BizTalk Express Anyone

My good friend Simon says that Microsoft should make BizTalk free and while they are at it make sure they throw all the tools into VS.net

I do agree with him on the fact that BizTalk need to be set free to see the general adoption, However rather than having it fully integrated into the Visual Studio IDE we need something more in the vein of SQL Express. Eventually BizTalk Express will be one of the tools every developer will have in their toolkit.

The interesting aspect will be what parts of BizTalk will they integrate into Visual Studio.

UPDATE: Seeing as we now have a christened the product here is a fancy Logo, maybe even bumper stickers 

Pre Go Live Rituals

I have till the end of the month before the project I have been working on for the last 8 months goes Gold. For the last 2 months we have been in weekly/fortnightly iterations and it has been going extremely well.

However as you may imagine a couple of the newer iterations have not had as much system and integration testing. Added to the fact that its also my first major project that I have been team leading, which has caused me to have a few less hours of sleep a night.

In the last week i have been preparing for Go Live checking and double checking lists, Pacing around the office, Burning the midnight oil just to make sure everything is perfect as can be. I guess the question is “What do most people do just before Go Live?” Do you have any rituals that need to be performed before going live?