BizTalk Server

1 of 989 | Another new book: 'First Steps: Developing BizTalk Applications' - Apress released another book about BizTalk.Here's the description:First Steps: Developing BizTalk Applications is a primer to most other introductory Biztalk books. If you feel like traditional beginning books are too abstract, and that you are mired in detail and missing the "big picture," check out this book. It's not a reference -- it's a jumpstart to learning Biztalk. You learn about the product in a phased approach. This way, you learn just what you need to know, when you need to know it. And the entire book is example-based: you learn by doing. Each phase provides detailed instructions for creating, deploying, and testing a BizTalk project. Through the book's projects, you will be exp......

2 of 989 | Failed to open BAM Excel workbook file: Old format or invalid type library - While trying to deploy a BAM workbook I created with Excel 2002, I received the following error message:Since I was using an older version of Excel (2002) I thought that installing the 2003-version would fix my problem. Unfortunately it did not...After some Googleing I found the blog from Don Glover, a Programming Writer for the BAM feature of BizTalk Server. He states that localization was the problem:"BAM is made up of a number of separate components, SQL, web services, custom tools, and more. In order for each of the components to operate together effectively, they must all be set to the same locale/culture. In addition, your system and user locale/culture should match those set for BAM.......

3 of 989 | Failed while creating a B2BOrchestrations.B2BProcess service - I received the following error in the group hub while testing the solution build in Microsoft tutorial 3, lesson 3: “Failed while creating a B2BOrchestrations.B2BProcess service”After 30 minutes I finally found the solution. BizTalk does not refresh the new deployment automatically. You should first restart the BizTalkServerApplication Host instance from the “Platform Settings - Host Instances” node in the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console. If that did not do the trick, you can also try to remove the orchestration from the GAC, redeploy it and then refresh the BizTalkServerApplication Host instance. ...

4 of 989 | New BizTalk documentation - This week Microsoft updated the BizTalk Server 2006 documentation. You can download it here:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3294ddaf-9f67-409f-a92d-2f6070dc0d1a&displaylang=en ...

5 of 989 | New great site - Biztalk 24 * 7 is an attempt by a Microsoft Biztalk server enthusiast Saravana kumar to put pointers to all the available resources for Biztalk under one roof.http://www.biztalk247.com/v1/default.aspx ...

6 of 989 | BizTalk Server: Spotlight on Cost - You can save tons of money by moving to BizTalk Server(remember Gieco Ad). :) Following is a deck that highlights how customers can save by using BizTalk Server. Cutting Cost with BizTalk Server View more presentations from shasbe. ...

7 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2009 - automated build & deployment using TFS 2008 – parameterization - This post is all about how you can parameterize your builds to work in different scenarios. Before you read this, please take a moment to read Mikaels introductory blog post and take a look at my webcast on Channel9 [~18m], if you haven't already...(read more)...

8 of 989 | DenizBank: Turkish Bank Processes Annual Transactions in Just Eight Hours Due to New Infrastructure - Really interesting case study of bank in Turkey. BizTalk is used in many banks across the world. :) DenizBank got amazing benefits due to automation. Really worth a read. :) Turkey-based DenizBank realised the evolution of Web technologies presented both challenges and opportunities. The key challenge was to develop a robust infrastructure that could support all banking services reliably. The organisation required a fully integrated environment delivering customer relationship management, business process management, and a business intelligence layer to maximise efficiency and service quality. DenizBank worked with solution provider Intertech to build the inter-Next infrastructure, whic......

9 of 989 | Saiseikai Kumamoto Hospital: Japanese Regional Hospital Boosts Efficiency with Enhanced Data Integration - BizTalk supports HL7 as standard feature. Saiseikai Kumamoto Hospital was able to use this feature to get great benefits. :) Profile: Saiseikai Kumamoto Hospital is a major healthcare provider in southern Japan. To efficiently provide high-quality services while cooperating with other regional healthcare providers, the hospital uses IT to manage data and optimize operations. When it was time to upgrade to a fully integrated IT infrastructure, Saiseikai Kumamoto Hospital chose to implement the Microsoft® Connected Health Framework, driven by Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2006 R2. With the new infrastructure, the hospital’s IT staff are able to better integrate clinical and administrative data......

