Missing VPC Console Window

What happened to my VPC console window? – Ever startup VPC and not be able find the console application window on the screen? Chances are its startup config data got corrupt and its Top and Left coordinates are telling it to start up off screen.

The config data is stored in the Options.xml file located at:
%appdata%\Microsoft\Virtual PC

Find the \Window\Console\left_position and top_position element and changed them to something more reasonable, such as 1

 <window>
  <console>
   <height type=”integer”>256</height>
   <left_position type=”integer”>4294935296</left_position>
   <top_position type=”integer”>4294935296</top_position>
   <visible type=”boolean”>true</visible>
   <width type=”integer”>367</width>
  </console>
  <new_pc>

Save the options file and restart the VPC console.

Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2008 (PDC2008)

Microsoft PDC 2008 had a lot of great sessions this year as well as some good announcments. The cool thing however is that Microsoft has made all the session recordings and slide material publically available. You can find it here: https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx

You can also find some great links and event photos at the core site located here: http://www.microsoftpdc.com/

Enjoy!

BizTalk Server 2006 R3

So you may have heard about OSLO. If not, you can read more about it here http://www.microsoft.com/soa/products/oslo.aspx

Since its announcement at the SOA conference October 2007, the rumor was that it wouldn’t be available for a couple few years.  As such, expected needs for a service pack, updates to play well with Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, etc suggested an interim release might be needed. As suspected, R3 was announced.

BizTalk Server 2006 R3 will provide us with a number of updates. Since this is not considered a major release, it has taken on the name of R3 to follow the current release version named R2. It is expected to provide operability for Windows 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and.NET 3.5 further promoting next-generation web and service oriented applications, virtualization, scalability and office interoperability.

Additionally, the long awaited UDDI Version 3.0 support for web service registry functionality, new adapters for LOB application, enhancements to industry protocols and additional patterns and best practices can all be expected.

We should see a CTP release sometime during the summer of 2008 with an RTM sometime in H1 2009.

Additional information about this announcement can be found on Steven Martin’s blog located here: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2008/04/23/biztalk-server-platform-updates.aspx

BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer v1.1

Recently, a close knit group of folks inside of Microsoft have been working real hard collaborating on enhancements to the BizTalk Server Best Practice Analyzer V1.1 (BPA) tool. They have recently released Version 1.1 and has been posted up on Microsoft Downloads.

Overview
The BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer performs configuration-level verification by reading and reporting only. The Best Practices Analyzer gathers data from different information sources, such as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes, SQL Server databases, and registry entries. The Best Practices Analyzer uses the data to evaluate the deployment configuration. The Best Practices Analyzer does not modify any system settings, and is not a self-tuning tool.

What’s new:
The followings rules are relevant to the current PSS Top Issues in the area of Orchestration, Configuration and SQL/DTC. Even though BizTalk BPA is only one of the solutions that can help to resolve the Top Issues, having these rules shows a step to the right direction. We have doubled the rules. V1.0 has 77 rules, v1.1 has 220 with 143 new rules added! 

Here are some rules that are relevant to PSS Top Issues:

1. Added a warning rule for stopped orchestrations
2. A check on MaxLogSize MSDTC
3. Verify that TempDB and BizTalkMsgBoxDb data and log files are placed on separate drives
4. Check that the Max Degree of Parallelism setting is set to 0 in all other BizTalk databases
5. Verify that the MaxWorkerThreads in the SQL Server UMS configuration setting is set to XXX
6. Check that the Maximum Server Memory is set to XXX GB
7. System Time Diff between SQL and BizTalk Machines
8. Orphaned SPIDs
9. SQL Server Service Pack Installed for DB : xxxxxx
10. Ignore Duplicate Key check
11. Check Biztalk SQL Server Jobs running or not

Other Best Practice Analyzers

1. BizTalk Server Best Practice Analyzer
2. Best Practice Analyzer for ASP.NET
3. SQL Server 2005 Best Practice Analyzer
4. Exchange Server Best Practice Analyzers
5. SharePoint Services and Office Best Practice
6. patterns & practices Guidance Explorer

All must haves for your tool bag of tricks!

Loan Origination Architecture and the Financial Services Component Library

A couple weeks ago Mike Walker (an architect and technical evangelist at Microsoft) announced the 2nd release of the Loan Origination reference architecture (OR-LOS) and a Financial Services Component Library.  I’ve been watching some of his work over the last 1/2 year or so in terms of these reference architectures it looks like some really great reuse and guidance.

The Loan Origination reference architecture shows how to build solutions that unify people, process and technology through familiar Office 2007 user interfaces. It includes an architecture framework for lending with an Office Business Application based scenario and BizTalk “MISMO” Accelerator for the loan origination process in banking.

The Financial Services Component Library provides over 90+ OBA components spanning key areas in Banking, Insurance and Capital markets. These components and associated guidance is expected to be released over the next month or so at the Microsoft Financial Services Architecture Portal.

“OBAs are an emerging class of business applications that connect existing line-of-business (LOB) systems with the people that use them every day through the familiar user interface of Microsoft Office, bridging the gap between how business process systems work, and how people work. OR-LOS will help customers simplify document management, increase integrated workflow, improve efficiency and ultimately lower time-to-market offering for faster turn-around and reduced cost.”

