BizTalk 2006 Interview questions January 22, 2007
Posted by balajinjl in BizTalk 2006.Tags: BizTalk
5 comments
For the last couple of weeks I was interviewing candidates for BizTalk developers and architects. I did select a few but unfortunately I was not able to find candidates with core understanding of BizTalk.
Some of the questions I would generally ask BizTalk architects
- Have you ever used BizTalk server in a scenario other than in a typical messaging environment?
- How will you create an Error handling framework in BizTalk?
- What are the draw-backs of BizTalk?
- What is the future direction of BizTalk?
- Why do we need convoy?
- How to resubmit a suspended message? What is possible and what is not possible?
- What is the difference between Windows Workflow and BizTalk server? Explain the scenarios
- What is the need to create MSMQT by BizTalk team when MSMQ is already available?
- Explain the Pub-sub model of BizTalk ?
- Architect a solution that would receive 100 messages of 50 – 100 MB in size and process them in 3 mins?
- How to deploy BizTalk in a highly available scenario?
- How to deploy BizTalk in a multicomputer scenario. Assume there would be DMZ and Corpnet?
Some of the questions I would generally ask BizTalk developers
- What is a targetNamespace? Why do we need it?
- What is a MessageType?
- What is correlation? Why do we need it?
- What is the difference between MSMQ and MSMQT? Why do we need MSMQT?
- What are the security groups created by BizTalk?
- What is the difference between distinguished fields and Property fields? Give an example with usage scenarios for each.
- How to debug an Orchestration?
- In the Orchestration what is the difference between Exception and Compensation? Give an example of its usage scenario.
- Can we do messaging in BizTalk without Orchestration? If yes how?
- What is a Convoy? Why do we need it? Give usage scenario for each Convoy.
- Explain the Publisher – Subscriber model of BizTalk
- What is a Message Box?
- What is BAM?
- What is BAS?
- What are adapters? What do we need it?
- What are the different ways BizTalk can be integrated with SAP?
- In a BizTalk project how to consume an external web service?
All the best for your interviews,
-Balaji NJL
How to create an affordable RAID server using Windows XP January 4, 2007
Posted by balajinjl in How to, RAID, Windows XP tips.add a comment
Just a week before holidays, my Windows 2000 fileserver with 300 GB internal HD crashed. I had my Music, Photos, Videos and Movies on this server. I was kicking myself for not taking a backup. But as we all know scheduling a regular backup is a big pain unless you have big money to throw on tape backups. So I decided to build a simple fileserver with RAID this time.
First I need to do is recover data from crashed HD. I booted using Knoppix and luckily it recognized the crashed HD. I started SSH server in Knoppix and using SCP I remotely copied all data onto an external HD. Then I tried to recover this crashed HD by reformatting but no luck.
Now to create a simple RAID server
- I bought two 500 GB internal SATA drives from Newegg for $150 each.
- Then I bought a SIIG SATA – PCI 4 channel RAID controller from local FRYs for $70. I couldn’t find 2 channel RAID controller. I think it costs around $40. Make sure the controller card supports 500 GB disks. BTW this controller card comes with the 4 SATA cables and 2 Y power cables.
- Dusted off an old Pentium II machine from my garage. This particular SIIG card works only with Pentium chips not with Celeron.
Steps to create the RAID server
- Install the SIIG RAID controller in the free PCI slot.
- Connect the Y power cables to the SATA drive
- Connect the SATA data cables to the controller and the SATA HD.
- Power up the computer.
- While in boot screen press ctrl S or F4 to get into RAID setup options.
- Select the type of RAID you want to setup. I want to setup RAID 1. So I selected RAID 1. Then follow the instructions.
- I wanted to start fresh so installed Windows XP on this machine. SIIG controller card only supports Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It doesn’t support Windows 2003 or LinuxL. So I choose Windows XP.
- I installed Windows XP on the HD that was originally on the machine. (not on SATA disks)
- After Windows XP installation is complete, install the drivers for the SIIG controller from the SIIG CD. You can use ‘Add new hardware’ wizard if windows do not prompt for the driver automatically.
- Install SIIG GUI from the CD.
- Open the Disk Manager (Computer Management – Disk Management). You would notice two disk drives instead of three. One of which would be the original HD with NTFS partition and status as healthy. Other one would be the 500 GB RAID disk unformatted drive.
- Right click the 500 GB unformatted disk and format it. (You may want to divide this disk into multiple drives as per your need)
- To make sure everything works fine – reboot the machine. (Optional)
Voila !!, you have got a 500 GB RAID server running on Windows XP.
In future, if one disk crashes, SIIG GUI will let you know. Replace the crashed disk with a new one. During boot process select RAID setup, select rebuild option and it should do the rest. (I haven’t tried this yet).
HTH and have fun,
Balaji NJL
My first post using Office 2007 and Windows Vista January 3, 2007
Posted by balajinjl in Office 2007, Windows Vista.add a comment
Hi All,
During holidays I installed Vista and Office 2007 on my Toshiba Tecra M3. Some of the things you need to be aware before installing Vista and Office 2007.
- Don’t install on lower-end hardware. My recommendation is 2 GB RAM and 2 Gig Proc.
- In order to install Vista on Toshiba, you need to upgrade your BIOS. Check Toshiba’s web site and download the corresponding BIOS for your laptop model. It is generally an iso file. Create a boot CD and boot using this CD. Upgrade your BIOS.
- Don’t try to upgrade your BIOS from Windows. I had issues with that.
-
Back-up your files (Vista also saves a copy for you)
- My documents
- Application Data
- Local Settings
- Book marks, favorites etc
- And any other important files
- Install Vista and follow the prompts.
- Configure Windows Experience Index via Control panel – Performance and Information Tools.
My first impression of Windows Vista
- It has a nice glossy look, heavily borrowed from Apple.
- Out of the box support for Least-privilege User Account (LUA). Finally Windows got a LUA that really works. I think now Windows is on par with Linux / Unix in terms of LUA.
- I can see lot of improvements in terms of system lock down. This is really good. Some people complain about multiple prompts but I don’t see this as an issue. If you are doing administrative tasks the OS should double check who you are and that’s a good thing.
- All the user files are under [installdrive]\users. IMO correct way to organize the user files.
Net-net
High marks for making it secure out of the box. Good work.
My first impression of Office 2007
- It looks cool.
-
Saves documents as PDF. I was using PDFCreator earlier.
-
Supports Blogs !!!
-
Ribbon menu bar – I am not impressed. IMO its bulky. You have to relearn the locations of all the menu options again. I will create a cheat sheet for menu options and its new location. (I will continue to update the following table)
|
Office 2003 Options |
Office 2007 locations |
|
Document Properties |
Office button – Prepare – properties |
|
Help |
I couldn’t find it in the menu. I used F1 key. (Found it. It’s a small ‘?’ tucked on right-hand side corner. I was expecting it as a text dropdown in the menu bar) |
|
Find & Replace |
I couldn’t find it. I am using ctrl – H |
Things I would like to do
- Reduce the icon size in the ribbon. I don’t like big icons.
-
Option to switch back to old menu. Like in Windows Start menu you can switch to ‘Classic’ menu.
I would be happy if someone could let me know how to do this.
HTH,
Balaji NJL
