Watch this space for live pictures and commentary from the HALO3 Launch Party in Dallas, TX. Updates will begin shortly after 6pm Central Time Today, and will continue through Midnight. Phil Wheat talks about CodeToLive.com the new Channel 9 show for those who program for more than a paycheck.
"The best reason to blog something is so that you can Google your own brain." -- Poorly paraphrased Scott Hanselman, yet so very true. In that spirit, today I'm posting a reminder of a very useful trick for promoting properties out of Orchestrations. Kudos go to Saravana Kumar and David Hurtado for posting about this long before I did, but I record this information here to make sure I can find it when next I need it. Normally when you assign a value to a message context property from within an Orchestration, that property is not promoted, even if it was promoted prior to you assigning a value to it. In order to promote a property within an orchestration we use an "elegant hack" as detailed below: Create a new Correlation Set, and as such likely a new Correlation Type, which contains the property or properties which you wish to promote. When you use a "Send" shape in your orchestration, there is a property called "Initializing Correlation Sets", check off your new Correlation Set from the drop down on this property. Rejoice, you have now promoted those properties. Now before anyone asks, no this does not create orphaned subscriptions in the Message Box, we are never creating a Receive using this Correlation Set so we're never creating a subscription. This can be very useful, in particular I've used it just this week on a 2006 R2 project I'm working on to enable batching from an Orchestration. That is a long story, but the short version is we're creating a new message in the Orchestration which we then intend to immediately queue for batching, so we need to promote these properties without ever having passed through a pipeline with this message.
Can you name every vehicle in HALO 2? Do you know how many Flood must be killed to beat HALO 2 on Legendary? And do you "know what ladies like"? THEN THIS CONTEST IS FOR YOU! Thanks to the incredible evangelism team here in the South Central district, I'm pleased to bring you, dear reader, the chance to go to the Microsoft Pre-Launch party for HALO 3. That's right, you will be welcomed into the Microsoft campus in Irving, TX on September 24th, 2007 between 6pm and Midnight and have a chance to play HALO 3 while everyone else is still standing in line! You read that right, 6 hours of HALO 3 while the rest of the peasants are sitting outside GameStop just so they can rush home an play it. The event will feature food and drink and everything you'd expect from such a prestigious frag-fest. You can win this ticket to Master Chief Nirvana by doing two things! Important, you must do both things to win. Leave a comment on this blog containing: Your Real Name Your Gamertag (No tag? Sorry, serious fans only) The reason you should win the ticket. Be on XBOX LIVE this Saturday (9/15/07) night, between 8 PM and 9 PM Central. I will review the entries, consult the mystic oracle, and pick from among the comments the very best response. On Saturday night between 8pm and 9pm Central I will logon to XBOX LIVE (Gamertag Gisben for those who are new here) and will see if that person is online. If not? On to the next best response of course! The lucky winner will be given all of the relevant details for the event. This event is being held in Irving, TX ... If you can't be in Irving, TX on September 24th of your own power, then do not enter. The contest is only for the ticket to enter the event, not for travel or anything else. And I remind you ... may your reasons good, this isn't a random drawing my friends, your reason has to be better than everyone else's reason if you hope to walk away with the prize.