Architecture Themes
Described below are some of the Microsoft architecture themes in which these architectures highlight.

Technology Components Included in the Financial Services OBA Component Library

Interactive BizTalk Capabilities Poster

Jon Flanders recently built a really cool Interactive BizTalk Capabilities poster and kicked it up a notch using Silverlight. Its pretty cool and could also prove to be a nice reference guide. It’s also discussed on the BizTalk Server Team Blog. All the really cool technical guide posters can be found here.

In a similar “light”, an Interactive Developer Map for Microsoft Office is also available.

BizTalk Blogs Aggregator

Back in December, Microsoft quietly released BizTalkBlogs.com. Its a blog aggregator bringing us recent posts from some of the most influential bloggers in the field focusing on BizTalk Server, .NET and Connected Systems. Its a must have reference, place to visit and site to keep your eye on.

Microsoft BizTalk Server Operations Guide!!

Microsoft recently released extremely valuable BizTalk operations readiness documentation chock full of excellent planning information, best practice, configuration, check lists, performance considerations and the like. There are over 600 pages of references and guidance and no BizTalk tool box should be without it. It can be found on Microsoft Downloads site or through the link above.

What’s in It? (from the document)

Guidance based on real-world experience. The idea for the guide originated with Microsoft field representatives, partner organizations, and customers who plan, deploy, and maintain BizTalk Server installations. This group of IT professionals has accumulated extensive hands-on experience with a diverse range of BizTalk solutions. As they gained experience they created checklists, best practices, and presentations to guide future BizTalk Server operations. We collected and organized this information to create the guide.

Key portions of this guide are new; however, a considerable portion consists of documentation taken from BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Help, white papers, Knowledge Base articles, and other sources. It has been carefully reviewed and vetted by experts from the community of BizTalk Server IT professionals and members of the product development team, whom we gratefully acknowledge at the end of this topic. We believe that the information presented here will help BizTalk Server users solve, and above all, avoid many of the common problems that can occur while deploying and maintaining a BizTalk Server installation.

Web Service Factory – Modeling Edition

The Microsoft Patterns and Practices group has recently announced the release of the Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition for Visual Studio 2008. As you might expect, we should begin seeing more and more modeling tools coming our way over the next couple years and it looks like the service factory is moving in that direction.

Also see: Service Factory Blogs, Web Service Software Factory Community Site

The following is an brief excerpt from the official posting.

Summary
The Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition (also known as the Service Factory) is an integrated collection of resources designed to help you quickly and consistently build Web services that adhere to well-known architecture and design patterns. These resources consist of patterns and architecture topics in the form of written guidance and models with code generation in the form of tools integrated with Visual Studio 2008.

What Is in the Service Factory: Modeling Edition?
For the Web service developer, the Service Factory contains automation and guidance integrated into Visual Studio for building services. The core of the automation components is a Web services domain model. This domain model contains elements such as service contracts, operations, messages, and data contracts. This domain model manifests itself in the form of three integrated domain-specific languages (DSLs) that are used to model services: Service Contract Model, Data Contract Model, and the Host Model. Figure 1 illustrates an example of the Service Contract Model. For more information about working with this and the other models, see the “Designing with the Models” section in the documentation included with the Service Factory.

Figure 1
The Service Contract Model

In addition to the Visual Studio automation facilities, the Service Factory also contains the relevant written guidance about building Web services from the December 2006 release. Some of these topics include architecture, message design, versioning, exception handling, and other useful patterns. For a full list of topics that are included, see the “Web Service Architecture” section in the documentation included with the Service Factory. Web service developers interested in learning more about the Service Factory: Modeling Edition are encouraged to complete the Building a Web Service hands-on lab provided on the Service Factory Community Site on CodePlex.

What is the Microsoft VTS Program?

The Virtual TS program is a very unique program within Microsoft and has grown from the US to a global level. The VTS Program is sponsored and managed by a global team of Field Program Managers out of the BizTalk Corporate Product Group which is part of the Connected Systems Division.

The Field PM team is comprised of regionalized Program Managers dedicated to assisting customer, partners, and Microsoft in providing world class technical resources for BizTalk. In order to scale their role, the Field PMs enlists highly skilled individuals from the partner community as Virtual BizTalk Technology Specialists to become an extension of the team. The Virtual TS team generally has access to resources that are typically reserved for only the Microsoft internal teams. The group reports directly into Product Engineering, in contrast to Product Marketing and forms a cornerstone of our Advisors, TAP (Technology Adoption Programs), customer programs, release management, and QFE (Quick Fix Engineering).

The Virtual TS program was designed to create a deeper partnership with local Solution Integrators, the Product Team in Redmond and Microsoft customers in the field as well as local Microsoft sales resources. It is designed to enable a high performance team of partner-based resources to deliver pre- and post-sale activities and provide service, support, and integration directly with Corporate and District resources to empower customers and help them meet their integration needs.

“By Microsoft and AIS working together, our hope is that we grow AIS and at the same time, increase the adoption of BizTalk in the Mid-Atlantic District,” said Bashar “BASH” Badawi, Microsoft’s BizTalk Field Program Manager responsible for the VTS program partners in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast districts. “We believe the BizTalk Virtual TS program provides the right balance of training, Microsoft Corporate Access, Product Group affiliation and escalation paths that will allow AIS to develop a strategic advantage in this space.”