choing — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:42:27 GMT

Listen/download podcast (15:14 min)

http://www.scientificcomputing.com/Information_Management_in_the_21st_Century.aspx

In the global information economy of the 21st century, effective information management is critical to gaining competitive advantage. In virtually all industries, companies that can best transform their data into information will have an edge over the competition, as vast knowledge can be gained, resulting in better speed to insight and confidence in decision making.
Unfortunately, enterprises are fraught with complex interdisciplinary processes and challenges when it comes to integrating systems to be able to take full advantage of the information they are generating. These challenges include:

inability of the scientist/manager to efficiently find information locked in a variety of unconnected and frequently incompatible systems across the organization
lack of integration among the devices and equipment in the laboratory and enterprise systems
a multitude of different systems used for analysis
manufacturing and research teams, under pressure to move quickly, that are compelled to make decisions without all of the relevant data at their disposal
manual reporting processes resulting, for example, in compound pipeline reports that are out of date before they are even completed

To enable effective information management, there are many IT-based activities that need to be conducted by researchers, scientists and managers, such as

search
data integration
collaboration
analysis/visualization
reporting/business intelligence

This podcast discusses these five activities, illustrating the complexities and challenges and, more importantly, the advances in technology that address them thereby driving innovation.

Listen/download podcast (15:14 min)

Imagine Cup 2008 Memories

gisardo — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:41:00 GMT

Imagine Cup 2008 is over. Another GREAT edition has challenged more than 100 thousands students from all over the world. This year I’ve been invited as a judge in the Software Design category; it’s hard to describe the amazing week I spent with the competitors, other judges and all the Microsoft ADEs and staff. I thought that sharing some picture might be a good start; however, if you have any question on this or previous edition of IC…don’t hesitate to contact me or add a comment to this post Louvre...(read more)

Community post: Peter’s Software releases VelociForm

clintc — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:20:22 GMT

I got the following email from Peter’s Software:

Los Angeles, CA For Release July 28, 2008 - Adding to its growing suite of Microsoft Access developer tools, Peter's Software announces the release of VelociForm v1.0.

VelociForm is an add-on for Microsoft Access that provides the ability to instantly and dynamically display an add/change/delete/search form based on any table or query definition, or SQL statement. Intended as an alternative to creating a separate form for each miscellaneous table, VelociForm is one form that brings consistency, flexibility and a professional look to the beginner or experienced developer's Access application. Users can set properties with an easy-to-use form, then open VelociForm with one line of code or a one-line macro.

Like the Access form wizard, VelociForm displays a form based on table or query fields. Unlike the form wizard, VelociForm appears instantly, is fully functional, professionally designed, and fields and labels are sized to fit the data they contain. Since VelociForm is formatted on the fly, any table or query changes to the underlying record source are instantly reflected on VelociForm.

Shareware versions of VelociForm are available from the Peter's Software web site at www.peterssoftware.com.

I haven’t tried it out but thought I would pass along the information.

How to create IronPython objects of types defined in C#

seshadripv — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:45:00 GMT

The DLR Hosting API lets the hosted script instantiate objects of types defined in the hosting C# / VB module. This post describes how to do that using the appropriate methods from the API. Here are the simple steps -

1) Load the assembly containing the type in to the ScriptRuntime object

ScriptRuntime runtime = ScriptRuntime.Create();

runtime.LoadAssembly( Assembly.GetAssembly( typeof( n1.MyType1)));

2) Import the namespace/type inside the script

from n1 import *

3) Create an object of the type and invoke members

n=MyType1()

print n.Name

Here’s the full sample

using System.Scripting;

using Microsoft.Scripting.Hosting;

using System.Reflection;

namespace n1 {

public class MyType1 {

public string Name { get; set; }

public MyType1() {

Name = "MyType1";

}

public class Program {

static void Main(string[] args) {

string code = @"from n1 import *

n=MyType1()

print n.Name";

ScriptRuntime runtime = ScriptRuntime.Create();

runtime.LoadAssembly( Assembly.GetAssembly( typeof( n1.MyType1)));

ScriptEngine eng = runtime.GetEngine("py");

ScriptScope scope = eng.GetEngine("py").CreateScope();

ScriptSource src = eng.CreateScriptSourceFromString( code, SourceCodeKind.Statements);

src.Execute(scope);

}

PowerShell Build Environment for Windows SDK

PowerShellTeam — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:39:00 GMT

The Windows SDK team would like your feedback on what features you would like most in a future Windows SDK. One of your choices is a PowerShell Build Environment. If this is something that would be useful to you, go HERE and take the survey and let them know.

Cheers!

