Hernan de Lahitte's blog

Patterns & Practices Redmond Summit 2009

2009-09-03T01:17:00Z

If you still did not notice yet, here is the p&p summit 2009 with great speakers like Martin Fowler, Scott Guthrie, Ade Miller and many more.You can get further registration information here.

SOA Patterns With BizTalk Server 2009 (and Biztalk ESB Toolkit)

2009-07-03T21:12:00Z

Over the last weeks after finishing my collaboration with the ESB Toolkit project, I had the chance to read a great book on Biztalk called SOA Patterns with BizTalk Server 2009 by Richard Seroter, an authority on BizTalk topics.

The book discusses in a very comprehensive and well structured way the core principles of SOA and how to get a great synergy with WCF Adapters with samples on implementation of synchronous and asynchronous communication patterns. In particular I was more biased to focus on chapter 11 where it is described the ESB Toolkit.

The first thing I noticed was that the chapter was based on the CTP2 version of the toolkit. Nevertheless, the overall structure and samples are pretty good and follow basically the general approach. Naturally some details and parts had changed since that version of the toolkit and in particular the licensing area where now it DOES have official Microsoft support as a product (Biztalk Server 2009).

After that I also found that Richard also posted in his blog some comments and samples regarding the final version like the presentation of the latest ESB Toolkit version or this great sample about executing multiple maps in sequence (Notice that this sample shows some screenshots of the new Itinerary Designer).

I recommend this book to all Biztalk audiences in particular if you want to build maintainable mission critical based solutions.The book can be purchased from Packt Publishing and Amazon.

Biztalk ESB Toolkit - All About Itinerary Designer Security

2009-06-29T22:30:00Z

There is a new feature in the ESB Toolkit 2.0 that let you protect the sensitive information embedded into an Itinerary model such as passwords, connections strings, credentials, etc.Let start with some details about the model properties that may be protected and also the encrypted data embedded into the exported itinerary.First of all, the protection is being done by encrypting the sensitive data with an X.509 Certificate selected in the “Encryption Certificate” property located at the model level settings. Here are the basic operations on setting certificate in this property: (Note: If you already read this from the documentation, you can bypass it and go down to “Certificate Validation Settings” section.)

To select the X.509 certificate for an itinerary:

In the Itinerary Designer Properties window, expand the Encryption Certificate property, and then click the Store Location drop-down list, and select the CurrentUser or LocalMachine. This associates the X.509 certificate store with the current user or the local computer.
In the Properties window, click the Store Name drop-down list and select the value which corresponds to your certificate store.
In the Properties window, click the ellipsis button (...) next to the Encryption Certificate property, and then select the X.509 certificate in the Select Certificate dialog box.

To remove the X.509 certificate from an itinerary:

In the Itinerary Designer Properties window, expand the Encryption Certificate property, and then set the Store Location property to a different value. This disassociates the old certificate with the BizTalk ESB Toolkit itinerary model.

To disable the X.509 certificate validation: For those scenarios like Development environments where you may not have available Certificates or you don’t want to use security, you can disable this feature by opening the Registry Editor, navigate to the subkey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk ESB Toolkit\2.0\Designer, and then set the RequireX509Certificate property value to false.

Note:

If you installed the BizTalk ESB Toolkit on an operating system that has 64-bit support, the subkey is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SysWOW64\Microsoft\BizTalk ESB Toolkit\2.0\Designer.

Notice that you may find other ways to do this like the one described here. However I would strongly suggest using the above steps because that’s the way it was designed the certificate usage ON/OFF switch functionality.

Certificate Validation Settings: The certificate is used for encryption but is also validated before using it. The validation behavior and settings are controlled by the attributes values located in the esb.config file in the following section:

You may have probably noticed that these attributes resemble the WCF Certificate Authentication Properties. The reason for this is simply because the Designer is actually using the same API that WCF uses in order to perform the certificate validation so you can use any of the values allowed in these settings according to WCF documentation. If you want to know more about this API and its usage you can read this post.

