As a user of good ole rock'paper'scissors from everything to resolving arguments to making importnat life changing decisions; this has to be one of the funniest things I have read in a long time ....
So bring on that paper beeatch!
So last night, December 5 2007, saw the launch of the first ever user group for BizTalk in South Africa.
As an integration architect and developer who makes heavy (almost exclusive) use of Microsoft technologies to deliver solutions in the EAI, B2B, SOA space this was an exciting event for me.
There were 40 (approximately) attendees at the inaugural event, which I think is outstanding. This proves to me once again that BizTalk is enjoying a run of popularity at the moment and that more and more people / organizations are starting to see the value of this tool as the glue in their distributed and connected enterprise.
All too often I have heard of BizTalk project failures and I believe it is due, largely, to the limited availability of good skills, understanding and experience on this tool in the country. Organizations implementing BizTalk in the past have often been sold this tool as the magic bullet to solve all their integration woes and a large percentage of these have been grossly disappointed up to now. It is my hope that a community such as this user group will go a long way to fostering a learning, sharing and collaborative culture around the product and related technologies allowing the image of BizTalk to be elevated to the level it rightly deserves.
Thanks to all the guys who took the bull by the horns, so to speak, and offered to present last night and in the future. Thanks to Paul Somers for attending, nice to see the current BizTalk MVP for South Africa present at a community driven event.
Last night's event was a little heavy on the power point slides for me ... I'd prefer to see more interactive hands-on demos, collaborative discussions / debates on implementing the product. I think the community can provide huge value in terms of real world experience versus the training / sales material and how sometimes these differ vastly.
So I guess I just volunteered myself for some major demo time at the next event .... 
A huge thanks must go to Frikkie Bosch from Microsoft. When I approached him with the idea of starting something like this he almost did backflips he was so excited. He immediately sprang into action and arranged everything for the first event. He has offered to setup and host an Office Groove site for the community where we can interact with each other. Microsoft has been kind and generous enough to offer us the venue for the meetings and last night provided fantastic snacks and drinks
(I must say, I am more than happy to be re-united with my old friend Amstel ... but that's for another post I guess 
)
Frikkie, thanks man .... now that you've done the first event I guess it is up to us, the community, to drive it from here and ensure that this good start gives us a launching pad to work from.
After hours and hours and hours of pure frustration with the joyful bandwidth we get in South Africa (but that's a whole other rant we've all heard a thousand times before ...) I finally managed to get the full Visual Studio 2008 Team System DVD in my grubby little paws!
My imagine my excitement upon putting the thing in my laptop and clicking autorun ...
Up comes the install screen, I select custom install and very quickly remove VB.NET (don't ask ... long story .... 
)
Click next and presto ....
I get this!
Fantastic!
And so begins the long and fruitful relationship with yet another instance of Visual Studio!
Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise. I mean come on, if it can't even install correctly is there any chance of it actually working properly?
What about the help I hear you say ...
Well I thought the same thing. Look the kind folk at Microsoft provided me a link to troubleshoot any installation problems.
But alas, once again my joy was very short lived. I clicked the link and this super useful helpful page pops up offering a whole 3 pearls of wisdom
• Use the Local Administrator account.
Um .... well yes thanks for that. Isn't this standard protocol for any Microsoft installation?
• Stop all required services and programs.
Don't even get me started with this one ....
• Clear the System\Temp folder.
Ok, this is about the only useful one. No idea why temp folder would be important if this was the first time I attempted to run the install. But who am I to question this pearl of wisdom? So I cleared out the temp folder, tried again only to be slapped in the face with the very same error message.
My notebook has never had anything that has resembled a alpha, beta or CTP on it ... I purposefully chose to wait until it RTM'd thinking that it might then be stable.
So now what?
Am I the only pure soul who is doomed?
Should I just be grateful for small mercies and continue with Visual Studio 2005 now that I finally for that stable on Vista?
Do I re-install my notebook and try again?
UPDATE:
So based on some of the comments and info received offline it would appear that the installer is moaning about not being able to install the .NET Framework 3.5 for some or other reason.
So I tried to install the dotnetfx3.5 manually from the DVD. Low and behold it failed! Examining this log file this installer created, it clearly states that it failed because Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 SP1 was not installed.
So ok, I downloaded that and tried to install it and proceed to get another error ...
.NET 3.0 SP1 is not supported on Vista!?!?!?
So 3.5 moans because 3.0 SP1 is not installed, but 3.0 SP1 says it is not supported on Vista; so does that in some roundabout way mean that 3.5 is not supported on Vista?
Maybe I have a version of Vista that got installed when the aliens abducted me and performed all sorts of horrible experiments on me and my laptop ....
UPDATE:
So ... .NET Framework 2.0 service pack 1 first hey? Ok .... Yes it was on the CD so I didn't need to download anything but once again when i try install this i get the following ...
Now i am convinced. My Vista was developed on a Friday morning after a very heavy case of phuza Thursday!