BizTalk 2009 Beta - First Look

On December 8th, 2008 I created a blog post indicating that the BizTalk 2009 Beta had gone public. Since then I have had a chance download the bits and play around with this latest release from Redmond.

I consider this release to be an evolutionary release, not an revolutionary release. One of the main purposes of this release is to align with Microsoft's latest technology platform offerings. This includes: Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. In addition to those additions, you will also see tight integration with Team Foundation Server, ESB Guidance 2.0, greater Unit Testing and debugging abilities and additional UDDI support.

I have taken some screen shots of the installation experience and will provide some relevant comments inline. The install was done on a Windows Vista dev PC, using SQL Server 2008 Developer edition and Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition.

Also note that this is Beta code so there are bound to be some changes to the final cut of the code.

The Prerequisite component installation remains a pain-less and efficient endeavor. Who remembers the pain that gathering all of the BizTalk Server 2004 prerequisites inflicted?

Something you may notice missing is Human Workflow Services (HWS). This feature was previously deprecated in BizTalk Server 2006 so it does not come as too much of a surprise that it is M.I.A.

For continuous integration enthusiasts, the highlighted "Project Build Component" should be of interest. It allows you to build BizTalk projects on a server that does not have an installation of Visual Studio on it. For instance, within my organization we use CruiseControl.net to poll our VSS repository looking for any changes to BizTalk projects. This occurs on a dedicated Build Server where we have an installation of VS.Net. Using this feature would allow us to reduce a VS.Net license. BizTalk is a first class citizen in MSBuild. So everything that you can do in VS.Net (with respect to build and deploy) you can do in MSBuild.

Below is the standard configuration screen that we are use to seeing with BizTalk Server 2006 Rx. Not too much has changed with the exception of MSMQT. This was another feature that was deprecated in BizTalk 2006. Microsoft has been pretty adamant about getting off of MSMQT as there were plans for its dismissal

Success...and on the first attempt no less!

Since BizTalk was installed on a machine with VS.Net already on it, you can see that the BizTalk templates have now been installed which allows developers to create and modify BizTalk Projects.

So as I have previously stated, this is an evolutionary release so you will not find many actual BizTalk changes in Visual Studio. This includes:

• No new BizTalk Shapes
• No new Functoids
• The Expression Editor still is not re-sizable - This debate never gets old :-)

Something that you will notice different is that the "Development and Deployment" VS configurations are gone! You will now only have Debug and Release which aligns better with what .Net programmers are use to. It also simplifies some of the automated Build and Deploy configurations, when dealing with .Net Helper assemblies.

I had the opportunity to participate in a Microsoft BizTalk 2009 Brown Bag session and have made some ad-hoc notes which I am happy to share with you (Non-NDA):

• BizTalk Project System – New Project System is implemented as a Flavor of C# Project System. This should allow for smoother transitions for future versions of Visual Studio. The BizTalk project is now a first class citizen in Visual Studio.
• BizTalk Project can contain any item (not just BizTalk artifacts). This means that you can have a C# class in your BizTalk project and do not have to create a separate .Net project that BizTalk would call. Note there are a few minor issues with adding a new class in the current build of this Beta but it will be fixed.
• Debug and Release as default configurations as opposed to Development and Deployment
• Add Web Reference is not directly available on Project anymore. Need to access it through “Add Service Reference” dialog box.
• Migrated all BizTalk project and item templates to the new style (.vstemplate)
• Old style templates are still supported.
• Full Visual Studio integration for BizTalk project migrations. This integration supports both BizTalk 2006 (R1 and R2) to 2009 migrations. ( I plan on creating a separate blog post that deals specifically with migration).
• During migration, only .sln, btproj and btproj.user files are backed up as there are no fundamental changes to remaining artifacts.
• Support for conversion of projects checked into Source Code Control.
• Implemented entire BizTalk build system using MSBUILD.
• Support for incremental builds (only re-build what you need to rebuild - this will reduce some of the build times for minor changes to your project).
• Refactored all compilers to eliminate any VS Dependencies – can compile BizTalk projects without VS – Project Build Component in BizTalk install (for build server).
• Map, Schema(validate against sample instances) and Pipeline(programmatically) unit tests can now be executed from within Visual Studio.
• Currently you cannot debug a map that has an extension object – such as calling an external assembly – will be addressed in a future release. You can unit test it though.
• Currently(2009 beta) multi source maps cannot be united tested
• DEBUG and TRACE constants will work for c# classes in BizTalk projects.

