Why is Architecture important?

 Architecture, Enterprise, General  No Responses »
Mar 022012
 

Today I was humbled in talking about architecture as I stumbled through some explanations of principles and key terms.  For those that know me I am very passionate and professional on how I approach things, including discussions.  I found myself stumbling because I got myself stuck on answering an open question about how I would architect something anyway I wanted to (skies the limit).  I struggled because everyday architects resolve issues within the constraints of budgets, personnel, and technology stacks.  It was like asking me, if you could do anything in the world, you want what would do?  Flight or invisibility?  But at the end of the day, the laws of gravity and physics comes into play.

I asked myself, why is architecture important?

Like everything else to me it is a process and with that it has defining characteristics.  Some of the main issues that seem to get focused on is acronyms and perceptions.  What I mean by that is acronyms have different meanings to different industries – they also seem to overlap.  Like a house, software needs a strong foundation to build on and without it everything built on top of it is at risk – do we really need to concern ourselves with what we call it.  Sometimes I think quite a few great discussions get last with acronyms and there usage

With that what should the goals of Architecture be?

The main focus should be bridging the gap between business requirements and technical requirements by understanding the software’s use cases and working out ways to implement them.

Well then, what key principles should an Architect consider?

  • Instead of building to last, build to change.
  • To reduce risk and model to analyze.
  • Use visualization as a collaboration tool.
  • Work to identify key engineering decisions.

With emergent architecture try using a more iterative or agile approach to help minimize risk of change throughout the process.

So, to answer the main question without a strong foundation you simple end with a house of cards, that is difficult to deploy, modify, manage, and support.  While architect by nature is conceptual, without walking that mile or suffering through a bumpy foundation – how do you really know what foundation to build?

 

Sequential Convoys

 Architecture, BizTalk, ESB, Patterns and Practices, SOA  No Responses »
Feb 082011
 

Quite a few people have asked “What are sequental convoys?” and “When should I use them?”.  So here is the definition and a quick example on when and/or how I would use them. 

 “A sequential convoy enables multiple single messages to join together to achieve a required result. A sequential convoy is a set of related messages that have a predefined order. Although the messages do not have to be exactly the same, BizTalk Server must receive them in a sequential order.” * Microsoft definition

 Where this becomes handy in business is around batching of messages, an example of this would be when a business process requires batch processing that needs to retain the order in which the message was received.  The way this is accomplished is to put a Listen shape within a delay, which the delay the loop ends.  During this delay time any number of received messages can enter the same business process.  This approach can have a side effect of Zombie messages, but we will look at those in a future post.

In our book, we discuss a pharmaceutical ESB system and we have a process that batches order messages from vendors until 2pm, then sends order processing and shipping.  In this process we show the use of sequential convoys as well as look into the side effects of this process.

Silverlight 4 Printing

 .NET, Application, Architecture, ASP.NET, Enterprise, General, Silverlight  1 Response »
Jan 182011
 

Printing in Silverlight has been made pretty simple, how it comes with some caveats because it opnly supports rasterized image printing.  Not 100% a problem but in LOB applications will run into issue with printing thinks like PDF, because all formatting is lost in reflect to the final printed document.

Here is a quick code method on printing in Silverlight 4:

[sourcecode langauge="csharp"]
PrintDocument documentToPrint= new PrintDocument();
documentToPrint.DocumentName = "Sample Document";
documentToPrint.StartPrint += new EventHandler(documentToPrint_StartPrint);
documentToPrint.PrintPage += new EventHandler(documentToPrint_PrintPage);
documentToPrint.Print();
[/sourcecode]

Quick Refresher – ASP.NET Page Life Cycle

 .NET, Application, Architecture, ASP.NET, General  No Responses »
Jan 062011
 

The Life Cycle of a page when requested for the first time:

Initializing: During this phase, the server creates an instance of the server control

Loading: During this phase, the instance of the control is loaded onto the page object in which it is defined.

