News & Announcements

11/12/2008 Meeting - Caching and Exception Handling with WCF

2008-11-06T12:27:00Z

We have a double header planned for the November 12th meeting!

Todd Stone will present on caching frequently accessed data near a Windows Communication Foundation service. WCF can be a chatty interface and Todd will demonstrate that caching the frequently accessed data near the WCF service will avoid a lot of overhead in accessing it every time from the database. This in turn makes your WCF service more scalable, robust and available.

Zach Bonham will present on the fundamentals of exception handling when working with Windows Communication Foundation. Zach will cover options for communicating exceptions across the service boundary in a distributed system, getting the most out of your exception handling (client and service), working with fault contracts and a look at IErrorHandler.

We will have FREE food, drinks, and there will be a prize drawing for those who attend - courtesy of Sogeti!

Presentation: Caching and Exception Handling with Windows Communication Foundation
Date: Wednesday, November 12th 2008
Time: 6:30PM
Where: Microsoft, Las Colinas LC1 (7000 HWY 161, Irving TX)
RSVP: rsvp@dfwcsug.com or via Codezone (new users use Access Code 'BizTalk2006' - see Join Us On Codezone for more info!)
Maps: Google | Yahoo | Mapquest | Microsoft

Speaker Bio

Todd Stone is a developer at HBS Systems. He works with communicating with a variety of different platforms including Windows, UNIX, LINUX, and the IBM iSeries (AS/400).

Zach Bonham is a developer for Mary Kay, Inc. where he spends his time working with Microsoft Connected Systems technologies.

Sponsors

We would like to extend a special thank you to the sponsors of this event!

VSLive! Dallas 2008

2008-11-04T04:20:00Z

VSLive! Dallas, December 8-11, 2008

Architecture and Design
Implementing Infrastructure
LINQ
Thin Web Clients
Services and Workflows
Rich Clients
Process, Methodologies and Testing
Database Technologies

Early bird registration deadline is November, 5th!

Looking for an additional way to save? Take advantage of your choice to support your local user group community!

The User Group Promotion price and Priority Code is as follows:

You must enter the following priority code at the time of registration to take advantage of this special User Group promotion: Priority Code - VDAUG

Special Pricing for User Group members:

VSLive! Dallas Registration Package: $1,100 ($395 off the VSLive! Dallas Registration Package)

VSLive! Dallas PLUS Registration Package: $1,495 ($400 off the standard PLUS price)

We'd like to thank our local user group leaders that helped make this possible, THANK YOU!

10/08/2008 Meeting - Real World Example of Synchronous and Asynchronous Messaging with BizTalk Server

2008-10-02T23:27:00Z

Please join us on October 8th as Don Tian presents on how to create a platform in BizTalk to process messages in an asynchronous, sequential fashion with duplicate detection, error handling, and recovery. Don will utilize a custom orchestration delegator to provide a clean API to users of the platform and test the platform using BizTest. This example is based on the platform created at Countrywide.

We will have FREE food, drinks, and there will be a prize drawing for those who attend - courtesy of Sogeti!

Presentation: Real World Example of Synchronous and Asynchronous Messaging with BizTalk Server
Date: Wednesday, October 8th 2008
Time: 6:30PM
Where: Microsoft, Las Colinas LC1 (7000 HWY 161, Irving TX)
RSVP: rsvp@dfwcsug.com or via Codezone (new users use Access Code 'BizTalk2006' - see Join Us On Codezone for more info!)
Maps: Google | Yahoo | Mapquest | Microsoft

Speaker Bio

Don Tian is a Microsoft consultant for Sogeti. He has worked with BizTalk Server for over four years. He has also created a functional test tool for SOA named BizTest.

Sponsors

We would like to extend a special thank you to the sponsors of this event!

09/10/2008 Meeting - WCF in .NET 3.5 SP1 and MSMQ Follow up

2008-09-11T15:26:00Z

Thanks to everyone for attending and thanks to Darshan for presenting!

Darshan has provided us with this presentation, and source code, which can be downloaded here:

WCF in .NET 3.5 SP1 and MSMQ Communication Presentation and Source

Once again, great feedback from everyone...keep those ideas coming!

See you next month!

BizTalk 2009 and Area Events

2008-09-09T01:11:00Z

BizTalk 2009

Late last week, as part of an updated BizTalk Roadmap, Microsoft announced that they have renamed 'BizTalk Server 2006 R3' to 'BizTalk Server 2009'. This is a fairly significant release for BizTalk developers as the tooling will finally catch up to the rest of Visual Studio 2008! This should greatly enhance the BizTalk development experience! Ok..there is probably some other goodness in the release as well. Check out the roadmap for details!

