Windows Server AppFabric Customer Advisory Team

Technical guidance & best practices from AppFabric, Azure, BizTalk, WCF, WF, SQL Data Modeling & StreamInsight technology experts

We Have Moved to MSDN

We blog too much! We have maxed out the storage space allowed on MSDN blogs. All new content will be...

Author: Christian.Martinez Date: 02/07/2011

Intellisense when editing Service Bus configuration files? Yes please!

The problem The setup of Windows Azure  AppFabric SDK adds the elements reported in the table...

Author: Paolo Salvatori Date: 02/07/2011

Enterprise Library on Windows Azure: Key Learnings from Customer Project

This post has been moved to a new location. Please follow the link below. Thank you....

Author: Valery M Date: 01/31/2011

How to use Duplex MEP to communicate with BizTalk from a .NET application or a WF workflow running inside AppFabric Part 3

Introduction In the first article of the series we discussed how to exchange messages with an...

Author: Paolo Salvatori Date: 01/20/2011

Running .NET4 Windows Workflows in Azure

This blog reviews the current (January 2011) set of options available for hosting existing .NET4...

Author: SurenM Date: 01/12/2011

StreamInsight: Creating a LINQPad data context

This blog post is for those folks comfortable with creating a data stream from an IEnumerable,...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 01/05/2011

Best Practices for Maximizing Scalability and Cost Effectiveness of Queue-Based Messaging Solutions on Windows Azure

This post has been moved to a new location. Please follow the link below. Thank you....

Author: Valery M Date: 12/20/2010

AD FS 2.0 to secure WCF and Workflow Services hosted in Windows Server AppFabric

This blog entry is a sequel to the October 30th Blog “Securing WCF Services hosted in Windows...

Author: SurenM Date: 12/14/2010

Logging and Counters in App Fabric Cache

  The following is a good place to get started with how to go about collecting basic...

Author: Jaime Alva Date: 12/14/2010

StreamInsight Query Patterns: Fun with process data – calculating the wind chill factor

Process data, commonly accessed from OPC or a process historian such as OSIsoft PI, is well suited...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 12/13/2010

SQL Azure and Entity Framework Connection Fault Handling

A number of customers are choosing to use Entity Framework with Microsoft SQL Azure, and rightfully...

Author: James Podgorski Date: 12/10/2010

Distributed Cache != Database

Even though this topic looks obvious, there have been some interesting customer scenarios centered...

Author: Rama Ramani (Azure CAT) Date: 12/09/2010

Fronting long-running WF Services with MSMQ, the right way

A couple of weeks ago I was working with a customer who engaged me to assist with a "little" problem...

Author: Emil Velinov Date: 12/08/2010

StreamInsight: Reading from other data contexts into StreamInsight with LINQPad

The LINQPad driver for StreamInsight provides an awesomely easy way to run StreamInsight queries...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 12/03/2010

StreamInsight: Where did that query result come from (using the Event Flow Debugger in LINQPad)?

Occasionally, when working with StreamInsight queries an unusual result will crop up, leading to...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 12/02/2010

Basics on how to setup an App Fabric Cache server and API usage

At this year’s SQL PASS summit, I had the opportunity to talk with customers about App Fabric...

Author: Jaime Alva Date: 11/30/2010

BizTalk Server–distinguished field

The distinguished field is used to expose the value of a node of a message instance to BizTalk...

Author: Quoc Bui Date: 11/29/2010

Windows Azure AppFabric Caching Service - soup to nuts primer

Introduction One of the important reasons to move an application to the cloud is scalability...

Author: Rama Ramani (Azure CAT) Date: 11/29/2010

StreamInsight: Understanding dynamic query composition

Been tied up with PASS for the past (pun intended) couple of weeks, so it’s time to get a bit caught...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 11/22/2010

A Configurable AppFabric Cache Attribute For Your WCF Services

Doing a search online for WCF and Cache will eventually lead you to a number of links* demonstrating...

Author: Christian.Martinez Date: 11/10/2010

AppFabric Cache – Deploying cache servers and cache clients on different Active Directory Domains

Recently, a particular deployment with cache servers on domain1 and cache clients (app servers or...

Author: Rama Ramani (Azure CAT) Date: 11/03/2010

StreamInsight Query Pattern: Find the top category (using Order By, Take and ApplyWithUnion)

This is a question that has come up in a few customer engagements, and on several forum posts – how...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 11/03/2010

StreamInsight: Obscure LINQ error - Stream other than apply input stream is cannot be referenced inside apply branch

Another little LINQ error you might encounter from time to time. Ran into this yesterday while...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 11/02/2010

Getting the most out of user events and Windows Server AppFabric Monitoring

"Yet another post on AppFabric Monitoring" I hear you saying. Indeed, and one that you may want to...