PreRendering: During this phase, the control is updated with the changes made to it. This prepares the control for rendering.

Saving: During this phase, the state information of the control is saved. For example, if a value is set for the control during the Load event, it is embedded in the HTML tag that will be returned to the browser.

Rendering: During this phase, the server creates the corresponding HTML tag for the control.

Disposing: During this phase, all cleanup tasks, such as closing files and database connections opened by the control are performed.

Unloading: During this phase, all cleanup tasks, such as destroying the instances of server control are performed. This is the final event in the life cycle of a server control

The processing sequence in which a page is processed during a postback event is:

Initializing: During this phase, the server creates an instance of the server control

Loading view state: During this phase, the view state of the control posted by the client is reloaded into the new instance of the control.

Loading: During this phase, the instance of the control is loaded onto the page object in which it is defined.

Loading the postback data: During this phase, the server searches any data corresponding to the control that is loaded in the data posted by the client.

PreRendering: During this phase, the control is updated with the changes made to it. This prepares the control for rendering.

Saving state: During this phase, the change in the state of control between the current request and the previous request of the page is saved. For each change, the corresponding event is raised. For example, if the text of a textbox is changed, the new text is saved and a text_change event is raised.

Rendering: During this phase, the server creates the corresponding HTML tag for the control.

Disposing: During this phase, all cleanup tasks, such as closing files and database connections opened by the control are performed.

Unloading: During this phase, all cleanup tasks, such as destroying the instances of server control are performed. This is the final event in the life cycle of a server control

The events associated with the relevant page cycle phases are:

  • Page Initialization: Page_Init
  • View State Loading:LoadViewState
  • Postback data processing: LoadPostData
  • Page Loading: Page_Load
  • PostBack Change Notification: RaisePostDataChangedEvent
  • PostBack Event Handling: RaisePostBackEvent
  • Page Pre Rendering Phase: Page_PreRender
  • View State Saving: SaveViewState
  • Page Rendering: Page_Render
  • Page Unloading: Page_UnLoad

Installing BizTalk 2010 with BizTalk 2009

 Architecture, BizTalk, ESB, General  1 Response »
Oct 112010
 

Unfortunately you are not able to run both side by side; so I would suggest you run 2009 in a VM and test your 2010 project in that if you need downward compatibility.

Remember, BizTalk 2010 is the only version of BizTalk compatible with R2 version of the Microsoft Server 2008 and SQL 2008.  Setup is still roughly the same.

BizTalk (Showing BizTalk Assembly Viewer in My Computer)

 Architecture, BizTalk, General  1 Response »
Oct 042010
 

To add Assembly Viewer to the Windows registry

  1. From the Start menu, click Run.
  2. In the Run dialog box, type cmd.
  3. From the command line, navigate to <BizTalk Server Installation Folder>Developer Tools where BTSAsmExt.dll resides.
  4. At the command line, type:

    regsvr32 BTSAsmExt.dll

  5. To begin using Assembly View, log off and then log back onto the computer.

To remove Assembly Viewer from the Windows registry

  1. From the Start menu, click Run.
  2. In the Run dialog box, type cmd.
  3. From the command line, navigate to <BizTalk Server Installation Folder>Developer Tools where BTSAsmExt.dll resides.
  4. At the command line, type:

    regsvr32/u BTSAsmExt.dll

  5. To complete the removal, log off and then log back onto the computer.

BizTalk 2010 (and earlier versions) namespace gotcha

 Architecture, BizTalk, General, Troubleshooting  No Responses »
Sep 302010
 

I have not been able to find a post or get a true explanation on “reserved words” in BizTalk; however there are a few you should stay away from.  I have personally tested these.

You should refrain from using “BTS” or “EDI” anywhere in your namespace to avoid namespace property look-up issues.

I will be posting more about this as I work through the public version of BizTalk 2010 on Oct. 1, 2010.

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