TechEd
TechEd
See you in Boston!!!!
I just realized that I forgot one of the coolest parts of BAM. The events that you track don't have to come from BizTalk. Events can be “intercepted” by mapping them to messages or orchestrations but there are also simple (synchronous and asynchronous) API's for recording events from any process. This is key since, in most cases, not all of your systems will be integrated with BizTalk on Day 1.
Well, as usual, I have reached my GSP (Geek Saturation Point). After 5 days of sessions, I am just staring ahead with glazed eyes. TechEd has been GREAT this year. The VS.NET stuff looks really cool, but waiting until next year for it sucks rocks!
Last night's party at Sea World was fine. Good food, not too crowded. I would appreciate that sort of thing a lot more if my family was here. As it is, I just wandered the park looking at the animals.
I am going to one last session on the MSBuild tool that is part of VS.NET 2005. Then it's off to the airport and back to the real world.
Yesterday, I saw a really good presentation on BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) in BizTalk 2004. I had always heard this as a way to track your Orchestrations through the system. That was something sorely lacking in previous versions, so it wasn't something that really captured my attention. I had a "I'll learn it when I need it" attitude. As it turns out, it is much more than that.
Here is a scenario. I have a business process such as a typical fullfillment system. This system has a set of 'Business Activities' (I prefer the other term they use, 'Events') that occur during the normal processing of a transaction. For example, an order can be received, declined, paid, approved, backordered, shipped, delivered, etc. You can think of the timespan between events as a "Phase". For example, "Shipped" and "Delivered" would be the "In-tranist" phase. Each activity has a set of data associated with it, called the payload. The payload for the Shipped event might be carrier, tracking code, ship date/time, estimated delivery date/time.
In BAM, a business analyst creates a set of Business Activities using an extension to Excel. They also create a set of "Business Views". This defines how the business user needs to be able to analyze the data. Essentially, they are creating mockups of the pivot tables they would like to be able to get from an OLAP cube to analyze the data. All of this information together is called the "Obersavtional Model". It's how we want to "observe" the business process.
At this point I am thinking about how I would design a system to collect and store all of the activity data. Then you need to create DTS jobs to move it into a star schema so that it can be loaded into an OLAP cube. After that, you can define virtual cubes for the business user to access. You also have to deal with data archival, cube partitioning, etc.
This is where BAM shines. Remember that Excel file the Business Analyst created that defined their requirements? You use the BAM interface to fully provision and deploy a complete OLAP implementation for the system!!!!!!! It creates the load tables, DTS jobs, star schemas, cubes, etc. to capture, view, secure and maintain this data over the LONG TERM. Wow!
As I was watching this presentation yesterday, I quickly realized that I am about to build a system that does exactly this processing. We were torn between BTS 2002 and 2004 because the HIPAA Accelerator isn't available yet for 2004. Now I have to go back to Omaha and talk them into 2004. This is a perfect fit for their needs.
I spent all of yesterday afternoon is a series of sessions about ASP.NET 2.0 . The number of features they have added makes my head hurt.
My favorites: Master Pages, Membership, Profiles, SQL data-dependent page caching.
Just saw a presentation on WinForms updates in VS 2005. Here are some highlights:
New menu and tool bars - Much more professional looking than the ones available in WinForms up to now. They can handle embedded drop-downs and such. They are dockable, floatable and overflowable (is that a word?). COOL FEATURE ALERT: There is a “Renderer” object that you can specify to give the bar a different look and feel. It's like a custom paint handler for the control. Options are system, office, etc. and ROLL YOUR OWN. He showed a sample. It's only a few lines of code to do some really nice effects.
New Layout Controls - There are new panel controls that allow you to handle control alignment in the same way as in web applications. There is a FlowLayoutPanel that flows side-to-side like a web page and also up and down. There is a TableLayoutPanel that allows you to layout your controls as though you are using a <table> on a web page. I can see this being huge for multi-language apps where the text in a label may get significantly longer or shorter from one language to another.
New One-Click deployment - Apparently this is an evolution of the Updater Application Block. I have implemented real apps with that block. If this has smoothed out the rough spots, this could change the way we distribute desktop apps. There is another presentation on this Friday. I will try to make it.
