Greeting and welcome to my BizTalk Blog.

I guess you might want to know a little about who is going to be writing this blog. Before working with BizTalk Server, I ran my own retail internet business selling toys and display cases on the net. Ok, that does not sound very exciting or technical but I did all the web site development along with all the order packing, phone answering, receiving, etc. Oh, I guess I should back up a little more and should mention that before that I was working for International Paper in a paper mill as a Process Engineer. I went to the University of Iowa and have a Chemical Engineering degree. And, No, we do not grow potatoes in Iowa.

I have been working with BizTalk Server since February 27^th 2001. I remember that date well… since that was my first day in Seattle on a new project and the next day we were shaken up by the 6.8 earthquake. Who knew Seattle was on a fault line?I have spent over 2 years working with BizTalk 2000 and 2002. I have been working exclusively with BizTalk 2004 since I got my hands on the Beta in early July 2003. I started on first BizTalk 2004 project in August 2003 working (or trying to work with) the Beta.

Now, after RTM, I am working on my 3^rd BizTalk project.What do I hope to achieve with my Blog? Good question. I hope to post simple solutions to common, complex problems. Like working with LARGE files (1GB+), using XPath and C# inside the mapper, custom pipelines, orchestration throttling, batching, de-batching, and the list goes on and on.

My approach is always consistent: Make it as simple as possible with little custom code!