I spent the last 10 days playing instead of working (for a nice change). We took advantage of the yearly SAS deal to go to Europe relatively inexpensively and took in the sights in Spain (Barcelona, Seville, Cordobba, ) and Morocco (Tangiers and Fes). A few rough ferry rides, a few nice night trains, a bunch of pretty architecture, some tapas, and I'm all recharged ready to go again. While I was playing everyone else was working pretty hard.
1) We pretty much finished the BizTalk Server 2004 wave over the last few days with the following releases:
BizTalk Server 2004 Adapter for MSMQ 2.0. This interfaces to MSMQ cf. MSMQT. By default if you are thinking about whether you should use MSMQ or MSMQT use should MSMQ. Note I didn't say always I just said by default. MSMQT isn't going away in BizTalk Server 2006 however the Indigo team owns the MSMQ charter and potential innovation in that space (won't it be nice to have remote transacted reads in the future? - maybe I'll put in a request).
BizTalk Server 2004 Adapter for WSE 2.0. Providing support for WS-Security and WS-Policy and built on top of WSE 2.0 SP2.
BizTalk Server 2004 Documentation Update. This release addresses issues discovered and contains additional documentation. We hear you on the need for more documentation so here is some more.
2) You probably saw the news on Indigo last week. Mike from my team was at VS Live demonstrating a community supported Indigo adapter (thanks to our regional director Morten Abrahamsen for all his hard work on this!). Indigo provides the next level of web service support and we are excited to Indigo entering the scene. We will endeavour to release the community support Indigo adapter "around" the time that Indigo drops their first public build assuming that Morty makes it back alive from Australia where he is having way too much fun.
3) Its time for your MVP nominations again
The Microsoft MVP Program is a worldwide award and recognition program that strives to identify amazing individuals in technical communities around the globe who share a passion for technology and the spirit of community. Microsoft MVPs are recognized for both their demonstrated practical expertise and willingness to share their experience with peers in Microsoft technical communities. Please see
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ for additional information about the program. The nomination process has started for this quarter and will close on February 14, 2005. Please send your nominations us immediately. We ask that you provide the following information:
First, Last Name
Email address
Country
Area of expertise (BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, Host Integration Server)
Newsgroup that candidate participates in on a regular basis
Length of participation in newsgroup or other areas
Your comments describing why your candidate should be consider for membership in the MVP program.
Sample post to activities in newsgroups or links to other community activities
Please contact your local Microsoft representative and request that they nominate your candidate. You can alternative send your nomination directly to one of the community team members as follows:
Alex Shogren:
alexsh@microsoft.com Please send this week!
4) New BizTalk Server blog from the core team
Some key members of the core development team have set up another blog you might be interested in. It has an interesting article on SP1 FAQs and will have collected PSS learnings over time (ie. common issues). Check it out here: http://blogs.msdn.com/BPIDCustomerResponseTeam/.
Btw is it bad form to post so much information in a single blog entry? :). Well enough dreaming of Sangria and a lovely sunny day (17 C) strolling around the Alhambra time to read some more of those 500 or so emails that are awaiting me.
