Dick Dijkstra

BizTalk Mapper on Surface

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:29:00 GMT

Have a look at this post by Tim Rayburn. Nice combination of technology!

Interview in Automatiserings Gids

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:27:00 GMT

Recently I've been interviewed by Automatiserings Gids about fragmentation in .NET. Read the article here

Testing in integration solutions

Dick Dijkstra — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:05:00 GMT

I recently told something about testing and BizTalk for the BizTalk User Group and wrote an article about this subject (Dutch). Material will be online soon...

Ghostdoc

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:17:00 GMT

I thought NDoc was great, this (http://www.blueonionsoftware.com/Blog.aspx?p=ca36e092-4671-49ca-9af5-5de2e0f6dc72) is even better!!

BizTalk 2006 Best Practices Analyzer

Dick Dijkstra — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:17:00 GMT

A really helpful tool to see whether Best Practices are applied to your BizTalk solution.

Exposing a BizTalk webservice that accepts generic content

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 08:52:00 GMT

In a BizTalk HTTP messaging scenario, it's fairly common to have one port that receives all message types. Depending on the message type (and perhaps some other properties) messages are routed to different destinations. You can implement the same pattern with the SOAP adapter. Have a look at Richard's blog for a complete description.

The future of BizTalk / WCF / WF

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 08:46:00 GMT

A lot of guessing and many new questions in this good article by Tomas Restrepo on the future of BizTalk / WCF / WF.

Dragon Curve

Dick Dijkstra — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:23:00 GMT

At highschool I had to write a java application that showed the dragon curve fractal. I liked the assignment at the time because of the power of recursion. I wrote a simple .NET app that does the same. Download here

Property Demotion

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:51:00 GMT

Most people working with BizTalk have heard of property promotion, in fact property promotion is very important in CBR messaging scenarios. Property promotion makes it possible to route messages based on their content. In short, property promotion is taking information from the message and putting it in the context of a message.

Have you ever heard of property DEmotion?? This is the opposite of property PROmotion, so taking information from the context and putting it in the message. This might become handy when you for instance need the initial filename of message. This information is stored in the context, to be more specific in the element ReceivedFileName in the schema FILE.bts_file_properties in the referenced assembly Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas. How do you get this value in your output message (demotion is done in the send port - use the XMLTransmit pipeline)?

Right-click the element in your schema you want to contain the ReceivedFileName value and click Promote -> Show Promotions.
Add a new property schema: choose <your schema project> -> References -> Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas -> Schemas -> FILE.bts_file_properties
Choose a proper prefix e.g. btsFileProps or something, I think ns0 is dirty
Add your element and bind it to <your prefix>:ReceivedFileName and click ok

Deploy your schema and test it - your output message should contain the ReceivedFileName property value if your input message has left the element to be filled empty. Questions? Feel free to ask!

BizTalk Hotrod: Where BizTalk Meets the Road...

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:38:00 GMT

I really like the magazines (issue 1, issue 2) on the BizTalk Hotrod website. Both the website and the articles so far contain very good and readable information on new BizTalk technologies.

AMQP

Dick Dijkstra — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:15:00 GMT

Have a look at this. AMQP is a messaging standard that looks very powerful. I wonder when a .NET / BizTalk implemention will be available.

Schemas without namespace

Dick Dijkstra — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:59:00 GMT

It's not recommended, but sometimes you dont have a choice to use schemas without namespaces. BizTalk deals with the schemas very well, just be aware that the BTS.MessageType used in the filter will be only the rootnode, not #RootNode.

Working on BizTalk Solution Software Factory

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 10:01:00 GMT

I'm working on a new version of the BizTalk Software Factory, enhancing the old version with functionality to create pipeline components. Futher on, the new version will contain a DSL for creating CBR solutions. Future plans are to include functionality for creating application adapters and BizTalk adapters.

