DennisMulder.NET

Developing Integration Solutions with BizTalk Server 2006 R2

dennism — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:38:00 GMT

Earlier this year I updated the whitepaper “Developing Integration Solutions with BizTalk Server 2004” to cover BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and Team Foundation Server.

This document is now finally published on MSDN.

Check out the newly updated document that provides techniques and best practices for designing, developing, and deploying solutions within Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006 (R2) in conjunction with Team Foundation Server.

I intend to create yet another version of this document to cover BizTalk Server 2009 next year!

Sample code - btsautomatedbuildsample.zip

The sample code provides a sample solution that leverages TeamBuild to Compile, Package and Deploy the solution through TeamBuild 2008.

Extract the solution to c:\btsautomatedbuildsample.
You need to create a new Team Build in TFS (both TFS 2005 and 2008 should work, although 2005 will require some minor changes).

This will create a new folder in TeamBuildTypes\<Build name>
Replace the tfsbuild.proj and add the CustomBizTalkBuild.proj to the TeamBuildTypes\<Build name> folder as such (the files can be found in the teambuildtypes subfolder in the zipfile)

The CustomBizTalkBuild.targets contains the magic and will compile and deploy the solution to the local biztalk instance.
Make sure your default host is running in Trusted mode.
Permissions for the build server user (the user under which Team Build is running):
- Permissions to deploy to BizTalk (BizTalk Server Administrators)
- Permissions to deploy to the GAC (Easiest to make the user a local administrator)
- Full Control on the c:\program Files\BizTalk Server 2006\Pipeline Components\ folder (add the BizTalk Server Administrators group to this folder)
- Make sure the user under which the BizTalk Host is running has permissions to c:\btsautomatedbuildsample\inbound and c:\btsautomatedbuildsample\outbound.
- The default host must have Trusted Authentication turned on.

VSTS Rangers shipped TFS Branching Guide 2.0

dennism — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:51:04 GMT

Branching strategy is one of the most important aspects of TFS deployment. The right strategy can lead to optimized team cooperation, increased productivity and a successful adoption. On the other hand, a bad branching strategy can cause frustrations, damage production and derail TFS adoption in an organization. We have therefore put a lot of effort in creating a set of practical guidance to educate our customers and partners and support their VSTS adoption efforts.

The TFS Branching Guide can be found here on Codeplex.

Vhdmount on Vista

dennism — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:17:22 GMT

Lately I have been running into the following error message when unplugging a VHD file that I mounted with Vhdmount on Vista:

“Failed to unplug the virtual disk device(s)”

See the blog post from my colleague, Clemens Schotte to install Vhdmount and have some convenient right click menus:

http://blogs.msdn.com/cschotte/archive/2008/03/26/how-to-mount-a-vhd-quickly-under-vista-using-your-mouse.aspx

I suggest the following, change the following line:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Mount\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Virtual Server\\Vhdmount\\vhdmount.exe\" /p \"%1\""

to:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Virtual.Machine.HD\shell\Mount\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Virtual Server\\Vhdmount\\vhdmount.exe\" /p /f \"%1\""

(notice the /f), /F description:

Performs the specified operation without creating an Undo Disk. This parameter is applicable for /p and /m. All changes to the mounted disk are directly written to the specified VHD.

But then still you can run into “Failed to unplug the virtual disk device(s)”.

To fix this I opened the “MS Virtual Server SCSI Disk Device” in Device Manager:

And changed the Write Caching setting to “Optimize for Quick Removal”.

Unfortunately you have to do this again for each image you mount.

Software Factory Community Portal

dennism — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:03:14 GMT

From Edward:

It is there, a new Software Factory Community Portal !

This community is all about software factories, domain specific languages, Visual Studio Extensibility and other related topics. The portal includes a forum, blog aggregation, news and additional resources like links, articles, books, etc. We haven’t finished adding all resources yet but registered users are allowed to add new resources, provide ratings and add comments.

"Oslo" unveiled at SOA & BPM Conference

dennism — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:20:17 GMT

Microsofts next generation SOA & BPM platform will be unveiled at the SOA & BPM Conference in Redmond. Sadly I am not there, while I am in the area for an internal event. On my trip here I already ran into a couple of attendees, Carlo Poli and Erwyn van de Meer. And of course Pieter de Bruin (ex-colleague from Avanade) is speaking there!

Watch the Microsoft SOA site for further details about the announcement:

www.microsoft.com/soa

Software Factories Illustrated Storyboard

dennism — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:34:57 GMT

My good friend and colleague (well almost), Erik Gunvaldson, has created a very nice Illustrated Storyboard in easy language to get a good grasp of what Software Factories are.

