I was recently asked if I could help move a virtual machine that had been setup and running in VirtualPC and move it to run under Hyper-V.  The answer is yes it can be done.  Movement from Hyper-V to VirtualPC is not as easy (and many times...

It has been a long time since my last blog post.  It certainly hasn’t been for a lack of content but it is amazing how fast time flies when you are busy.  I have been spending a lot of time lately working on composite applications and will be...

If you are in Minneapolis on Thursday March 17th please join us for the Twin Cities Connected Systems User Group Meeting. The meeting takes place at 6:00 p.m. at the Microsoft offices at 8300 Norman Center Drive, Bloomington, MN 55437. Andy Morrison will...

If you are in Minneapolis on Thursday September 16th please join us for the Twin Cities Connected Systems User Group Meeting. The meeting takes place at 6:00 p.m. at the Microsoft offices at 8300 Norman Center Drive, Bloomington, MN 55437. Eric Kraus...

For those using BizTalk, we have long had the need to store configuration information in a central location that is shared between each of the distributed BizTalk instances.  BizTalk itself uses SSO for all of its internal configuration information...

It appears that I have lost some of my blog posts. I am reposting this blog post which originally appeared back in May. Did you know that you can use the AppFabric Cache with ASP.NET? AppFabric Cache provides an ASP.NET session state provider. There...

In two of my previous entries I outlined functionality and patterns used in the AppFabric Cache. In this entry I wanted to expand and look at another area of functionality that people have come to expect when working with cache technology. This expectation...

When I start talking to people about the caching functionality that is part of Windows Server AppFabric I am usually asked "What is the AppFabric Cache?" The MSDN page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee790954.aspx provides a great overview...

Danny Garber and I were interviewed for Endpoint.TV on Windows Server AppFabric and our upcoming book. The interview has been published and is now available. Check it out at http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Endpoint/endpointtv-Pro-Windows-Server-AppFabric...

I have been working with Windows Server AppFabric caching lately and have found it to be very impressive. The more that I work with it the more that I can see areas that it can be utilized. One of the things that will become quite evident as you start...

If you are in are in Minneapolis on Thursday March 11th please join us for the Twin Cities Connected Systems User Group Meeting. The meeting takes place at 6:00 p.m. at the Microsoft offices at 8300 Norman Center Drive, Bloomington, MN 55437. I...

I have been spending my free time working on my next book. Danny Garber and I are co-authoring this book from APress. The book will be available this spring and should coincide with the release of AppFabric.

If you are in are in Minneapolis on Thursday January 21st please join us for the Twin Cities Connected Systems User Group Meeting. The meeting takes place at the Microsoft offices at 8300 Norman Center Drive, Bloomington, MN 55437. This months meeting...

There have been lots of questions lately about AppFabric (code named Dublin). These questions have centered around why Microsoft needs another middle tier solution and will AppFabric replace BizTalk. Lets take a look at these questions as well as two...

Paolo Salvatori and I delivered a session titled 'Customizing and Extending the BizTalk WCF Adapters' and Paolo has created a number of fantastic blog entries around this subject. His latest entry goes through much of the content that was delivered in...

I will be speaking at TechEd Europe 2009 in Berlin Germany November 9th through the 13th. I will be presenting two sessions. My first is a 'Deep Dive with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 Development Platform' and my second is 'Customizing and Extending...

I co-authored an article titled 'Design Considerations for S+S and Cloud Computing' in this months Architecture Journal. I co-authored this along with 8 other architects at Microsoft. They were Fred Chong , Alejandro Miguel, Jason Hogg , Ulrich Homann...

You are probably asking what is StreamInsight. Well, it is the platform for performing Complex Event Processing (CEP) from Microsoft. Actually to quote exactly what it is - it is a " platform for the continuous and incremental processing of unending sequences...

Did you know that when doing contract first development and utilize a Boolean data type with a default value (lets just say the default value was set to true), WCF will not serialize out the default value in the message. WCF will only serialize out the...

I was recently working on a proof of concept where we needed to interface to a repository that returned the documents using DIME attachments. I don't know if you have had the 'opportunity' to work with DIME attachments before but there isn't much that...

In part 1 , I covered how to create a custom behavior to inject headers into the dynamically created WSDL. In part 2 , I showed how to either promote or write the header data to the BizTalk context. What happens if I want different headers for different...

In part 1 we covered how to create a custom behavior to inject header data into the dynamically created WSDL. In this part we will look at consuming the header data passed in. By default BizTalk will take any custom header it finds in the incoming...

Since the WCF Publishing Wizard in BizTalk does not support adding custom headers defined at the server, we need to programmatically modify what gets created by the wizard to add custom headers. However, from the client you have the option to pass in...

I have just submitted my chapters for the new Pro BizTalk 2009 book from APress. You can also find information about the book on Amazon . I am co-authoring along with George Dunphy, Harold Campos, Peter Kelcey, Sergei Moukhnitski and David Peterson...

I will be speaking at TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles. I will be presenting two sessions and doing demos at a third. My first presentation will be on 'Application Lifecycle Management Experience for BizTalk Server 2009 Developers'. My second presentation...