Webcasts by Alan Smith

Alan Smith
In the third in series of webcasts looking at Workflow Foundation 4.0 custom activities I’ll take a look at Custom Activity Designers. The designers use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to allow developers to easily create stylish and functional activities. Data binding is used to edit activity properties in the workflow designer.
February 14 Views: 1114 Rating: 3.7 (3 votes) Duration: 08:20
 
Alan Smith
This is the second in a series of webcasts looking at building custom activities in WF 4.0. This webcast will focus on creating asynchronous activities by deriving from the AsyncCodeActivity class.
January 31 Views: 1035 Rating: 2.8 (6 votes) Duration: 08:12
 
Alan Smith
This is the first in a series of webcasts looking at building custom activities in WF 4.0. This webcast will focus on deriving from the code activity class.
January 31 Views: 1580 Rating: 4.3 (7 votes) Duration: 13:45
 
Alan Smith
This webcast will take a look at the distributed cache functionality in Windows Server AppFabric (formally codename “Velocity”). The PowerShell management interface will be used to create and manage named caches and view cache statistics. Caching will then be added to a sample application and the performance improvements tested. The webcast is based on the AppFabric Beta 1 bits, so things may change in future releases.
January 14 Views: 1113 Rating: 5.0 (1 votes) Duration: 19:49
 
Alan Smith
This webcast takes a look at building declarative workflow services using the WCF Workflow Service project template in Visual Studio 2010. It is one in a series of webcasts looking at working with WCF Workflow Service.
January 8 Views: 1620 Rating: 4.1 (10 votes) Duration: 16:09
 
Alan Smith
This is the first in a series of webcasts looking at AppFabric (formally codename “Dublin”). In this webcast I will install the Application Server Extensions on Windows Server 2008 and then activate the monitoring and persistence databases. I will then create a basic declarative workflow service, deploy it to AppFabric, and then call it from a client. This will create tracking and persistence data that can then be viewed in the Application Server Extensions dashboard.
November 19 2009 Views: 847 Rating: 3.5 (2 votes) Duration: 14:20
 
Alan Smith
This webcast will take a look at the new default configuration options on WCF 4.0, showing how you can manage service and endpoint configuration using much simpler config files.
November 17 2009 Views: 840 Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Duration: 13:10
 
Alan Smith
Carl Franklin entertains the customers at The Bishop’s Arms in Malmo, accompanied by Shawn Wildermuth on guitar.
November 5 2009 Views: 1252 Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Duration: 05:10
 
Alan Smith
In this webcast I will take a look at calling WCF services from a WF workflow in Visual Studio 2010. The WCF/WF integration is one of the new features in .NET 4.0 that will appeal to developers who work with WCF services and want to leverage the functionality of WF workflows in their applications. This is a fairly basic run-through of how to do it. I will be producing more advanced WCF/WF webcasts in the near future.
October 25 2009 Views: 1279 Rating: 0.0 (0 votes) Duration: 09:54
 
Alan Smith
In this webcast I’ll run through the new flowchart workflow designer in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. The flowchart workflow designer allows for a free-form layout in the workflow, allowing fore more varies decision paths. (I’ve updated this webcast with a better way of calling the WCF services.)
October 22 2009 Views: 2020 Rating: 3.6 (11 votes) Duration: 23:39
 
Alan Smith
This is the first in a series of webcasts looking at the WF Designer in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 (forget the other WF webcasts, lots has changed now). I’ll be taking a quick tour of the new WF designer functionality, looking at both the sequential and Flowchart workflow models as well as creating a custom activity.
October 20 2009 Views: 2426 Rating: 3.6 (10 votes) Duration: 15:47
 
Alan Smith
In this interview Alan Smith talks to John Callaway about the rise and rise of BizTalk and SharePoint opportunities, hidden BizTalk features and the perils of delivering training courses.
October 11 2009 Views: 594 Rating: 0.0 (0 votes) Duration: 08:26
 
Alan Smith
When Brian Loesgen was in town I took the opportunity to record an interview with him. Among the subjects we discussed are BizTalk ESB Guidance 2.0, Oslo, DSLs, and also some tips for creating and maintaining a successful user group.
October 11 2009 Views: 540 Rating: 0.0 (0 votes) Duration: 23:30
 
Alan Smith
This webcast will take a detailed look at the Atomic Transaction shape in BizTalk orchestrations. The correct usage of the shape will be demonstrated along with some tips for reducing persistence and error handling.
October 4 2009 Views: 1051 Rating: 3.7 (7 votes) Duration: 31:26
 
Alan Smith
In this webcast I’ll run through the deployment of a new version of the CloudCasts website. I’ll start by showing the project structure and how I have configures the application to use local or cloud based storage in the development phase. I’ll give you a few tips on hosting your Azure applications in IIS to speed up development. I’ll then run through the deployment of the new version of the site to a staging environment, and finally taking it into production.
September 13 2009 Views: 1409 Rating: 5.0 (2 votes) Duration: 16:41
 
Alan Smith
A webcast looking at building basic and hierarchical data contracts in WCF. The DataContract and DataMember attributes will be used to transform an entity class into a data contract that can be serialized. The serialization mechanism will be demonstrated by creating SOAP messages from the data contracts. The use of ordering will be demonstrated, along with the use of generic lists for collections.
September 10 2009 Views: 977 Rating: 0.0 (0 votes) Duration: 21:18
 
