Daniel Gocsman’s Blog

Teched declared K2 blackpearl winner of the SharePoint Development category, this proves once again the tight integration between Windows SharePoint Service and K2. Here the abstract from the Windows IT Pro Awards site:

“Enterprise adoption of Microsoft SharePoint has exploded over the last few years, leading to a host of new products for SharePoint developers. K2 blackpearl is a prime example of a new breed of applications that helps developers get the most out of their SharePoint investment. Using a collection of easy to use tools and features, K2 blackpearl allows developers to quickly create applications that pull together disparate systems, information, and business processes. K2 blackpearl can leverage your existing infrastructure investment—including SharePoint, but also BizTalk and Forms Server—to surface the application mashups you create.”

Congrats for the K2 team!

K2 [blackpearl]™ 0803 (4.8075.1.0) is now available!

K2 [blackpearl]™, the centerpiece of the new K2 platform, has the K2 [blackpearl] 0803 (4.8075.1.0) release now available.
The 0803 release provides support for 64-bit hardware platforms, support for Worldwide English (non-English Windows, SQL Server, SharePoint, Office and Visual Studio), improved license management, performance enhancements and post-SP1 patches and bug fixes.
Here are the details on the new and updated features:

64-BIT SUPPORT
64-bit support allows K2 [blackpearl] components to be installed on 64-bit hardware platforms. Support for the 64-bit platform includes the following components.
> 64-bit SQL Server 2005
> 64-bit SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
> 64-bit SharePoint 2007 (WSS/MOSS/Forms Server)
> 64-bit K2 [blackpearl] Server
> 64-bit K2 Workspace

WORLDWIDE ENGLISH (INTERNATIONALIZATION)
Worldwide English support allows K2 [blackpearl] to run in English on non-English platforms. Support for non-English platforms includes the following components.
> Windows 2003 Server (Standard or better)
> SQL Server 2005
> SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
> SharePoint 2007 (WSS/MOSS/Forms Server)
> Visual Studio 2005 (Professional or better)
> Visio 2007

LICENSE MANAGEMENT
The K2 license management feature adds the following capabilities.
> Add / Delete license
> Edit existing licenses
> Manage Logged in Users
> Manage License over usage

DISTRIBUTED INSTALLATION ENHANCEMENTS
The K2 Installation Manager and K2 Configuration Manager tools have been greatly enhanced to allow for greater flexibility and robustness when installing K2 [blackpearl] in distributed environments, including the following.
> Improved support for network load balanced web front ends in SharePoint farms
> Improved support for network load balanced K2 Workspace scenarios

PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS
Numerous performance enhancements have been implemented. Some of the highlights are as follows.
> Workflow Server Performance
> Improved processes execution
> Worklist & Worklist Item performance
> Improved memory usage when starting processes and finishing work list items
> Improved batch execution of K2 processes
> SmartObject Performance
> SmartObject Server data handling enhancements
> Client Data Marshalling enhancement
> SmartObject Synchronization - see KB000250 - SmartObject GUID Synchronization

IPC EVENT
The following issues have been fixed relating to the IPC Event.
> Process Synchronization using Batch Actioning, IPC Sync Events, and Worklist Navigation
> Worklist Issues with Multiple Destinations, IPC Events and Dynamic Roles
> Not all processes in a solution are displayed when browsing for child processes in an IPC Event
wizard
> When an activity contains an IPC event where the destination user is mapped to the child process and
is used in a client event, both users are able to view the other user’s work items.

DOCUMENTATION
Several additions and enhancements have been made to the K2 [blackpearl] Documentation. The key areas of improvement are as follows.

OVERALL DOCUMENTATION
> Combined all documents to be linked from CHM file for easier discovery
> Added a “Send Feedback” link to all topics
> Added/Improved content for Troubleshooting, License Management, K2 Wizards, SmartObject
(Delete), 2003 Interoperability and InfoPath Templates

GETTING STARTED GUIDE
The K2 [blackpearl] Getting Started Guide has been completely rewritten to provide clear concise information for planning and installation including the following.
> A Getting Started Checklist spreadsheet is embedded in the guide to help you plan, document and
verify your K2 environment
> Software prerequisites list is provided by component and by role
> A new “Before you begin” section has been added that details steps for configuring DNS, Service
Accounts, Permissions, NLB, SPNs, MSMQ and DTC
> Detailed information for installing in a distributed environment has been greatly enhanced
> New topics have been added to the Troubleshooting the Installation section

DEVELOPER REFERENCE (FORMERLY SDK)
The K2 [blackpearl] Developer Reference was introduced mid Q1 and has been updated with the following new content for 0803.
> Database Overview & Schemas

