I guess Faisal has either been too modest or too busy preparing for PDC05 to post this, so I've decided to post it for him.

Prior to joining Microsoft full-time, Faisal was a consultant in the Patterns & Practices group. The Applied Integration Baseline Reference Implementation, one of the projects he had worked on while he was there, was recently published.

The Applied Integration Baseline Reference Implementation illustrates how to use a pattern-driven approach to create a baseline architecture for a complex integration scenario. As an alternative to building applications in silos, learn how to integrate enterprise applications using BizTalk Server, Active Directory, Host Integration Server, SQL Server, and Visual Studio .NET.

Download here.

Integration design and testing is a particularly relevant topic in the SOA era. We are in the process of rolling out a massive portal-like application that aggregates hundreds of different servers, and I've spent the past year developing infrastructure to simplify and improve the integration effort. (If you're interested, feel free to ask me about it at PDC!)