News & Announcements

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

zachbonham — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:29:00 GMT

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.

Mary Kay, Inc. -- June 11th Meeting

John Lingenfelder — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:50:00 GMT

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

John Lingenfelder — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:39:00 GMT

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

John Lingenfelder — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:52:00 GMT

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.

March Meeting Cancelled

admin — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:01:00 GMT

Our March meeting has been cancelled due to unforseen circumstances.

February 2008 Meeting - DFW Connected Systems Group

John Lingenfelder — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:02:00 GMT

The DFW Connected Systems Group (formerly DFW BizTalk User Group) will hold its February meeting on
Wednesday, February 13, 2008. Tim Rayburn, Principal Consultant with Sogeti, will have an exciting presentation.

A special surprise guest may also present the second part of the evening.

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 February 13th.

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

Looking forward to seeing you there.

January 2008 Meeting - Get FREE Software!!!

John Lingenfelder — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:22:00 GMT

[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.

November Meeting – Very Special WCF Presentations (And an election)

John Lingenfelder — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:50:00 GMT

The Dallas Area BizTalk User Group has had some really great meetings of late, each focused on BizTalk 2006 R2 and WCF. This month’s meeting will be no exception.

Amirali Rajan with Sogeti opens with a presentation on using WCF.

The WCF Chat Application

Amir shows us how he created an Internet Chat application using WCF. Included are the lessons learned working with WCF (and the difficulties he faced and solved). This is a great chance to see WCF in action!!

Our featured speaker, Tim Rayburn (Sogeti) has prepared a great talk on an interesting subject:

Building HIPAA Solutions with BizTalk Server 2006 R2

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 includes new HIPAA EDI functionality natively. This talk will highlight these new features related to EDI, discuss how they compare to the previous HIPAA Accelerator, and discuss how healthcare organizations might use BizTalk to automate their claims, eligibility and remittance processing.

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

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

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

There is a vacancy on the board. We will have nominations and an election for the position of “Vice President, Meetings” (Would you like to serve?). Also, an amendment to the By-Laws will be proposed by Tim Rayburn.

Following the presentation there will be drawings for door prizes. AND door prizes this month are going to be sharp and brand new. Plus there may be a poster of the new .Net Framework 3.5 as a prize. Those who RSVP will receive two tickets (for the drawings) at the door.

Respond. Confirm you will be there. Receive two tickets for the drawings.

As always food and drinks available.

These are provided courtesy of Sogeti.

October Meeting is This Week -- WCF reprised

John Lingenfelder — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:21:00 GMT

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.

September Meeting Next; August is Over

John Lingenfelder — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 22:31:00 GMT

The September meeting will be a special event - Windows Communication Foundation in R2

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

When: 6:30pm on Wednesday September 12th.

[Let us know you will be there, confirm with an email to: rsvp@biztalkusergroup.com]

Avanade, the global IT consultancy, will be the event sponsor and Jonathan Summers, a Solution Architect with Avanade will be the featured speaker.

Jonathan will present a talk about Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 that launches worldwide in September. It features several key additions to the product – key among them the WCF adapters. Join us for an hour-long deep dive into the features of the WCF adapters and how they can be useful in building secure, enterprise-scale integration solutions. The adapters will be demonstrated in action and Jonathan will discuss the new adapter framework that will ship with R2.

In addition to his role as a Solutions Architect, Jonathan focuses specifically on the BizTalk Server product line and related integration technologies. He is a frequent speaker at a variety of events discussing enterprise integration technologies and techniques.

There will be more... door prizes, food and drink, and a "nuts & bolts" session. So, RSVP... let us know you will be there.

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August Meeting - Source Control, PGP Encryption, GiveAways

John Lingenfelder — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:00:00 GMT

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.

July Meeting - Officer Election, BizTalk Maps, Giveaways

John Lingenfelder — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:42:00 GMT

July 11, 2007

Nine BizTalk developers braved the weather to attend the July meeting held at the Microsoft Offices in Las Colinas on the 11th. Pizza and soft drinks were provided by Sogeti, provider of top IT expertise and technical assistance.

The order of business was to elect officers for the group. The following were the results of the election:

President - Tim Rayburn (Sogeti)
VicePresident, Meetings - Ed Kisinger (Sogeti)
VicePresident, Membership - John Lingenfelder (Safety-Kleen Systems)

Jay Leask gave a presentation on Mapping Fundamentals which was very well received. One item learned was that labeling the connectors into a functoid, replaced the xpath in the functoid content with that label. Much easier for readability.

Before adjourning the meeting, there was a drawing for two fantastic door prizes.

The XBox game, N3 (Ninety-Nine Nights) was won by Tim Rayburn
The fully licensed Microsoft Ultimate Office Suite 2007 was won by Jay Leask.

The next meeting of the group will be Wednesday, August 8th, 6:30pm at the Microsoft Offices in Las Colinas (7000 State Highway 161 - near hwys 190 and 114).

Officer Elections & By-Laws

admin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:17:00 GMT

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

This document shall serve as the guiding rules of the Dallas BizTalk User Group.
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.
There shall be three officer positions within the group, these being: President, Vice President of Membership and Vice President of Meetings.
Elections

Voting shall be of all those attending the meeting, with one vote per person.
Any person may nominate someone as a candidate for an office, including themselves.
After all nominations have been heard, voting will commence and at that time no more nominations will be accepted except as detailed below.
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.
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.
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.

Officer Terms

Officers are elected for a term of 1 calendar year, running from July through June.
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.
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.

Officer Duties

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.
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.
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.

June Meeting - Dustin Hicks with a BizTalk Solution Design Review

admin — Wed, 30 May 2007 01:18:00 GMT

Topic : BizTalk Solution Design Review
Speaker: Dustin Hicks
Date: June 13th 2007
Location: Microsoft Campus at 7000 State Highway 161, Irving, TX 75039
Time : 6:30 PM

Description :
Dustin Hicks will be discussing the implementation details of an SAP integration project utilizing a custom written decorator pipeline framework. Architecture design and production details will be presented and discussed in detail. We will review the code for a generic decorator pattern, it’s implementation in a pipeline component, value passing context properties, DocumentProcessor classes and development patterns. In addition, purchase order integration including RosettaNet (3A4) to SAP (ORDERS05) transformations and processing pattern will be presented.

No Meeting in May

admin — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:24:00 GMT

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.