Windows Server AppFabric Customer Advisory Team
Technical guidance & best practices from AppFabric, Azure, BizTalk, WCF, WF, SQL Data Modeling & StreamInsight technology experts
We Have Moved to MSDN
We blog too much! We have maxed out the storage space allowed on MSDN blogs. All new content will be...
Date: 02/07/2011
Intellisense when editing Service Bus configuration files? Yes please!
The problem The setup of Windows Azure AppFabric SDK adds the elements reported in the table...
Date: 02/07/2011
Enterprise Library on Windows Azure: Key Learnings from Customer Project
This post has been moved to a new location. Please follow the link below. Thank you....
Date: 01/31/2011
How to use Duplex MEP to communicate with BizTalk from a .NET application or a WF workflow running inside AppFabric Part 3
Introduction In the first article of the series we discussed how to exchange messages with an...
Date: 01/20/2011
Running .NET4 Windows Workflows in Azure
This blog reviews the current (January 2011) set of options available for hosting existing .NET4...
Date: 01/12/2011
StreamInsight: Creating a LINQPad data context
This blog post is for those folks comfortable with creating a data stream from an IEnumerable,...
Date: 01/05/2011
Best Practices for Maximizing Scalability and Cost Effectiveness of Queue-Based Messaging Solutions on Windows Azure
This post has been moved to a new location. Please follow the link below. Thank you....
Date: 12/20/2010
AD FS 2.0 to secure WCF and Workflow Services hosted in Windows Server AppFabric
This blog entry is a sequel to the October 30th Blog “Securing WCF Services hosted in Windows...
Date: 12/14/2010
Logging and Counters in App Fabric Cache
The following is a good place to get started with how to go about collecting basic...
Date: 12/14/2010
StreamInsight Query Patterns: Fun with process data – calculating the wind chill factor
Process data, commonly accessed from OPC or a process historian such as OSIsoft PI, is well suited...
Date: 12/13/2010
SQL Azure and Entity Framework Connection Fault Handling
A number of customers are choosing to use Entity Framework with Microsoft SQL Azure, and rightfully...
Date: 12/10/2010
Distributed Cache != Database
Even though this topic looks obvious, there have been some interesting customer scenarios centered...
Date: 12/09/2010
Fronting long-running WF Services with MSMQ, the right way
A couple of weeks ago I was working with a customer who engaged me to assist with a "little" problem...
Date: 12/08/2010
StreamInsight: Reading from other data contexts into StreamInsight with LINQPad
The LINQPad driver for StreamInsight provides an awesomely easy way to run StreamInsight queries...
Date: 12/03/2010
StreamInsight: Where did that query result come from (using the Event Flow Debugger in LINQPad)?
Occasionally, when working with StreamInsight queries an unusual result will crop up, leading to...
Date: 12/02/2010
Basics on how to setup an App Fabric Cache server and API usage
At this year’s SQL PASS summit, I had the opportunity to talk with customers about App Fabric...
Date: 11/30/2010
BizTalk Server–distinguished field
The distinguished field is used to expose the value of a node of a message instance to BizTalk...
Date: 11/29/2010
Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service - soup to nuts primer
Introduction One of the important reasons to move an application to the cloud is scalability...
Date: 11/29/2010
StreamInsight: Understanding dynamic query composition
Been tied up with PASS for the past (pun intended) couple of weeks, so it’s time to get a bit caught...
Date: 11/22/2010
A Configurable AppFabric Cache Attribute For Your WCF Services
Doing a search online for WCF and Cache will eventually lead you to a number of links* demonstrating...
Date: 11/10/2010
AppFabric Cache – Deploying cache servers and cache clients on different Active Directory Domains
Recently, a particular deployment with cache servers on domain1 and cache clients (app servers or...
Date: 11/03/2010
StreamInsight Query Pattern: Find the top category (using Order By, Take and ApplyWithUnion)
This is a question that has come up in a few customer engagements, and on several forum posts – how...
Date: 11/03/2010
StreamInsight: Obscure LINQ error - Stream other than apply input stream is cannot be referenced inside apply branch
Another little LINQ error you might encounter from time to time. Ran into this yesterday while...