Has 'Oslo' piqued your interest yet? If not, be sure to check out Oliver Sharp's announcement, as well as posts by Doug Purdy and Don Box. As always, you can stay up to speed with happenings in the world of BizTalk by subscribing to BizTalk Blogs!

Area Events

September 23 - ARCReady: Architecting Modern Distributed Applications

Free event hosted by Microsoft, see link for details. Please note that the event is an all day event presented in two sessions. The registration is for both sessions.

09/10/2008 Meeting - WCF in .NET 3.5 SP1 and MSMQ Communication

2008-08-25T00:03:00Z

Please join us on September 10th as Darshan Singh presents on the improvements to WCF in .NET 3.5 SP1 and MSMQ! We will have FREE food, drinks, and there will be a prize drawing for those who attend - courtesy of Sogeti!

Presentation: WCF in .NET 3.5 SP1 and MSMQ Communication
Date: Wednesday, September 10th 2008
Time: 6:30PM
Where: Microsoft, Las Colinas LC1 (7000 HWY 161, Irving TX)
RSVP: rsvp@dfwcsug.com or via Codezone (new users use Access Code 'BizTalk2006' - see Join Us On Codezone for more info!)
Maps: Google | Yahoo | Mapquest | Microsoft

Speaker Bio

Darshan Singh is a Sr. Developer at Intuit, working with the Innovative Gateway Solutions (IGS) team to provide credit card authorization gateway services. He is currently working on upgrading several .NET 1.1 and 2.0 applications to .NET 3.5.

Summary

In this two-topic presentation on Windows Communication Foundation, you will learn about the latest and greatest improvements to WCF introduced by .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1. The second part of the presentation will focus on implementing MSMQ-based communication using WCF.

Sponsors

We would like to extend a special thank you to the sponsors of this event!

8/13/2008 Meeting - Workflow as a Service Followup

2008-08-15T22:43:00Z

Wow! Thank you everyone for sharing your time during the August meeting! Based on the excellent questions, Anderson’s presentation on “Workflow as a Service” was very well received! Anderson has already posted the slide deck, sample code and additional resources, which you can download here.

As promised, we are publishing the feedback that we received for everyone’s review, and as a matter of record. The group leadership team will be using this feedback to try to determine how best to plan for presentations in the future.

Without further adieu, below are the presentation topics that were suggested by the group, along with the number of responses for each. As you can see, there was an overwhelming response for Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation!

We were missing some regular BizTalk attendees and also had several new faces, which might account for it!

Each of these topics is fairly broad by themselves, and in fact, the additional feedback we received was that you want to see MORE DETAIL and MORE ADVANCED TOPICS. The fluff is ok, but you want to get to the internals of a particular topic. We hear you! :) We will work on fleshing out more detailed topics. In the meantime, if you've got an idea for a deep dive, or are interested in presenting yourself, please let us know at vpmeetings (at) dfwcsug.com.

Additionally, there has been discussion around dedicating a segment of the meeting to hearing from someone in the group. This also coincides with some pretty consistent feedback about getting the chance to relate your personal experiences with Connected Systems technology. Whether it’s a chance for an architectural review, an overview of how a particular Connected Systems technology is implemented at your site, or even a “war story”, this will be a spot for someone each meeting to share with the group. Once we get a format defined for this we will be looking for volunteers to kick us off! If your interested, please let us know.

Until next month!

07/09/2008 Meeting - Workflow Policy and Rules Follow up

2008-08-14T23:09:00Z

I don't know how I missed this, but I did. Mark has graciously posted the content from his demo titled "Windows Workflow Foundation Policy and Rules". You can download it here. Go check it out!

Call for Speakers 2008

2008-08-13T12:36:00Z

From Todd Stone, VP of Meetings:

"The DFW Connected Systems User Group is looking for speakers for the rest of 2008.

We meet the 2nd Wednesday of each month at the Microsoft Campus in Irving. The August and December meeting dates have been filled. The next available open meeting date is, Wednesday, September 10th, we also need speakers for October 8th and November 12th. The presentation topics can be on Microsoft BizTalk Server, BizTalk adapters and accelerators, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, the Web Services Architecture, or XML technologies. If you would like to present on any of these topics or know of anyone else who may, please contact Todd Stone at vpmeetings (at) dfwcsug.com.

The current format we use for the meetings is as follows:

Each Meeting:
2 topics - 2 speakers
First speaker presents 30 minute beginner to intermediate level topic
Second speaker presents 1 hour advance level topic"

Feedback from our group suggests that everyone is interested in how everyone else is using connected system technologies. Don't be shy, this is a great opportunity to tell YOUR story!

