Charlie Mott

21 Posts | 23 Comments

Charlie Mott

Feb 13

Azure Deployment Error: requested resources are too large for the specified vm size

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source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... I am using the Windows Azure PowerShell CmdLets to perform deployments of Cloud Services. This was all working well until I started to receive the error “total requested resources are too large for the specified vm size”. Deployments via Visual Studio worked fine. A few details about VM size are here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/e... ......

Posted On Monday, February 4, 2013 3:03 AM Azure

TFS Build Custom Activity : TODO Counter

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... Tracking the count of TODO’s in your solution can be used for the following: Use as an additional measure of code quality. Predict estimated completion dates through use of a burndown chart. Once in production, TODO’s can be a good measure of how much Technical Debt lives within a solution. As such, ......

Posted On Monday, February 4, 2013 2:22 AM TFS , WF

Oct 12

Azure Task Scheduling Options

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Currently, the Azure PaaS does not offer a distributed\resilient task scheduling service. If you do want to host a task scheduling product\solution off-premise (and ideally use Azure), what are your options?Update: 09/01/2013 - There is a new way to schedule tasks in Windows Azure using the Scheduler (preview) provided with the Azure Mobile Services. ......

Posted On Monday, October 8, 2012 7:59 PM Azure

Aug 12

Clean-up BizTalk BizUnit tests only on failure

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This article discusses, from a BizTalk\BizUnit perspective, implementing the Channel Purger Enterprise Integration Patten to “keep 'left-over' messages on a channel from disturbing tests.” If one test fails, you may see subsequent tests also fail. This is because service instances triggered from the failed test may still be running in BizTalk. These ......

Posted On Wednesday, August 8, 2012 10:27 PM BizTalk , BizUnit , MSTest

Jul 12

Azure publishsettings file cannot be downloaded in IE9

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When setting up publishing for an Azure project from Visual Studio, are you unable to download the the .publishsettings file? Are you using IE9? Is the error “<file> couldn't be downloaded”? If so, change the IE9 default settings to uncheck "Do not save encrypted pages to disk". For further information, see: http://support.microsoft.co... ......

Posted On Friday, July 13, 2012 1:31 AM Azure

Jun 12

BizTalk Patterns Wiki Page

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I’ve published a TechNet wiki page here. This identifies links that show BizTalk implementations of the patterns described in the book Enterprise Integration Patterns. I look forward to seeing others’ contributions and updates to this wiki page ......

Posted On Tuesday, June 19, 2012 3:42 AM BizTalk , Patterns

Jun 12

Business Case for investing time developing Stubs and BizUnit Tests

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I was recently in a position where I had to justify why effort should be spent developing Stubbed Integration Tests for BizTalk solutions. These tests are usually developed using the BizUnit framework. I assumed that most seasoned BizTalk developers would consider this best practice. Even though Microsoft suggest use of BizUnit on MSDN, I've not found ......

Posted On Tuesday, June 5, 2012 10:28 PM BizTalk , BizUnit

Mar 12

What type of tests are BizUnit tests?

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... BizUnit is defined as a "Framework for Automated Testing of Distributed Systems." I've never seen a catchy label to describe what type of tests we create using this framework. They are not really "Unit Tests" that's for sure. "Integration Tests" might be a good definition. However, I want a label ......

Posted On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 3:15 AM BizUnit

Nov 11

TODO Formatting

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... TODO's in code should only be used for a short period of time to remind you that something needs to be done. They should be addressed as soon as possible. In order to know who owns a TODO task and how long it’s been outstanding, my company uses the following formatting standard: Format: // TODO : ......

Posted On Tuesday, November 22, 2011 7:29 AM StyleCop , R#

Jul 11

ESB Toolkit Clients

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... What is the best approach for developing a WCF client application that sends messages to the WCF on-ramps exposed by the BizTalk ESB Toolkit? I had considered various approaches: Generate an xml message from a string template using string replacements. Then submit the message to the ESB endpoint ......

