Sergio Del Piccolo

K2 will announce the release of K2[blackpearl] 0807 later today. The 0807 release focuses on greater stability and better performance including various enhancements and performance increases for the K2 Workspace, the K2 Designer for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, and the K2 blackpearl Workflow Server. Also included are post-0803 patches and bug fixes. There are a couple of exciting new features included; Out of Office functionality and K2 Interop.

For a complete list of improvements see my earlier post regarding the release of the the 0807 beta. The 0807 release can be downloaded from the K2 Partner and Customer Portal.

K2, SourceCode, K2[blackpearl]

The Canadian Connected Systems Team are planning on putting on a roadshow in three cities across Canada this fall. This would be a great opportunity to hear more about BizTalk and how it relates to broader SOA initiatives. The roadshow dates are as follows:

Vancouver – 30th October 2008
Toronto – 4th November 2008
Montreal – 6th November 2008

Watch this space for more information regarding the agenda and registration details.

Microsoft, BizTalk, BizTalk Server, SOA, Connected Systems, Vancouver, Canada

Today Microsoft announced that they have updated the name of the next release of BizTalk Server from BizTalk Server 2006 R3 to BizTalk Server 2009.  This is planned to be a full product release with new and enhanced capabilities and updated platform support for customers to take full advantage of the latest technology wave (Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5).

The BizTalk Server 2009 release will have 5 core feature areas, including platform support, SOA & web services, business to business integration, device connectivity and developer and team productivity.

Microsoft plan on delivering a public CTP by the end of 2008 and should be on track for availability in the first half of calendar year 2009.

For more information on the roadmap and features:
Microsoft BizTalk Server Roadmap
Steve Martin: Director, CSD Product Management

Microsoft, BizTalk, BizTalk Server 2009, Steve Martin

K2 announced the release of the K2 blackpearl 0807 beta. This will provide an opportunity to test out some of the new features and fixes prior to it being released as RTM. The beta period will be 2-3 weeks and give you the ability to provide some meaningful feedback.

The new release contains the following features and fixes:

1. Enhanced Active Directory Service Object
2. K2 Visual Studio stability
   • References
   • Source Control (support for TFS/VSS)
   • Memory management enhancements
3. Workspace
   • Enhanced paging and filtering
   • Multi-domain support
   • SmartObjects
   • Out-of-memory issue fixes
   • Deployment fixes on associations
   • Run-time performance fixes
   • More granular selection of workflow reporting SmartObjects on process deployment
4. Out of Office functionality
5. Workflow server – worklist “no data” issue fixes
6. K2 blackpearl Designer for Visual Studio 2005
   • Minor Wizards Sweep
   • Memory management enhancements
7. Migration
   1. Server Side Migration Tool – a separate utility that will be released based on the K2 blackpearl 0807 code base targeted for the week following K2 blackpearl 0807 RTM. This tool is used to migrate an existing K2.net 2003 databases/server to a new K2 blackpearl databases/server.
   2. Client Side Migration Tool – this is the ability to open a k2.net 2003 project (kpr) in K2 blackpearl Designer for Visual Studio and deploy that project to K2 blackpearl server. The “interop” code only happens on the client side. Once Finish is clicked on the old K2.net 2003 template, K2 takes all the code that would have been generated in 2003 and uses that in a native K2 blackpearl activity. Server side it is just executing .net code – same as if you used the migration tools above. Interop also provides the ability to build “hybrid” processes which include a mixture of K2 blackpearl wizards and K2.net 2003 templates in the same process. The 2003 Interop functionality is available in this release of K2 blackpearl 0807.

For more information on the enhancements, fixes and to download the beta visit the K2 Partner and Customer Portal.

K2, SourceCode, K2[blackpearl], beta