Encrypted Model Properties: As I mentioned at the beginning, there are some properties in the model and extenders that may be secured by encrypting them with the X.509 Certificate set in the model property.Regarding the properties that are encrypted when the model file is persisted, we have: - Model Properties:o Biztalk Server Connection Stringo Model Exporter (DB Exporter): Itinerary Database- Static Resolver Extender:o Endpoint Configuration Regarding the “Endpoint Configuration” property, there are some details to add. First you need to set the “Transport Name” property. After this when you open the Endpoint Configuration editor (…) will show up a dialog with all the properties included in the manifest file according to the Transport Name set. Let say that you set the “FTP” value, then the editor will show up the properties in the FTPPropertyManifest.xml file located in the Designer installation folder.

You will find in the following property element the “encrypted” attribute that marks this element for encryption. The same applies to any other element with this attribute set to “true”.

In case that there’s no Certificate set and the certificate registry value is set as “true”, you may not be able to set a sensitive property value because it will show up as disabled like in the following figure:

Once you have set the certificate or disabled the certificate usage as described in the above section, you may set these properties as expected.

Exporting the model with encrypted values

When you export the model to an xml itinerary you will get the encrypted data like the properties marked for encryption in “Endpoint Configuration” resolver property or any other extender property (including custom extenders) with the attribute “EncryptPropertyAttribute” on the sensitive property like the sample below:

[EncryptProperty(typeof(ItineraryModel))]

public string EndpointConfig { get; set; }

After exporting the model, you will get the exported data like in the “endpointConfig” attribute value below, all the XmlEncryption section “<EncriptedData>…” with a reference to the X.509 certificate used for encryption.

Notice that you should install this same certificate on the server where the core ESB engine will process this itinerary in order to decrypt the sensitive information.

Biztalk ESB Toolkit - Useful links

2009-06-29T18:05:00Z

Here are a bunch links that you might find them useful when working with this toolkit.

Forums: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/biztalkesb/threads

MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/dd876606.aspx

Codeplex: http://esb.codeplex.com/

Getting started: Getting up and Running with BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0

Toolkit Videos+HowTos+others: http://blogs.msdn.com/pkelcey/archive/tags/BizTalk+2009/default.aspx

MS Connect site: https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=886

Itinerary Designer Help: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd897766.aspx

Itinerary Designer Demo webcast: http://cloudtv.cloudapp.net/ViewWebcast.aspx?webcastid=2521552588569031455 (very nice demo by Brian Loesgen)

Biztalk ESB Toolkit - Itinerary Designer Model Importer

2009-06-29T17:43:00Z

If you are already using the Biztalk ESB Toolkit and have version 1 (V1) itineraries (xml file) and want to create designer models from them, you may use this console application that will import your V1 itineraries and create the model file (.itinerary) along with the designer file (.itinerary.designer).

The usage is very straightforward. Just simple type in a command prompt:

ItineraryImporter.exe /i=someItinerary.xml

Notice that running the .exe without parameters will show up the help notes.

Here some implementation Notes:

1) This version only supports V1 itineraries (As you can see from the tests included in the source)

2) The model file (.itinerary) and diagram file (.diagram) are generated.

3) The Biztalk Application and Port settings in the On/Off ramps will be missing (not included in the itinerary xml file) so they will require manual setting after opening the generated model into the designer in VS.

After settings these values the model should validate successfully.

Import considerations:

Since both OnRamp and OffRamp information and Send/Receive handlers are not persisted in the itinerary file, then some assumptions were made like the following:

1) All messaging services will be set as “receiveInbound” (OnRamp – Receive Handlers) whenever they are located before an OffRamp Extender service.

Otherwise they will be set as “sendTransmit” (OffRamp – Send Handlers).

