BTUG.be is born

I would like to make a small announcement... today we publicly announced the birth of a brand new Belgian BizTalk User Group, called BTUG.be! We were planning something like this for quite some time now, and you even might have picked up some rumours about it in the past. But as of today it is official, Belgium now has its very own BizTalk User Group.



I'm proud to say that I'm one of the co-founders of this BTUG.be. Together with Sam Vanhoutte we have started this initiative under excellent guidance of Lex Hegt, who shared his knowledge he gained with the Dutch BizTalk User Group.
And to start out, we wanted to make it a joined collaboration of the Belgian BizTalk Community. In this spirit we are glad that also i8c decided to support the initiative and Sven Van den brande agreed to fulfill our board of the BTUG.be. So that makes the all new Belgian BizTalk User Group will be worked out as a joined effort by Cnext, Codit and i8c with in the board at startup myself, Sam Vanhoutte and Sven Van den brande.
I'm already looking forward on having a great time working together with these guys organising all upcoming events.

A very first launch event is being planned to have place in november. For keeping up to date on all matters of this BTUG.be, I'll recommend you subscribe to the mailing list on the website http://www.btug.be and even keep a close eye to the website for all announcements. And certainly don't forget to follow our twitter account @BTUGbe.

And last of all, I would like to call out for sponsors... As the entire organization will be driven on volunteer work. So to cover all the necessary costs we will need to make for hosting events, catering, travel expenses in case of international speakers, etc. we are on the lookout for sponsors to keep it fun and free for everyone. You can always contact us on any questions or to share your interest for sponsoring using this entry form on the website.

BizTalk blog posts 02/2013 - 05/2013

The past time I haven't posted a lot on this blog, especially not much blog posts on BizTalk subjects. This doesn't mean that I haven't done any BizTalk related blog posts, I just haven't done it on my personal blog for a while... I've mostly posted on my companies blog, where I am the sole contributor and administrator.

But for all of you loyal readers of my personal blog, I thought it would be nice to give an overview of all of my latest posts. I'm thinking of doing this every once in a while to keep all of you updated on ALL of my posts.

So here goes for the period till May 2013...

• BizTalk error: ‘The message found multiple request response subscriptions’: solution to sending messages to multiple request-response send ports
• BizTalk file mask difference for windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2: A difference in file mask usage between windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2
• BizTalk360 v6.0: new features explained: a quick view on some of the improvements introduced in the new BizTalk360 version 6.0
• BizTalk Server 2013 is now RTM!: the announcement of the new BizTalk version release on MSDN, with the new features listed
• BTS2013 features explained: XslCompiledTransform: I started a new series on viewing some of the new features of BizTalk 2013 in more detail, the first one was about the XslCompiledTransform
• BTS2013 features explained: Improvements in dynamic send ports: follow up post on a new BizTalk 2013 feature on the Improvements in dynamic send ports
• BTS2013 features explained: Dependency tracking: an in depth view of the new dependency tracking feature of BizTalk 2013
• First Cumulative Update for BizTalk 2013… available through Microsoft Update!: the announcement that the very first cumulative update was released for BizTalk 2013, and that it even was available through Microsoft Update
• BAM error: Failed to list permissions for BAM view – System.Data.SqlTypes.SqlNullValueException: Data is Null: a solution to a BAM issue I encountered

Hope you enjoy these blog posts!

Became an official BizTalk360 Product Specialist

Yesterday, BizTalk360 introduced the whole new title "BizTalk360 Product Specialist" on their blog. Because of the constantly increasing popularity of the monitoring tool BizTalk360, to streamline the process the new title and badge where introduced. The idea is to honour individuals who have gained adequate knowledge in installing, configuring and implementing BizTalk360 solution at customer sites.

The only way of obtaining this title is by receiving the confirmation from the BizTalk360 team itself. I myself filed a request immediately... And I am proud to announce my request got approved. Now I have the honour to officially call myself a "BizTalk360 Product Specialist"!

