Extending TN's recordToBizdoc

In a previous article, Extending TN's bizdocToRecord, I described a service that converts the document content of a TN document (bizdoc) to the appropriate IS document structure for XML, flat file and EDI document types. This article describes a service that does the reverse: given an IS document it creates a bizdoc following the document type definition or IS schema for XML, flat file and EDI document types.

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It's about the music, stupid

I have no illusions that anyone at Sirius/XM will ever read this or take action, but this is an attempt to "rally the troops" to pressure Sirius/XM to reverse a trend I've been seeing. Perhaps others have noticed too.

In the good old days of just a couple years ago, all channels were commercial free. Music, news, sports and talk channels catered to a variety of tastes. The trends of late:

• Commercials have been introduced on some channels. The number of commercials seems to be increasing.
• DJs, many of them old MTV VJs from the 80s, are now on a few channels.
• The music seems to be growing more repetitious. When channel surfing it seems more prevalent that multiple channels are playing the same song at the same time.
• This is not a trend but is a recent change: listening to XM Radio Online used to be included with a subscription. Now it is an extra cost option.

I've sent an e-mail to provide this feedback (can't fix what you don't know is broken!) but I'm pessimistic about seeing any results. I imagine the trend will continue. Since the reason I subscribed to satellite radio was to get uninterrupted music (and get away from the inane and annoying "morning zoo crew" that seems to be on every FM station--take Bob and Tom, please!) I most likely will let my XM subscription lapse if the trend continues. Commercials and yakkety DJs are what I wanted to avoid. If XM continues adding these "features" then the value of subscribing to XM will be lost for me.

Extending TN's bizdocToRecord

Those familiar with webMethods Trading Networks know that the first thing a typical service invoked via the TN processing rules does is retrieve the document data from the TN database and convert it to an IS document for further processing. This describes how to extend wm.tn.doc.xml:bizdocToRecord to support XML, EDI and flat file documents.

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writeFile service for webMethods Integration Server

Curiously, Integration Server doesn't come with a service to write to a file. People have shared their implementations on wMUsers.com and elsewhere. The professional services group at webMethods provides several file writing services in their PSUtilties package. This post provides yet another implementation.

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NerdDinner

I've just completed the NerdDinner sample chapter from the upcoming book Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 by Rob Conery, Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, and Scott Guthrie. It's been quite enjoyable and very instructive. It's been some time since I did anything in Visual Studio and this was just the thing to get reacquainted with the IDE.

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