Join DFWCSUG on CodeZone

2008-08-07T13:09:00Z

CodeZone is a user community portal that helps user groups better manage their membership, mainly by providing tools for managing users and user event registration. This helps our group, DFW Connected Systems User Group, in a couple of different ways. The one that has the biggest impact is that the more users on CodeZone the more prizes for the group! Who doesn't need more swag?

CodeZone is also a great way to get connected with other user groups in our community!

You can get connected to DFWCSUG in two easy steps:

First time CodeZone users can register with CodeZone. If you already have a CodeZone account, be sure your logged into CodeZone, then skip to step 2!
Get connected to DFWCSUG by entering Access Code 'BizTalk2006'.

Thats it! Be sure to tell your friends!

8/13/2008 Meeting - Workflow as a Service

2008-08-07T00:00:00Z

Please join us on August 13th as Anderson Imes presents on Workflow as a Service! We will have FREE food, drinks, and there will be a prize drawing for those who attend - courtesy of Sogeti!

Presentation: Workflow as a Service
Date: Wednesday, August 13th 2008
Time: 6:30PM
Where: Microsoft, Las Colinas LC1 (7000 HWY 161, Irving TX)
RSVP: rsvp@dfwcsug.com
Maps: Google | Yahoo | Mapquest | Microsoft

Speaker Bio

Anderson is a developer for Mary Kay and an active member of Microsoft's Connected Technology Advisor program. Anderson is currently delivering software solutions built on .NET, including Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow. You can learn more about Anderson from his blog http://theimes.com/.

Summary

In the past, raising events and communicating from the outside into a running workflow was difficult to understand and to manage. With .NET 3.5, though, Microsoft has blurred the lines between Windows Communication Foundation and Workflow Foundation, giving you the same great homogeneous communication model with workflow as you do a WCF service.

In this presentation you will learn:

How to implement a WCF service declaratively, using WF
How to create long-running operations that could span weeks, months, or years
New bindings in WCF for use in and out of WF
Tips to make sure your transition to .NET 4.0 WF is painless

Sponsors

We would like to extend a special thank you to the sponsors of this event!

07/09/2008 Meeting - Windows Workflow Foundation Policy and Rules

2008-06-25T14:29:00Z

Please join us as Mark Dunn, an INETA speaker, will be presenting Windows Workflow Foundation Policy and Rules next Wednesday 7/09/2008. As always, we will have FREE food, drinks, and there will be a prize drawing for those who attend - courtesy of Sogeti!

Presentation: Windows Workflow Foundation Policy and Rules
Date: Wednesday, July, 9th 2008
Time: 6:30PM
Where: Microsoft, Las Colinas LC1 (7000 HWY 161, Irving TX)
RSVP: rsvp@dfwcsug.com
Maps: Google | Yahoo | Mapquest | Microsoft

Summary

In the future, orchestration in BizTalk will be defined with Windows Workflow Foundation. It's an important tool for BizTalk developers to learn now in order to be prepared for the future. In this talk Mark will cover a brief introduction to workflow to explain where it fits and why you would interested as a BizTalk developer.

WF includes the ability to define rule driven workflows with a powerful rules engine. Mark will dig into the rules engine and explain how forward chaining works, how you can take control of rule evaluation yourself and how to use the various attributes that control how the rules engine makes its decisions. You'll also learn the secret of making dynamic changes to rules for a running workflow.

Speaker Bio

Mark has over 20 years of experience in the disciplines of software engineering, database administration, and project management. Software that Mark developed for the radio industry is still in use today. He was a lead developer on the team that created Tapscan, a well-known Arbritron ratings analysis package that has dominated that industry for many years. He is the president of DUNN Training and Consulting, Inc. a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Atlanta, GA.

For the past four years, Mark has been awarded MVP status for his contributions to the Visual Studio .Net community and he serves as Microsoft's Regional Director covering the Southeast United States. Mark also co-founded .Net Rocks, an Internet radio program for .Net developers recognized in over 80 countries and now hosted by Microsoft on the MSDN site. He is a popular speaker at conferences such as TechEd and DevConnections as well as a member of the INETA speakers bureau.

Mark is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Application Developer, Solution Developer for .Net, and Database Administrator.

Sponsors

We would like to extend a special thank you to the sponsors of this event!