Azure Services Kit - Exercise 2 (IntroServiceBus)

I have recently been evaluating the Azure Services Kit and ran across an error that I figured I would post in case anyone is looking for a solution.

The error occurs in Exercise #2 when trying to initialize the Server project to listen for requests through the .Net Services Service Bus. I would imagine that this error applies more so to IIS and WCF than the actual Service Bus.

Error
System.ServiceModel.AddressAccessDeniedException was unhandled Message="HTTP could not register URL http://+:80/services/My-Solution-Name/EchoService/. Your process does not have access rights to this namespace (see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=70353 for details)." Source="System.ServiceModel" StackTrace: at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.OnOpen() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.TransportManager.Open(TransportChannelListener channelListener) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.TransportManagerContainer.Open(SelectTransportManagersCallback selectTransportManagerCallback) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.TransportChannelListener.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelDispatcher.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.ServiceHostBase.OnOpen(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open(TimeSpan timeout) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.CommunicationObject.Open() at Service.Program.Main() in D:\Development\AzureServicesKit\Labs\IntroServiceBus\Ex02-BindingsConnectionModesSample\begin\Service\Program.cs:line 34 at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(Assembly assembly, String[] args) at System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(String assemblyFile, Evidence assemblySecurity, String[] args) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly() at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart() InnerException: System.Net.HttpListenerException Message="Access is denied" Source="System" ErrorCode=5 NativeErrorCode=5 StackTrace: at System.Net.HttpListener.AddAll() at System.Net.HttpListener.Start() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SharedHttpTransportManager.OnOpen() InnerException:

Solution
The solution itself can be found in the link that is provided ( http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=70353) ...I know what a bonus; an error message that actually points you in the right direction to a solution.

The description of the error is not all that useful, but does cover some scenarios:
Using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) over HTTP either requires the use of a host, such as Internet Information Services (IIS), or manual configuration of the HTTP settings through the HTTP Server API. This document describes manually configuring WCF when using HTTP and HTTPS.

In order to actually solve the problem, I ran this command on my Vista machine:

netsh http add urlacl url=http://+:80/services/My-Solution-Name/EchoService/ user=domain\user

Note:

• "My-Solution-Name" is where I inserted my Azure Solution name. You would enter yours in this place holder.
• If your machine is not part of a Domain, just use the local machine name instead of Domain

Now that I have some spare time, I plan on spending some more time with Azure and more specifically .Net Services. Hopefully, I will have some interesting posts regarding these technologies.

Canadian TechDays - Virtualization

I spent my day at the Microsoft Canada TechDays conference. There were no Connected Systems related sessions going on so I figured that I would sit in on a few sessions that I knew very little about; virtualization.

From what I got out of these sessions is that Microsoft has made some great progress in this area. No longer can virtualization only be used on servers with non-mission critical applications. In fact under the right scenarios; servers capable of running VMBus and "Designed for Windows" hardware there is suppose to be very little overhead involved in running a guest Virtual Machine on a Windows 2008 Host server.

(image credit)

With virtualization creeping to the top of many CIO's lists I wanted to learn more about the topic so that I can intelligently speak about the subject when it comes time to discussing virtualizing BizTalk servers.

A document that I am aware of but have not had a chance to read yet is the BizTalk 2006 R2 Hyper-V Guide written by Ewan Fairweather and Clint Huffman. After sitting in the sessions and learning about the capabilities of Hyper V and Windows 2008, reading this document has risen towards the top of my "to-do" list.

On a lighter side, I must give the Microsoft Marketing folks some credit when it comes to the swag that they handed out. While the 160 gb portable hard drive that they handed out at PDC was nice, it was no where near as creative as what they handed out today.



And for my American friends that black piece of clothing is called a "tuque" not a "hat". :-)

TechDays_CA

BizTalk Server 2009 - Public Beta now available

The bits are now available for download from Microsoft Connect.

What can you expect?

(from Microsoft Connect site)

BizTalk Server 2009 represents the next release in Microsoft’s long-term strategy to enable the connected enterprise. BizTalk Server 2009 enhances enterprise connectivity with broad industry support of WS* protocols, the edge via Microsoft BizTalk RFID, and business partners though EDI.
What’s new in BizTalk Server 2009?

