MSDN Virtual Lab: Office Business Application Reference Application Pack for Manufacturing Plant Floor Analytics

At the end of this lab, you will understand how an Analytics OBA (Office Business Application) can be implemented to materialize the Analytics Value Chain of enabling operational monitoring, tactical analysis & decision making, and strategic insight. You can find this lab here

Sample BizTalk 2006 R2 HIPAA Solution Published on Codeplex

First release of the BizTalk 2006 R2 HIPAA Claims Processing sample application demonstrates how healthcare companies can submit claims through BizTalk 2006 in real-time over HTTPS to a 3rd party claims processor called Availity. This solution demonstrates the following technologies:
· Business Rules Engine
· SQL 2005 Analysis Services
· MOSS and InfoPath
· New R2 EDI Features for healthcare

BizTalk Server 2006 extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation Sample

Microsoft released BizTalk Server 2006 extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation (June CTP) SDK Sample. To try it out head to the Connect Site for this project, complete the survey, download the sample code and do the walk through.
Prerequisites for the walkthrough:
1- To complete the walkthrough you should first have Visual Studio 2005 professional or greater installed.
2 - You also need BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Beta 2 which is available on it's own connect site here. 3 - SQL Server 2005 SP1 express or greater is also required and you can get that here.
4 - Lastly you'll need the BizTalk extensions for WF from Connect.
The walkthrough will take about an hour and it starts with a WF workflow model and steps you through how to run this workflow inside the BizTalk Server managed server environment. No BizTalk experience is required for the walkthrough.

Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspective

A great read , infact a must read
http://no2google.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/life-at-google-the-microsoftie-perspective/

3 new OBA (Office business Applications) RAP (Reference Architecture Pack) Released

One of the many great technologies to come out of Microsoft recently is OBA (Office business Applications). In the last week Microsoft release 3 Reference Architecture Pack (RAP). You should see them.

OBA RAP for Plant Floor Manufacturing Analytics:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb643797.aspx

OBA RAP for E-Forms Processing in the Public Sector:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb643796.aspx

OBA RAP for Health Plans
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb530326.aspx

Beta of two new web-based applications

Microsoft released a beta of two new web-based applications for storing and sharing photos and files -- Live Photo Gallery and Live Photo Folder.
1)Live Photo Gallery allows people to easily sharing, editing, organizing and printing of photos and digital home videos stored on their computers.
2) Windows Live Folders provides 500MB free Microsoft's online storage service, aiming to make it easier to share and control access to files stored online.
Both products are in 'managed beta', which means that the general public will not yet be offered access. Microsoft dominant position in the software market is an advantage over web-only service providers, such as Google and Yahoo

Calling a .NET class from a Gadget

We can call a .Net Assembly from a Vista gadget in following ways
1. We can interact with COM component by using the ActiveX Object constructor.
2. They are also different ways to interoperate with an application or a web service using WCF
3. A reference to Windows Forms UserControl is another option.
4. Last way is to dynamically execute a command line application, pass it arguments and get back output.

Enterprise Library 3.1 is here :)

Microsoft has released Enterprise Library 3.1. The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Application blocks are a type of guidance, provided as source code that can be used "as is," extended, or modified by developers to use on enterprise development projects. This release of Enterprise Library includes application blocks for Caching, Cryptography, Data Access, Exception Handling, Logging, Policy Injection, Security and Validation. download it from here

Article on Choosing the Right Technology for Integrating Systems

I wrote an article on Choosing the Right Technology for Integrating Systems few months back and after the feedback i got from people in PDC i thought i should publish the link. you can find this article here. I 'll be publishing an article on Microsoft office 2007 and its integration with application soon.