As you might have seen, I already placed the official badge at my own blog on the column on the right. I also updated my LinkedIn profile accordingly.

CU1 for BizTalk 2013... using Microsoft Update!

The Microsoft Team has just announced the release of the very first Cumulative Update For BizTalk 2013.

But an even more surprising news is that it is available using Microsoft Update!... This is the very first time a BizTalk Update can be obtained with Microsoft Update, as before it had to be done by downloading it manually through the hotfix download. An amazing improvement if you ask me, making it a whole lot easier for administrators.

The update will still be available through the hotfix download though.

The Content of the Cumulative Update

The very first CU for BizTalk 2013 brings 3 fixes:

• User cannot perform certain database-related operations in BizTalk Server 2013
• BAM tools cannot be configured in a multi-node BizTalk Server 2013 environment
• The vertical scroll bar on the target schema does not work correctly when you use Visual Studio to design a BizTalk Server 2013 map

How to install using Microsoft Update

The following steps are applicable if you have Microsoft Update enabled in the machine where BizTalk Server is installed.

1. Log into a server where BizTalk Server is already installed, and Microsoft Update is enabled
2. Check for windows update
3. Notice available fixes for BizTalk Server under optional updates
4. Select the update and install

(Perform the above operations in each of the BizTalk nodes)

The original announcement can be found here.

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2013 available on MSDN

It took a while, but here it is... BizTalk Server 2013 is now in RTM (Manufacturing)! as of now you can download BizTalk 2013 from MSDN, and it will be available for purchase in April.

Besides all kinds of new features, the new version of BizTalk also brings us a whole new licensing model. At least it is new in terms of BizTalk pricings... it will be a per-core licensing model, just like the SQL Server licensing.

A more detailed info can be found on my companies blog post.
the official announcement of the BizTalk team, can be found in this post on their blog.

Blog admin of my companies blog

First of all, I would like to thank all of my regular reader and hope you've al enjoyed my blog posts for almost 2 years now. I already announced in one of my previous posts some time ago that I would join the contributors of the biztalk admin blog at http://www.biztalkadminsblogging.com/ .

Today, I'm proud to announce that there is another brand new blog I will be contributing to on BizTalk and Azure related news, problem solvement, etc.... My companies (Cnext) blog (http://blog.cnext.eu) . Well actually, the blog already existed quite some time (even longer than my own blog :) ), but there wasn't any new posts for over 2 years. Most recently I became the new administrator of the Cnext blog and had the task to revive it. After 1 month, 3 completely new posts, and still some blog posts in the making, it is ready to be shared with all of you... see for yourself at the Cnexts revived blog.

The first thing I did is restyle the entire blog to match the current branding of Cnext. And after publishing some new material, I can say that it is ready to be read!

Now go and check it out.. and keep following all of my blog posts.




More info on cnext can be found on http://www.cnext.eu. And as mentioned the blog will be situated at http://blog.cnext.eu... keep an eye out for all new material to be added soon!

Biztalk 2013 Beta released

Microsoft finally released a beta version of the new biztalk, wich can be found here.
The first thing that should be noticed is that Microsoft decided to change the next versions name from Biztalk 2010R2 to Biztalk 2013. This has some very important consequences… It indicates the next version to be a major release, which implies a much longer support from Microsoft.
Microsoft’s support lifecycle policy says that products will have 5+5 years (mainstream+extended) support. However, that applies to major versions. If the product would still be BizTalk Server 2010 R2, it will not get an extended support lifecycle end date.

So in conclusion, having the next Biztalk version being a full release is an important sign to the market, it implies a much longer support lifecycle for the product.


Biztalk 2013 will have following new features:

• Integration with Cloud Services: messages using different relay endpoints hosted on Azure.


• RESTful services: provides adapters to invoke REST endpoints as well as expose BizTalk Server artifacts as a RESTful service.


• Enhanced SharePoint adapter: the need for dependency on SharePoint farms has been removed, while still providing backward compatibility.


• SFTP adapter: added an SFTP adapter that will enable sending and receiving messages from an SFTP server.