Simplify Interoperability

• Support for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 - take advantages of the latest developer tools.
• Support for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 – full support of Hyper-V, and increased performance and scale.

Extend To The Edge

• EDI - enhanced out of the box support for the most commonly used EDI schema and trading partner management tools.
• Simplify development of mobile applications that expose relevant, real-time business information (RFID Mobile).

Enhance Productivity

• ALM – new support is provided for Team Foundation Server (TFS), allowing development teams to leverage the integrated source control, bug tracking, support for team development, Project Server integration and support for automating builds via MSBuild.
• Enhanced Developer Productivity – improved underlying project system enhances debugging support for artifacts, pipeline components and orchestrations, and enables support for unit testing.

Support

This beta is community supported. The TechNet forums will be the primary place for support - http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1470&SiteID=17.

• This beta is for evaluation purposes only. It is not supported in a live operating environment.
• ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP is also now available at - http://msdn.microsoft.com/esb

Come back to this blog for more information regarding BizTalk Server 2009 - Public Beta

BizTalk Hosted Web Service - Error CS2001

The project that I am currently on has an Orchestration that is exposed as a Web Service. This is running on Windows 2003, so we have created an app pool and assigned the BizTalk Isolated Host Instance user to this app pool's identity.


We just migrated our app to a pre-prod environment and were having some troubles connecting the client application to the BizTalk exposed web service. There were no errors in the event viewer on the BizTalk server, but there was in the client application's event viewer.


Here is the error:
Problem while generating request for waiting records: Server was unable to process request. ---> Unable to generate a temporary class (result=1).
error CS2001: Source file 'C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\hgz0bwpr.0.cs' could not be found
error CS2008: No inputs specified


There are a fair amount of CS2001 and CS2008 errors documented on the web, but I figured I would add this one to highlight that the error occurs on the client machine, not the host server.


How did I fix it?
I provided the BizTalk Isolated Host Instance user with the following permissions on the C:\Windows\temp folder:

• Read & Execute


• List Folder Contents


• Read

Also note that this machine is internal to our network so if your machine is externally facing, you may want to further restrict some permissions.

PDC Day 4 - More time spent in the Cloud

On the 4th day of PDC I spent more time in the Cloud learning about some architectural scenarios that the Cloud is capable of supporting.

As part of the PDC Symposium series, I attended Gianpaolo Carraro's session called "Head in the Cloud, Feet on the Ground". The objective of this session was to further investigate the Architectural challenges and opportunities in the cloud.

I found this session to be really helpful as so much of the other sessions has been about the technical bits that makes the Cloud technology "cool". This session focused on decisions that an Architect or even CIO may face when thinking about what applications belong in the cloud and which applications may be better hosted on premise. On premise meaning locally in your organization.

He also attacked this subject from two perspectives:

1. Corporate IT perspective
2. ISV Perspective

Since I live in Corporate IT I will spend more time in this area.

On Premise
Applications that are hosted locally tend to have more control than those in the cloud. Think of this more in terms of a custom application versus an application that runs in the cloud like Salesforce. If you have a custom built application, then your organization controls the feature set and have more agility when making a change as less people are involved. A challenge with this approach is that you have very little economy of scale as only your organization can extract value out of this application.

Cloud Applications
Conversely, an application that runs in the cloud has an opportunity for great economy of scale. Since many customers may be paying for this application, the savings are returned to the customers as collectively they are paying for the software to be developed. The challenge with this approach is that a company may need to alter an internal business process to align with the way that the application has been designed.

Conclusion
The end result came down to determine which applications are core to your business and provide a competitive advantage. These are the types of applications that are ideal candidates to be built and hosted internally. The commodity applications like Mail Services or Timesheet applications that are required to run your business, but not necessarily make your business more competitive are candidates for cloud based applications.

Best of both worlds
What I find extremely compelling is the idea of building an on premise service, yet leverage the capabilities of the cloud to expose this service to the world. This alleviates you from being overwhelmed with challenges related to Firewalls, NATs and security. I find this of even of greater value when you introduce several B2B partner scenarios. You don't need to be concerned with each of your partner's connectivity requirements. You let the .Net Service bus deal with those complexities.

