D/FW Connected Systems User Group

Please join us for an engaging and informative session! As always, we will have FREE food, drinks and prizes for attending! 

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.

 

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

 

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.  

 

Our March meeting has been cancelled due to unforseen circumstances.

[Wednesday - January 9th] 

Don Tian with DonWare will present this month's subject.  BizTest 3.0, a new tool for creating and executing automated tests against your integration application.  A new version will be presented that adds support for data driven testing, Excel files and WCF. 

All members in attendence will receive a free license to BizTest, valued at $499.00.

Don has been a Microsoft technologist for almost ten years.  The last fours year were spent developing C# and BizTalk Server solutions for Countrywide Financial and for EMSI.  In 2006 Don founded Donware, LLC with the public release of BizTest.

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

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

 

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

 

November Meeting Wrap-up 

   

We have a new name!! The membership voted to change the name of our user group to reflect Microsoft's focus on Connected Systems.  The new name for our group is DFW Connected Systems Group.

   

Todd Stone is the new Vice-President for Meetings.  So, extend your congratulations to Todd.

Following on the excellent presentation last month by Jonathan Summers of Avanade to show us the WCF Adapter, Leigh Sperberg with Sogeti, presents the WCF framework this month.

Leigh begins with an introduction to WCF and the architectural decisions Microsoft made when creating the framework.

 

Following that introduction Leigh next demonstrates how to build a WCF server, including contracts, endpoints, hosting options and bindings.  Then he shows how to build a client to interact with the WCF server, including endpoints and proxies.

 

Code examples will be presented throughout, and there could be a quiz at the end of the talk.

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

     When:   6:30pm on Wednesday October 10th.

[RSVP to rsvp@biztalkusergroup.com to double your chance to win the door prize]

Following the presentation there will be drawings for door prizes.  The really big prize this meeting is “Microsoft Vista Ultimate”.  This is an in the box, fully licensed copy of the latest operating system.  Those who RSVP will receive two tickets at the door. 

So respond and let us know that you will be there.

As always food and drinks available.  These are provided courtesy of Sogeti.

 

August 4, 2007 

Topics: 1. "Controlling Your BizTalk Source Control" and 2. "Custom Pipeline Component for PGP Encryption"
Speaker: Ed Kisinger and John Lingenfelder
Date: Wednesday, August 8th 2007
Location: Microsoft Campus at 7000 State Highway 161, Irving, TX 75039
Time : 6:30 PM

Ed Kisinger will present an overview of using Source Control with BizTalk. 

John Lingenfelder will present an overview of the PGP Encryption process and how to utilize in constructing a pipeline component for encoding and decoding interchanges, whether externally or within the enterprise.

RSVP and double your chances for the raffle of great door prizes.

Send your RSVP to RSVP@BizTalkUserGroup.com to let us know whether or not you plan to attend.

At the next meeting, on July 11th, we will be electing officers for the Dallas BizTalk User Group.  When the original leadership group was put together for the user group, we wanted to give the group time to build attendance and build leaders from within before elections were held.  Looking back I think this was definitely the right decision.

The original conversations about this group were held between me, Caleb Jenkins (Microsoft Developer Evangelist at that time) and Dustin Hicks (Microsoft TS for BizTalk Server).  This was quickly increased to include Eddy Wassef and Stephen Thomas.  Caleb was kind enough to arrange a conference call with others from the MidWest who had started a BizTalk User Group before and to lend his considerable experience with the Tulsa .NET Developers group.  Caleb stressed to us that the first 6 months of a user group were very important, and so the leadership group which was forming there decided to plan elections after 6 months of meetings.

We have held successful meetings in January, February, March, April, June and soon July.  While we are still a group in its infancy, I feel we are doing very well.  At this point, I intend to put forward a basic set of By-Laws for the group which in turn creates three officer positions.  You can see a draft of these By-Laws below, and I encourage you to write me at tim@timrayburn.net if you have any concerns.

I greatly appreciate all of those who attend the user group, and look forward to growing this group in the future.

Tim Rayburn

Draft of the By-Laws for the Dallas BizTalk User Group

1. This document shall serve as the guiding rules of the Dallas BizTalk User Group.
2. These by-laws can be amended by the vote of two-thirds of the membership attending any meeting.  Any member may bring such a motion before the meeting.
3. There shall be three officer positions within the group, these being: President, Vice President of Membership and Vice President of Meetings.
4. Elections
1. Voting shall be of all those attending the meeting, with one vote per person.
2. Any person may nominate someone as a candidate for an office, including themselves.
3. After all nominations have been heard, voting will commence and at that time no more nominations will be accepted except as detailed below.
4. A candidate must receive the votes of a majority of those attending, not merely of votes cast, in order to be selected as an officer.
5. Should no candidate receive a majority as detailed above and there are more than two candidates, then the candidate with the least votes will be removed from consideration and voting will occur again.
6. Should no candidate receive a majority as detailed above but two or less candidates remain, then all candidates will be removed from consideration and nominations will begin again after a short break.
5. Officer Terms
1. Officers are elected for a term of 1 calendar year, running from July through June. 
2. Officers who find that they lack the time or ability to complete their offices and bring that to the attention of the group will be thanked for their service and an election will be held at the next meeting to fulfill the remainder of the term of that office.
3. Officers can be removed from office by a vote of two thirds of those attending any meeting.  Any member may bring such a motion before the meeting.
6. Officer Duties
1. The President shall serve as the legal representative of the group, is responsible the success of the group, and shall manage such funds and property as the group possess.  The President is expected to be the driving force behind recruiting speakers for the user group.  The President shall ensure that the he and the other officers are completing their duties, or have sufficient volunteers to do so in their absence.
2. The Vice President of Membership is responsible for the maintenance of the group website, ensuring that announcements of upcoming meetings are published to the membership and for signing in members as they arrive to the meetings.  When door prizes are offered Vice President of Membership will also be responsible for handling the drawings for those prizes.
3. The Vice President of Meetings is responsible for working with our sponsors to ensure that we have a location for each meeting, for ensuring that food and beverages are available for each meeting.

Our speaker for the May meeting has had to reschedule, so we are cancelling this month's meeting of the Dallas BizTalk User Group.  We are always looking for more speakers, so please if you're interested in speaker, or even willing to speak, then please send an email to leaders@BizTalkUserGroup.com.