Architecture topics
> Architectural Overview of K2 [blackpearl]
> Architecture of Authoring, Management and Runtime aspects of the K2 platform
> Architecture of the Workflow Server
> Architecture of the SmartObject Server
> Architecture of the Event Bus
> Architecture of the Environment Library
> Architecture of the Workspace Management Console

New “How To” topics
> How to access and return information from the Global Worklist
> How to upload a file to a SmartObject
> How to add a 3rd-party event recorder to the K2 [blackpearl] Server
> How to create a custom MSBuild task to set rights on a process
> How to Generate a Report in PDF format

DOWNLOAD K2 [BLACKPEARL] 0803 (4.8075.1.0)
K2 [blackpearl] 0803 (4.8075.1.0) is available at https://portal.k2workflow.com/do wnloads/bp/Default.aspx.
License keys can be obtained at https://portal.k2workflow.com/lice nsekey/Default.aspx. The page can also be found via the Support > License Key Request > License Key menu on portal.
The 0803 installer is slipstreamed, so if K2 [blackpearl] is not already present, the installer will install K2 [blackpearl] with the 0803 updates.

The release of BizTalk Server 2006 R3 was announced publicly yesterday April 22nd 2008, you can find the initial announcement on Steve Martin’s blog.

BizTalk Server R3 will enable us to take advantage of Microsoft’s recently released products like Windows Server 2008, .Net Framework 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 and it will include the following new features and capabilities:

• New web service registry capabilities with support for UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) version 3.0
• Enhanced service enablement of applications (through new and enhanced adapters for LOB applications, databases, and legacy/host systems)
• Enhanced service enablement of “edge” devices through BizTalk RFID Mobile
• Enhanced interoperability and connectivity support for B2B protocols (like SWIFT, EDI, etc)
• SOA patterns and best practices guidance to assist our customer’s implementations

A CTP release of R3 is planned for this summer with the RTM release targeted for the first half of 2009. For those who are wondering how is this going to impact the Oslo suite of products the word is that the vision of Oslo and timing will not be affected by the release of BizTalk Server 2006 R3.

Stay tuned for more details….

A new version of the BizTalk 2006 Best Practices Analyzer has been released, I found this tool very useful in the past,b it helped me identify critical configuration issues that prevented the BizTalk platform function as designed. There is no overhead running this tool, I recommend running in all you platforms to validate your BizTalk 2006 deployment configuration. Here is some more info:

The BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer performs configuration-level verification by reading and reporting only. The Best Practices Analyzer gathers data from different information sources, such as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes, SQL Server databases, and registry entries. The Best Practices Analyzer uses the data to evaluate the deployment configuration. The Best Practices Analyzer does not modify any system settings, and is not a self-tuning tool.

Link: BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer v1.1

The very first K2 Insiders Annual Conference was held in Denver, Colorado and I am happy to say I was very pleased with the event. It was great to meet fellow K2 Insiders and also some of the guys that are representing the heart and soul of K2. It was also exciting to get some more dept in what K2 [blackpearl] has in store for the near future and get a good understanding of the product roadmap, its new features how K2 is positioned in the BPM space. While there was no shortage on information distribution, I have captured below some of the highlights of the conference.

The first day started with the keynote of Adriaan Van WY, CEO, SourceCode in conjunction with Olaf Wagner, Senior VP - Product Development, SourceCode. Both of these guys are founders of the company and it was nice to hear the some interesting facts about the company and its culture also it was great to see their passion for technology and SourceCode. The keynote was revolving around K2 [blackpearl] and how it fits in the Business Process Management space, the emphasis was around using K2 as a platform for building process-driven applications that will help organizations to improve business efficiency.

Adriaan presented talked about some of the challenges that SourceCode faced the past year, he was open with some of the challenges that the company faced last year but he was very positive on the direction that the company is going. One has to take a closer look at K2 [blackpearl] to really understand the value that it can potentially bring to an organization, this new version of the product definitely exceeded my expectations.

Throughout the day Adriaan and Olaf definitely captured everyone’s attention around some of the enhancements that were part of Service Pack 1 of K2 [blackpearl] also what are some of the fixes and features that are going to be released in the near future. The next 3 new releases were labeled 803,805, 806 here are some of the new feature and enhancements:

803

• Full support for 64 bit server platforms
• Deployment fixes and enhancements
• Internationalization support
• 30 + patches around:
• Visual Studio performance
• Workflow engine performance
• Reporting performance
• SmartObject lifecycle enhancements
• Release of sales tools for partners

805

• Additional fixes (if required)
• Team Foundation Server integration
• Reference fixes
• Additional SmartObjects and Reporting performance enhancements
• K2 [connect] for SAP RTM

806 (timeframe for this release has not been announced)

• Support for Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008
• Full K2.net 2003 interoperability support and migration wizards
• K2 Studio RTM
• Process Portal RTM
• K2 Endpoint RTM
• Out of Office RTM
• Dynamic SQL Service (tables, views and stored procedures)
• Web Service/WCF Workflow Template RTM
• K2 [blackpearl] templates for BizTalk 2006 R2

In the second half of the day we had the chance to see first hand some of the new enhancements of K2 [blackpearl] and a roadmap of the new components and features that the K2 team is busy working on.

