BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer

This is very helpful and handy for consultants and Developers who are working on BizTalk.

From the blog of luke nyswonger, lead programmer writer, BizTalk

"The Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer examines a BizTalk Server 2006 deployment and generates a list of best practices issues it discovers. The Best Practices Analyzer is intended for use in BizTalk Server 2006 production and staging environments.

The Best Practices Analyzer performs configuration level verification, by reading and reporting only. For example, the Best Practices Analyzer gathers data from Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes, Microsoft SQL Server databases, registry entries, and other parts of your deployment, and uses the gathered data to determine whether best practices are being followed. The Best Practices Analyzer does not modify any system settings, and is therefore not a self-tuning tool."

Download Now!

Bill Gates Bowing Out

News Conference
Redmond, Washington
June 15, 2006

Bill Gates:
"I have decided that two years from today, starting July 2008, I will reorder my personal priorities. Today I am working full-time for Microsoft and part-time for the Gates Foundation. Starting two years from now, I will shift, work full-time at the Foundation, part-time at Microsoft as Chairman and as a senior technical adviser. "

Read the full article

Judging Software Competition "Open House" @ FAST-NU

It seems like judging Software in a competition has become a regular activity for me in last 2 months I have been called in competitions involving more than 50 projects and few of them from neighboring countries also. On 7th June I received a letter from FAST-NU that I have to be a judge at Open House (a Software competition for the graduating batch to show their final project). The entries involved software ranging from call center and HRMS to research projects so it was nice to have such diversity in the projects to judge. To conclude it was a well organized Event.

Conducting Second & Third Phase Evaluation For Microsoft Imagine Cup Software Design Competition 2006

29th May 2006:
I have been really busy so wasn't able to update my blog there have been 2 main event regarding Imagine cup. The final 2 rounds were held at IBA and the selected entries from previous round were competing in it. The judges panel included Waqar Khamisani (Microsoft ISV Manager Pakistan), Dr. Saeed Ghani (Chairman CS and MIS, IBA), Dr. Shahid Shameem, Dr. Amir Raza, Rehan Ghayor (Sr. Manager MIS, IBA), Talha Mahmood and My self. In the 2nd round there were 5 projects and after going through the demos and the Presentation we were hardly able to separate the top 2. So we decided to go to the third round with only 2 projects.

6th June 2006:
Final round was held to select 1 project from the top 2. Again both the projects were very impressive and had made some improvements in the last week to brighten their chances. Eventually after a long debate and demo/presentation 1 was selected to represent Pakistan in Imagine cup 2006.

Microsoft Application Security Seminar @ NED Postponed

Due to the strike in Karachi the event @ NED University on 27th May has been postponed to 1st June. It would have been great if it was on 27th because it was Saturday and the attendance would have been very good.

Conducting the Preliminary Round for Imagine Cup 2006 Pakistan

On 20th May the preliminary round for Projects entries for Imagine cup was completed. The judges panel included Waqar Khamisani (Microsoft ISV Manager Pakistan), Dr. Saeed Ghani(Chairman CS and MIS,IBA) , Rehan Ghayor(Sr. Manager MIS ,IBA), Talha Mahmood and My self. We went through many projects, discussing the projects detail and marking them. Finally we select 5 projects to be forwarded to the final round, before sending them to India. The final assessment Round will be held on 29th May 2006.

WCF Architecture

WCF architecture consists of 4 main sections

I have talk about Contracts in one of my previous entry. Let’s examine the other parts of this framework

Service Runtime

The service runtime layer contains the behaviors that occur only during the actual operation of the service, that is, the runtime behaviors of the service. E.g. Instancing, throttling, error handling etc.

Messaging

The messaging layer shows the formats and exchange patterns of the data. WS Security enables security at the message layer while WS Reliable Messaging channel enables the guarantee of message delivery. The encoders present a range of encodings that can be used to suit the needs of the message.

Activation and Hosting

This is the part where service is started by analyzing its activation options. Services can be either self-hosted or hosted in the context of another application.

From .NET Remoting to the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

I personally tried to convert my project from Web services to WCF and I’m still trying but in the mean while found 1 great Article on Microsoft Site.

Click here to view the Article

Assessing Projects For Imagine Cup 2006 from Pakistan

I received a mail from Vaqar Khamisani (ISV manager, Microsoft Pakistan) that I'll be part of Judging Committee for the Imagine cup 2006 project evaluation in Pakistan. I have been helping many students to improve their projects for Imagine Cup and resolve their issues for last 2 months or so. Now this is the time to actually see that they have done and there are many entries from students which I have not help/assisted. I feel it will be very interesting to evaluate them. Hopefully their will be very good entries and they perform very well in India.

Microsoft Application Security Seminar @ Karachi University

It was my first event in KU and 2nd the series of Seminars on Application Security. I was accompanied by Razi bin Rais (Snr. Software Eng, Kalsoft). I spoke on WinFX, WCF and Security in WCF. There were some interesting questions about WCF as the students were trying to understand the core concept, later on I showed them a Demo. Razi started with the core concept of Web Applications and moved on to ASP.NET and then to new login/roles/users related controls in ASP.NET2. After the event I Introduced Imagine cup and distributed the CDs which were provided by Microsoft.

