Richard Seroter - SoCal BizTalk Musings : Other

I'm Out

rseroter — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 01:16:54 GMT

Today's my last day here at Microsoft, and as of now, this blog is locked down. But, my BizTalk party will continue over at http://seroter.wordpress.com. Thanks to all who have contributed, and see you on the other side.

Technorati tags: BizTalk

Leaving Microsoft ...

rseroter — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:52:21 GMT

Next Thursday, 1/11/07 will be my last day at Microsoft. I've decided to take an "Architect" position with one of my customers in the Los Angeles area. It was a tough choice to leave my great colleagues and customers, but I'm fairly jazzed about the new opportunities I now have.

So, much like Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back, this particular blog will be frozen. Next week it will get locked from any future usage. My new employer has indicated support for my blogging habit, so, I've set up a new blog at http://seroter.wordpress.com. I plan on continuing to do the same things on that blog that I do on the current one. So, look out for more code snippets, walkthroughs, demos, reviews, pointers to cool resources and more. I just posted an article on the new BizTalk blog about "considerations for resuming suspended orchestrations". Thrilling stuff.

I've really appreciated all the great feedback and questions resulting from the 160+ posts on this blog, and hope you'll continue participating in the new one.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk

Back In Town, And Commerce Server Best Practices Analyzer

rseroter — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:54:00 GMT

Just returned from a pleasant 10-day vacation to London and Edinburgh and am ready to get back to work. A few musings ...

If you live in the LA area, I recommend NOT using LA Limo Service for transportation. I got a call an hour before my pickup saying they had to cancel because the driver was in traffic. Traffic in Southern California ... shocking. Good planning, Magellan.
Why are there so many freakin' Italian restaurants in London? I think they outnumbered the English pubs. Best food I had was actually Indian. Just great stuff at Moti Mahal in Kensington.
For a city that has virtually no pubic trash receptacles, the streets are surprisingly clean. Where does all the trash go (not counting the Tube tracks)?
If you get chance, that train ride from London to Scotland is something else. You don't get scenery like that in SoCal.
I've developed a man-crush on St. Louis Cardinals baseball coach Tony La Russa after reading Three Nights in August on the plane flight. Of the couple dozen books I've read this year, this might be my favorite.
If your female companion wants to wear 3-inch heeled boots to tour a hilly, cobblestone saturated castle, take my advice, tell them not to. It's terrifying to watch.

In order to not make this a completely useless post from a technical perspective, don't forget to check out the brand new Commerce Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer. As with the BizTalk BPA, it doesn't change any configuration settings, but, does make you aware of less than optimal settings.

Technorati Tags: Commerce Server

Compelling Article on Ray Ozzie and Microsoft Strategy

rseroter — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 06:24:00 GMT

Not integration-related from a BizTalk sense, but this article in Fortune about Ray Ozzie and the changes at Microsoft has a lot to do with integration of vision and products at this company.

Just a fascinating read, and reassures me that I made the right choice joining Microsoft 12 months ago.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft

Virtual Server 2005 R2 Now Free (And Supporting Linux)

rseroter — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 19:55:00 GMT

Nice! We announced today (see HERE and HERE and HERE) that Virtual Server 2005 R2 is a free download, and, will host Linux. I'm preparing some materials for an upcoming 5-day lab for SoCal customers, and we'll be building a BizTalk Server farm in Virtual Server.

Windows Workflow in ASP.NET Apps

rseroter — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:02:00 GMT

Very very nice article in this month's MSDN Magazine that goes into great depth explaining how to use Windows Workflow from an ASP.NET application (or service). I may have to re-jigger my Sharepoint-WF-BizTalk post from a few weeks back using this updated info.

Also, from the same MSDN issue, see some props to my man Stephen Thomas for his great BizTalk entry to the Connected Systems Developer competition. Nicely done.

Using Business Rules Engine "Update" for Forward Chaining

rseroter — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 01:19:00 GMT

Fitting that my 100th post is on the same topic as one of my first, the Business Rules Engine.

The other day I had a customer ask me about a problem they had while executing a business rule on a repeating element where the result was not what they expected. The scenario consisted of multiple address nodes with an element called OptOutDays. The role of the business rule was to evaluate each Address/OptOutDays and store the largest one in a root-level field called TempOptOutDays. For instance, I have an XML input instance (see below) that has three address lines, and OptOutDays of 170, 120, and 100. So the rule action had to update the TempOptOutDays with the max amount, in this case, 170.