• ESB Toolkit integration: ESB Toolkit is now fully integrated with BizTalk Server. Also, the ESB Toolkit configuration experience is vastly simplified to enable a quick setup.


• Dependency tracking: dependencies between artifacts can now be viewed and navigated in Admin console.


• Improvements in dynamic send ports: the ability to set host handler per adapter, instead of always using the default send handler of the adapters.

Passed the Microsoft BizTalk Exam

As of yesterday I can call myself a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010.

I passed the exam 70-595: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions by Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010. I did this making only a single mistake, not bad at all :).

All I did as preparation was reading the book (MCTS): Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 (70-595) Certification Guide once. This together with the practical knowledge I had gathered on the job made sure I passed the exam easily.

So all credits go to the authors of the book (Johan Hedberg, Kent Weare , Morten la Cour). They definitely achieved their goal. Also the sample questions (and their answers) were very helpful in the preparation.

New blog site: Windows Azure Road trip

There is a brand new developers' blog site on Windows Azure, called windows azure roadtrip. three specialist developers, each in thier own programming language, will be posting some blogs regularly.

Maarten Balliauw (a .NET developer) kicked it off with the very first blog post 'Winsows Azure when you code .NET: what & Why'.
The other blog writers are Michelangelo van Dam (a PHP developer) and François Hertay (a Java developer).

Keep a close eye on this webiste, more useful blog posts to come.

Resource: https://www.azure-roadtrip.be/

joined BizTalkAdminsBlogging.com

My personal blog only exists for a year and a half now, but already has quite some visitors. Yesterday I was even asked to join another Biztalk blogging team on Biztalk administrator related topics. I already knew the blog and was a frequent visitor of the website. Of course I was glad to join the Biztalk blog team.

So, as of  today I joined several other biztalk experts on the BizTalk admin blog BizTalkAdminsBlogging.com.
This blog is dedicated to provide BizTalk admins with useful information, tips, example scripts and everything else that is interesting for a BizTalk admin.

I will still publish posts to this blog, but I will also write an occasional blog post for the BizTalkAdminsBlogging.com website... My first post on the site still has to be written, and any suggestions are always welcome :).

My profile on BizTalkAdminsblogging.com: http://www.biztalkadminsblogging.com/index.php/component/k2/itemlist/user/59-mitchvanhelden

BizTalk Server 2010 R2 announced

According to Microsoft the new release wil focus on 3 main themes:

• Platform Support – Supporting new and current server and development platforms
• Improved B2B – Aligning with industry standards and continuing to invest in performance improvements
• Ready for the Cloud – Enabling customers to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing

BizTalk Server 2010 R2 will be delivered approximately 6 months following the release of Windows Server 8. Release timing for Windows Server 8 is yet to be announced.

More info: BizTalk Server 2010 R2 - BizTalk Server Team Blog

SQL Server 2012

The next version of SQL Server will be released in the first half of 2012.
Microsoft has confirmed this release at the PASS Summit on October 12th.
Although Microsoft was yet to announce a specific availability deadline for SQL Server 2012.
Source: SQL Server 2012 Launches in H1 2012, Now in the Final Production Stages

Microsoft already released a Developer Training kit for SQL Server 2012.
This training kit is designed to help you learn how to develop SQL Server 2012 database and BI solutions.

SQL 2012 Training Kit: SQL Server 2012 Developer Training Kit

BUILD conference keynote summary

Here you can find a summary of the Windows BUILD conference keynote on Windows 8:
BUILD conference: impressions of Windows 8 keynote news - ctodx

The future of BizTalk

Last couple of days the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference took place in Los Angeles. It appeared that there was some discussion on the future for Biztalk Server, but I couldn't figure out exactly what it was.

Today I found some Blogs which summarizes the presentation given by Microsoft’s Tony Meleg. It seems that BizTalk as product/brand name may go away after few years but the integration concepts are going to remain. As I understood, no new features would be released anymore, only some maintenance releases.