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows Management Partner Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx

Fix corrupt preformance counter information with logman

MovingMars — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:35:00 GMT

I'm a bit rusty on the operations side of things and this sometimes gets me into trouble. So, when I find a tool that can clean up the mess after I've already scrambled things beyond recognition, I waste no time using it. Sometimes I'm so anxious to use it, in fact, that I launch the tool without reading all the instructions first. I stumbled upon a tool today that fixes corrupt performance counters. And, by mistake, I neglected to supply all the suggested parameters. The result was an interesting accident, but one I am not likely to forget soon.

So here's the situation. I was trying to set up some performance counters and alerts on a SQL Server (SQL2K5) by importing a template my friend Chad Boyd - http://blogs.mssqltips.com/blogs/chadboyd created. However, there were changes I should have made to the template to insure the counters would work on the new server. After installing from the template, I had no counters that could be recognized. I tried a number of things, eventually realizing that I had corrupted the counter information in my registry. I resigned myself to the probability that the only likely solution was to rebuild the box (I had not made any restore points either - it seems the only time you really need a restore point is when you don't have one...).

I searched TechNet and other likely places for a solution, but found nothing that helped. Finally as sort of a last resort, while looking at one of the multitude of counter errors in the event viewer, I clicked the "More Info" Link (this was on windows server 2003). This took me to an article on TechNet that said I could use a builtin command "lodctr.exe" to fix the problem (see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490926(TechNet.10).aspx ).

Lodctr.exe is supplied with every version of windows (I think) since windows 2003 server. The description of lodctr says "Lodctr Registers new Performance counter names and Explain text for a service or device driver, and saves and restores counter settings and Explain text." What an understatement. I've looked around and don't see a lot of references to it. Those that do seem to imply that if you use the /r switch (to fix registry problems), you must also include the name of a file containing the correct entries. Luckily, as I said, I'm not known for patience or thorough reading, so I missed this.

Here's what I did. From a command prompt on the affected machine I entered lodctr.exe /r and hit enter. Lodctr started working and went away long enough for me to start worrying (now, I finished reading and realized that I should have used /r:filename but by the time I was through reading this, my cmd prompt was back and there was a message that said "Info: Successfully rebuilt performance counter setting from system backup store".

I can't tell you how or why this works, but it does (I've tested it on a box running Windows 2003 Server and one running Vista). Perhaps someone more knowledgable than me will feel like filling in the details. But regardless of how or why it works, it does work. And, that's what I care about...

SharePoint End User Training

ianpal — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:33:45 GMT

If you are looking for the End User Training for SharePoint 2007, the End User training is free to all, and is provided by the SharePoint Product team.

There is a standalone version that you can run on a users PC desktop, and also a version of the same content that runs in the SharePoint Learning Kit (SLK) if you want leverage MOSS as your training platform, track who has taken the course, and facilitate/manage the participation in the training.

The portal site to access these official training courses from Microsoft is: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA102488011033.aspx

The direct download to the standalone training here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7bb3a2a3-6a9f-49f4-84e8-ff3fb71046df&displaylang=en

Training topics included in the Office SharePoint Server 2007 Training:

· Collaboration: team sites, permissions, Web parts, libraries, lists, blogs, wikis, and workspaces.
· Enterprise Content Management: document and records management, protecting files, using workflows, compliance, and more.
· Search: finding files, Web sites, information and people.
· Portals and personalization: My Sites, targeting content, and managing My Site access
· Business processes and forms: streamline business processes, gather information with forms, and configure workflows.
· Business intelligence: share Excel workbooks, work with a Report Center site, use dashboards, integrate internal data, and more.

If you want to see what these training courses look like and what content they include, Ian Morrish from Microsoft New Zealand has them all running on a public site to easily see/evaluate them http://training.wssdemo.com/training/default.aspx

Additionally, there is 17 x 30 minute videos that you can watch to learn about team sites, document management, calendars etc in SharePoint. Find them all here http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/cr102146081033.aspx

Finally - our training partners also offer End User Training if there is a need for specialised requirements for site ownership etc.

Darn Gigabit switches...

Conor Cunningham [MSFT] — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:22:00 GMT

I had a netgear gs108 (8 port gigabit switch) die on me this evening. Perhaps it is me working from home.. Perhaps it is the high temperatures in Austin this time of year.. Perhaps it is the humidity from Hurricane Dolly. Who knows... I have patched together the home network enough to get back online, albeit at 100Mbs (which is now sooooo 2400 baud...) So, I'm looking to buy a new switch for the home network. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833129035 Comments appreciated - I...(read more)

BizTalk - a beautiful big beast

geoc — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:29:00 GMT

OK, so here's a confession - I've always been a huge fan of BizTalk. I remember back in the day (that's last century to you, young fella) when James Utzschneider and his team came up with the BizTalk name, the library and community. But let's face facts, when BizTalk Server 2000 came out, it was still a great idea (using XML and derivatives as the core to your central messaging hub for EAI and B2B) but lacked the ‘complete engineering’ required for you to bet your business on it (things like monitoring, staging and performance tuning were, um, 'challenging'). Since then we’ve improved it with BTS 2000, then 2002, 2004 (which was the “bet your business on this” release) then 2006 and today we’re at BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and now it’s a magnificent beautiful beast of a product.