Date: 11/02/2010
Getting the most out of user events and Windows Server AppFabric Monitoring
"Yet another post on AppFabric Monitoring" I hear you saying. Indeed, and one that you may want to...
Date: 11/02/2010
Disaster Recovery for AppFabric Caching configuration DB (SQL Mirroring)
In the middle tier AppFabric (AF) Caching can be setup in High Availability (HA) mode which...
Date: 11/01/2010
Securing WCF Services hosted in Windows Server AppFabric with Windows Identity Foundation (WIF)
A key challenge while designing and deploying Web Services is access control and this blog post is...
Date: 10/30/2010
How to use AppFabric Auto-Start feature to avoid warm-up delays for IIS-hosted WCF Receive Locations
Scenario During recent years, I had the chance to work with many customers and I realized that one...
Date: 10/29/2010
Less tweaking of your WCF 4.0 apps for high throughput workloads
I always have a sense of satisfaction when I find out that there is less tweaking or tuning needed...
Date: 10/29/2010
Best Practices for Handling Transient Conditions in SQL Azure Client Applications
This post has been moved to a new location. Please follow the link below. Thank you....
Date: 10/28/2010
Updating AppFabric Cache via SQL Service Broker External Activator
Event Driven Updates If I can't have magic then I want something easy. I'd like to have changes that...
Date: 10/27/2010
StreamInsight V1.1 is released (.NET Sequences / IObservable, side-by-side installation and perf improvements)
The StreamInsight dev team has just released the next version of StreamInsight (version 1.1)!! ...
Date: 10/25/2010
StreamInsight: Obscure LINQ error - The field 'Key' of type 'IKey`1' either contains a nested member, or is a type that is not supported as event type field
This is a pretty obscure one, and a nice short snippet of a blog post. I ran into this error...
Date: 10/23/2010
Holding a Reference to the EF MetadataWorkspace for WCF Services
The title lends itself to a bit thought. Why would the developer feel the need hold a static...
Date: 10/22/2010
StreamInsight: Getting started with using the (Event Flow) debugger, viewing diagnostics, and exposing the management service.
StreamInsight has a very powerful management service that is fully available to developers and...
Date: 10/21/2010
StreamInsight and reference data (lists, databases, etc)
Using reference data in StreamInsight is a very common scenarios; some examples would be: Monitoring...
Date: 10/19/2010
BizTalk Patterns part 2–Sync Async
co-Authored by Thiago Almeida (Datacom) reviewed by Conor Brady (Oakton) Developing a BizTalk Server...
Date: 10/15/2010
Building Your Dynamic Router on AppFabric Cache
I’ve seen a lot of services routing solutions. Some used expensive hardware. Some were built...
Date: 10/07/2010
Considerations when managing source control via Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and using Text Template Transformation Toolkit to generate .NET4 Entity Framework objects
T4 background Leveraging the power of Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4 template) to generate...
Date: 10/07/2010
StreamInsight: Synchronizing slow-moving reference streams with fast-moving data streams (time import)
One of the common tasks in StreamInsight is to use a reference stream to integrate metadata or...
Date: 10/05/2010
Implementing Reliable Inter-Role Communication Using Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus, Observer Pattern & Parallel LINQ
This post has been moved to a new location. Please follow the link below. Thank you....
Date: 09/30/2010
BizTalk Patterns part 1 – Asynchronous Aggregation
Developing a BizTalk Server solution can be challenging, and especially complex for those who are...
Date: 09/28/2010
Versioning NET4 Workflow Services in Windows Server AppFabric
There is tremendous interest in versioning .NET4 Workflows. This blog post provides guidance on...
Date: 09/28/2010
Windows Server AppFabric Monitoring - How to create operational analytics reports with AppFabric Monitoring and Excel PowerPivot
One of the great (and major) features of Windows Server AppFabric is the out-of-the-box experience...
Date: 09/28/2010
Windows Server AppFabric How-To: Adding multiple persistence stores to an AppFabric installation
Yesterday someone contacted me in regards to adding a secondary persistence store to their AppFabric...
Date: 09/23/2010
Financial Messaging Services Bus (FMSB) – Add-ons for ESB Toolkit
Summary: Financial Messaging Services Bus (FMSB) is a vertical industry implementation of...
Date: 09/20/2010