Software Factories Illustrated Storyboard

Associated blogpost

Technorati Tags: Software Factories

Pro WCF @ Books24x7

dennism — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:07:36 GMT

Technorati Tags: wcf

At Avanade everyone has access to books24x7. In their announcement of new books Pro WCF, the book I co-authored, appeared!

(picture ripped from Amit his blog)

Public case study: Software Lifecycle @ Interpolis by Avanade

dennism — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 10:12:07 GMT

I am proud to see this public case study published on the Microsoft site. I have been involved in pre-sales of this project and guiding of the team on the background as the Architect/Lifecycle Solution Manager. Although this project is still ongoing, Interpolis made a big step in the right direction in doing .NET projects by implementing Visual Studio Team System and ACA Lifecycle.

"Developers at Dutch Insurance Firm Boost Productivity with New Monitoring System

With 22,000 employees and a turnover of €12 billion in 2005, Achmea is the largest insurance company in the Netherlands. It wanted to increase the responsiveness of its IT department by improving the transparency of development projects. Partnering with Avanade and Microsoft, Achmea successfully implemented Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System, which provides administrators with access to detailed, accurate information across multiple systems. Projects can now be tracked from beginning to end, making it easier to maximise efficiencies in the development process. And with Visual Studio 2005 Team System, the company’s 200 developers have increased productivity."

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000000562

Leaving Avanade... working for Microsoft

dennism — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 08:22:58 GMT

Just a short blogpost. I have decided to leave Avanade at the end of september and work for Microsoft as a Development Consultant as of the 1st of october. It has been a tough decision, but I am confident this will lead to even more interesting work for myself...

This might create room for new interesting blogposts.

PDC 2007 Slips

dennism — Fri, 25 May 2007 05:05:39 GMT

So I thought Microsoft did have some news to bring to the table on PDC 2007, but apparently they already announced all of their upcoming news at the MIX07.

So they are postponing their event on the future of the platform to a later date, I am assuming that is at least a year.

Well I have sent most of my training days already, so that kinda comes in handy!

Microsoft patterns & practices releases ESB Guidance on Codeplex

dennism — Tue, 22 May 2007 20:28:03 GMT

The Microsoft patterns & practices group has released the CTP1 of ESB Guidance on CodePlex. They are targeting final release for September 2007.

http://www.codeplex.com/esb

First dutch code camp

dennism — Mon, 14 May 2007 11:05:14 GMT

Last saturday we had the first dutch code camp. In my opinion it was a great show. I did a presentation together with Entlib Legend Olaf Conijn on Entlib 3.0. You can download the code and the deck here:

I very much liked the Chalk & Talk session from Paul Gielens on Domain Driven Design.

So for me, we should follow this up pretty soon with a new Codecamp....

On a side note, within Avanade we had plans to start up this Codecamp here in The Netherlands. Adam Magee, the aussie who joined us back in December by transferring from Avanade Australia, had great experiences with Codecamps in Waggawagga (yes! no typos here). Anyways, so I registered www.codecamp.nl to figure out a week later that SDN had similar plans and registered www.code-camp.nl. Anyway, we hooked up and the www.codecamp.nl DNS is now also pointing to the only true dutch codecamp site. Stay tuned for the next one...

Domain name:

      codecamp.nl

   Status: active

   Committed to ADR: yes

   Administrative contact:
      MUL010923-TRAIP
      D Mulder
      dennis.mulder@gmail.com

   Registrar:
      Transip BV
      Jan Tinbergenstraat 27e
      2811DZ REEUWIJK
      Netherlands

   Technical contact(s):
      MUL010923-TRAIP
      D Mulder
      dennis.mulder@gmail.com

   Domain nameservers:
      ns0.transip.net
      ns1.transip.net
      ns2.transip.net

   Date registered: 09-02-2007
   Record last updated: 09-02-2007

Domain name:
      code-camp.nl

   Status: active

   Registrant:
      SDN000014-ISINS
      SDN
      Fazantlaan 8
      7102AR  Winterswijk
      Netherlands

   Committed to ADR: yes

   Administrative contact:
      PEC000157-ISINS
      J.J. Pecht
      +31 (0)543518058
      info@sdn.nl

   Registrar:
      IS InterNed Services B.V. *)
      Gorslaan 18
      1441RG  PURMEREND
      Netherlands

   Technical contact(s):
      BEH000176-ISINS
      IS Beheer
      +31 (0)299476185
      beheer@is.nl

   Domain nameservers:
      ns1.is.nl            213.133.33.2
      ns2.is.nl            213.196.21.3

   Date registered: 14-02-2007
   Record last updated: 14-02-2007

Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server Beta Exam (071-510) Passed!

dennism — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:32:24 GMT

Cool, I passed the TFS beta exam! I wasn't really surprised about that, since I have been working with the product for quite some time, but I wasn't too certain about all the XML Syntax questions (on build scripts etc.) that they asked.

