Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Codemash - It's not over...

Codemash . It is hard to say anything that have not yet been posted/blogged. If you are like me and still want more *mash. Check out the google newsgroup. There is still a very active discussion on different topics.

How to: Pass message to an external assembly



I am trying to write a re-sequencer. I want to be able to pass the message I receive and have an external assembly sort it for me.

The code for the External assembly:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes;

namespace HelperDecompose
{
[Serializable]
public class Class1
{
public void PrintMessage(XmlDocument inputXML)
{
Trace.WriteLine("bts- --------------------");
Trace.WriteLine("bts- xml:[" + inputXML.OuterXml + "]");
}

public void PrintBTSMessage(XLANGMessage btsMessage)
{
StreamReader reader = new
StreamReader((Stream)btsMessage[0].RetrieveAs(typeof(Stream)));
string sXML = reader.ReadToEnd();
Trace.WriteLine("bts- in the new [" + sXML + "]");
}
}
}



On my expression shape this is the code I have to send the message to the assembly, the xmlDocVariable is of type System.Xml.XmlDocument.


xmlDocVariable = msgOrder;

System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("bts- before calling Helper assembly");
System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("bts- [" + xmlDocVariable.OuterXml + "]");

//init the object
oHelper = new HelperDecompose.Class1();

//send the xmlDocument
oHelper.PrintMessage(xmlDocVariable);

//send the actual message
oHelper.PrintBTSMessage(msgOrder);

System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("bts- after calling Helper assembly");

Here is my sample code to implement this:

file:///C:/vsProjects/Spykes/Biztalk/ConvertMsgToXMLDoc.zip



Monday, January 22, 2007

Biztalk weird error in Vista

I was doing a simple training for this developer. Then I added a very simple webservice to be called from an orchestration. The first time I ran it, it worked fine. So I went and refactored it. By refactoring I meant deleting web service reference, re-adding it. Recreating new Configured Port on the ODX, etc. Then all of a sudden, I could not deploy this orchestration anymore.

It will compile correctly, but it will fail on the deployment with this error:

Error Error 6 Failed to add resource(s). Change requests failed for some resources. BizTalkAssemblyResourceManager failed to complete end type change request.

Could not save the log to HTML file
"C:\Users\Arnulfo\AppData\Local\Temp\BT\PID4848\BizTalkAssembly\Update.log".

Exception: '',
hexadecimal value 0x1F, is an invalid character. '',
hexadecimal value 0x1F, is an invalid character.


Funny thing is that I did not have the BT\PID4848 directory. So I went and created it. Then I got this error:










I will dig this a little bit more. It is strange than by just shutting down the IDE, it does not fix the problem, but rather it gives a different PID number now.

I will update this blog when I find this culprit.

I have tried restarting the host from the IDE:

Friday, January 19, 2007

Codemash - Session on OpenUp

I have attended the session with Scott Ambler. He is an amazing speaker. One of the reason I wanted to attend his session was because I have partially read his book: Refactoring Databases. And I think he touches a very important subject there. His talk yesterday was excellent. Even thought I don't really care to much about OpenUp, I wanted to hear him talking and I was not disappointed one bit.

If you have not heard about him, check out his bio on IBM website: Scott Ambler.

I will now have to bump his book to the top of my reading stack. :D

Codemash

First day of Codemash. You can feel that this is going to be a different type of conference from the moment you walk in. One of my favorite question to ask is: Where are you from? and How did you hear about Codemash?

One guy was from out of state. He mentioned that he drove 6hrs to get here.! Apparently it was a lot faster to drive here, than to take a flight to Cleveland, rent a car and drive to Sandusky. Whoa, talk about commitment.! How he heard about Codemash? His wife's friend heard about it somewhere. Then his wife told him to check it out and that's how he ended up in here. My next question was about technology. What technology he was using. Well, surprise, surprise he is a PHP developer.

Most of the other people that I have spoken to, have heard about Codemash through their user's group. Which again promotes the fact that Codemash is really a community event. It seems to be all word 0f mouth at this point.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Microsoft 070-552 Certification

What I did for my x-mas vacation:

In 2005 I was fortunate enough to join the geekiest of the geek in a road trip. This was the VS launch event in Detroit, MI. In the launch event, all of the attendees got some swag. One of the best one was a free voucher for a Microsoft Certification test.

Since this voucher was going to expire on December 31, I decided to use it and take shot at one of the new certification test. This would really give me a true assessment of my kung-fu skills in the art of .NET. I chose the 70-552 which is the upgrade exam for going from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0 certification.

This test was a MONSTER!!. 3.5hrs of nothing but sheer in-depth, no holds-barred .NET knowledge. I wished I had practice a little bit more before taking this test. This test is the equivalent of taking 3 separate tests. Needless to say, I did not pass, out of 1000 questions (so it seems after the first 2hrs in there); I only got 52% correct. I will try again on the spring time ;)

I would definitely recommend this test to anyone who wants to test his skills on .NET 2.0.

Hints: after you are done reading CLR via C#, then read it AGAIN and AGAIN, until you memorize it.