Beta of BizTalk Server R3 Expected Later This Year

Later this year, Microsoft will deliver the first preview of the new release of its BizTalk Server middleware platform that supports Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, and the ।NET Framework 3.5, with general availability during the first half of 2009, a Microsoft product manager said on his blog last week.

BizTalk Server is Microsoft's core business process management (BPM) middleware platform for integrating enterprise applications, synchronizing the flow of data with external systems, and sending and receiving business documents as part of a supply chain। In short, if it's B2B processing you need on a Windows Server, BizTalk Server is a good start.

There has been some concern among Windows customers that Microsoft had not yet communicated its plans to support the new Windows Server stack--anchored by Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, and the ।NET Framework 3.5--with a new release of BizTalk Server.

Those fears were addressed last week by Steven Martin, director of product management for the Connected Systems Division, on his blog, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Simple Middleware

"Once SQL Server 2008 . . . becomes generally available, we will follow with an updated version of BizTalk Server designed for the latest versions of Windows Server, the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and SQL Server," Martin wrote on his blog.

The new release will be called BizTalk Server 2006 Release 3, and the first community technology preview (CTP) will go out later this year, with a release to manufacturing (RTM) expected during the first half of 2009, according to Martin

Here's what else you can expect, in addition to expanded platform support: support for UDDI 3।0, the Web services repository; new adapters for ERP systems, databases, and legacy hosts; enhanced support for RFID devices through BizTalk RFID Mobile, a new product Microsoft announced last week and which will ship later this year; better support for B2B protocols like SWIFT and EDI; and support for SOA patterns and best practices.

source=http://www.itjungle.com/

Microsoft's Enterprise Project suite isn't just for the enterprise

Keeping track of a project -- any project -- can be an overwhelming task, especially if you're dealing with multiple teams, various funding expenditures, and the ever-popular string of setbacks and delays that haunt projects

Microsoft has continued to roll out products to help take control of projects। In addition to unleashing the latest project flavor last year, Redmond ripped Project Server in two, creating Project Server 2007 and Project Portfolio Server 2007. Each offers complementary and useful features to help users organize and control the flow of a project.

Both servers (with their client counterparts) are part of what Microsoft calls the Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution, which has been designed to help "you gain visibility, insight, and control across your project, program, and application portfolios"

Project Server 2007 allows you to access and manage a project through different methods: Among them, there's Project Professional, the client application sold separately or as part of Office 2007, as well as Project Web Access, which allows users to connect to Project Server from a Web browser

With Project Server, users can track project planning through the approval process। The activity plan can show users where a project stands at any given moment. Through the Resource Center, you can get quick reports as to where resources are allocated. Moreover, you can analyze timesheet management, as well as cross-project dependencies, on a project-by-project basis, allowing for more efficient use of time and money. In terms of security, admins can establish permission settings for users, allowing them access only to the resources they need to see and work with.

Project Portfolio Server 2007 lets you go one step further in creating an entire portfolio of projects or sub-projects। The server analyzes work flows and displays them graphically so you can see ways to optimize the project plan and execution. Through the Dashboard Module, you can see and track multiple portfolio scorecards for managing and tracking active portfolios. You can use the Optimizer Module to put your project portfolios through various what-if scenarios; you can also build out informational charts about your portfolio as it currently exists.

But this really becomes interesting when you compare Microsoft's EPM solutions to the project management products on the market -- and there are plenty of out there. On the upscale side, we have Oracle Fusion, and IBM Rational as well as Niku from Computer अस्सोसिअतेस

But Microsoft is also seeing competition for the smaller project management market from companies such as Clarizen and LiquidPlanner

How can Microsoft respond in the mini-market of project management when its offerings of Project Professional, Project Server, and Project Portfolio Server all seem so gi-normous to the average user?

The project servers allow for Project Web Access and therefore also allow for hosted solutions through a cornucopia of different vendors. So, the high-end features of an EPM solution don't necessarily require in-house servers or the administrative skill necessary to handle the dedicated hardware and software that come with such high-end project management solutions

Does this mean Microsoft Project is for everyone? Not quite। Many will argue that aside from the cost for infrastructure (which would be removed somewhat by the hosted solution path), there is still a valid reason to consider other solutions due to the unnecessary complexity of Project and concerns that it actually doesn't handle projections reasonably.