(Incidentally, if you’re using BizTalk as the central pillar of your SOA strategy, then you’ll want to take a look at our ESB Guidance, here.)

It is a big beast though – for a couple of reasons. The main one is actually business politics. Because it’s a central messaging hub, it’s really an infrastructure sell and there aren’t many people in organisations that understand both the technical and business significance of that. Getting both the Enterprise Architects as well as the General Managers to invest in such infrastructure can be interesting. The second reason for BizTalk being a “big beast” is that, because it’s a central messaging hub, it touches so many systems. And while we try (!) to have well defined interfaces into all these systems, it often takes a knowledge of those systems to get the end-to-end business process flowing smoothly. So, that’s a big chunk of technical knowledge required – outside the knowledge of BizTalk.

The answer for a successful BizTalk implementation appears to involve the following:

- Executive buy in and support – after all BizTalk is going to span many groups both internal and external to your organisation. It’s going to have a big impact on how you do business.

- An “integration” centre of excellence run by passionate and committed people

- Great core infrastructure optimization (ie a metric driven IT department that keeps the lights on and is always looking for ways to improve)

Fortunately, things are getting easier. We've now got some great BizTalk partners here in Australia (Avanade, Breeze, Data#3, DataCogs, Oakton, Stargate to name a few). Additionally, the folks in Redmond have produced some great “how to” manuals that you can download. In particular, I’d highlight the Operations Guide and Performance Guide. You can get the full list here.

BizTalk just gets better – and if you look at where we’re going with Oslo, you can see it continues to be pretty core to our enterprise development strategy.

Previous Post's Application Using Live Data Services

CorrinaB — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:15:00 GMT

All of the code for the sample application described in my previous post is updated and working in Silverlight 2 beta 2 now, and it is using live data services from various places on the web including MSN Video, Flickr, Digg, and Ebay. My passion is not coding, so the code is not perfect by any means, but it works reasonably well.

You can download my sample project or view the application live using the following links...

19th Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference: Day 1 Highlights

mikewalker — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:09:36 GMT

For those who didn't get the updates. Here is a summary of the activates at the Open Group Conference in Chicago.

The Open Group’s 19th Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference kicked off on Monday, July 21st in Chicago. Industry leaders from near and far convened at the historic InterContinental Chicago Hotel to share their insights on the latest enterprise architecture trends, challenges and opportunities facing federal government organizations as well as global businesses. Below, please find highlights from Day One.

Allen Brown, President and CEO, The Open Group, kicked off the Day One “Frameworks for Federated Architectures” plenary session with open remarks. Mr. Brown welcomed several hundred attendees from around the globe.

Following Mr. Brown’s opening remarks Wing Commander Shaun Harvey, Department Director, United Kingdom SAF/XCPA, delivered his presentation, “Architecting for Interoperability using Fit For Federation Criteria.” Wing Commander Harvey prefaced that much like complex, highly distributed businesses, the Department of Defense (DoD) is comprised of many interdependent components. These include the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines, each of which shares common integration and interoperation issues. While the DoD and the Air Force use Architecture Federation to help address integration, the Wing Commander explained the Air Force’s development of an Architecture Federation approach called “Fit For Federation” to specifically support interoperation.

Next, Marc Othersen, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research, delivered his presentation “Compliance Frameworks: The Foundation of IT-GRC.” According to Othersen, business imperatives, increased regulatory pressure, and customer demands are forcing many CIOs to adopt a structured, enterprise wide approach to deal with IT governance, risk, and compliance (GRC). Because IT GRC initiatives have traditionally been scattered across organizations without much coordination, many companies are looking for solutions that can help them create a unified approach to managing information risk and IT compliance requirements while ensuring good governance at the same time. Marc outlined Forrester’s view on IT GRC and gave recommendations for developing a robust IT GRC program.
To access additional information on Marc’s presentation, including a free report from Forrester, entitled “Defining IT GRC”, please visit: www.forrester.com/opengroup2008.

