Interview Series: Four Questions With … Steef-Jan Wiggers

Greetings and welcome to my 28th interview with a thought leader in the “connected technology” domain.  This month, I’ve wrangled Steef-Jan Wiggers into participating in this little carnival of questions.  Steef-Jan is a new Microsoft MVP, blogger, obsessive participant on the MSDN help forums, and an all around good fellow.

Steef-Jan and I have joined forces here at the Microsoft MVP Summit, so let’s see if I can get him to break his NDA and ruin his life.

Q: Tell us about a recent integration project that seemed simple at first, but was more complex when you had to actually build it.

A: Two months ago I embarked on an integration project that is still in progress. It involved messaging with external parties to support a process for taxi drivers applying for personalized card to be used in a board computer in a taxi (in fact each taxi that is driving in the Netherland will have one by 1th of October 2011). The board computer registers resting/driving time, which is important for safety regulations and so on. There is messaging involved using certificates for signing and verifying messages to and from these parties. Working with BizTalk and certificates is according to MSDN documentation pretty straight forward with supported algorithms, but project demanded SHA-256 encryption which is not supported out-of-the box in BizTalk. This made it less straight forward and it would require some kind of customization involving either custom coding throughout or third party products in combination with some custom coding or third party product to be put in and configured appropriately. What it made it more complex was that a Hardware Security Module (HSM) from nCipher was involved as well that contained the private keys. After some debate between project members we decided to choose Chilkat component that supported SHA-256 signing and verifying of messages and incorporated that component with some custom coding in a custom pipeline. Reasoning behind this was that besides the signing and verifying we also had to get access to the HSM through appropriate cryptographic provider. So what seemed simple at first was hard to build and configure in the end. Though working with a security consultant with knowledge of the algorithms, chilkat, coding and HSM helped a lot to have it ready on time.

Q: Your blog has a recent post about leveraging BizTalk’s WCF-SQL adapter to call SQL Server stored procedures.  What are you decision criteria for how to best communicate with a database from BizTalk?  Do you ever write database access code to invoke from an orchestration, use database functoids in maps, or do you always leverage adapters?

A: When one want to communicate with a database. One has to look at requirements first and consider some of the factors like manipulating data directly in a table (which a lot of database administrators are not fond of) or applying logic on transaction you want to perform and whether or not you want to customize all of that. My view on this matter is that best choice would be to let BizTalk do messaging, orchestration part (what is it is good at) and let SQL Server do its part (storing data, manipulating data by applying some logic). It is about applying the principle of separation of concerns. So bringing that to level of communication it can best be leveraged by using the available WCF-SQL adapter, bacause this way you separate concern as well. The WCF-SQL adapter is responsible for communication with the database. So the best choice for this from a BizTalk perspective, because it is optimized for it and a developer/administrator only has to do configuring the adapter (communication). By selecting the table or stored-procedure or other functionality you want to use through the adapter one doesn’t has to build any custom access code or maintain it. It saves money and time and functionality you get when having BizTalk in your organization. Basically building access code yourself or using functoids is not option.

Q: What features from BizTalk would have to be available in Windows Server AppFabric for you to use it in a scenario that you would typically use BizTalk for?  What would have to be added to Windows Azure AppFabric?

A: I consider messaging capabilities in heterogeneous environments through using adapters something that should be available for Windows Server AppFabric. One can use of WCF as technology for communication within Windows Server AppFabric, but it would also be nice if you could use for instance the FILE or FTP adapter within Windows Workflow services. As for Windows Azure AppFabric I consider features like BAM, BRE. We will see this year in Windows Azure AppFabric an integration part (as a CTP) that will provide common BizTalk Server integration capabilities (e.g. pipeline, transforms, adapters) on Windows Azure. Besides the integration capabilities it will also deliver higher level business user enablement capabilities such as Business Activity Monitoring and Rules, as well as self-service trading partner community portal and provisioning of business-to-business pipelines. So a lot of BizTalk features will also move to the cloud.

Q [stupid question]: More and more it seems that we are sharing our desktops in web conferences or presenting in conference rooms.  This gives the audience a very intimate look into the applications on your machine, mail in your Inbox, and files on your desktop.  What are some things you can do to surprise people who are taking a sneak peek at your computer during a presentation?  I’m thinking of scary-clown desktop wallpaper, fake email messages about people in the room or a visible Word document named “Toilet Checklist.docx”.  How about you?

A: I would put a fake TweetDeck as wallpaper for my desk top containing all kinds of funny quotes, strange messages and bizarre comments. Or you could have an animated mouse running on desktop to distract the audience.

 

Thanks Steef-Jan.  The Microsoft MVP program is better with folks like you in it.