What solutions are you currently working with to handle project management?

source=http://weblog.infoworld.com/

Glue and Mortar

Zend co-founder talks about the new PHP framework, Yahoo! and open Web standards।

As university students, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski discovered PHP/FI-predecessor to PHP -- while working together on a "shopping cart" project for extra credit। They rewrote the PHP core engine and started their own company, Zend Technologies Inc.

As university students, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski discovered PHP/FI-predecessor to PHP -- while working together on a "shopping cart" project for extra credit। They rewrote the PHP core engine and started their own company, Zend Technologies Inc.

What does the Model View Controller (MVC) pattern let you do in Zend Framework?
What Zend Framework has already had for the last year and a half is a really respectable MVC pattern, and what that allows you to do is to separate your business logic from the presentation layer। That's kind of the simple thing it allows you to do, but in most cases -- including ours -- it also allows you to create composite views. So if you have an app that has two or three different pieces of information on the same Web page, it allows you to build those kinds of Web pages in a very modular way. Also, our MVC supports AJAX, so if you're writing a rich Internet app with JavaScript on the client, there's already the right plumbing in our MVC framework to communicate with the browser and respond to AJAX requests from the browser.

What advantages does PHP offer for a Microsoft shop?
I think the main difference to customers who choose PHP -- and we have a lot of enterprise customers that have very heterogeneous environments -- is that they can use PHP on all of their systems। A Fortune 500 customer of ours -- a very big Microsoft and IBM customer -- they have mainframes, System i [IBM midrange server], Unix and Windows and they can now put PHP on System i, expose a Web service with PHP, put PHP on Windows and consume it on Windows.

What's the latest on your interoperability partnership with Microsoft?
In the past year and a half, we've really been working closely with Microsoft to make sure that PHP works well on the Windows platform, and as part of that work they implemented FastCGI support for IIS and we optimized PHP on Windows। And with the release of Windows Server 2008, both of these efforts come together -- FastCGI ships with Windows 2008. And we have a product called Zend Core, which is our certified PHP distribution. We've worked with Microsoft to make sure that Zend Core is certified to work with Windows Server 2008. Now customers can come to Microsoft or Zend and get a PHP stack that's ready for running business-critical apps on Windows.

In your blog, you talked about MIX08 and your fears that technologies like Silverlight and Flex might work against an open Web.
The risk with something like Silverlight succeeding too much is that it's not an open standard। Microsoft decides which platforms are supported. So today, it's really Windows and Mac, and kind of Linux with the Novell relationship, but it wasn't planned last year when they announced Silverlight 1.0. So it means that if you're on a mainframe or System i, or any other Unix system, you might not have that available. I really think the foundation for the Web -- whether it's HTML, JavaScript or whatever comes afterward -- [we] should make sure those things are open standard so that all the different browser implementations can support them.

Someone at MIX08 described Web development as building the Taj Mahal out of wire and Popsicle sticks -- making older technologies do things they weren't meant to do. What's your view of Web development today, and how do the different versions of PHP fit into it?
In general, we've always viewed PHP as a glue language। One of the reasons that PHP has become so successful is that it's very easy for people to adopt. You can develop object-oriented with it or you can develop in a functional paradigm with it, so anyone can pick it up. And it's very easy with PHP to get at any database, any Web service, any information assets in your company. And so this whole notion of gluing your various assets together has always been PHP's main strength, which is why it's so dominant today.

Where we're going is, we're continuing down the same path। So we're continuing to extend how you glue all your various assets together: the interoperability with the browser with AJAX, the interoperability with Web services. With PHP 6, we're going to have more internationalization support. The world is becoming flatter; a lot of companies are global businesses today. They need to be able to expose data and content in multiple languages. A lot of it is really more of the same, but we're continuing to evolve as the Web is evolving.

If Microsoft's bid for Yahoo! is successful, what are the implications for PHP development within Yahoo! and in the community at large?
I do think that over time, it's probably likely that Microsoft's influence will trickle over। You might see more use of Microsoft servers in production, so they might start running PHP on Windows. You might see more with Silverlight and, who knows, eventually over time, when they start a new big project and it's rewritten, there's probably a likelihood that they might choose ASP.NET before PHP. So I do think long-term it could affect how PHP is being used at Yahoo!. I think for the next couple of years, there probably won't be a lot of influence there.

source = http://reddevnews.com