2) The criteria for creating an OffRamp extender service was to detect if the service name was included in one of the defined names in the ESB config file. (see “IsOffRampExtenderService” funtion in “Extenders.Importers.Common\ItineraryModelImporter.cs” file. So a message service with a name like “Microsoft.Practices.ESB.Services.Transform” or “Microsoft.Practices.ESB.Services.Routing” will be created as a Messaging service and another with a name like “DynamicTest” will be an OffRamp extender service.

3) Any service created after an OffRamp extender will be placed between the OffRamp extender service and the OffRamp ESB service element.

In case of a Request/Response itinerary, the OffRamp service will be connected to the OnRamp service.

Notice that this strategy may not reflect in some scenarios the actual design of the itinerary because the services after OffRamp extender may be located after the OffRamp service as a “sendInbound” (OffRamp – Receive Handlers).

In this case a manual update may be required after model creation.

However, if this is not done, the same itinerary as the original will be exported back from VS so a safe round tripping will be honored.

You can download it from here (Binary and Source included): Download.

Biztalk ESB Toolkit is live!

2009-06-09T12:58:00Z

Finally is out. You can explore the toolkit right from the landing page in MSDN http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd897973.aspx and download the installers (x86 and x64) along with all the complete documentation (>100 pages of How to's and even more on SOA patterns and samples).

Enjoy it!

Patterns & Practices Summit 2009

2009-05-22T16:21:00Z

Now is live the announcing of the next P&P Summit 2009.

Stay tunned and you may also take a look at the Facebook summit page and post your comments or read others.

PS: Get ready for October 12th where the summit kicks off. (And I will also blow one more candle as well :)

New .NET 4.0 Security changes

2009-05-22T10:12:00Z

You can take a look at the new v4.0 .NET Framework, and the changes that will be described in Shawn's blog.

Here are the two first of the series.

- .NET 4.0 Security

- Security Policy in the v4 CLR

Stay tunned for more insightful info on this topic.

Depend On Patterns and Practices

2009-04-29T19:08:00Z

I just found a nice article on P&P guidelines named "You Can Depend On Patterns and Practices" that Alex Homer wrote on MSDN Magazine - May Edition.

There you may find some of the core Architecture concepts descibed in the good "patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide 2.0".

Nice to have for Enterprise Library 5.0

2009-04-22T15:35:00Z

This community call is a bit old (Jan 09) but just in case you never noticed, here are the posts/links to cast your vote on the new feature you may want to have in the next version of EntLib.

http://blogs.msdn.com/agile/archive/2009/01/26/enterprise-library-5-what-s-on-your-wish-list.aspx#comments

And this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/agile/archive/2009/03/27/enterprise-library-5-0-tentative-product-backlog-published-story-feature-prioritization-is-open-your-participation-is-invited.aspx

You can find more info in the patterns & practices portal and in codeplex.

Hands-on Labs for Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.1 and Unity 1.2

2009-04-22T15:08:00Z

In case you didn't notice yet, there are new HOLs for EntLib 4.1 and Unity 1.2.

Included in this release are three new hands-on labs covering:- Interception (with Policy Injection Application Block and Unity)- Dependency Injection with Unity- Validation Application BlockThere are also updates of the hands-on labs for the following blocks:− Caching Application Block

− Cryptography Application Block

− Data Access Application Block

− Exception Handling Application Block − Logging Application Block − Security Application BlockClick here to download the complete set of Hands-on Labs for Enterprise Library 4.1.
Unity 1.2 Hands-on Labs are also available as a separate download.

Additionally, a comprehensive set of Frequently Asked Questions is now available online.

Further details can be found in Grigori's blog.

Run as different user in Vista

2009-04-22T10:22:00Z

Very useful script for adding this feature back to Windows Vista in case the "Run as Administrator" may not fit your needs :)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc300361.aspx

Broken or missing project templates in Visual Studio 2008 or 2005

2009-04-22T10:13:00Z

After my last system restore, I got this annoying issue when I opened a VS soultion with test projects and some other project types. This is basically becasue of the "broken templates" issue. I came across this post that describes the problem and solution which in my case simply fixed running this command devenv /InstallVSTemplates from a Visual Studio command prompt with admin privs (for Vista).