1. K2 Studio
• Targeted for non developers, easy to use with a very familiar Office 12 and 14 ribbon like skin where content of a process will be dynamically presented, it is a great tool to use without the need to have Visual Studio installed
• Ability to create and open workflow project both in K2 Studio  and Visual Studio
• Ability to surface Visual Studio built artifacts to assemble a process
• K2 Studio to be used to assemble prebuilt blocks rather than templates, however it can support it
• K2 Studio key features:
• Process Design
• SmartObject Design
• Artifact Library
• Future designers and features will be included
2. Process Management API and Toolset will allow processes to be modified at a definition and instance level, it will also have the ability to make changes and aplly changes to one or all instances of the same version of the process. The first version of the tool will be hosted in Visual Studio and K2 Studio, with plans to make it available also as web tool.
3. Process Portal is planned to host details that pertain a particular process, it will be hosted as a SharePoint site and will have its own highly customizable template. It will be also possible to provision Process Portals as part of the K2 process deployment. One of the cool features that caught my attention was the “Documenter” feature, this will allow you to generate on demand the latest version of the process that the SharePoint site is tied to. Some of the features of the portal will be:
• Message Instances:
• Running Instances
• Error Instances
• Stopped Instances
• All Instances
• Reports
• Activity Statistics
• Process Instances
• Process Statistics
• User Performance
• Administration
• Error Profile
• Roles
• Security
• Versions
4. K2 [connect] is perhaps one of the most powerfull features that K2 brings to the table, it is a tool that will allow creating reusable business entities by connecting and surfacing data from backend systems without the need of writing code. These business entities can be used and reused within K2 processes, exposed in .NET-based applications or Web services, and consumed by other applications like Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. One of the first targeted backed systems is SAP, K2 plans to develop the capability to connect to 80 backend systems in the future. K2 [connect] will also have an adapter for BizTalk Server 2006.
5. Endpoint Publishing Tool will give us the ability to publish any SmartObject as a WCF endpoint, using UDDI as the registry catalog. It will allow to publish K2 workflow processes as endpoints and it will provide automatic versioning of the endpoint to the SmartObject.
6. Silverlight Workflow Designer will be replacing the existing Ajax workflow designer and it will be built using Silverlight 2.0 . It will be compatible with the current version and it can be hosted in any web application. One of the features to note that it will be compatible with WSS and MOSS, and one of the enhanced features will be around the drag and drop capabilities.
7. Blackpearl Simulation is a Silverlight 2.0 based application that will allow for simulating process behavior and load scenarios. It will have an extensible resource and reporting model with a very cool “video editing” mode that allow you to replay historical saved “scenarios”. Very powerfull tool will give you the ability to use historical data, at the same time measuring KPI’s across versions.
8. Blackpearl Workspace 2.0 is the next generation of the Workspace, it will have a new look and feel with define improvements around performance, with faster load and response time. It will resemble more closely the K2.net 2003 Workspace but at the same time will come with a set of new features that ultimately will enhance usability. There will be an option to use either v1 or v2 for any K2 [blackpearl] implementation. 
9. Out of Office will be greatly improved allowing for a much more granular “task based” approach where you can configure certain activities to be handled by different individuals while you are out of office.

Wow, this was day one! A lot to absorb but well worth it, the day ended with K2 Insiders discussions providing feedback to K2. 

Question: is there more?
Answer: Yes there is…

The next couple of days of the conference were comprised of K2 [blackpearl] architectural sessions and K2 Insiders presentations. Stayed tuned for more details on some of the details on these sessions…. 

The BizTalk Server 2006 Management Pack for SCOM (System Center Operation Manager) 2007 has been recently released by Microsoft, I was a bit puzzled why it took so long..however you can find all the details here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=389FCB89-F4CF-46D7-BC6E-57830D234F91&displaylang=en

Enjoy!

Just the other day I was at a customer’s site assisting them with a BizTalk Server 2006 implementation on a 64-bit platform, and I had an issue during the configuration of the BAM portal. After a bit of research I realized that if you want to run the BAM portal in a 64-bit environment, Internet Information Services (IIS) must be set to 32 bit mode, you don’t have any other options if you want BAM to be installed.