The problem was that this customer's TempOptOutDays value didn't contain highest OptOutDays amount. So I spent some time rebuilding their scenario, and discovered that because they had not properly set up forward-chaining, the TempOptOutDays value was getting overwritten by each looping pass. I wrote the rule you see in the picture below. Note that I use an Update action step so that I am telling the Business Rules Engine to reevaluate the particular fact. In this case I'm passing in the parent element of the TempOptOutDays node, which is the root element.

So why did that matter? The BRE goes through three stages when executing policies: matching, conflict resolution and action. During the matching phase, the execution agenda is populated by rules that match the conditions and input facts. During this particular matching instance, the BRE adds this rule to the agenda for each "address" fact, since the default TempOptOutDays is 0, and each rule condition should fire (see picture below). It does NOT take into account that the rule's action CHANGES that TempOptOutDays value from pass to pass, and therefore overwrites the value each time (treating it as 0). So, the Update forces the BRE to intelligently reevaluate the rules and therefore always consider the CURRENT value of TempOptOutDays element.

I rewrote this a couple times, and it still reads back a bit confusing. But the moral of the story is, if you have forward-chaining scenarios, think about how to efficiently update the facts in memory when the values of those facts drive other rules.

Microsoft RFID Platform Offering Explained

rseroter — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 05:01:00 GMT

We just published a paper on the upcoming Microsoft RFID offering, and it's actually fairly informative. It covers the basic background, ideal applications, issues with current solutions, and finally a dive into our platform (which is currently in beta) and how it adds value. Check out how BizTalk can play such a key role in the stack here.

On another note, I'll be abusing a new crop of customers in a 5-day BizTalk hands-on exercise I'm delivering this week from our fancy new LA office. Those possessing substandard concentration skills may simply stare at the Hollywood sign which is visible from the training room. I should hopefully be pump out an interesting post or two during nap time.

Windows Workflow + SharePoint 2003 + BizTalk Scenario Built Out

rseroter — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 00:29:00 GMT

So I had a use case from a customer to build a sample using BizTalk Server, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows SharePoint Services 2003. It was an interesting journey, and wanted to show how I got all these pieces to play nicely.

Before diving into each technical component, here's a summary of the use case.

Purchase Order document received from ERP system.
BizTalk looks at the document, assigns a reviewer, and publishes it to SharePoint.
SharePoint kicks off a workflow which creates a Task item for that user, and potentially sends them an email.
User loads up PO, and approves it.
SharePoint again triggers workflow which then marks users Task as "complete."

Now as you may know, the next version of SharePoint (I think called SharePoint 2007) will have Windows Workflow integrated. But for now, it doesn't. So there are multiple components that I put together to make this work.

Component: SharePoint Doc Library Configuration

First things first, I had to create the SharePoint document library. I did this by creating a BizTalk XSD schema, then creating an InfoPath form that used it, and finally publishing that InfoPath form to my SharePoint site, thus generating the library with an associated template. Once I had the library, I had to view the Change Advanced Settings page under Modify Columns and Settings. From here, I can define an event handler which will fire whenever a change is made to the SharePoint library. So, once I have it built, I'll reference my Event Handler class here.

Component: SharePoint Event Handler

This one was fun. I created a class that referenced the Microsoft.SharePoint assembly and implemented the IListEventSink interface. It also references the System.Workflow.Runtime assembly. The OnEvent method accepts a parameter of type SPListEvent. This is great since that object contains all sorts of info about the document and library that spawned the event. My first decision in this method is to determine which event just fired:
if (listEvent.Type == SPListEventType.Insert || listEvent.Type == SPListEventType.Update)

Then I created an instance of the WorkflowRuntime object that will execute the workflow. Since a workflow can accept any sort of parameter in, I fill the input dictionary with the SharePoint event (SPListEvent) and a string indicating whether an Insert or Update has occurred. Finally, I stop the runtime when the Workflow has completed. Now, after throwing the assembly in the GAC, I can go back to SharePoint and add my Event Handler class.

