Brian H. Prince

I just finished my mini-tour of Ohio with the talk about BizTalk Server and WF. The sessions went well, although I ran out of time in Toledo, and wasn't able to complete a more complex demo. The goal of the session is to introduce workflow and the two major platforms to do it with, so I think I at least accomplished that goal. I want to thank NWNUG and the Dayton .NET Developers Group for having me. As usual, it was a lot of fun. I think the funniest part was in Dayton. They were reading off names for the the swag, and the announcer couldn't pronounce the last name of the winner and the first name had been abbreviated to just T. The announcer started spelling it, and a women (I actually should say THE woman, as she was the only one) stood up and said that it was her, and pronounced a name that most likely used every letter in the alphabet. Someone in the audience ( James from work) said "Why didn't you just say 'The Girl'?". Everyone laughed. James is f...

I will be speaking about BizTalk Server and WF at NWNUG July 25th (Tuesday). They have a really interesting UG format. The first portion is meant to be easier content (level 100 type stuff). They then break for pizza, and then the second session is related to the first, but of a high level. A great way to help people ease into the water! Jim has graciously invited me to speak at the Dayton .NET Developers Group again. That will be this Wednesday (July 26th). The topic will be very similar to the NWNUG session. With BizTalk Server close to my hear, and knowing where MS is taking the product, workflow is near and dear to my heart. Mark my words, the lanscape for WF/BizTalk/middleware will be dreastically different in two years. There are major mind shifts happening, and I think it is very exciting. BizTalk server skills have always been a niche need, much like HIPAA, X.12, etc. Soon most developers will have at least basic skills in workflow and related technolgies, just like SQL serv...

I have recently finished a project for a client that used the IBS model. Infopath -> BizTalk -> Sharepoint. In this application the Infopath client used several web services. Some were hosted in IIS, and some in BizTalk. When the user submitted the form, it was sent to a BizTalk orchestration exposed as a web service for processing before being stored in a WSS doclib. [In IP you have to send only the data, not the entire form, to the web service.] The orchestration was nicknamed the router. It did some server side validation (you should never rely on client side validation, that is just there for the user's UX benefit). It also dynamically configured the WSS send port, and did some other housecleaning tasks. Each form was for a different business unit (more than fifty options). The router determined which site (based on audit year) and doc lib (based on business unit) the form should be sent to. While doing this project we learned a bit about the WSS adapter that we hadn'...