I had an older version if the Biztalk Server 2006 documentation downloaded on my laptop and the resolution to this issue happend to have a typo in it but it all worked out in the end. Here are the instructions on how to make it work:

1. Open a command prompt and run the adsutil command. To do this, click Start, click Run, and then type cmd.
2. Type the following at the command prompt:
c:\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1.
3. Close the command prompt.

Note: If you have the BizTalk Server Configuration mmc console open you will need to restart it before you can continue configuring the BAM portal.

I hear this over and over again; it is not easy to locate the BizTalk Server 2006 Redistributable CAB files that are required for the installation of BizTalk Server 2006. Although BizTalk Server 2006 has been out for a while now, I keep hearing the same thing, posting the links to my blog will make it easier for me as well, simple answer: “Visit my Blog, it’s all there!”.

 Here are the links to the BizTalk Server 2006 Redistributable CAB Files:

And here are the software components of the CAB file:

• Microsoft Office Web Components (OWC) 11

• Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.8 SP1

• Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) 3.0 SP7

• Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) 6.0

• SQLXML 3.0 SP3

• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0

• ADOMD.NET 8.0

• ADOMD.Net-KB893091-v8.00.0991-x86.EXE

• ADOMD.NET 9.0

Over time however the amount of data moved from the transaction database (K2) through to the log database (K2Log) will increased and the size of your log database may outgrow the storage capacity of the hard drive. The size of the K2Log database will also directly impact the K2.net infrastructure performance, searching and queries on current or recently completed Worklist items will take a longer time than usual.The K2.net Archiving utility is a tool which enables you to export data from the Log database and store the data in the Archive Database. This process reduces the size on disk of the log database and archives the data at the same time.

The K2Archiving tool should not be used to replace your data backup strategy. For your operational or standard backup requirements you must backup the Transaction and Log databases as per normal using conventional or industry standard backup methods. The main usage of the archive tool is to relocate data to an Archive database for historical review purposes.  Once the data has been “exported” from the K2.net Log Database, the data can be imported back into the Log database. The archived data will be stored in the same database, K2LogArchive (in all environments) and archiving process will have a timestamp, making it easier to import data back to the K2Log database. If queries need to be run on the archived data, use the browser based utility, the Archive Workspace to view the archived data.

In order to automate the archiving process I have worked with one of my developer coworkers, Katherine Ng, and we came up with an automated solution for archiving data using a SQL script that is scheduled to run as a job. The requirements for our project is to archive data on a monthly basis, so we have a script that runs once a month, determindes how many days we had last month (i.e. Feb2007 - 28 days) and also determines the last time the job ran. The SQL script invokes K2Archive.exe, the executable of the K2.net 2003 Archive Application (default location C:\Program Files\K2.net 2003\Bin). We are storing the path to K2Archive.exe in an AppControlTable in one of our App Databases, you can hardcode this in your script to point directly to the file.

Here are the steps you need to perform for automating K2.net 2003 Archiving:

1. Ensure that you have installed the K2.net 2003 Archiving Components (available on the K2.net Portal Site, including documentation)
2. Modify script to point to the K2Archive.exe
3. Use the K2.net 2003 Archive Application to run the first archive process (this will create a timestamp in the K2Log Database).
4. Create a SQL Job, specify:

• Type: Transact-SQL Script (T-SQL)

• Database: K2LogArchive (the name of your K2 Archive Database)

• Schedule the Job to run on the first of every month (I recommend running it after business hours to reduce the impact on your K2.net infrastructure)

Here is the script:

– Set the old archive start date
Set @maxPreviousArchiveStartDate=(Select max(FromDate) From _ArchiveTo)

A new documentation update for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2007 has been released by Microsoft, in this update you’ll find the following content:

* Complete documentation for all BizTalk Server Line of Business Adapters, including new tutorials, one for each adapter. See the section “Using Adapters.”

* Troubleshooting guidance for each of the native BizTalk adapters. See the section “Troubleshooting Adapters.”

* Troubleshooting Instructions for how to capture a memory dump. See the section “How to Capture a Memory Dump of a BizTalk Process.”

* Disaster recovery instructions for backing up and restoring your BizTalk Server and databases. See the section “Backing Up and Restoring BizTalk Server”

* Updated Tutorials. See the section, “BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials”

* Information for improving fault tolerance. See the section “Planning and Architecture”

* Updated Developer’s Reference that now includes the BAM namespaces that were not included in the RTM documentation. See the section “Developer’s Reference”

Here is the link to the update: 

 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=3294ddaf-9f67-409f-a92d-2f6070dc0d1a&displayLang=en