Sandro: I’m 33 years old, I live in the beautiful region of Porto in Portugal and from a very early age I got a passion for technology and especially for computers, I still remember with some nostalgia the days of my Timex, Commodore Amiga and Pascal. I started my professional career as a Java, C++ and C# developer and then as a Web project manager. In 2005 I decided to accept a new challenge and joined DevScope as BizTalk consultant and currently also as BizTalk Project Manager. DevScope is a company specializing in business intelligence solutions, systems integration, CRM and collaborative portals based on Microsoft technology and predominantly active in the industrial, financial and public sector.

Dan Rosanova: I’m a senior architect in the Technology Integration practice at West Monroe Partners, an international, full-service business and technology consulting firm. I’m also a three time MVP and author of Microsoft BizTalk 2010 Patterns. I’ve been developing on Microsoft platforms since the late 90s and have a heavy focus on distributed computing.

Michael Stephenson: I am from Newcastle in the UK and work for Connected Systems Consulting Ltd, which is my small freelance consultancy specializing in integration projects using Microsoft (and associated) technologies. I have been a Microsoft BizTalk MVP for a number of years and more recently have moved to the new Microsoft Integration MVP encompassing BizTalk and other Microsoft Integration technologies. I'm also part of the Microsoft Advisors program for Connected Technologies and Windows Azure.

Nitin: I am a Senior Writer in the STB – CSI organization. I work from the Redmond campus and my major focus areas now are BizTalk Server and BizTalk Services. I also help double-up as a Lead Writer for both these products and work on planning all the content deliverables that we ship for these two products. 

Mandi: Technically, I’m a writer for BizTalk Server, Service Bus EAI & EDI Labs, and BizTalk Server on the VM Role. In my heart, I am a BizTalk support engineer. Prior to the Writer role, my entire Microsoft career has been in support. I started with Microsoft Access where I spoke with a spectrum of customers, including teaching the meaning of ‘double-click’, explaining relational database concepts, writing T-SQL queries, and helping with VBA code. Next, it was supporting IIS users that I found I LOVED debugging memory dumps. Yep – LOVED. After that, it was BizTalk support where I remained for what seems like a lifetime. And BizTalk is where I’ve stayed. I cannot think of another product that touches so many other technologies and layers. From a support perspective, BizTalk is perfect because every day is a chance to learn something new.

What are your favorite articles you’ve contributed?

Steef-Jan: My favorite article I very much enjoyed writing is BizTalk Server 2010 (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/biztalk-server-2010.aspx), because the latest Wiki articles only gave details about BizTalk 2009, and I felt an update would be nice. Another article I liked doing was BizTalk Server 2010 – Tools (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5208.aspx). It describes and lists all the tools available for BizTalk 2010 to enable benchmarking, performing health checks, and to document BizTalk environments, aid in troubleshooting, testing, and deploying BizTalk solutions, and so on.

Tord: My favorite articles must be the article about Automatic throttling, this is a resources many have asked for and is hot in the community, in addition to this are the host thresholds as they both walk hand-in-hand. The last thing I wanted to add was the Performance Counters for BizTalk. But I must say many of my articles are my favorites, basically because I use and reference them very often.

Dan Rosanova: I think that would be Using FOR XML queries with the WCF-SQL Adapter. I’ve been working with XML since 1999 and it’s something I’ve really come to like using (granted it did take me a few years to actually like it). Once you know the right tools to use for working with XML it’s really pretty powerful. Things like the XmlSerializer made working with XML in .NET far simpler. I’ve also done a lot of SQL Server work and SQL Server started supporting FOR XML in the 2000 version. This is a really powerful tool because it enabled you to do two important things: 1) return table relational queries in a hierarchy rather than a flat table and 2) auto-serialize these into .NET objects. I used this pattern a lot (sometimes with XSLT for translation or presentation if skipping the .NET part).

Michael Stephenson: Windows Azure Service Bus Resources This resource pulled together a lot of the community content we had used in a simple to use page rather than spending hours searching for things.

Nitin: One of my favorite articles is Invoke ReSTful Web Services with BizTalk Server 2010. This articles is a great example of community-driven content, end to end. The idea/request for this article came from the BizTalk Server community. I wanted to write about something that the customers wanted to see and what they thought was missing. I asked this question to the community through my blog/forum and BizTalk Server + REST was the top request. So, that’s where it started. After that, people from the community sent me whatever little they had done around BizTalk Server + REST so I didn’t have to do all the groundwork. I already had a start. Then once the content was ready, I published it to the Wiki for others to contribute/improve the content and shape it the way they like. So, that was a really great experience.

Mandi: BizTalk Administrator's Checklist Compiled by Microsoft BizTalk Support is definitely on the list. During a support call, a MsgBox Viewer report is typically always collected. I always review this report and make suggestions. Over time, this list started to create itself. It includes actual support calls we’ve received, like knowing the SSO master secret password. There isn’t anything worse than telling a customer BizTalk has to be unconfigured/reconfigured because no one knows the SSO master secret password.

What is TechNet Wiki for? Who is it for?