Alan Smith
This webcast shows how the WS-ReliableMessaging standard can be used in WCF to increase the reliability of message transmission across unreliable transports. The Fiddler tool will be used to examine how WCF creates a reliable session, and how messages and message acknowledgements are transmitted across the wire. The effects of blocking messages will be examined with reliable messaging turned off and on, and with the ordered delivery options enabled and disabled.
August 30 2009 Views: 1787 Rating: 3.0 (11 votes) Duration: 23:17
 
Alan Smith
In this webcast I will provide a short review of the book SOA Patterns with BizTalk Server 2009 by Richard Serotor.
August 16 2009 Views: 1466 Rating: 3.0 (2 votes) Duration: 04:58
 
Alan Smith
This webcast will take a quick tour of the different projects available for developing WCF Services in Visual Studio 2010. The new declarative workflow based service templates will be demonstrated, along with some of the templates that were available in Visual Studio 2008. It will also provide guidelines on when the templates are appropriate to use.
August 10 2009 Views: 1816 Rating: 2.0 (4 votes) Duration: 22:58
 
Alan Smith
The Windows authentication options of WCF will be demonstrated using a simple service based on the wsHttpBinsing and hosted in IIS 7.
July 6 2009 Views: 1052 Rating: 5.0 (1 votes) Duration: 15:43
 
Alan Smith
A look at the transaction and compensation model in BizTalk Server 2009. The code is based on the Service Aggregator orchestration, which is described in a previous webcast.
July 6 2009 Views: 1012 Rating: 3.3 (6 votes) Duration: 20:58
 
Alan Smith
This webcast will demonstrate basic data modelling in 'M' using the IntelliPad tool.
May 14 2009 Views: 730 Rating: 5.0 (1 votes) Duration: 20:27
 
Alan Smith
A look at Custom XSLT mapping in BizTalk Server
May 14 2009 Views: 1535 Rating: 3.9 (8 votes) Duration: 21:41
 
Alan Smith
This webcasts focuses on developing custom activities for WF 4.0 and also at using the new WPF activity designer.
May 14 2009 Views: 967 Rating: 4.0 (3 votes) Duration: 26:32
 
Alan Smith
This webcast runs through the installation of the core BizTalk components in a multi server environment using Virtual PC images.
May 14 2009 Views: 1372 Rating: 3.0 (2 votes) Duration: 27:38
 
Alan Smith
This webcast is the third in a series looking at the service aggregator pattern in BizTalk Server 2009. The other webcasts are Service Aggregator and Orchestration Performance.
May 14 2009 Views: 1188 Rating: 4.0 (1 votes) Duration: 14:44
 
Alan Smith
A look at Basic HTTP security ad certificates in WCF.
May 14 2009 Views: 1313 Rating: 4.0 (4 votes) Duration: 20:32
 
Alan Smith
Creating an MGrammar DSL for a real-world scenario.
May 14 2009 Views: 690 Rating: 5.0 (1 votes) Duration: 20:36
 
Alan Smith
Using transactions and parallel actions to increase orchestration performance.
May 14 2009 Views: 1505 Rating: 3.4 (8 votes) Duration: 16:50
 
Alan Smith
A basic orchestration pattern to call multiple services from a BizTalk orchestration.
May 14 2009 Views: 1313 Rating: 4.6 (5 votes) Duration: 25:21
 
Alan Smith
Using views in Business Activity Monitoring to track Sushi production.
May 14 2009 Views: 1273 Rating: 4.5 (2 votes) Duration: 23:44
 
Alan Smith
Using activities in Business Activity Monitoring to track Sushi consumption.
May 14 2009 Views: 1551 Rating: 3.7 (7 votes) Duration: 25:01
 
Alan Smith
Looking at correlation, activation and instance subscriptions and issues 'Zombie' messages
May 14 2009 Views: 1125 Rating: 4.3 (3 votes) Duration: 13:44
 
Alan Smith
This webcast takes a look at the new designer in WF 4.0 and features simple workflows to input and output data.
May 14 2009 Views: 757 Rating: 5.0 (1 votes) Duration: 17:07
 
Alan Smith
A look at aggregating Sushi RFID tags with a sequential convoy orchestration.
May 14 2009 Views: 1095 Rating: 4.0 (3 votes) Duration: 22:28
 
Alan Smith
In this webcast I’ll take a quick run through the bits that were distributed at PDC-08 by the Microsoft Connected Systems Division (CSD).
May 14 2009 Views: 788 Rating: 0.0 (0 votes) Duration: 22:28
 
Alan Smith
This webcast will take a look into building a textual DSL with the MGrammar language and IntelliPad.
May 14 2009 Views: 705 Rating: 0.0 (0 votes) Duration: 18:15
 
Alan Smith
This webcast will look at hosting declarative services in the Dublin application server.
May 14 2009 Views: 829 Rating: 0.0 (0 votes) Duration: 19:04
 
Alan Smith
A simple demo of correlation in BizTalk Orchestrations.
May 14 2009 Views: 1287 Rating: 4.1 (7 votes) Duration: 16:06