Mary Kay, Inc. -- June 11th Meeting

2008-06-06T18:50:00Z

The DFW Connected Systems Group will hold its June meeting on Wednesday, June 11, 2008. Zach Bonham and Ray Crager of Mary Kay will present an overview of the BizTalk Solution at Mary Kay, Inc.

Presentation: The BizTalk Solution at Mary Kay - Six Years Later

Tonights presentation is one not to be missed. Mary Kay, Inc., the leading brand of women's cosmetics in the U.S., is a technological leader and the home of an extraordinary group of software architects and engineers. Recognized in 1999 by Bill Gates when it embraced the internet for online ordering, the Mary Kay IT department was among the earliest adopters of the .Net Framework and then of BizTalk 2002.

The June meeting will feature Zach Bonham, Technical Architect for Mary Kay, who will review the role that BizTalk played in Mary Kay's technology success over the last six years. Zach will speak about the connected systems, formats, and protocols; then discuss the infrastructure within which BizTalk runs. Zach also will address some of the perceived weak points in this environment (no BAM or BRE, plus tightly coupled ERP systems).

Zach's presentation is to be followed by one from Ray Crager. Ray, though an independent consultant, has been with the Mary Kay organization since BizTalk's introduction at Mary Kay. He is considered a key member of the architectural and engineering group. Ray will present a demonstration of Mary Kay's SharePoint portal for exception management; then one about an administration utility "HATTrick" that is used by Business Analysts and Developers.

This will be an informative view of the technology and architectural process at one of America's leading private enterprises.

There are food, drink and door prizes... so RSVP - then attend the meeting.

Place: Microsoft Offices (7000 State Highway 161, Irving TX).

When: 6:30pm on Wednesday June 11th.

[RSVP to rsvp@biztalkusergroup.com ]

We are looking forward to seeing you there.

The sponsor of the June meeting is Sogeti, the provider of top IT expertise and technical assistance.

May Meeting Is Wednesday - the 14th

2008-05-08T12:39:00Z

The DFW Connected Systems Group will hold its May meeting on Wednesday, May 14, 2008. Robby Powell with FarPoint Technologies will have a presentation about "Spread for BizTalk 2006", FarPoint's first SOA Solution.

Presentation: Spread for BizTalk 2006 - FarPoint Technologies

Spread for BizTalk is a spreadsheet pipeline disassembler and pipeline assembler component. Recently, Robby and his team released the beta of Spread for SharePoint, which is a fully-integrated SharePoint spreadsheet that provides SharePoint professionals with a feature-rich, robust spreadsheet for managing SharePoint List data.

Robbie Powell

Robby Powell comes to us from North Carolina. He has 20 years of experience in the software industry, and has been a member of the FarPoint development team since joining the company in 1995. He has been involved in the development of many of FarPoint’s products as the company has shown consistent leadership in supporting application developers using Microsoft technologies (DLL, VBX, OCX, ActiveX, .NET Windows Forms, and ASP.NET). In 2005, Robby became the Project Manger of Spread SOA Components to lead the company’s SOA initiaive.

There will be food, drink and door prizes... so RSVP - then attend the meeting.

Place: Microsoft Offices (7000 State Highway 161, Irving TX).

When: 6:30pm on Wednesday May 14th.

[RSVP to rsvp@biztalkusergroup.com ]

Looking forward to seeing you there.

The sponsor of our May meeting is Sogeti, the provider of top IT expertise and technical assistance.

April Meeting is This Wednesday - the 9th

2008-04-07T14:52:00Z

The DFW Connected Systems Group (formerly DFW BizTalk User Group) will hold its April meeting on
Wednesday, April 9, 2008. Rob Vettor, a Microsoft .NET Architect/Senior Solution Developer, will have an exciting presentation about LINQ and Integrated Querying.

An Introduction LINQ and Integrated Querying

While most enterprise applications are object-oriented, the data upon which they depend is not. Today, binding these two platforms together results in a significant amount of lost productivity as well as a less than optimal solution.

Take a detailed look at the "LINQ Project" to see what Microsoft is doing to help bridge the mismatch between OO and data. Rob will discuss the following:

How LINQ manifests a move from an imperative to a declarative style of programming.
Adding language and framework extensions to provide a single, unified approach to querying data.
Examples of querying data from multiple data domains.
A look at the upcoming Entity Framework.
How LINQ fits into a multi-tiered application.

There will be food, drink and door prizes... so RSVP - then attend the meeting.

Place: Microsoft Offices (7000 State Highway 161, Irving TX).

When: 6:30pm on Wednesday April 9th.

[RSVP to rsvp@biztalkusergroup.com and double your chance to win a great door prize]

Looking forward to seeing you there.