Seminar On Application Security In Fast-NU

Today I went to Fast-NU with Wajahat (MVP ASP.NET) for the Application security. I talked about indigo and the Security options in it. Wajahat took on Writing Secure code. It went pretty well the guys looked very impressed with WCF. As I was talking about message passing between applications a question about Application integration gave me chance to discuss BizTalk Server

Documentation Update for Windows Communication Foundation

Microsoft has updated the Documentation for Windows Communication Foundation
WCF Documentation CTP (15 Apr 2006)

Judging a programming Competition @ ProCom 2006

I received a Call from Fast-NU and was asked to judge a programming competition at their Annual All Pakistan Programming and Software Competition. To judge something which you have done all your life seems not a big issue but considering the fact that the programs will be coming from the best students from all over Pakistan and few from neighboring countries makes it really interesting.

BizTalk Server 2006 RTM is Released

Microsoft has finally unvieled BizTalk Server 2006 RTM on March 27th, 2006. This RTM version of BizTalk Server 2006 is available for download for MSDN Subscribers. Check out the following link for more information:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/biztalk/

Speaking at Microsoft Developers Days 2006

Speaking at MSDD 2006 felt real existed plus I feel proud that I was given a change to speak at such an event. The main objective was to update the current IT mainstream about the latest cutting edge tools and techniques that improve security during project life cycle using Microsoft technologies and thereby enabling them to practice better developing methodologies in an industry where security is an ever growing concern. I spoke at Indigo and its security. The event was a big hit and the feedback from the General Public was great

Gulf Developers Conference 2006

GDC 2006 is an event that provides a comprehensive technical overview as well as more insight on the latest (both recently released and upcoming) Microsoft development and platform technologies. During the GDC 2006 event, there will be many sessions that would demonstrate the latest advanced features that were introduced in Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, BizTalk Server 2006, Windows Vista and how all these technologies can be used to build reliable, secure, high performance applications that can connect people, information, processes and systems together. More than 1700 technology professionals from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region are expected to join this event and get the opportunity to meet and interact with top technology experts in the industry and Microsoft team for the duration of the event.

Hosting Indigo service in IIS

Today I hosted services in IIS for the first time. It is pretty easy (my first expression was that it will be really hard to run in IIS). It very simple and the benefits of deploying service in IIS are too many to have not explored this option so I tried it and it worked :))

New papers on Biztalk Server 2006

Understanding BizTalk Server 2006

Learn about key features and improvements in BizTalk Server 2006, such as significantly simpler installation; better support for deploying, monitoring, and managing applications; and improved capabilities for Business Activity Monitoring.

BizTalk Server 2006 Adapter Enhancements

This white paper discusses both the new built-in adapters and enhancements to the existing built-in adapters that will ship with BizTalk Server 2006.

BizTalk Server 2006 Application Deployment and Management

This white paper describes two new key features of BizTalk Server 2006—the capability to manage BizTalk artifacts as a single application, and the ability to monitor a group of artifacts through the use of the BizTalk Server Administration Console, which makes BizTalk Server less time-consuming to manage.

BizTalk Server 2006 Business Activity Monitoring

This paper provides a detailed description of two new Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) features in BizTalk Sever 2006—the BizTalk Server BAM Portal, and Alerts and Notification Support—and it discusses enhancements to the BAM features in BizTalk Server 2004.

BizTalk Server 2006 Developer Tools Improvements

This white paper describes some key product enhancements in BizTalk Server 2006 that are of interest to developers, in particular the Flat File Wizard.

BizTalk Server 2006 Runtime Improvements

This white paper reviews the improvements that have been made to message processing as part of the core engine enhancements for BizTalk Server 2006.

BizTalk Server 2006 Setup and Migration

Included in this white paper is a high-level overview of the BizTalk Sever 2006 setup process and how it differs with the BizTalk Server 2004 install process.

Understanding the Hub and Spoke Deployment Model for BizTalk Server 2006

Read this article to understand how the BizTalk Server 2006 hub and spoke model supports administrators who want to install and deploy the associated bits of a BizTalk Server solution from one central server and multiple remote servers.

The Business Value of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

This white paper examines the opportunities and benefits of RFID and how this technology will revolutionize supply chain management.

Preparing for Microsoft Developers Days 2006

Today I was told that I’ll be speaking and presenting some topic @ Microsoft Developers Days 2006. Plus I’ll be part of the organizing Committee for the event my responsibility is to look at the technical side i.e. speakers and their topics. Topics were decided 1 month earlier so my job was to prepare the speakers plus my own presentation. Also had a meeting with Microsoft ISV manager Waqar Khamisani for the approval of topics and presenters.

Free Microsoft re-Exams

If you are planning to do any Microsoft exam do it ASAP. Microsoft offers a free re-exam voucher when you fail one exam. Take this chance for a limited time. Find the details here.

The offer is valid till June 30, 2006.