Co-location
Also worth mentioning is a middle ground called Co-location or Managed Servers. This type of scenario may be ideal for you to build a custom application, but have it hosted by a 3rd party where you are not responsible for the on-going maintenance of the server that is hosting your application. For instance you may be a small or up and coming company that just does not want to make a large up front investment in infrastructure, but want to build an application and have it hosted in an external environment. This allows you to reduce the amount of up-front Capital Expenditures.

Looking Ahead
While some of this discussion is nothing earth shattering or ground breaking, I am curious to see how monitoring will evolve with these cloud based scenarios. For instance, currently with our on-premise applications we run Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to provide us with some visibility into the health of our applications. If in the future we decide that we want to host a WF workflow in the cloud, what type of tooling will be available to inform us of any issues that may be occurring? This is a scenario that Microsoft is definitely aware of so I will be keeping an eye open on what type of tooling will be available.

PDC Day 2 - Windows 7

The big news on Day 2 at PDC was the first public sneak peak of Windows 7. Overall, I was pretty impressed with what I saw.

The first thing that stuck out at me is that Microsoft has dedicated a lot of effort to improve the usability of the operating system. Below is a list of features that I feel will greatly improve the usability of the Operating System.

Jump Lists
A feature called a "jump lists" is viewable in your task bar area. You know when you have 8 windows of IE or Word open and they stack up on top of each other? Well a jump list will provide some better visibility into what each of those windows contains.

Libraries
Do you have several folders where you store most of your content? For instance you may have some files you keep on a network drive, external drive or local drive. Do you hate having to search each of them independently(or having to search the entire drive)? The concept of the Library is to have the ability to aggregate your content. So if you need to do a search within your library, it will automatically search each of your work spaces that are configured in your library.

Homegroup
Homegroup is designed to make networking, and more specifically home networking, easier. The idea is that when you introduce a new computer to your home network, it shouldn't be difficult. The feature is also "smart" enough to seamlessly allow you to connect your work laptop to the network and take advantage of all of the file, network and printing capabilities without exposing sensitive data on your laptop to the remaining devices in your home network.

Pushing Content to a device
Are you in your home office but want to play some content on another machine? This feature will allow you to "Play media "xyz" on machine abc".

System Tray Notifications
Annoyed by those pop-ups that appear in you system tray? A new management tool exists that allows you more freedom to display the notifications that you want to display and suppress the ones that you do not want displayed.

Themes
Improved abilities to customize your Windows Themes. Also the ability to import/export themes to allow for sharing.

External Memory devices
Windows 7 supports Memory Stick - bit locker protection out of the box to ensure that if your memory stick gets into the hands of someone else that your data is encrypted.

VHD Support
New capabilities exist that allow you to create a VHD from Disk manager and also the ability to boot a Windows 7 vhd(directly) while maintaining state between reboots.

Dual Monitor Support
Ever RDP (remote desktop) into a PC/Server that has dual monitors? New capabilities exist that allow you to RDP into those machines and actually use both monitors.

User Account Control (UAC)
Tired of the "nag" messages that Vista gives you when you actually try to do something? A new UAC Slide control easily allows you to set the level of "nag" (or security) that you want applied.

Increased Touch Support
More monitor touch support is provided "out of the box" including the ability to use flicks inside of Internet Explorer. (Monitor must actually have touch capabilities).

Customized Shutdown
Have users that "accidentally" shut down machines when they should be logging off? New shutdown capabilities exist that allow you to customize the shutdown menu.

Other Features
Been waiting for the update to Paint or Wordpad? Wait no longer, as some improvements have been included in this release including Open XML support in Wordpad.

Windows 7 Principles
The goal of the Windows 7 team is to deliver an OS that:

• Has a decreased Memory (RAM) footprint
• Reduces the amount of Disk IO
• Does not require excessive Battery power (think laptops)

while

• Improving Speed(Faster boot/Device readiness)
• Responsiveness (start menu, task bar)
• Scale (Windows 7 supports up to 256 processors)
  

This release looks extremely promising, however don't expect it any time soon. The message that was given was "it will be ready when it is ready". This isn't such a bad thing as Microsoft is trying to deliver a solid product.

I encourage you to take a further look by viewing the actual web cast here.