Here is a quote from Jeff Wierer:
“We're finalizing some content that we'll make generally available closer to RTM as the content today is very specific to a build we used for training. There is no problem in distributing the material, though it won't work with the HIPAA accelerator which cannot be generally distributed at this time.”
The “content” he is referring to is training material, NOT the final product itself. The Accelerator itself is still going to RTM in July apparently.
Microsoft is a little schizophenic (sp?) when it comes to delivering the HIPAA Accelerator version 3 (BTS 2004).
I spoke to Jeff Wierer a little while ago. He is the Microsoft Program Manager in charge of all BizTalk Accelerators. According to him, the RTM has been pushed to mid-July.
Then, I got a message from someone I worked with in a previous life who says that it goes to RTM in 3 DAYS. He also says that the “airlift” event already happened.
Everytime I ask someone about this I get a different answer!!!!!! I will post whatever I find out.
I have been attending several of the BizTalk 2004 sessions here at TechEd.
I was a big BTS 2000/2002 user, but I haven't had the opportunity to use 2004 yet in a project. (That is about to change.) I got really excited about BizTalk 2004 at last year's TechEd but when I got the Beta home and played with it, I couldn't really get it to do anything. Part of the problem was that the docs are copious, but not informative (common problem for MS, IMHO). Only now, after the final release, are any good BizTalk books nearing publication.
A few tidbits I have heard that I like:
- BTS 2004 is now envisioned as the component that glues together the services in a Services Oriented Architecture. BizTalk has historically suffered from a disorganized feature set because it is so complex. “Yeah, it can do this and this and this, but what is it really FOR?”
- Orchestrations seem to be much better in this version. In previous versions, they were more trouble than they were worth. I am still not fully sold on their usefulness, but at least now they aren't so annoying that I don't care how useful they are.
- Most of the tools for developing BizTalk solutions are now hosted within Visual Studio, not separately: BizTalk Editor, BizTalk Mapper, BizTalk Messaging Manager, Orchestration Designer, the new Pipeline Designer [very nice].
- The new messaging system (radically different from before) now makes more sense to me since they are presenting it as a Publish/Subscribe system instead of as just a “Mailbox”.
Sadly, the HIPAA Accelerator I need for a client is still being referred to as a “summer” release.
Saw a good session on the new test framework in VS 2k5 this morning. This is a real improvement over...well...nothing.
Unit Tests - Auto-generated VB.NET or C# unit test code. NUnit users will find this VERY familiar.
Web Tests - Recordable, automated web UI test scripting. Can simulate IE or Netscape browsers. You can bind form fields to a data source rather than using the same values over and over again.
Load Test - This is a container for any combination of Unit and Web tests. You can specify the number of users to simulate and a bunch of other stuff. It can collect performance counters and such. VERY COOL.
Manual Test - This is weird. It is managed just like any other test in the system, but the script to “run” the test is just a text or Word document. You then select “Pass” or “Fail” from a dialog box. It seems odd by itself but the cool thing is that the results are integrated with the bug tracking and other functionality of Team System just as though it was an automated test.
The Missing Test - Still no WinForm / GUI test automation in the product. MS had to bring in CompuWare to keep this from looking like a big hole.
They had an overview session for this stuff this morning. HUGE is an understatement! I won't even try to do it justice. If you are an Architect, PM, Developer, Tester or System Admin, you should check it out on the Microsoft site ASAP.
One thing that I was really psyched about was the Unit Test tools. They look just like NUnit. They are coded and run inside VS.NET with the results stored and preserved. The unit test code can even be GENERATED automagically! I am not a fan of code generators in general, but here's a good use for one.
P.S. I am adding some digital photos from TechEd to my image area.
I attended a talk by Clemens Vasters about handling state. (I know Clemens from a few years ago when I was the Technical Editor on a book he wrote about BizTalk.) He had some very interesting ideas about handling state data.