Ron Schuldt, Senior Staff Systems Architect, Lockheed Martin Enterprise Business Services, next presented on “An Open Group Standard for Building Your Controlled Vocabulary.” Mr. Schuldt began his address by explaining that TOGAF™ does a great job of identifying the processes necessary for defining an enterprise architecture, but it does not assure “Boundaryless Information Flow” across organizations. The Open Group standard that provides the foundation framework for a controlled vocabulary, known as the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) is part of the solution, argued Schuldt. His presentation provided a detailed demonstration on UDEF and highlighted the role of this critical standard within the enterprise. For more information on the UDEF standard, visit: http://www.opengroup.org/udefinfo/.
An in-depth UDEF Training is open to all conference attendees on Wednesday, July 23^rd at 9:00am.
The day’s last plenary presentation, “Standardize Architecture Delivery in a Federated Architecture using TOGAF,” was given by Peter Van Hoof, Principal Enterprise Architect, Sasol, South Africa. Sasol, South Africa’s largest industrial company, has a strongly entrenched federated business model and utilizes a deeply embedded business project methodology across its many diverse business units, called the Business Development and Implementation Model (BD&IM). Mr. Van Hoof’s presentation covered how Sasol aligned TOGAF with the BD&IM – a great example of how to standardize architecture delivery in a federated architecture environment using TOGAF.
Kicking off the afternoon’s Government Enterprise Architecture Track was Robert Weisman, Partner & Executive Consultant, Global Enterprise Architecture Practice Leader, CGI, with “TOGAF Case Studies in Government.” Mr. Weisman highlighted several applications of TOGAF in selected US State and Canadian Federal Government engagements. The presentation provided recommendations for future use of TOGAF within a government environment and also discussed how TOGAF works in conjunction with other EA frameworks, including Zachman, EA Tool, Australian Government Outcome Based Planning and Australian Government Architecture.

In the TOGAF Track, Matt Vandenbush, Enterprise Architect, Brady Corporation, presented a case study “Preparing the Enterprise for a Successful Architecture Program Based on TOFAF.” Mr. Vandenbush began his presentation with a poignant statement, “Almost half of EA groups are dissolved within two years and many more do not meet stakeholder expectations.” This is more often the outcome of poor internal advocacy- architects within their organizations need to prove the value of EA as a tool for making better decisions; and TOGAF has served as Brady Corporation’s guide to achieve this level of success. Mr. Vandenbush made recommendations on the three most important activities to make EA matter within any organization: getting your governance processes under control; prepare to use the TOGAF architecture development method (ADM); and focus on “delivery”.

Later in the Government Enterprise Architecture Track, Eduardo Castro, Architect, Grupo Asesor en Informatica, Costa Rica, presented on “Digital Government Strategy in Costa Rica.” He covered the strategy followed by Costa Rica to implement a massive EA initiative in order to bring better services to the public institutions, providers and citizens.
In the SOA Track, Pinaki Ghosh, Lead Architect Specialist, The Dow Chemical Company, delivered a lively presentation on “Developing Enterprise Business Object Libraries to Support SOA.” Mr. Ghosh began his session arguing that the main competitive advantage in information architecture comes down to a well constructed information footprint model within an EA framework, such as TOGAF, Zachman or DoDAF. During the transition from legacy architecture to SOA, however, one of the critical things most companies neglect is the preparation of an Enterprise Object Library. Such a library contains both business and IT objects categorized by international standards, unique artifact numbers and database identities. Pinaki’s presentation delved into The Dow Chemical Company’s use of a business object library to better align IT services with the business.

Chang Peng, Enterprise Architect, MoneyGram International, closed out Day One’s EA Best Practice Management Track with his presentation “Enterprise Architecture in Support of Business Strategy.” The goal of Mr. Peng’s presentation was to extend enterprise architecture beyond the IT walls to support corporate business strategy. Chang’s presentation demonstrated how MoneyGram International re-aligned their traditional EA model to encompass deep rooted business logic and link with several tangible business strategies. As a result “enterprise architecture” is now a part of the common vocabulary among MoneyGram’s senior executive management team.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Architecture,Open Group,TOGAF,SOA,Security

Kevin Johnson to leave Microsoft

mthree — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:04:28 GMT

"I read the news today... oh, boy." You can read more in the Journal article by Robert Guth... "The head of Microsoft Corp.'s online business who led the company's bid to buy Yahoo Inc. is leaving the software giant to run Juniper Networks, Inc., according to people familiar with the situation. The departure of Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, will be combined with a re-organization of Mr. Johnson's business unit, which houses both the online services business...(read more)

Channel9 Interview: Visual Basic Language Design Meeting

Beth Massi — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:02:00 GMT

I sat down with the VB Language design team and asked them about their design process, favorite features, their thoughts on other languages, as well as what the Visual Basic language strategy really is. It was a fun and enlightening interview with a group of really smart people lead by Paul Vick. You can find most of the team members writing on the Visual Basic Team Blog.

Stay tuned for more interviews like these...

Enjoy!