Author: Emil Velinov Date: 11/02/2010

Disaster Recovery for AppFabric Caching configuration DB (SQL Mirroring)

  In the middle tier AppFabric (AF) Caching can be setup in High Availability (HA) mode which...

Author: Jaime Alva Date: 11/01/2010

Securing WCF Services hosted in Windows Server AppFabric with Windows Identity Foundation (WIF)

A key challenge while designing and deploying Web Services is access control and this blog post is...

Author: SurenM Date: 10/30/2010

How to use AppFabric Auto-Start feature to avoid warm-up delays for IIS-hosted WCF Receive Locations

Scenario During recent years, I had the chance to work with many customers and I realized that one...

Author: Paolo Salvatori Date: 10/29/2010

Less tweaking of your WCF 4.0 apps for high throughput workloads

I always have a sense of satisfaction when I find out that there is less tweaking or tuning needed...

Author: Tim Wieman (AzureCAT) Date: 10/29/2010

Best Practices for Handling Transient Conditions in SQL Azure Client Applications

This post has been moved to a new location. Please follow the link below. Thank you....

Author: Valery M Date: 10/28/2010

Updating AppFabric Cache via SQL Service Broker External Activator

Event Driven Updates If I can't have magic then I want something easy. I'd like to have changes that...

Author: Christian.Martinez Date: 10/27/2010

StreamInsight V1.1 is released (.NET Sequences / IObservable, side-by-side installation and perf improvements)

The StreamInsight dev team has just released the next version of StreamInsight (version 1.1)!! ...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 10/25/2010

StreamInsight: Obscure LINQ error - The field 'Key' of type 'IKey`1' either contains a nested member, or is a type that is not supported as event type field

This is a pretty obscure one, and a nice short snippet of a blog post.  I ran into this error...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 10/23/2010

Holding a Reference to the EF MetadataWorkspace for WCF Services

The title lends itself to a bit thought.  Why would the developer feel the need hold a static...

Author: James Podgorski Date: 10/22/2010

StreamInsight: Getting started with using the (Event Flow) debugger, viewing diagnostics, and exposing the management service.

StreamInsight has a very powerful management service that is fully available to developers and...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 10/21/2010

StreamInsight and reference data (lists, databases, etc)

Using reference data in StreamInsight is a very common scenarios; some examples would be: Monitoring...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 10/19/2010

BizTalk Patterns part 2–Sync Async

co-Authored by Thiago Almeida (Datacom) reviewed by Conor Brady (Oakton) Developing a BizTalk Server...

Author: Quoc Bui Date: 10/15/2010

Building Your Dynamic Router on AppFabric Cache

I’ve seen a lot of services routing solutions. Some used expensive hardware. Some were built...

Author: Christian.Martinez Date: 10/07/2010

Considerations when managing source control via Visual Studio Team Foundation Server and using Text Template Transformation Toolkit to generate .NET4 Entity Framework objects

T4 background Leveraging the power of Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4 template) to generate...

Author: Jaime Alva Date: 10/07/2010

StreamInsight: Synchronizing slow-moving reference streams with fast-moving data streams (time import)

One of the common tasks in StreamInsight is to use a reference stream to integrate metadata or...

Author: Mark Simms [MSFT] Date: 10/05/2010

Implementing Reliable Inter-Role Communication Using Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus, Observer Pattern & Parallel LINQ

This post has been moved to a new location. Please follow the link below. Thank you....

Author: Valery M Date: 09/30/2010

BizTalk Patterns part 1 – Asynchronous Aggregation

Developing a BizTalk Server solution can be challenging, and especially complex for those who are...

Author: Quoc Bui Date: 09/28/2010

Versioning NET4 Workflow Services in Windows Server AppFabric

There is tremendous interest in versioning .NET4 Workflows. This blog post provides guidance on...

Author: SurenM Date: 09/28/2010

Windows Server AppFabric Monitoring - How to create operational analytics reports with AppFabric Monitoring and Excel PowerPivot

One of the great (and major) features of Windows Server AppFabric is the out-of-the-box experience...

Author: Emil Velinov Date: 09/28/2010

Windows Server AppFabric How-To: Adding multiple persistence stores to an AppFabric installation

Yesterday someone contacted me in regards to adding a secondary persistence store to their AppFabric...

Author: Emil Velinov Date: 09/23/2010

Financial Messaging Services Bus (FMSB) – Add-ons for ESB Toolkit

Summary: Financial Messaging Services Bus (FMSB) is a vertical industry implementation of...

Author: vinayba Date: 09/20/2010

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