Recent Posts
OAuth Certificate Authentication with ACS
My experience authenticating clients with the Windows Azure AppFabric Access Control Service (ACS) using (X.509) certificates.
How to pass 70-573 SharePoint 2010 Application Development
My experience preparing for the TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development exam.
Time Dimension Populate Script
Here is a very simple TSQL script that will flesh out a time dimension, for use with analysis services cubes.
The BizTalk WCF SQL Binding and MSDTC
Highlights a common misconfiguration of the BizTalk WCF Adapter Pack 2.0 SQL binding.
.NET 4.0 GAC Post-build Event Command
"%programfiles(x86)%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\NETFX 4.0 Tools\gacutil.exe" /i "$(TargetPath)"
BizTalk Custom WCF Behaviour
This post highlights one area of extensible goodness that WCF offers. In the context of BizTalk's WCF Adapter runtime opens up amazing possibilies.
WordPress Blog and ASP.NET MVC Integration
This was too easy/cool to keep tucked away. I wanted the most cheap and cheerful way of listing the top 10 blog posts, into a larger, containing website I am building for a client. I started out b...
SSO Configuration Road Block
Recently I’ve had the need to setup a BizTalk Server 2006 R2 virtual machine. Quietly confident about my experience with this version of BizTalk, I jumped in head first to quickly get a simple s...
BizTalk Server 2010 Prerequisite CAB Files
Exciting times! BizTalk Server 2010 is out and as per every major release of the product there are a fresh set of redistributable CAB links to hunt down. These links available from the official in...
BizTalk Servers Slow First Hit
Lately I been thinking about BizTalk Server, and a particular behavior that it consistently demonstrates without fail. It takes a dreadful amount of time to service a “cold” request, however once ...
Back To Basics: Sharing Libraries in a Team
When developing in a team consisting of more members than yourself, you’ll quickly run into the scenario where shared libraries and/or other similar resources need to be shared in someway. Its es...
BizTalk Server 2009 Unit Testing
I feel like i’ve missed the boat with this, but the “first class” unit testing support that has been added to BizTalk Server 2009 is terrific...
Back To Basics: Managing Databases
On a new clients site the other day, observed that over time the more companies I work for the deeper my knowledge for applying effective work practices becomes. In other words, over time you see ...
Subversion Repository
I’ve been working on a number of personal projects lately and need a reliable, fast and possibly multi-user source control. There are many of options available, but for me VS.NET integration is a ...
Azure BizSpark Camp
Last month I was invited to attend the Azure BizSpark Camp in Sydney. Given minimal detail about the event, 7 small Australian startups pitched...
C# 3.0 Language Extensions
Put together a little snippet to remind myself of the some of the beautiful language extensions that shipped with the C# language. namespace CSharpLanguageExperiment{ using System; using Sys...
70-235 Certified
A few weeks ago I sat the 70-235 exam. Coming from a real-world perspective I wasnt overly impressed with the exam. To me it felt mind numbingly robotic and very 2006 R1 feature set focused (e.g. ...
XHTML Formatted Messages
BizTalk messages are very XML centric. A while ago there was a requirement to produce a neatly formatted XHTML report, which was destined to be emailed. At the time I stumbled across a customised ...
BizTalk 2006 Install Problems on WinXP
Today while doing some vanilla BizTalk 2006 R2 installs, discovered the installer was choking with: Error 5003.Regsvcs failed for assembly C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\Microsoft.B...
R&D Todo List
Now my post-grad studies are finalised ive got some spare time to inject into technology. I plan to inject some solid hours into running through the .NET 3.0 certification stream. Some areas tha...
Font Smoothing with Remote Desktop and Windows Server 2003
Microsoft has recently released a hotfix to enable font smoothing over remote desktop (RDP). If your addicted to font smoothing (aka ClearType) you will love this hotfix. At least service pack 1 i...
Why Enterprise Service Bus?
To provide a messaging infrastructure that will: Break the communication complexity problems associated with distributed software – such as the ability to deal with ongoing change, providing man...
ESB Guidance - Dynamic Resolution
The goal of dynamic resolution is to avoid defining end-points anywhere statically. The responsibility of carrying and managing this knowledge, which is specific to the interaction, is frequently ...
Sequential Receives
Today I came across an interesting compile time error, given a scenario I had never exercised before. I had a vanilla orchestration that was receiving the same message type (same schema different ...
ESB Guidance Package
Lately I've been having heaps of fun playing with what's known as the "ESB Guidance" (ESBG)—a community/open source driven initiative to fill the gap Microsoft current have in the SOA/ESB space. A...
Recent Orchestration Activity
Here is a simple TSQL query for the BizTalk tracking database, to summarise the orchestration instantiation head-count for a given host. Your mileage with this query may vary depending on how fre...
Deserialization Issues
There have been a few scenarios where the complexity of using a standard BizTalk map, have far outweighed using some custom code. This approach, prescribed in Professional BizTalk Server 2006 as t...
Pectoralis Major Tear
My experience tearing/ripping/rupturing my right chest muscle (aka the "pec" or "pectoral" or "pectoralis major").
Orchestration Deployment + Bindings
There seems to be an intermittent deployment problem with BizTalk 2006, that has been the cause of much time wasting. When attempting to deploy BizTalk artefacts either explicitly using the BizTal...
MIME Decoder and 64bit
This week I got a great introduction to the subtle difficulties that are waiting to be encountered when running a 32-bit component in a 64-bit environment. In short, an orchestration that employed...