Darren Jefford

I've decided to ressurect my blog but over on a new web-site that enables me to have more control over the look and feel. Please join me (if your still monitoring this blog) over at http://www.darrenj.co.uk

As promised in my last posting let's take a look at the new "Workflow in the cloud" functionality offered in the July drop of the BizTalk Services This cloud based workflow system leverages Windows Workflow and is hosted in our datacenter and extended...

This announcement came sooner then I expected, I'd assumed PDC was going to be the first time Dublin was mentioned in public! The most detailed information before the PDC can be found here . A number of internal people in the field (myself included) have...

I've been looking into the possibility of updating the highly successful Professional BizTalk Server 2006 book to take into account new features and capabilities in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and the recently announced BizTalk Server 2009 product. A fair...

I’m now back from a trip to Seattle a few weeks back where I attended a huge week-long Microsoft internal technical training event. I presented three times during the week, two of the presentations were “Software in the cloud” sessions which received...

CSD have just announced Release 12 (R12) of Codename BizTalk Services, Clemens has a good low-down on what’s new here . Remember BizTalk Services != BizTalk. BizTalk isn’t used in the cloud or the client – it’s just a branding thing. The Connectivity...

Yes, It’s been quite a while since my last blog post! A lot has been happening internally including a job move for me to the Solution Architecture team in MCS as a Solution Architect from the fantastic Application Development Consulting (ADC) team. ...

A number of you have contacted me in recent months to report that the BizTalk Orchestration Profiler and BizTalk Documenter didn't run on 64bit machines, this seems to have been down to compiler settings which I've now resolved. I've uploaded a planned...

I've managed to find somewhere to store the presentation deck I delivered yesteday and you can now download it from here . I've also added the slides I had to cut from the presentation to enable it to fit within the SOA & BPM conference breakout length...

Microsoft has just made the first public announcement of “Oslo” at the SOA and BPM conference, at a high level “Oslo” is an overarching initiative across multiple products and Microsoft divisions, in fact the first release as announced today will be made...

Thanks to everyone who came to my presentation today, I was humbled by the huge turnout! The presentation deck will be broadly shared to attendees which contains hyperlinks to all the tools showcased but in the meantime the links are below if you want...

I've just arrived in Seattle for the Microsoft SOA & BPM conference that kicks off on Tuesday 30th October in Seattle, I'm presenting a best-practice session on Wednesday afternoon titled "How everyone should test their BizTalk Server based solutions...

Hi, I've recently taken ownership of the source for the BizTalk Orchestration Profiler and BizTalk Documenter tools that Jason Birth originally developed, the documenter has worked fine with BizTalk Server 2006 but the Profiler was broken in a number...

Long overdue but I've finally got around to finishing up the latest release (1.1) of the GenerateTypedBamApi tool. You can find the new version here , if your not familar with the tool read on! The GenerateTypedBamApi command line tool enables you...

I arrived in Orlando yesterday after a long old flight from London and should make the Party with Palermo tonight which looks like it'll be fun but as I'm presenting tomorrow it'll be a quiet night! My two sessions are shown below, the second session...

After what seems like a huge delay the usual UK retailers such as Amazon and Computer Manuals now have stock of the book! From what I've heard pre-orders have already started to drop through letter-boxes. Enjoy, and please remember to put a review...

Another quick update, it seems that stores in the US now have stock and are shipping. Both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble are reporting stock! The UK should follow very shortly, 7 days seemed to be the difference with the Team System book

I knocked out a brain-dump of some BAM best practices this morning for a colleague, it seems like a good thing to share more broadly. It's a starter for 10 and I'll refine it over time I'm sure, the book covers all of these things in far more detail as...

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be presenting two sessions at TechEd which is being held at Orlando between Monday 4th June and Friday 8th June! The first is a breakout session which covers BAM and demonstrates some real-world examples of how we've...

I've just had an update from Wiley and the book arrived into their warehouse last Friday (20th April) and it started physically shipping to stores yesterday (Monday 23rd April) so if you've pre-ordered expect it to arrive real soon! I hope you enjoy it...

For developer level tracing the tracing classes held within the System.Diagnostics namespace are often used along with the Windows Sysinternals DebugView tool. Tracing events are written to OutputDebugString via the DefaultTraceListener trace listener...

I’ve used the same base VPC for my various BizTalk Server 2006 images over the last few years, this has worked fine apart from a few annoying bugs that of course plagued every single instance of a VPC using it, of course I never really spent the time...

Hi, I'm reliably informed by Wiley that the book should be in-stock at their warehouse on the 23rd April 2007 and should then ship to distributors/stores in the US followed by international outlets subject to delivery times. Enjoy! Woo Hoo!

Following on from my previous post, included below is the final chapter list and a brief overview of the content covered in each chapter. Chapter 1: Technical Primer—This chapter primes the reader on some key technologies that each developer...

A year on, ~224,000 words and over 600 pages later, and Professional BizTalk Server 2006 has finally gone to the printers! This book has been a mammoth undertaking for all involved, but having just reviewed the entire book end-to-end I’m extremely proud...