Presentation video: AP03 - The Future of Middleware and the BizTalk Roadmap
Presentation slides: Download Session Presentation

Summarizing blogs:

• Is BizTalk Server Going Away At Some Point? Yes. Dead? Nope. « Richard Seroter's Architecture Musings
• The Future of Middleware and the BizTalk Roadmap - Recap
• Microsoft BizTalk's future is cloudy (no pun intended)

Microsoft Lightswitch coming on July 26

Microsoft’s LightSwitch to Launch on July 26. This program will give developers a simpler and faster way to create high-quality business applications for the desktop and the cloud. LightSwitch is a new addition to the Visual Studio family.

I've already been playing with Lightswitch some time ago + I've seen the presentation on Techdays 2011 in Belgium. The new Visual Studio addition definitely has some promising features, and is easy to use. It could get quite handy for some (smaller) projects.

Lightswitch makes sure you'll get a working program fast with pre-configured screen templates, prewritten code and other reusable components to handle routine application tasks, along with helpful step-by-step guidance.

And afterwards you can of course customize it all in Visual Basic .NET or C#. To finalize, you can deploy to the desktop, browser, or cloud to share your application with others more easily without the cumbersome installation processes.

More info: Lightswitch, a developers tool, will launch on July 26
Videos and tutorials: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/lightswitch

interesting vids

I've been to the Microsoft Techdays a few weeks ago.It's been an amazing experience and learned some new things.

Too bad though that some interesting sessions took place on the exact same moment. So I could only follow one of them.
Luckily however, they announced that all sessions would be recorded and placed on the channel 9 web site to view later.

Well, I'm still waiting for those sessions to appear on the website...
I've found some other Microsoft technology event sessions of this year that were on channel 9 already. So for now, I won't have any evenings not knowing what to do :).

Devdays 2011 Netherlands

MIX 2011 Las Vegas

techdays 2011 Belgium (only developer keynote on line yet)

BELUX MSDN and TechNet Desktop Gadget

Stay up to date with the latest news from MSDN and TechNet in Belgium and Luxembourg via the new desktop gadget for Windows Vista and Windows 7. It’s free, easy to install and very practical: you won’t miss anything of the latest tech news, blogs, videos and event registrations, as they are all fed right into your desktop!

Downoad: http://gallery.live.com/LiveItemDetail.aspx?li=1f7425ec-9b30-4d71-ac92-242837a10c41
Blog: Install the BELUX MSDN and TechNet Desktop Gadget to stay up to date - Katrien DG's MSDN Blog

Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

MSDN subscribers can already download SP1 for Visual Studio 2010.
On March 10, it will be generally available.

Source: Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 - Jason Zander's WebLog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Next-generation Integration Platform examination (from Gartner)

Gartner publishes an examiniation of vendors whose products provide features that address the needs of systematic A2A, B2B and cloud-based application integration projects.

Microsoft, with its BizTalk Server product, comes out as one of the leaders in the Integration space.

Gartners published research: http://www.gartner.com/technology/media-products/reprints/microsoft/vol2/article3/article3.html

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/nikosan/archive/2011/01/18/implementing-your-next-generation-integration-platform-from-gartner.aspx

What's new in BizTalk 2010

Recently I've been to a seminar on the new features of BizTalk 2010.
I like to share a brief summary of all new features in BizTalk 2010 that I've discovered on this seminar.

Platform Support

All latest Microsoft developments are supported.

·      Visual Studio 2010

·         Virtualization support for Hyper-V

·         SQL Server 2008 R2

·         Windows Server 2008 R2

·         SharePoint 2010

·         Windows 7

·         .NET Framework 4.0

BizTalk mapper

The BizTalk mapper is improved dramatically in this latest version, which makes the life of developers a lot easier. Productivity when designing new maps will increase with the more intelligent BizTalk mapper .