Component: Windows Workflow

My workflow looks like this:

This class references the core SharePoint library again so that I can interact with the site. My first workflow shape simply initiates all my member variables that are used by later steps. For instance, I have a member variable that is a pointer to my SharePoint site. I just took the SPListEvent that came into my workflow and used its Site member to gain my reference:
activeSite = currentSPEvent.Site.OpenWeb();

Then I went about setting all sorts of variables for sending email, and so forth. One tricky thing to be aware of. So when I created my SharePoint document library via InfoPath, I promoted a number of columns. Now, those values are available to me in the SPListEvent object. However, the names of the columns don't come through, but rather, a GUID. That mapping between the name of the promoted column and the GUID identifier is stored in the SharePoint library's Forms folder in the properties.xfp file. So, I just grabbed the GUID for the column I wanted and set my variable as such:
taskStatus = Convert.ToString(currentSPEvent.PropertiesAfter["xd_{5264C7A5-9142-488F-923B-0721E8770775}"]);

Got that?

The next shape that fires (assuming an Insert operation) is the CreateTask action. The code is fairly simple and looks like this:
SPListItemCollection listItems = activeSite.Lists[taskListName].Items;
SPListItem wfTask = listItems.Add();

//set task values
wfTask["ReqID"] = reqID;
wfTask["Title"] = taskTitle;
wfTask["Assigned To"] = activeSite.Users[@taskAssignment];
wfTask["Status"] = taskStatus;
wfTask["Start Date"] = DateTime.Now;

//insert task into collection
wfTask.Update();

For the SendMail shape, I simply utilize the System.Net.Mail assembly to build out a simple mail message. If an update is occuring, I need to see if the status is Complete, and if so, mark the appropriate SharePoint task as Complete. So if the task is Complete I use the SPQuery object to build a query that only returns the task with the corresponding ReqID value, then update that task.
//build query to pull back task with specific ReqID
SPQuery itemQuery = new SPQuery();
itemQuery.Query = "<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='ReqID'></FieldRef><Value Type='Text'>" + reqID + "</Value></Eq></Where>";

SPList taskList = activeSite.Lists[taskListName];
SPListItemCollection taskListItems = taskList.GetItems(itemQuery);

//if task still exists ...
if (taskListItems.Count > 0)
{
//set status to completed
SPListItem wfTask = taskListItems[0];
wfTask["Status"] = "Completed";

try
{
wfTask.Update();
System.Diagnostics.EventLog.WriteEntry("WF", "Task Updated");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
System.Diagnostics.EventLog.WriteEntry("WF", ex.ToString());
}

And that's pretty much the workflow piece.

Component: BizTalk Server

My BizTalk piece right now is fairly brain-dead. Just picks up a file, sends it to the SharePoint library, thus triggering the workflow.

Final solution

So what does this look like right now? A file gets put in my SharePoint library ...

Then, a task is created ...

Next an email is sent ...

User changes the doc, and saves it, and the Task gets updated to Complete ...

Gotchas

I glossed over a few things that were indeed comically tricky. So, here are a few notes, and links that helped me out ...

SharePoint site that hosts the document library must be running under ASP.NET 2.0
Only a single workflow runtime can be loaded in the App Domain at one time. So, I'll have modify my process for starting workflow instances in order to handle parallel load.
Had to incorporate some impersonation in order to get the Workflow the necessary permissions to interact with SharePoint. Used the WindowsImpersonationContext object and during variable initialization in the Workflow I started the impersonation, and at the end of the process I executed the Undo() method to reset permissions on the thread.
Absolutely invaluable SharePoint SDK for the full SharePoint API.
MSDN article demonstrating some SharePoint eventing
Part 1 and Part 2 of useful blog series
Nice, but a bit outdated Windows Workflow article on MSDN.
Helpful post on SharePoint events and .NET 2.0

Nice Free AJAX Library from Yahoo!

rseroter — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 18:44:00 GMT

This has nothing to do with BizTalk, but I'm just really impressed with the new, free collection of AJAX utilities and controls that Yahoo! just made available. Solid utility classes (animation, drag-drop), and nice UI controls (calendar, treeview). I'm working in my free time on something that could make very good use of this.

