Thomas F. Abraham – On Technology

Digineer continues to be a leading Microsoft partner for BizTalk Server in the Twin Cities area.  As of this writing, we are proud to have six consultants who have passed exam 70-235, and several like myself who also completed the 2004 certification exam.  We are active in the Twin Cities BizTalk Server User Group and regularly provide content for the BizTalk Hotrod e-mag.

Since I have been so behind on my blog this year, I’m writing this in November but I passed the 70-235 exam in June (!).  Passing is 700 with 50 questions total.  I was pleased to walk away with an 842, despite the diabolical BAM questions they always throw in.

I think the exam was quite good as certification exams go.  It covered many aspects of the product and in order to pass you will have to spend hands-on time with the product.  There was quite a bit of BAM and BRE, some poorly written questions, but pretty much as expected overall.  There was a question on BRE FactRetrievers that I wasn’t expecting, but otherwise, no code-focused questions.

The question types are a lot of “choose X of Y”, some straight choose-one multiple choice and some “choose the necessary steps from a list and put them in the right order.”

If you’re a current or aspiring BizTalk developer and want to be part of a group who really knows and loves BizTalk, and you’re in the Twin Cities area, please contact me.  We are always looking for people who have a passion for BizTalk!

A while back Microsoft copied some of the biggest and most in-demand software downloads for MSDN Subscribers to the Akamai content distribution network.  If you haven’t heard of Akamai, it operates a worldwide network of content distribution servers with the goal of offloading download activity from web servers and moving the content as close to your physical location as possible.  It’s all about getting data to you faster.

There are now two ways to get some popular software from MSDN Subscriber Downloads.  The first, and familiar, way is to log into the Subscriber Downloads website as usual, and use the Microsoft Download Manager ActiveX control to download the software.  The newer, Akamai way is (I believe) only available from one web page here.  You will still need to log in as usual.

In order to use the Akamai downloads:

1. Allow pop-ups from http://msdn2.microsoft.com.
2. Visit the downloads link, log in, and when the page comes up, look down to the “Top Subscriber Downloads” area.  These are the Akamai download links.
3. Determine if the software you want is in the list.  If not, you’ll have to go through the normal Subscriber Downloads site.
4. If the software you want, like VS 2008, is in the list, click the link to begin the download.  A pop-up will appear, and you will have to allow the Akamai Download Manager ActiveX control to install.  You may need to re-click the link after the control installs.
5. The Download Manager will ask for a folder to store the file in.  You’ll have to keep its window open while the download takes place.
6. If you are on Vista with default configuration, there is one little catch: the Download Manager will not be allowed to download to most directories on your hard disk, and it will be forced into a Vista virtualized folder system.  That’s where Vista points an application to a folder in a temporary location (not the folder the application thinks it is pointing to) for security with Internet applications.  Once you have downloaded a multi-GB file and it is not in the folder that you selected at the start of the download, you are probably not going to be a happy camper.  It’s there, just not where you expect.  Look for a folder like this: C:UserstabrahamAppDataLocalMicrosoftWindowsTemporary Internet FilesVirtualizedCUserstabrahamDocuments.  In this example, I pointed the Download Manager to C:UserstabrahamDocuments and that is where it ended up.

I hope that helps.  Some of the downloads are a lot faster from Akamai — if they happen to be popular enough to be on the Top Subscriber Downloads list.  Visual Studio 2008 RTM is up there as I write this, and my download just finished.  Time to install!

The next major release of Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 have quietly been released to manufacturing over the weekend, along with .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 and .NET 3.0 SP1.  This is an important release of Visual Studio because it fully integrates the tooling for the technologies released in .NET 3.0 (Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation and CardSpace) and, for the first time, can target multiple versions of the .NET Framework.

Our team has been building experience in the .NET 3.0 technologies for most of this year and playing with the betas, and we’re looking forward to working with the improved tooling in the RTM release.

Download .NET Framework 3.5 here.  The .NET 3.5 installer will install the 2.0/3.0 Framework and 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1 automatically.  The service packs are also available separately for 2.0 and 3.0.  As for Visual Studio 2008, I think the MSDN subscriber downloads site is having issues already, probably due to high demand.

I just finished installing .NET Framework 3.5 RTM on my laptop running Vista Enterprise.  The install took a long time, about 30 minutes, but succeeded.  Along with 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1, it also installed two Vista hotfixes, KB929300 and KB110806.  This release, like 3.0, is more of an additive release that requires and builds upon 2.0 and 3.0, unlike the 1.1 to 2.0 transition.

There is also a big new training kit (120 MB) that includes presentations, demos and labs.  You can get that here.  There are also 3.5 whitepapers by David Chappell and a 3.0 common namespaces and types poster.

I’ve been working with 3.0 and the 2008 betas for about 10 months now, so I’ve been a bit negligent with my blogging!  It has just ended up to be another really busy year.  I hope to get some new posts out about 3.0/3.5 soon.

From Microsoft:

.NET Framework 3.5 builds incrementally on the new features added in .NET Framework 3.0. For example, feature sets in Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows CardSpace. In addition, .NET Framework 3.5 contains a number of new features in several technology areas which have been added as new assemblies to avoid breaking changes. They include the following:

• Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness. This new feature will let you write code written in LINQ-enabled languages to filter, enumerate, and create projections of several types of SQL data, collections, XML, and DataSets by using the same syntax.
• ASP.NET AJAX lets you create more efficient, more interactive, and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers.
• New Web protocol support for building WCF services including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM, and several new WS-* standards.
• Full tooling support in Visual Studio 2008 for WF, WCF, and WPF, including the new workflow-enabled services technology.
• New classes in .NET Framework 3.5 base class library (BCL) that address many common customer requests.

This has turned out to be a very busy year, thanks in part to Microsoft’s ever-accelerating stream of product releases.  Even five years ago I never thought that I’d hope Microsoft would slow down!

One of those exciting new products is Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2, which features Microsoft’s new RFID platform, extensive support for EDI and all-new native WCF adapters (my favorite!).  I had the pleasure of presenting at the Minneapolis/St. Paul-area BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Launch event on October 9th.  My session was entitled “BizTalk Server 2006 R2: A Core Component of a Service-Oriented Architecture” and was very well-attended.  Thank you to everyone who listened in!  We even had Jon Flanders from Pluralsight and Michael Woods from the BizTalk product group on hand, and Michael introduced my sessions with an overview of Microsoft’s vision of SOA.

Tonight, November 15th, I’m presenting a session with my co-worker Randall entitled “Message Queuing with BizTalk 2006 R2: MSMQ, IBM WebSphere MQ and Ordered Delivery” for the Twin Cities BizTalk User Group.  I’m going to talk about queuing and the pros and cons, go through some MQ configuration issues and demo the MSMQ and WebSphere MQ adapters for BizTalk.  Randall is going to show some code as part of a solution for ordered delivery using MSMQ.  We hope to see you there!