Year in Review, MVP Status Awarded

I was going to use this, my 100th post on WordPress, and first of 2008, to highlight my favorite posts from last year.  But upon my return from vacation yesterday, I discovered that I had been granted an MVP award for my efforts in 2007, so, I also want to throw a quick thanks to the Microsoft folks.  Achieving an MVP was one of my silent goals for the year, so I’m jazzed that my contributions were considered useful enough to warrant this.

I had lots of fun learning new BizTalk things in 2007, and these were a few of the ones that I enjoyed writing the most …

• Message debatching
  • SQL Adapter debatching.  Turned out to be something a few folks were trying to do.
  • Debatching flat file and persisting headers.  I wish XML debatching kept headers the same way flat files do.
• Building a complete BizTalk + certificates scenario.  It was great to get this working from end to end and finally prove it out.
• Figuring out orchestration message synchronization.  Interesting to see how the message objects get changed in an orchestration.
• BAM stuff
  • BAM and “group” shapes.  Small gotcha about using scopes vs. group shapes.
  • BAM security and deployment.  Finally began to understand how a production BAM system would look.
  • BAM data archiving explained.  Nice to dig into the BAM archiving process and gain confidence in how the plumbing works.
• Ordered Delivery
  • Ordered delivery scenarios.  Neat to see how ordered delivery can be used.
  • Using ordered delivery to prevent web service call timeouts.  One way to handle bursts of inbound data that could cause SOAP timeouts on downstream calls.
• BizTalk maps
  • How code is generated in the scripting functoid.  I didn’t realize that parameter “types” are fairly irrelevant in a scripting functoid.
  • Using global variables.  Good to know that a map can have “state” during its execution.
• Scripts and tools
  • Solution structure generation script.  I’d recommend every BizTalk shop agreeing on a common artifact structure.
  • Query service metrics on a per-application basis.  Cool way to see the activity for a given application.
  • SSO Configuration Store tool.  My favorite tool of the year.  So easy for me to use SSO to store values now.
  • BizTalk code review checklist.  Each BizTalk shop should also agree on what their BizTalk practices and coding standards are.
  • Send port duplicator.  Always fun to build tools that save a few mouse clicks.
• BizTalk and SOA Software.  I’ll probably be spending time this year working on my company’s SOA governance and maturity plan and SOA Software plays a big role in that.
  • Securely storing SOA Software access passwords.  Neat way to use encryption algorithms, SSO and singletons to make my code reusable.
• BizTalk and static objects.  Interesting findings about static objects in the BizTalk environment.
• BizTalk and InfoPath Forms Services 2007.  I like InfoPath Forms Services and bet that many folks haven’t given InfoPath a second look since disregarding the 2003 release.

This year you’ll see fewer BizTalk-related posts as I continue my descent into broad systems architecture, but, I’ll try and keep you all entertained nonetheless.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk, SOA, MVP