Our first UK connected system user group is scheduled for Feb 15th 2011.  There are two sessions planned for this meet.

Session 1

Speaker: Saravana Kumar (BizTalk 24/7 & BizTalk BlogDoc & BizTalk MVP)

Topic: Instrumentation and Diagnostics in BizTalk Projects

Session 2

Speaker: Richard Blewett

Topic: WCF 4.0 Routing Service

I'll be presenting the first session on how to instrument and diagnose a BizTalk solution. I'm trying to address some of the bad practices we acquired over the years in this space and suggesting few best practices moving forward. It's only a 45 min session, so its going to be challenging.

The tickets are going fast, when I checked few minutes ago only 8 left. So be fast, if you are planning to attend.

Nandri!

Saravana

Those who are in BizTalk/CSD space long enough would have known the one and only Richard Seroter and his famous Interview Series. Richard is well know in the community for his prolific blog. He is the author of the books SOA Patterns with BizTalk Server 2009 and Applied Architecture Patterns on the Microsoft Platform.

Recently, I had the pleasure of taking part in his interview series http://seroter.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/interview-series-four-questions-with-saravana-kumar/ I need to thank him for the opportunity. I believe its always difficult to come up with the question than answering them. Keep up the good work Richard.

Nandri,

Saravana

Every year 1st of July is a bit of a panic day for me. I check my email more frequently than I normally do. Because that's my MVP renewal day. I?m very pleased to say, I been re-awarded the MVP status for 2010 4th year in a row. I would like to thank everyone who worked behind the scene (honestly I don't have a clue.). I also noticed lot of existing BizTalk Server MVP like Jan Eliasen, Thiago Almeida renewed on the same day and some new ones like Steef-Jan Wiggers. I would like to congratulate all of them.

Nandri!

Saravana

I'm right now on the MVP Gloabl summit 2010 at Redmond. There are various technical advantages being an MVP, you are always in constant touch with the product team, you get access to certain confidential information under strict NDA, basically Microsoft tries to keep you on top of the game on whatever ways possible.

Apart from the technical advantage the another key aspect for me is, it provides me a great opportunity to meet people from around the world who are experts (world leaders) in their respective areas. There was an instance this morning, which I simply can?t let it go.

I was in a Microsoft shuttle bus this morning which takes us from hotel to the campus. I was the first one in the bus and we were waiting to get some more people. A gentle man turned up and asked me few questions regarding things like event registration, where to do it etc, etc and sat next to me. After like 10-15 minutes of general discussion, during the course of the conversation the routine question came up. So, whom do you work for. The gentleman replied "I'm Brad Kingsley the CEO (and President, he didn?t mention this) of ORCSWeb". I just need to pinch myself and ask the question again. Did you say you are the CEO of ORCSWeb. He replied back, "Yes, I formed this company 14 years ago".

That's incredible. ORCSWeb is not a small company, its one of the well known big hosting companies in the world, which hosts some of the high volume, highly demanding Microsoft sites like Channel 9.

After this I had the opportunity to speak to him for another 20 minutes during the journey and till we reached the registration booth on the Microsoft campus. It was an awesome experience, and I need to thank Microsoft for creating such an opportunity.

BTW, Brad Kingsley is not an MVP and he came to visit the MVP summit with a insider PASS to get some early preview of the technology roadmap. So, watch out guys you may be sitting next to some big shots.

Nandri!

Saravana

I was really excited to see the email with subject line "Congratulations 2009 Microsoft MVP". This is my 3rd consecutive year as BizTalk Server MVP. I feel honoured to receive this award year after year. I would like to thank those unknown faces behind the scene who nominated me for this year. The value you get out of this program is enormous. Things like regular interaction by product group meetings, annual MVP summit which gets you closer to the dev's and architects behind the product(s), knowing the road map of the product(s), attending Software design reviews etc etc. 

Apart from all these things, there is an enormous pleasure when someone drops a comment in my blog or web site saying it helped them solve so and so problem. When some unknown people recognise you in conferences and user group meetings and prize your work.

Simply its great!!

Saravana.

Chaps, I'm going to be there this year, I just booked my flights and completed the registrations this weeks. Those of you flying from UK please contact me via the contact link, we?ll see if we are travelling on the same dates.

For those folks who?ll be travelling under visa waiver program (anybody with UK passport, see the link for full list of countries who come under VWP see this link) its important to know the new US rules.

Full details can be found here, please do your registration via https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta 

ELECTRONIC SYSTEM FOR TRAVEL AUTHORIZATION (ESTA)

International travellers who are seeking to travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) are now subject to enhanced security requirements.

On August 1, 2008, the Department of Homeland Security began accepting voluntary registrations from qualified VWP travelers under the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). From January 12, 2009, ESTA becomes mandatory for all qualified VWP travelers entering the United States on or after that date with the exception of citizens of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Republic of Korea for whom ESTA is mandatory if entering the United States on or after November 17, 2008. ESTA applies only to those VWP travelers entering the United States by air or sea. Travelers entering by land either from Canada or Mexico are not required to register before traveling.
Travel Authorization is obtained through an online registration system known as ESTA. If your registration is successful, it will be valid for multiple applications for two years or until the date on which your passport expires, which ever comes first.
Before going on line to register, you should ensure that you are qualified to travel under the Visa Waiver Program otherwise your registration will be rejected. It also does not guarantee entry into the United States; that decision rests with the immigration official at the Port of Entry in the same way that travelers currently entering the U.S. under the Visa Waiver Program or with a visa are subject to inspection.
Entering the United States by land

Travelers who make their initial entry into the U.S. by land from either Canada or Mexico are NOT required to travel authorization through ESTA before traveling.

