New Blog Home & a New BizTalk Version

Blog Update

Yesterday I found out about the big change Microsoft was making to abandon the Live Spaces blog platform. I had been using this platform for the past three years so I am sorry to see it go. It was definitely not perfect but I found it to have better search engine rankings and it worked fairly well for what I needed. Today I converted my blog over to WordPress so bear with me while I go through a few growing pains. I know of a few issues that I will have to correct:

• Some of the images are showing up in a limited preview/thumbnail mode. I have started fixing this and should have this all updated shortly.
• The links from the MSDN forums are no longer correct. I am still working on a great solution for this. If anyone knows of a way to handle this, please let me know.

I anticipate there will be a few other hiccups along the way. Please reply to this post and let me know if you see anything not working correctly. There are a couple improvements to the blogging experience I am excited about with the move to WordPress:

• Much better extensibility
• Spam controls – this was a major annoyance on Live Spaces and it was very difficult to manage
• More designer capabilities

So today i am turning a page on a new blog experience and later this week we will be welcoming the next version of BizTalk being completely released. In my part of the Northern hemisphere the leaves are changing now with Fall so I suppose it is a suitable time for so many changes. 🙂

New BizTalk Version RTM coming 10/1

If you have been following along with the BizTalk news lately you know that the next major version of BizTalk is due to be released near the end of Q3 2010. Here is the link to the BizTalk server team blog announcing that BizTalk 2010 will be available on October 1, 2010: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2010/09/22/biztalk-server-2010-released-for-manufacturing.aspx. The core part of BizTalk server in the developer edition is now being offered for free at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=938102b8-a677-4c20-906d-f6ae472b3a6a&displaylang=en. Perhaps this is a win for those of us who have been requesting a lite or express version of BizTalk for lower cost projects. It is nice to see that the developer edition is being offered which normally includes all of the features of the enterprise edition but with a license that cannot be used for production purposes. I had a few observations on the current status of the release I wanted to make for anyone checking for the latest downloads of BizTalk 2010.

• The free download of BizTalk 2010 does not include the extension packs such as the adapter pack or accelertors so I am not sure if the license model may have changed with the new free version. If I were to guess, I would anticipate that these will still be included with the free version but they are just not available yet for download. For example, fixes for the issues with the ESBT 2.1 made after the beta release has not been posted for general consumption.
• During the BizTalk 2009 launch, there was a period of time when the documentation had not been completed and people were starting to use the RTM product without all of the MSDN articles being available. It looks like Microsoft learned a lesson last time and has already released much of the BizTalk 2010 documentation. Here is an example of the RTM documentation that was posted with the free BizTalk 2010 developer edition: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=74b202a2-272a-4b27-b7dd-0dced1bead22&displaylang=en
• At this point MSDN has not been updated with the new downloads so I would expect this to happen right before 10/1. The Connect site that was used for feedback during the Beta is still up but it has not changed much in the last days of the beta.
• To aggregate a little of the information gleaned from some of the beta bugs and MSDN forums, the BizTalk adapter pack with BizTalk 2010 will be supporting Oracle 11g Release 2 (R2) but will not be supporting any new Siebel versions. This new version information should now be available for the BizTalk adapter pack.

I am excited about the new capabilities of my blog and BizTalk 2010. Stay tuned for more of my BizTalk blog posts. Thanks!