In my case, that solved my problem. If you don;t have that luck then you may read all the above post and follow the rest of the steps.

DSL model gradient background

2009-04-21T12:24:00Z

In one of my recent DSL projects I was looking a way to get that nice gradient background that you can find in the Visual Studio DSL designer like the figure below:

As we can see, there is a gradient background along with a title "Classes and Relationships" at the top left. So let's start with the steps to get this working and define our own background color and title.

First you need to locate you diagram element and select the property "Generate Double Derived" as True like in the figure below:

Second you need to add a partial class of your diagram defined type which is the generated class that is defined in the Diagram element in the above figure.

So let's say that you have a class named "Language1Diagram" (like the default "MinimalLanguage" sample model), then you can create a new partial class like this:

public partial class Language1Diagram

{

private readonly Color BackgroundGradientColor = Color.LightCyan;

private readonly Color BackgroundSelectedGradientColor = Color.LightBlue;

private readonly Color BackgroundSelectedInactiveGradientColor = Color.CadetBlue;

// setting as true will create an AreaField named "Background"

// that we can customize in InitializeResources method.

public override bool HasBackgroundGradient

{

get { return true; }

}

As the comment points out, with this override you will get the background AreaField in your Diagram element. Now you need to customize that background with your required attributes (like the constants values defined at the top of the class definition) and add your title to the diagram background.

So you can add this code:

// This method runs per model

protected override void InitializeResources(StyleSet classStyleSet)

{

base.InitializeResources(classStyleSet);

// Fill brush settings for background (Start gradient color).

BrushSettings backgroundBrush = new BrushSettings();

backgroundBrush.Color = BackgroundGradientColor;

classStyleSet.OverrideBrush(DiagramBrushes.ShapeBackground, backgroundBrush);

// Selected state

backgroundBrush = new BrushSettings();

backgroundBrush.Color = BackgroundSelectedGradientColor;

classStyleSet.OverrideBrush(DiagramBrushes.ShapeBackgroundSelected, backgroundBrush);

// SelectedInactive state

backgroundBrush = new BrushSettings();

backgroundBrush.Color = BackgroundSelectedInactiveGradientColor;

classStyleSet.OverrideBrush(DiagramBrushes.ShapeBackgroundSelectedInactive,

backgroundBrush);

// We should find a "Background" field created when we set the

// HasBackgroundGradient property to "true"

AreaField background = this.FindShapeField("Background") as AreaField;

if (background != null)

{

background.DefaultReflectParentSelectedState = true;

// We can set the height of the background area a bit smaller (like half the

// total height) so the gradient will fade "faster" so you can see the fading in

// samller areas

background.AnchoringBehavior.SetBottomAnchor(AnchoringBehavior.Edge.Bottom,

this.MaximumSize.Height / 2);

}

// Custom font styles for diagram title

FontSettings fontSettings;

fontSettings = new FontSettings();

fontSettings.Style = FontStyle.Bold;

fontSettings.Size = 9 / 72.0F;

classStyleSet.OverrideFont(DiagramFonts.ShapeTitle, fontSettings);

// Create a text field for the Diagram Title

TextField textField = new TextField("DiagramTitle");

textField.DefaultText = "Itinerary Designer";

textField.DefaultVisibility = true;

textField.DefaultAutoSize = true;

textField.DefaultFontId = DiagramFonts.ShapeTitle;

textField.AnchoringBehavior.SetLeftAnchor(AnchoringBehavior.Edge.Left, 0.33);

textField.AnchoringBehavior.SetTopAnchor(AnchoringBehavior.Edge.Top, 0.07);

this.ShapeFields.Add(textField);

}

So now you can get a gradient background with title that will also change the color on focus events like this:

Focus on selected background:

Focus outside diagram:

Now you can have gradient backgrounds in your DSL models.