Community developer blogs

Darren Jefford

Recent Posts

• Software in the cloud: Cloud Workflow

  Posted: 02 Oct 2008 at 10:31 by darrenj

  As promised in my last posting let's take a look at the new "Workflow in the cloud" functionality offered in the July drop of the BizTalk Services This cloud based workflow system leverages Windows Workflow and is hosted in our datacenter and extended as appropriate through "cloud-scale" runtime se

• Dublin!

  Posted: 01 Oct 2008 at 22:43 by darrenj

  This announcement came sooner then I expected, I'd assumed PDC was going to be the first time Dublin was mentioned in public!   The most detailed information before the PDC can be found here. A number of internal people in the field (myself included) have been working with the product team

• Professional BizTalk Server 2009?

  Posted: 29 Sep 2008 at 11:34 by darrenj

  I've been looking into the possibility of updating the highly successful Professional BizTalk Server 2006 book to take into account new features and capabilities in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and the recently announced BizTalk Server 2009 product. A fair bit has changed to warrant new chapters and updat

• Software in the cloud: The Relay Service

  Posted: 24 Sep 2008 at 14:39 by darrenj

  I’m now back from a trip to Seattle a few weeks back where I attended a huge week-long Microsoft internal technical training event.  I presented three times during the week, two of the presentations were “Software in the cloud” sessions which received fantastic feedback. The premise of these se

• Cloud Services

  Posted: 16 Jul 2008 at 23:03 by darrenj

  CSD have just announced Release 12 (R12) of Codename BizTalk Services, Clemens has a good low-down on what’s new here.  Remember BizTalk Services != BizTalk.  BizTalk isn’t used in the cloud or the client – it’s just a branding thing. The Connectivity service (relay) is an amazing piece of

• Long time, no blog!

  Posted: 16 Jul 2008 at 22:50 by darrenj

  Yes, It’s been quite a while since my last blog post!  A lot has been happening internally including a job move for me to the Solution Architecture team in MCS as a Solution Architect from the fantastic Application Development Consulting (ADC) team. I still retain my strong technical focus

• 64bit support for the BizTalk Orchestration Profiler and BizTalk Documenter

  Posted: 28 Nov 2007 at 11:36 by darrenj

  A number of you have contacted me in recent months to report that the BizTalk Orchestration Profiler and BizTalk Documenter didn't run on 64bit machines, this seems to have been down to compiler settings which I've now resolved. I've uploaded a planned release for both tools to codeplex - if yo

• How everyone should test their BizTalk based solutions: Presentation

  Posted: 01 Nov 2007 at 18:06 by darrenj

  I've managed to find somewhere to store the presentation deck I delivered yesteday and you can now download it from here.  I've also added the slides I had to cut from the presentation to enable it to fit within the SOA & BPM conference breakout length - these cover the throttling semantics

• Codename “Oslo”

  Posted: 31 Oct 2007 at 23:43 by darrenj

  Microsoft has just made the first public announcement of “Oslo” at the SOA and BPM conference, at a high level “Oslo” is an overarching initiative across multiple products and Microsoft divisions, in fact the first release as announced today will be made up of BizTalk Server “6”, BizTalk Services “1

• How everyone should test their BizTalk based solutions presentation links

  Posted: 31 Oct 2007 at 23:32 by darrenj

  Thanks to everyone who came to my presentation today, I was humbled by the huge turnout!  The presentation deck will be broadly shared to attendees which contains hyperlinks to all the tools showcased but in the meantime the links are below if you want to get started right away.  &nbs

• Microsoft SOA & BPM Conference

  Posted: 29 Oct 2007 at 16:51 by darrenj

  I've just arrived in Seattle for the Microsoft SOA & BPM conference that kicks off on Tuesday 30th October in Seattle, I'm presenting a best-practice session on Wednesday afternoon titled "How everyone should test their BizTalk Server based solutions", it's a great deck with some compelling demo

• Orchestration Profiler for BizTalk Server 2006 and BizTalk Documenter

  Posted: 05 Jul 2007 at 12:53 by darrenj

  Hi, I've recently taken ownership of the source for the BizTalk Orchestration Profiler and BizTalk Documenter tools that Jason Birth originally developed, the documenter has worked fine with BizTalk Server 2006 but the Profiler was broken in a number of places.   I have just finished a new

• GenerateTypedBamApi

  Posted: 06 Jun 2007 at 01:47 by darrenj

  Long overdue but I've finally got around to finishing up the latest release (1.1) of the GenerateTypedBamApi tool.  You can find the new version here, if your not familar with the tool read on!   The GenerateTypedBamApi command line tool enables you to take a BAM Observation model represen

• TechEd 2007: Sessions and Book Signing

  Posted: 03 Jun 2007 at 13:51 by darrenj

  I arrived in Orlando yesterday after a long old flight from London and should make the Party with Palermo tonight which looks like it'll be fun but as I'm presenting tomorrow it'll be a quiet night! My two sessions are shown below, the second session being a very informal chalk/talk style session wi

• Professional BizTalk Server 2006: UK has stock!

  Posted: 23 May 2007 at 13:23 by darrenj

  After what seems like a huge delay the usual UK retailers such as Amazon and Computer Manuals now have stock of the book!   From what I've heard pre-orders have already started to drop through letter-boxes. Enjoy, and please remember to put a review on Amazon if you get the chance!  F

• Professional BizTalk Server 2006: In Stock (In the US)

  Posted: 02 May 2007 at 10:13 by darrenj

  Another quick update, it seems that stores in the US now have stock and are shipping.  Both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble are reporting stock!   The UK should follow very shortly, 7 days seemed to be the difference with the Team System book

• BAM Best Practice: Starter for 10..

  Posted: 30 Apr 2007 at 10:11 by darrenj

  I knocked out a brain-dump of some BAM best practices this morning for a colleague, it seems like a good thing to share more broadly.  It's a starter for 10 and I'll refine it over time I'm sure, the book covers all of these things in far more detail as you'd expect :)  • Avoid c

• Presenting at TechEd

  Posted: 26 Apr 2007 at 14:13 by darrenj

    I'm pleased to announce that I'll be presenting two sessions at TechEd which is being held at Orlando between Monday 4th June and Friday 8th June!  The first is a breakout session which covers BAM and demonstrates some real-world examples of how we've put BAM to great use and how it has

• Professional BizTalk Server 2006: Shipping!

  Posted: 24 Apr 2007 at 14:10 by darrenj

  I've just had an update from Wiley and the book arrived into their warehouse last Friday (20th April) and it started physically shipping to stores yesterday (Monday 23rd April) so if you've pre-ordered expect it to arrive real soon!  I hope you enjoy it! Woo Hoo!!

• Watch out: DebugView (OutputDebugString) & Performance

  Posted: 03 Apr 2007 at 21:43 by darrenj

  For developer level tracing the tracing classes held within the System.Diagnostics namespace are often used along with the Windows Sysinternals DebugView tool.  In default configuration all trace will be output using the Win32 OutputDebugString function which DebugView can monitor.   This