Anyways, this saves me some learning time, that I can now use to finally upgrade my MCSD to MCPD!

Whitepaper: Building a DSL for an existing Framework (ACA.NET + WCF)

dennism — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:16:00 GMT

Finally the whitepaper I have been talking about before is published. The paper dives into the process we took to build a Service DSL for WCF and ACA.NET (Avanade Connected Architectures for .NET), the framework on which Entlib is based (see Help->About in the Entlib configuration tool).

For a couple of reasons it took much longer to get this published on MSDN, it was originally planned for the Architecture Journal #9. That is the bad news, the good news is that is is finally here. Bear in mind that this paper was originally written in Mid 2006.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb381702(vs.80).aspx

I'd appreciate it if you leave comments on this blogpost, if you have any after reading the paper.

WCF Webcast time

dennism — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:02:04 GMT

The authors of Pro WCF have planned two WCF Webcasts. These webcasts fit into the Microsoft APIO (Application Platform Infrastructure Optimization) initiave.

Webcast 1 - “How to build an SOA application with WCF”
Webcast 2 - "How WCF impacts on Enterprise scale applications"

Free Chapter: Hosting and Consuming WCF Services on MSDN!

dennism — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:36:22 GMT

We just published our first MSDN article relating to the Pro WCF Book. It is currently being selected to headline Microsoft .Net 3.0 Development Centre homepage! This is a customized version of chapter 5 of the book of which I was the main author.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/default.aspx

The article can be found in the MSDN library. The direct link:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332338.aspx

Pro WCF - Best Seller?

dennism — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 06:08:16 GMT

I am proud to let you know Pro WCF is in the best seller list of Apress, see here:

http://www.apress.com/tradesite/

And the screenshot below:

Pro WCF out, 1 month later

dennism — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 20:29:30 GMT

Our book is now out for a month or so and sales is going very well. We are also starting to receive some great reviews, see here and on Amazon. Very nice to see people like our work. We are currently in the process of publishing Chapter 5 (one of my chapters) on MSDN and another one (probably chapter 9 on COM+ integration) will follow soon after. Links to follow in a future blogpost.

On the Apress site you can read the table of contents and chapter 1. Chapter 1 is definately a must read when you are new to SOA or when you want to sell SOA in your organization to business people.

I am also working with Rob Caron to get a paper published on MSDN talking about the development of DSLs that also talks a bit about WCF. Link to follow later.

Happy reading!

PRO WCF: Sourcecode available

dennism — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:19:00 GMT

The sourcecode of our book is available here.

TFS MS Project Mapping file

dennism — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:14:00 GMT

It appears, the bug is was mumbling about here and here in TFS SP1, was a bug in the process template I am using. Sorry Microsoft.

I was able to fix this by exporting the mapping file, making a couple of changes and importing the mapping file.

Moving Team Foundation Server from single virtual server to dual server on a new domain

dennism — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 10:13:00 GMT

I was recently forced to do a migration from a single virtual server to a dual server deployment on a new domain with a couple of running projects on it. Now you might argue things like this should be thorougly thinked through first, which we did, but then our virtual environment ran into a couple significant issues. So I was forced to do this migration quickly to limit the downtime for the projects that were using the platform.

In this blog post I will share the lessons learned as it appeared the Microsoft migration guides, though useful, didn't support my complete scenario.

The Microsoft guides for migration of TFS environments seem great at first glance as there are a couple of scenarios available. Unfortunately our scenario is not there. Here's a list with links to a couple of guides required in a typical TFS migration scenario:

The order in which I have done the migration is as in the previous list, although the following guides aren't written for my scenario, so I needed to mix the following guides:

So in the remainder of this blogpost I will go through the order on how to mix the latter guides. Since the Microsoft material is copyrighted I think I am better off not copy/pasting a new guide.

Both guides start with references to the backup guides mentioned in my first list, I chose to use the How to: Move Your Team Foundation Server from One Hardware Configuration to Another to start with as the first things you will have to do is the topic in that guide called "To install and prepare the new TFS server for a restore-based move". This involves backing up the Reporting Services installtion id's. You can skip steps 5-10 in that guide for this topic. Then it is time to the full data restore in the other guide (How to: Restore Team Foundation Server Data to a Different Server), without restoring the Sharepoint configuration database (STS_CONFIG_TFS). You can skip the topic "To re-configure and stop the report server" and the "To stop remaining services used by Team Foundation Server" as these are already done in the previous guide. The rest of the guide is fine, but you work through it till the "Reporting Connections for Reporting Services" topic. You can skip the rest of the guide and return to the previous guide (How to: Move Your Team Foundation Server from One Hardware Configuration to Another).

