Microsoft User Group Meeting

Hi Friends, this article shares my experience with Microsoft user group meeting.

I attended my First Microsoft meeting here in Heartford, speaker was CTO of Tallan systems Mario. He is an expert in Biztalk and the interesting fact is, he is part of Microsoft Virtual Tech Specialists.

see his profile below.
http://www.tallan.com/aboutus/pages/ExecutiveProfile.aspx?profileID=11

He gave good overview of Biztalk, usage, applicability and .net integration. Believe me coding is on his finger tips.

Some points i learned in the meeting.

Microsoft changed its logo recently. Interesting right!!! check the new logo here
http://weblogs.asp.net/pgielens/archive/2004/01/20/60813.aspx

In biztalk you can integrate with all other applications through concept of adapters.
Basically, it is competition for IBM message queue server
we have some cool features like single sign on, WCF adapter SDK etc.,
We can define our own adapters by defining Source and destination XSD's, pipeline, map, functiods. Don't get scared with these words, they are really simple with Biztalk editor, which looks similar to visual studio editor.
License is around 30K for Enterprise edition it seems.
There is a concept called Orchestration, dont ask me what it is :-) i may have to dive deep to understand it more clearly.

He explained a realworld example where it can be useful and then coded a simple application to get the feel of the biztalk development.

The most interesting and stunning part of it is , the next version is again pointing to Oslo (microsof model based development - yet to release) and Cloud computing.

Microsoft is counting big on these two. It would be separate article if i start writing about Oslo, Cloud Computing and Azure......you can find it soon in my blog though.......

Dont worry.....Thirst for knowledge never killed any body in the history......