Hat Tip: Daily Grind

Couples Weeks Off, And Upcoming Topics

rseroter — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 21:19:00 GMT

So I'll be going dark here for a couple weeks as I head off on vacation (getting married, and no live-blogging of the honeymoon). However, I've got a few things queued up when I get back, including my experiences building J2EE web services to integrate with BizTalk, how to build an alternate business-focused Business Rules interface, and more. So stay tuned.

Debating Our Rules Engine

rseroter — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 22:45:00 GMT

If you're someone deeply interested in rule engine algorithms, and specifically Microsoft's implementation of the Rete algorithm in the Rules Engine that ships with BizTalk Server 2004, then you absolutely must read this facinating study by Charles Young. Charles also talks about some of the background of the debate around our implementation here. I shake my fist at you, Charles, for forcing me to spend 2 hours on a sunny Saturday reading about rules engines! Such interesting stuff.

PDC05 - Day 1 SQL Service Broker Musings

rseroter — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 01:44:00 GMT

Attending the Building Distributed Asynchronous Applications with SQL Service Broker session at PDC05 and thought I'd share these notes ....

Service Broker is for SQL Server applications
The queues are actually database objects
You can write these applications as stored procedures with T-SQL (or .NET). New T-SQL keywords include:
- transaction
- receive
- conversation
- waitfor(?)
- queue
- xml (as part of SQL Server 2005)
Reliable messaging included for queuing across databases
Dialogs are for two-way messaging between services
- Guaranteed delivery, in-order delivery, secure communications
- Dialogs can be over a long period of time, or short
A service is a named endpoint that a message can travel to
Some basic code might start like:
create queue [Inventory Queue];
create service [Inventory]
on queue [Inventory Queue] ([DEFAULT)];
Begin a dialog transaction "from" a service, "to" a service and pass on a defined transaction
On target server, you select from the destination queue
Can debug the T-SQL service from within Visual Studio.NET
What if you don't want all the logic within stored procs? Answer: External Activation
- Messages placed in an Event Queue where an external activitor handles the logic
Visit www.sqlservicebroker.com
How do you keep this working without deadlocking? Answer: Conversation Group Locking
- Dialogs are single-threaded
- Locking of conversations to prevent collisions [note: look at further]
Announcing ... Indigo (WCF) channel for the Service Broker!
Using (datbase stored) certificates and public/private keys for Dialog Security between service endpoints
Summary: Asynchronous DB "Stuff", Reliable Messaging, Reliable SOA

End To End Email WIth BizTalk On A Single Dev Box

rseroter — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 22:15:00 GMT

Often for either isolated BizTalk development or BizTalk demonstration purposes, the need arises to do a full email scenario on a single physical or virtual machine. Did you know that you can utilize the standard Windows Server 2003 plug-in SMTP and POP3 services to send a receive email on a single box without installing a full email server?

You're probably familiar with the SMTP service you can install as part of IIS. Once installed, it looks like this ...

Now you can also install the basic POP3 service included in Windows Server 2003. In the Add or Remove Programs it's under Add/Remove Windows Components and labeled Email Services.

Once that is installed, you get a new POP3 Service console where you can manage mailboxes for users.

If I'm using this in a BizTalk scenario, then my SMTP adapter will address email to a mailbox that's been setup in the POP3 console. Notice that the SMTP Server is also set to my local machine.

Finally, if you have Outlook installed, you can point to the new valid POP3 account, and actively poll it. In my case, I send BizTalk Server 2006 suspended messages (via our new routing of error messages), and workflow messages via SMTP to this account. The screenshot below demonstrates receiving my human workflow email in Outlook, then viewing the BizTalk message attachment as an InfoPath form. The user gets full interaction with the BizTalk system (and naturally any system it integrates with) without leaving Outlook or InfoPath. Come on, that's good stuff right there.

MSN Virtual Earth Is Pretty Hot

rseroter — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:00:00 GMT

Enough about Google Maps (which is still darn cool), let's throw props at the MSN Virtual Earth guys! Very nice stuff. I like the ability to zoom in and out using my mouse wheel, and I actually was able to zoom in closer than with Google Maps. Also pretty neat that when you are viewing a particular area, and then do a "business" search (or even generic like "fast food"), it finds the ones that exist in the viewable area.

Channel9 has even more great stuff on it.