The material is pretty diverse and spread across 11 chapters – each covering a different area of BizTalk. Each chapter is broken down into several (8 to 25) sections that take the following format: problem, followed by solution, followed by an explanation. While this format works for some of the content, it does not work for all of it and can end up confusing the reader. Here, I believe a tradeoff was made for consistency over accuracy because the “how it works” section does not always describe the “how” but the “why” or the “when.”

I believe a beginner to intermediate BizTalk developer would gain the most out of this book, while some value can still be had for the intermediate to advanced BizTalk developer – though not as much since Mark does not cover the deeper scenarios that they may be looking for. The book covered core scenarios in key areas well – schemas, maps, and orchestrations. It also covered other core scenarios or features in other areas such as business rules, EDI, deployment, administration, business activity monitoring, and non-WCF adapters. I especially liked chapter 1 of the book being all about the new features in BizTalk 2010. While it might seem confusing for a new to BizTalk developer, it is great for those that have used previous versions of BizTalk.

I was hoping that areas outside the core product such as ESB Toolkit would be covered and thought it a strange omission that WCF adapters were not included in the Adapters chapter or anywhere in the book at all. They have been a part of BizTalk since 2006 R2. This was probably the largest disappointment in the book for me personally, as I was looking forward to Mark’s take on WCF adapters.

Overall, I thought reading BizTalk 2010 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach was worth my time. For the developer with beginner to intermediate-level skills in BizTalk development, I would rate this book a 4+ out of 5. For intermediate to advanced skillsets, I would rate this book a 3 out of 5, since it did not cover more advanced and/or obscure topics.

Thanks to all of the organizers at the NYC Code Camp for an excellent day of learning and networking! This year, it “sold out” in 27 hours! The speakers were excellent and the event was run very smoothly.

I have posted the slide deck (including the demo code) for your viewing pleasure.

Material:

For next time, I may try to turn this into two separate presentations and beef each up with more nitty-gritty. I know I have been asked  to dive into item-level and field-level security so I will attempt to do so for the next New England Code Camp in Waltham.

Slide Deck (PPTX): EF4 and WCF Data Services 4 – Max Weber – Tallan

Slide Deck (PPT): EF4 and WCF Data Services 4 – Max Weber – Tallan

Entity Framework project: EF4Presentation.Solution

Entity Framework + WCF Data Services project: BlogModel solution modified

Don’t forget to check out Elisa Flasko’s article on Entity Framework 4.0 and WCF Data Services 4.0 in Visual Studio 2010 – this was the basis for the BlogModel solution and is good at guiding one through setting up a WCF Data Service with EF4.

Acouple of weekends ago at Code Camp 10, I presented on the ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) Framework. As promised, I have attached the presentation for all to see.

I would like to thank my co-worker Stan Kennedy for his assistance with the slide deck (actually, he deserves most, if not all of the credit for it) and everyone that showed up to the presentation. I hope everyone learned something – I certainly did as well.

I would like to direct everyone over to the ASP.NET MVC site, which is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to know more about it – and would recommend anyone who wants to start out with it to view Stephen Walther’s How-to videos on the subject (also on the ASP.NET MVC site) as well.

Additionally, I know there were some questions around REST and what it had to do with the Model View Controller. From what I understand, REST is simply an architectural style, which is usually applied to an entire website. REST stands for Representational State Transfer and in the case of a website, each page represents a state, and each link represents a state transfer. Since each page is its own state, the state transfer takes place by loading up a new URL on the page. The ASP.NET MVC Framework allows a developer to build their website in a RESTful architecture from the ground up from the framework’s normal usage patterns. There is a bit more to the architecture, so for the curious, I would recommend heading to wikipedia to get additional information or to this other site, which I think summarizes REST quite well.

Thanks, and enjoy

Max

Powerpoint slides: mvc-mweber-code-camp-10