These are the added features for the BizTalk mapper:

·       Search functionality: it is now possible to search in your map, even inside the functoids

·         Cut / copy / paste / move / undo functions, makes it all easier to design maps

·         Improved support for documenting maps and readability

·         Predictive match: match all underlying nodes based on for example matching names

·         Some functionality to increase the readability when highlighting a functoid or a binding:

o   Highlight propagation

o   Auto-scrolling: scrolls your schema’s to the right spot

o   Coalescing sibling nodes: all unused nodes of the schema’s will collapse

Dashboard

A whole new settings dashboard consolidates all settings into a single place. These settings are used to tune your BizTalk environment to your needs.
All settings are now granular, so you can change your settings at different levels. You can change all settings on three different levels, namely on group, host or host instance.
There’s also support for automated settings deployment, which allows you to deploy your settings on all environments using scriptable import / export operations.
And last but definitely not the least is the improved admin concole.

System Center (SCOM)

This System Center Operation Manager  is used for monitoring and diagnose your BizTalk Environment. The SCOM has a new model with separate application and deployment views. They’ve also added new alerts and diagnostics for better monitoring the environment.
The SCOM can be also be used for clustered servers.
All these functionality contribute to an improved machine monitoring.

Adapters

BizTalk 2010 brings along a serie of new and enhanced adapters. They even provide a higher level of security and secure a better performance.
important adapter updates:

·         FTP adapter:

o   Added support for secure FTP with a new FTPS adapter and an improved FTP adapter

o   Possibility for read-only files: it will redownload when a file is changed

o   Atomic file transfer now also in ASCII mode

ESB Toolkit

The ESB toolkit already existed for previouses BizTalk versions, different is in BTS 2010 it gets installed along with BizTalk.
The BizTalk ESB Toolkit is a collection of tools and libraries that extend BizTalk Server capabilities of supporting a loosely coupled and dynamic messaging architectur
An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is an architectural pattern and a key enabler in implementing the infrastructure for a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It addresses integration problems in a way that maximizes the re-use of services and maintains flexibility.

This ESB toolkit is an abstraction layer on top of BTS, which brings several advantages, like:

·         Easier to redeploy

·         Reduces your necessary ports, which makes it all easier to manage

·         Faster response to changes

·         Higher level of reusability

·         High extensibility for future or special needs

For further info on the ESB toolkit I suggest this URL: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/esb-guidance.aspx

New trading partner model

You ‘ll probably know the old trading partner model (‘parties’ in the admin console), where you were able to configure the AS2, Edifact or X12 settings for a certain Customer. However this old trading partner model had a non-intuitive representation, where you had to make a new party for every new agreement.
The new trading partner model brings some new possibilities. It reflects typical B2B relationships and is easier to manage large scale TPM deployments. Each party can now possess several so called business profiles. Agreements have to be made between these  Business Profiles. Every agreement also have the possibility to manage an agreement lifecycle. Furthermore, you’ll have more control over the message types in the new partner model.

Thes changes contribute to following advantages:

·         Settings are more visible (improved UI)

·         Improved productivity(agreement protocols + protocol settings)

AppFabric

BizTalk Server 2010 includes easy to use tools that integrate Line-of-Business applications with Windows Server AppFabric Workflows.  This includes Workflow activities that provide access to the BizTalk Transformation Engine and Mapper, and the BizTalk Line-of-Business adapters.

Removed features

Some features are removed and replaced by new features in BizTalk Server 2010.

·         BizTalk Web Services Publishing Wizard: The BizTalk WCF Publishing Wizard can be used to publish Web services from BizTalk.  The BizTalk Web Services Publishing Wizard has been removed

·         Legacy adapters: they are replaced by the adapters in the BizTalk Adapter Pack (SQL, Oracle, Siebel, mySAP)

·         EDI pipeline and Context Properties:  The new Trading Partner Management feature in BizTalk Server 2010 provides the same capabilities as the EDI Pipeline and Context Properties and replaces these features

BTS 2010 upgrade path

They’ve added a new smart setup which scans and installs BizTalk upgrades automatically. You can upgrade from BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and BizTalk Server 2009.

All these new features make me really look forward to working with BizTalk 2010!