Sergio Del Piccolo

When starting on the development phase of an engagement, the first step in the process is usually getting a zero feature release completed. As part of working on the ZFR, we set up a build server to take care of continuous builds, of which I’m a big fan. For more information regarding continuous builds look at Martin Fowler’s article.

Our build server uses CruiseControl and NAnt to initiated builds. Both can be found on SourceForge.net. CruiseControl integrates with more tools e.g. NUnit, FxCop and NCover, providing builds that are well suited to your company’s internal development policies.

I recently tried to get the continuous build process working on projects with BizTalk Server 2006 and K2.Net 2003. While I’ve automated builds with BizTalk Server before, I’ve not done it with K2.Net 2003. Since you need to have a references to all of the assemblies and executables used by the programming tool used on the server, you usually need to install the application, e.g. installing BizTalk Server 2006 on to the build to get the application to build. In the case of K2.Net 2003, you can get away with installing the K2 Studio and K2 Service Manager, which works well as you don’t have to be concerned with paying for an additional license.

So how do we go about building the K2 application? A couple of colleagues of mine have built a K2 Installer using Visual Studio 2005 that will build an msi file by calling the K2 Studio. Once the installer has been built, getting it to build on the build server is no different to building any other Visual Studio project - using a NAnt call to devenv.exe.

Links:
Steve Hart: Zero Feature Release
Martin Fowler: Continuous Integration
Keith Curtis: K2 Installer
CruiseControl
NAnt

Zero Feature Release, Continuous Builds, K2.Net 2003, K2 Installer,  CruiseControl, NAnt, NUnit, FxCop, NCover

This morning I took and passed the MCTS: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 - Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using BizTalk Server 2006 (70-235) exam. The exam was made up of multiple choice and interactive questions, although the interactive questions were not like the ones I faced in the MCTS SQL Server 2005 exam. They were simply moving items from one list box to another and re-odering them in the correct sequence. In the SQL Server 2005 TS exam there was a virtual desktop and you were required to complete actual SQL Server tasks, which I thought was a great way of testing technical knowledge.

Two sections that were heavily tested were:

• Implementation of Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and
• Implementation of the Business Rules Engine (BRE).

One book that I’ve been reading over the last couple of months came in handy in the exam is BizTalk 2006 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach by Mark Beckner, Ben Goeltz, et al.

Links:
MCTS: Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 - Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using BizTalk Server 2006
BizTalk 2006 Recipes: A Problem - Solution Approach

Microsoft, BizTalk Server 2006, Microsoft Certification, 70-235