In that guide you are walking through the reconfiguration of the new application and data tier with a commandline tool (tfsadminutil). There's a typo in the guide that says (in step 1a) "On the new Team Foundation data-tier server, open a Command Prompt window and change directories to drive:\%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\Web Services\Services." to change the web.config to point to the old data tier, this should of course be done on the application tier. The guide is lacking the step to revert the web.config file to have the connection string point to the new datatier. So I have written these steps. You can do these steps right before the topic called "To move user accounts and service accounts":

To Restore the web.config

Modify the services web.config file and replace the Team Foundation data-tier name with the NEW Team Foundation data-tier name as follows:

On the new Team Foundation application-tier server, open a Command Prompt window and change directories to drive:\%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server\Web Services\Services.
Open the web.config file in this directory in Notepad or any text-based editor.
In the connection string value, under the appSettings node, change the Source parameter to use the original Team Foundation data-tier server name. For example, the following line must be modified from:
Application Name=TeamFoundation;Data Source=oldTeamFoundationDataTierServerName;Initial Catalog=TfsIntegration;Integrated Security=True;Persist Security Info=False
to
Application Name=TeamFoundation;Data Source=newTeamFoundationDataTierServerName;Initial Catalog=TfsIntegration;Integrated Security=True;Persist Security Info=False
Save the Web.config file and close Notepad.

In the topic called "To restore WSS project sites on the new team foundation application-tier server" you will setup the new WSS Configuration database to use the WSS Content database that you restored already in the "How to: Restore Team Foundation Server Data to a Different Server" guide.

After this I was all set. I still think Microsoft did great work in the possibility to move around TFS, even to different domains. In particular the tool to reconfigure the system is great (tfsadminutil).

Yikes I am tagged!

dennism — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 13:44:00 GMT

There's a snowball of blogposts crawling through the internet. I got tagged by Edward and Mike, so here I go...

So here's my list of things people in general don't know about me:

I am married with Janneke Verlaat on 24-8-1999. We held our party in the Ajax Business Lounge in the Amsterdam ArenA. At the time we were working in the stadium and we managed to prevent a surprise where our marriage would have been announced on the field, right before the start of an important match that Ajax had. We have two daughters, Amber (26-5-2003) and Anouk (25-5-2006). Notice the timing! :)
At the age of 15 or 16 back in 1992 I published a game on the Commodore 64 called Dr. Foster. I mainly did some graphics stuff for this game, but was also coding some other games that were never released. I still have them on some 5 1/4 disks lying around.
I used the be very active in the cracking and demoscene of the Commodore 64. Coding was done in assembly, a great way to learn how computers work (if you consider the C64 a computer). At least this was the time when I wanted to become a programmer. My nicks were: Mc-T-Fly (Triad, The Ruling Company, TAT), Rock Krusher (Sense Design). I was the main author of the "Ambition" magazine for the C64.
When it was time for me to choose what my profession was going to be I wanted to become a Police detective and did a couple of tests with them, unfortunately at the time the Police in the Netherlands was forced to hire more people from ethnic minorities and women, so I was not allowed to enter the program. Then I started studying Computer Science at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and got hooked into Microsoft technology with my first internship back in 1997 (so now I am into MS technology for 10 years)
I love snowboarding:

Tagged: Olaf, Shawn, Amit, Chris, Sander

VS2005 SP1 installation eats memory

dennism — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 20:51:11 GMT

Don't get me wrong it is cool that VS2005 SP1 is released, but during my installation it was eating diskspace and it *LOVES* memory:

Visual Studio 2005 SP1 bug? with Office 2003 and 2007 side-by-side

dennism — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 14:24:00 GMT

After my recent install of Visual Studio 2005 SP1 I continued using the plugins in Excel and Project 2003 to access my work items in TFS. Unfortunately I am running into some nasty issues that probably have to do with my side-by-side installation of both Office 2003 and Office 2007. I am still using Office 2003 for my main tasks, still have to get used to the new ribbons. But after the install of SP1 I cannot work in Excel and Project 2003 anymore. A couple of issues I am having are in Excel:

TF84032: Team Foundation could not insert the work item list because there is data in the worksheet

that cannot be moved. Select a location where there is enough space to insert the list.

In an EMPTY excel!

And in Project 2003:

Publishing a simple task (just one) gives: "Cannot complete the operation. An unexpected error occurred"

In Excel 2007 it is working as expected, in Project 2007 it gives the same error as in Project 2003.

One of my colleagues doesn't have Office 2007 installed, but does have VS 2005 SP1 installed. His Office 2003 plugins for VSTS are working as expected....

UPDATE: It appears this is a bug in the process template I am using, specifically in the project mapping file. See my new post for more clarification.

WCF v2 and BPEL?

dennism — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 06:32:43 GMT

These guys are fun, come and see Doug, Don, Steve and some others appear on this channel 9 movie.

Curious what this BPEL stuff is going to be, that they talk about around 27:57.