I have a client looking for a Biztalk resource (contract). I also know someone looking for a PHP developer (senior). Please contact me (riaan@elevato.co.za).

Jim Webber has recently coined the term "Guerrilla SOA" to describe a lightweight approach to SOA that does not rely on big middleware products. Here is some abstracts:

http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/12/SOA_Gorilla

ECMAScript (or JavaScript) 5 has just been released. See this link for more info : http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/12/ecmascript5

Found this gem on CodeBeter. This article asks the question: Is Agile the means to en end?

http://codebetter.com/blogs/rodpaddock/archive/2009/11/28/can-a-fish-use-a-bicycle.aspx

Many thought leaders in the agile community have started talking more about software katas - a way of practicing specific exercises until one has them memorized. Over the past several weeks, there has been an increase in blog posts and sites devoted to katas. Robert Martin has gone as far as calling them "performance art". Should you add katas to your software toolkit?

Read full story : http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/11/code-kata-video

Link to a short (but good) post on why it is important to keep a (key) developer on board:

http://codebetter.com/blogs/david_laribee/archive/2009/11/17/the-high-cost-of-losing-a-developer.aspx

Elevato has just released the first version of the BizTalk Orchestration Viewer. This tool allow you to view orchestrations from assembly files. This tool is usefull when validating a production deployed orchestration against a development version. The tool also have a save to image function, making printing easy.

The tool can be downloaded from here.

Base code for the viewer inspired by : http://blogs.msdn.com/ebattalio/archive/2006/08/18/Finding_the_Orchestration_Viewer_Control.aspx

Big news for developers out there: Google has just announced the release of a new, open sourced programming language called Go. The company says that Go is experimental, and that it combines the performance and security benefits associated with using a compiled language like C++ with the speed of a dynamic language like Python.

Read full story here - http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/10/google-go-language/

From  InfoQ :

Micromanagement, often has a negative connotation associated with it. It is a management style where a manager closely observes or controls the work of his or her subordinates or employees. Usually Agile development and micromanagement may seem to be opposite ends of spectrum however, they are more related than what meets the eye.

Mike Cohn suggested that it is the dark secret of Agile that it is all about micromanagement. Mike mentioned that all practices of Agile support micromanagement. He suggested,

• The daily scrum is about micro-managing the team’s daily work plans and making sure that everyone is doing what they say they’ll do.

• Continuous integration is put in place so that the minute some developer screws up and breaks a build, it becomes known.

• Pair programming is about making sure that programmers don’t lose focus, don’t goldplate, don’t work on only the fun stuff, and that they clean things up.

Read full story here - http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/11/agile-micromanagement

I find this a very interesting project. 

Irony is a framework created by Roman Ivantsov and used to write internal DSLs or entire new languages that run on .NET, the grammar being written in C#.

Irony, a CodePlex project, allows one to create a new language by specifying its grammar directly in C#. The framework generates the scanner and the parser making the job of creating a new compiler considerably easier.

Read more on InfoQ - http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/11/Irony

Below is a link to an InfoQ article on some serious WPF leaks.  Good to know info if you are using WPF for UI.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/10/WPF-Memory-Leak

Web-Oriented Arrchitecture is more and more becoming part of the everyday lives of architects, companies and developers. In this article WOA get used to help solve some of SOA’s issues.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/10/SOAWOA

 Microsoft has just announced some changes to the System.IO class, including changes to the File object. Read more at InfoQ - http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/10/System-IO

Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an update for BizTalk Server 2006 R2.  It includes fixes to issues that have been reported through our customer feedback platforms, as well as internally discovered issues.

It is available for download on the Microsoft Connect site to any customers that sign in to that site with their Live ID. Any feedback or issues you encounter can be reported here.
To see a listing of the customer-reported issues that are fixed in this service pack, click here.
For a description of some of the other updates included in this service pack, see What's new in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 SP1. For a list of of BizTalk Server hot fixes that are included in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Service Pack 1 Beta click here.

Original post - http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2009/10/12/announcing-biztalk-server-2006-r2-service-pack-1-beta.aspx

Here is some cool BizTalk Server goodies.

The first link is to an article with links to some Vision Stencils to use when designing BizTalk related solutions - http://connectedthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/visio-icons-for-biztalk-server/

The second link is to a blog post linking to some BizTalk "how to's" and posters  - http://blogs.digitaldeposit.net/saravana/post/2009/10/01/BizTalk-Videos-and-Posters.aspx