Warning

If your passport has ever been reported lost or stolen to the authorities and then recovered, please do not attempt to use it for travel to the United States. If you input the passport details into ESTA, your application will be denied.

Saravana

As an MVP I've been involved in series of web conferences and SDR (Software design reviews) related to "Dublin". As Darren mentioned here, the news came bit earlier than expected. It is more exciting time for people involved in Connected system development (Windows Communication[WCF] and Windows Workflow[WF]). I believe release of Dublin will take us to the next step, much closer to building enterprise scale applications using WCF/WF. Even though WCF got a rich hosting model, due to the lack of proper application server to host, enterprises always tend to use IIS as their hosting server. It's fine, there is nothing wrong with it, but at end of the day IIS is designed for a different purpose to serve web pages, not services. With the introduction of Dublin, things will change drastically. People coming from BizTalk background will see more similarities in Dublin, we (biztalkers) been enjoying the power and richness of the hosting platform provided by BizTalk for years now.

At my current client, recently I had been involved with series of discussion with our "Enterprise Architecture" group to discuss the usage of our "Business Services" by our web UI channel. Our "Business Services" are set of composite services sitting on top of application services, build using BizTalk Orchestrations. Our current production setup is tuned for high throughput(volume), with Web Channel coming into the picture, we need to tune the same services for low-latency.  To some extend we need to bend BizTalk to address some of the low latency scenarios (example: using inline send from orchestration while calling application services to avoid MessageBox hops). As part of the discussion, its been brought on board to evaluate "IBM WebSphere Message Broker 6.1" to address the low latency scenario.

I been tasked with evaluating the IBM WMB product. In WMB there is no concept of persistence, everything happens in-memory. In certain cases you can use WebSphere MQ as persistence store. It got a rich hosting platform (concept of broker, execution group, Configuration Manager - Similar to Host/Host Instances in BizTalk). You can design message flow (equivalent to Orchestration)  with nodes (equivalent to Adapters). You can consume web services and expose message flows as web services. etc, etc. Most of the WMB concepts will have similarities with Windows WorkFlow (WF), but work flow was lagging a a rich hosting environment. Customers need to write their own, which in most cases will be too expensive to bring it to enterprise scale. With the announcement of "Dublin" that's going to change.

NOTE: WMB is full featured broker (middleware) product, WF and WMB are similar but not like for like.

Exciting times ahead!!

Nandri

Saravana

I'm delighted to say I been awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for second year in a row. My first MVP year was awesome, its hard to believe the level of benefits you get from Microsoft for being an MVP. I'll say the highlight of my award year was participating in the "Oslo" Software Design Review at Redmond during the MVP global summit. Without being an MVP its very unlikely I would have got a chance like this to hear directly from the Product team their future road map. It's not all about hearing what's coming soon, but also getting the opportunity to engage yourself in heated debate and to provide feedback directly to the product team to shape the technology you love the most.

One of the other exciting thing for me as part of "Oslo" SDR, is the chance to interact with the industry experts. It was limited set of audience (around 40 people I believe) including people like Don Box, Juval Lowy, Michele Leroux Bustamante , Jesus Rodriguez, Jon Flanders, Sam Gentile, Brian Loesgen, Charles Young, Richard Seroter, Scott Colestock, Stephen Thomas, to name the few (guys I haven't left anyone intentionally, this list is from just on top of my head).

Not to mention, you get MSDN or Technet subscription free during your award year, which is great for a technical enthusiast to play with different things without the barrier of buying it.

I also need to thank everyone behind the scene, who nominated me for this award year.

Nandri!

Saravana

It's exactly 24 hours since I started my journey from London Heathrow to attend the 2008 MVP summit, I'm still travelling. I'm writing this blog post from Chicago O'hare airport at 5:30 AM in the morning. It's not a good start, it looks like I'm going to miss the morning session of the summit.

Lesson Learned: Avoid change overs in US from International to Domestic with short time duration.  Don't plan to reach your destination very late.

To add to my short transit time, my Air India flight was delayed by almost 1hr:45 minutes. I knew very clearly there is no chance of catching my connecting flight. As expected I missed my connecting flight from Chicago to Seattle, to add to my shock list they said they couldn't find any seat availability for whole of Monday to Seattle. Luckily after spending 30 minutes with the Air India staff they found one via St. Louis for next day which will take me to Seattle at around 11AM, but again the transit time is less than 30 minutes to get my connecting flight from St. Louis to Seattle. I was put in a near by Hotel for that night.

I arrived at the airport at around 4:45AM next day, the airport staff gave me two options either to take the flight via St. Louis or take a direct flight to Seattle which will take me 45 minutes later than the original one. With previous night experience I happily grabbed the offer in both hands to take the direct flight. Now I need to wait for another 3 hours in the airport to catch my flight.

Hope this terrible events will end here, and I'll have a good enjoyable conference. I'll miss the morning session, but hopefully there should be plenty more for me to cheer up for rest of the event.

I'll try my level best to convey the message (of course useful technical stuff, not all this blabbing), I can during the course of the conference.

-Saravana

Yeah, its official now. I have received the 2007 Microsoft MVP award for BizTalk Server. It's been a really fun year blogging, writing white paper, launching BizTalk 24 * 7 and just generally getting more involved in the community.

I feel proud and honored to be part of the select few that Microsoft recognizes as community leaders. I'll take this opportunity to thank each and everyone who nominated me for this award behind the scene.

 Nandri!

Saravana