Introduction

Greetings and welcome to my BLOG.

I have been meaning to begin BLOGging for several months now. Well, actually going on a year I suppose. I guess I felt that I really didn't have anything too terribly important to say. Not that I think that now, but that I have recently run across a few items that I found interesting. I guess I just needed something to get me started. Hopefully, I will have something that will benefit someone, somewhere.

A Little History
I entered the professional world of programming as a COBOL programmer on a WANG mainframe for the USAF. It was there I was asked to do web site development which lead to creating Intranet/Extranets and various web-based applications. I have probably spent the last 15+ years focusing on Microsoft related technologies. My most recent activities have revolved around BizTalk Server 2006.

Current Activities
Due to the nature of the projects I have been involved with, I have had the "pleasure" of using a variety of the Microsoft BizTalk Adapters for Enterprise Applications such as Oracle, Siebel, JDE OneWorld, and PeopleSoft. I also worked with the DB2 Adapter within Host Integration Server 2006. Fortunately, during most of my development efforts, we were part of either a CTP, TAP, or BETA program with Microsoft. I can't count the number of times that we had to raise a support issue with Microsoft directly since there was no information, or none I could find, on the web that provided us with answers to our problems. I'll admit, that sometimes it was a boneheaded mistake on our (my) part that caused the problem. But, on the opposite side, there were times where we identified problems, or nuances, with the way the adapters functioned that lead to changes in future releases. I do feel good that I was able to contribute, somewhat, to the evolution of the adapters to make them better for the development community.

Through my trials and tribulations with using BizTalk to communicate with various LOB systems, I still find myself banging my head against the proverbial brick wall. Although more information is available online, I still find it is rather limited and difficult at times to resolve certain issues. If you too are working in this realm, I am interested to hear about current problems you are facing, or even better, those you resolved. As I run across my own, I will make every effort to post them here. Hopefully someone will find them useful, or at least get a chuckle out of my pitfalls.