AssemblyInfo.cs in template when compiling Guidance Automation Project

Dick Dijkstra — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:30:00 GMT

When you're working with an Guidance Automation Project and you have template for lets say, a class library project that contains the file properties\assemblyinfo.cs, make sure you set the build action to "Content" instead of "Compile", or else you'll get an error message saying there are duplicate attributes in AssemblyInfo.cs. You get the error because the GA project itself also contains an AssemblyInfo.cs file.

P.S. Don't forget to set the "Copy To Output Directory" to "Copy if newer" for obvious reasons...

Covast & R2

Dick Dijkstra — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:49:00 GMT

With the coming of native EDI support in BizTalk 2006 R2, many people thought Covast would not be involved in creating EDI solutions with BizTalk. Well, that's not what's going to happen. Covast adds the very specific standards, like EDIG@S, ODETTE and EDINE. Moreover, Covast adds a nice B2B appliance called BBOT...nice! Have a look at the article.

NCover

Dick Dijkstra — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:40:00 GMT

When testing your software, do you hit every line of code? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but how can you make sure you do? Check out this tool, it'll show you the level of coverage of your code.

BizTalk Documenter

Dick Dijkstra — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:50:00 GMT

Many developers use this great BizTalk Documenter tool to create a CHM report describing their BizTalk configuration. Just a quick tip: when you get the error message "Unable to locate the help compiler executable", go download the HTML Help Workshop compiler here and install it. When you don't install the workshop in the default folder (C:\Program Files\HTML Help Workshop), change the line

in the config file (Microsoft.Sdc.BiztalkDocumenter.exe.config) of the BizTalk Documenter, so that it reflects the proper location of hhc.exe

Orchestration Profiler

Dick Dijkstra — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:03:00 GMT

Have a look at this tool! BizTalk 2006 Orchestration Profiler creates reports on the level of coverage of the orchestrations when testing them. The reports show the percentage covered and some metrics, so you can easily identify performance bottlenecks.

.NET Magazine

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 09:21:00 GMT

A while ago I wrote an article on Failed Message Routing in BizTalk, it was published in the dutch .NET Magazine (click). An article on BAM of a former collegue of mine, Sander Schutten, was published in the same issue (click).

Christian Siegers, a collegue of mine, published an article on the CRM adapter in the latest version of the magazine; We are both working on a new article on TDD with BizTalk to be published in december 2007.

Software Factories

Dick Dijkstra — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:59:00 GMT

Lately I've been working a lot on software factories, I found this toolkit to be really helpful. It combines GAT/GAX with DSLTools, so you can use the best of both worlds working towards a complete software factory concept.

Behaviour Driven Development

Dick Dijkstra — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 10:49:00 GMT

Behaviour Driven Developement (BDD) is an evolution of Test Driven Development (TDD), the methodology many developers nowadays use. BDD is very intuitive and fairly easy to understand for everyone involved in a software development project. There's a framework available that applies BDD called NBehave (www.nbehave.org) which is a port of JBehave. More information on BDD can be found here.

BizTalk Application Software Factory

Dick Dijkstra — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:56:00 GMT

I developed a software factory for creating BizTalk Applications. The software factory is created using the Guidance Automation Toolkit. It created a solution structure for you, including a strong named key if you didn't supply it. Furthermore, the software factory provides methods to create maps and schemas using best practices. Download here.

Web Service Software Factory

Dick Dijkstra — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 14:32:00 GMT

Recently the Web Service Software Factory has been released. This tool is really helpful in creating robust web service solutions very easily

Further details: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/12/ServiceStation/

Download: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480534.aspx

BTUG Meeting

Dick Dijkstra — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:39:00 GMT

On March 29, there will be another BizTalk User Group Meeting in Veenendaal (InfoSupport). Futher details: http://www.btug.nl (dutch)

New Blog

admin — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:26:00 GMT

Welcome to my new blog. I'll try to keep this new blog up to date with interesting BizTalk and .NET stories