He started out with the statement “There is no such thing as a stateless component”. Considering how much time and money Microsoft has spent pushing the idea that stateless components are the solution to the scalability problem, it was interesting to hear that. His point was that what we generally call a “stateless” component is just a component that has no “transient” state within the object between calls. This led into his main point which was to define state in one of four categories:
Volitile Data - Short-lived data in memory: local variables, stack data, etc.
Transient Data - Medium-term data in memory: ASP session data, heap objects, data connections, TCP connections, etc.
Durable Data - Working data stored on a non-volitile media: MSMQ messages, intermediate results stored on disk or in SQL, etc.
Permanent Data - Data that is the final outcome of a process.
He pointed out that all software is designed to transform data from one permanent state to another. Nothing else matters since it isn't permanent. All other types of data are just part of the transformation process.
What we call “stateless“ components are really designed to reduce (but not eliminate) the use of transient data.
Think of a “stateless“ component that calls other objects. It creates stack (volitile) for the calls and local variables. That data scales well because it is automatically reclaimed on exit. It creates the other objects. This involves heap and may involve network sessions, ASP sessions, database connections and other transient data as needed. As long as the call is going on, those resources are locked, limiting scalability. Even if all of the components dispose of and release all of these resources properly, they are still resources that are consumed for the life of the call. If they are not cleaned up properly, and left to garbage collection or something like it, they impact scalability significantly. It's not that you can or should eliminate this transient data, you just have to be aware of it and manage it correctly.
Another interesting point he made had to do with COM+ or EnterpriseServices proxies. Obviously, making a call into COM+ is very expensive. That's why you want the interface to be “chunky“ instead of “chatty“. The biggest expense though is in setting up the proxy used to call it. He suggested a method to create a “Proxy Pool“ that consists of a set of reusable proxies that are handed out to threads in the client as needed instead of creating new proxies from strach all the time. Using JIT activation, you only recreate the object itself on each call. You don't have to recreate the IPC or network connection and object context surrounding it.
In response to this morning's post, I was sent more information. The Team System web site is now active at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/teamsystem/default.aspx
This includes information on the new (codename “Burton”) Source Control System. There is a session on this Thursday here at TechEd.
Steve Ballmer gave his keynote this morning. I was hoping for some “Dance Monkey Boy”-style antics but no luck. He did start chanting “Features, Features, Features, Features...” at one point but his heart didn't seem in it.
They announced the release of WSE 2.0. I haven't really looked at WSE all that much. It is probably time I put it on my list of things to learn.
They announced a beta release of an Office integration framework. It makes for a cool demo, but I can't picture using it in the wild. We'll see.
The announcement that I was most interested in was for the VS.NET 2005 Team System. It looks like a set of great collaboration and SW lifecycle tools built right in to VS.NET. The things I saw that will be cool were: a bug/issue tracking system, better modeling tools, a Unit Test infrastructure that does code coverage analysis (HUGE!), a security hole checker (they showed it identifying a buffer overrun hole that was NOT obvious in the code), and new test tools including load testing.
At last night's BOF meeting, they asked for any comments or recommendations we had for Microsoft. I raised my hand and said “Either improve Visual Source Safe or replace it!“ That drew applause from the whole room. His response was “I'm not allowed to talk about that“ (which translates to “There is going to be an announcement pretty soon about that“) which also drew applause. In the discussion of Team System, he mentioned “enterprise-level source control“, but didn't give any detail. Here's hoping!
I went to Don Box's SOA talk right afterward but it was mostly about the philosophy of SOA. I was hoping for more detail. Oh well. There are lots of SOA talks this week.
Time for lunch!
Well, I made it. I got a call at 6:00am saying that my flight was delayed by the weather. The only way I can get to San Diego today is to catch a 7:15am flight. Thank goodness there weren't many of Omaha's finest on the roads this morning. I just barely made it.
The weather here is great. I would guess high 60's and breezy. VERY NICE!
The convention center looks great and the wireless network works like a dream. The “Cabana” areas they added this year look like they could be cool too.
I am going to a “Birds of a Feather” session shortly. These are new too. Basically, it's “let's get together and talk about stuff”. This one is on .NET futures.
Well, I'm off to TechEd next week. I plan on blogging about the sessions I attend each day. If anyone else is going and would like to meet, just use the new RIO system.
Cheers