Posted On Monday, July 25, 2011 10:50 AM BizTalk , ESB Toolkit

May 11

Sending header details in messages to Dynamics AX 2012 WCF services from BizTalk

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... How do you send "Call Context" information in the header message to Dynamics AX 2012 WCF services from BizTalk? One difference between AX 2009 and AX 2012 services, is that you no longer always need to provide destination endpoint context information. This is described here: In previous releases, ......

Posted On Friday, May 6, 2011 4:04 AM BizTalk , Dynamics AX

Apr 11

Catching Faults from Dynamics AX 2012 WCF services

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... I hit problems in an orchestration consuming WCF services exposed by Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 (AX6). When attempting to catch a fault response, I was getting the error "received unexpected message type 'http://www.w3.org/2003/05/... In order to fix this, I needed to change the ......

Posted On Monday, April 4, 2011 11:54 AM BizTalk , Dynamics AX

Apr 11

Test Categories with BizUnit tests

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... Often it is handy to organise BizUnit tests into test lists. This way longer running tests and edge case tests can be removed from check-in builds keep them running a bit more quickly. However, updating a .vsmdi test lists for each individual test method is time consuming. A better solution is to ......

Posted On Friday, April 1, 2011 10:06 AM BizTalk , BizUnit , MSTest

Dec 10

Creating typed WSDL’s for generic WCF services of the ESB Toolkit

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source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... Update (10/06/2011): I no longer recommend the approach below. It is too much of an administrative nightmare to create a wsdl for each possible service method call. See new advise here: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... Question How do you make it easy for ......

Posted On Monday, December 20, 2010 10:48 AM BizTalk , ESB Toolkit

Jul 10

Naming Standards for BizUnit Integration Tests

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source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... Roy Osherove on his blog and in his book gives guidance on the naming of unit test methods. For use with BizUnit end-to-end integration tests, I have extended these recommendations below. Implementing these conventions has the following benefits: Makes it easily to understand the purpose of the test. Make ......

Posted On Monday, July 5, 2010 6:45 AM BizTalk , BizUnit , ESB Toolkit

Mar 10

BizTalk Cross Reference Data Management Strategy

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... This article describes an approach to the management of cross reference data for BizTalk. Some articles about the BizTalk Cross Referencing features can be found here: http://home.comcast.net/~sd... http://geekswithblogs.net/m... http://geekswithblogs.net/c... ......

Posted On Sunday, March 14, 2010 12:32 PM BizTalk

Feb 10

XSD Validation from BizTalk Orchestrations

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... There are various blog articles that give sample .NET code that can be used to validate a message against a schema from a BizTalk orchestration. These include: msdn, haloscan.com, biztalkgurus.com, eggheadcafe.com and Sujan Turlapaty. Many of these blogs have subsequent comments about problems. Under ......

Posted On Tuesday, February 16, 2010 4:49 AM BizTalk

Jul 09

BizTalk Map Documenter

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... The "HTML Generator StyleSheet for BizTalk Maps" originally posted by Steve Hart is now on CodePlex. http://biztalkmapdoc.codepl... I have uploaded a new version that includes the following updates (not all of this was developed by me): output of label data. output of constants used. updated table ......

Posted On Thursday, July 23, 2009 8:34 AM BizTalk

May 09

Stub of Dynamics AX for BizTalk Development and BizUnit Testing

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... This article describes our approach to testing BizTalk integration with Dynamics AX 2009. It builds on the "Alternative Bindings" approach as described by Mike Stephenson. Alternative Bindings We are communicating asynchronous with Dynamics. As such, in our developer / unit test bindings, we have ......

Posted On Wednesday, May 13, 2009 9:26 AM BizTalk , BizUnit , Dynamics AX

Apr 09

Value vs. Id Cross Referencing in BizTalk

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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/c... Ever wondered what the differences are between "id" and "value" cross referencing in BizTalk? Functional The functional difference is documented on msdn. ... The cross reference ID methods can be used to establish and lookup the relationship between the IDs used by the two systems. ... the cross ......

Posted On Monday, April 20, 2009 6:28 PM BizTalk