10 of 989 | I will be speaking at TechEd 2009 - I will be speaking at TechEd 2009 in Los Angeles. I will be presenting two sessions and doing demos at a third. My first presentation will be on 'Application Lifecycle Management Experience for BizTalk Server 2009 Developers'. My second presentation will  be a 'Deep Dive with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 Development Platform'. The demo will be done with Danny Garber and will demo an application featuring the new capabilities of BizTalk Server 2009, Windows Azure Service Platform, the Live Framework, .NET Services, the new ESB Guidance v2.0 and the new Managed Services Engine (MSE) 7.0 If you are going to be there stop by and say hello....

11 of 989 | Newly released BizTalk Server 2009 Documentation -   BizTalk Server 2009 documentation released yesterday.  Click here to get the documentation.   ...

12 of 989 | BizTalk 2009 RFID Server Features - The key features of BizTalk RFID 2009 include: BizTalk RFID Mobile (RFID platform for Windows Mobile and Windows CE based devices) BizTalk RFID Mobile consists of a runtime engine, tools and components to develop, deploy and manage RFID solutions on mobile devices. Store and Forward: BizTalk RFID Mobile supports the ability to store events locally as well as forward them to the server. Remote Management: BizTalk RFID Mobile allows remote management of Windows Mobile-based devices. SQL Sink service: BizTalk RFID Mobile supports using a SQL database to store events and information on the mobile device, in much the same way that BizTalk Server RFID does.......

13 of 989 | BizTalk 2009 - all the SQL Bits you need - For me there always comes a time when installing BTS 09 or Clients to work on SQL 2008, that I need all the client 'bits' to talk to SQL2008 Also - the classic problem to solve when installing BizTalk 2009 using SQL 2008, "Where do I get Notification Services From???" Look no further - here's a SQL SP3 goldmine :) SQL GoldMine!! Enjoy...

14 of 989 | What I Learned at the 2009 Microsoft MVP Summit - Just returned from the Summit, and had a really great time meeting colleagues and seeing interesting content.  Without breaking any NDAs, I thought I’d share some thoughts on what I saw this past week. The CSD/BizTalk MVP group remains a smart bunch of guys with a diverse set of backgrounds.  I shared a hotel room with Yossi Dahan, and was thrilled to spend time with the likes of Mick Badran, Michael Stephenson, Saravana Kumar, Stephen Thomas, Leonid Ganeline, Ben Cline, Jon Fancey, Kevin Smith, Alan Smith, Mikael Håkansson, Jon Flanders, Matt Meleski, Tim Rayburn, Kent Weare, Bill Chestnut and many others.  The practical experiences these guys have with customers should be milked dry by t......

15 of 989 | BTS 09 Beta Documentation – peeking - Hi folks – if you want to check out some of the BTS 09 Documentation to help prepare you for when it hits shortly, check it out here: BTS09 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=38923F29-167F-497D-80A5-899602FEF8D7&displaylang=en ...

16 of 989 | Not Using "http://namespace#root" as BizTalk Message Type - This has come up twice for me in the past week: once while reading the tech review comments on my own book (due out in April), and again while I was tech reviewing another BizTalk book (due out in July).  That is, we presumptively say that the BizTalk “message type” always equals http://namespace#root when that’s not necessarily true.  Let’s look at two cases demonstrated here. This first simple case looks at a situation where an XML schema actually has no namespace.  Consider this schema: Perfectly fine schema, no target namespace.  I’ve gone ahead and created another schema (with namespace) and mapped the no-namespace schema to the namespace schema.  After I deploy this solution and cre......

17 of 989 | - BizTalk Server performance relies on several hardware (disks, cpu(s)...), software (SQL Server, BizTalk Host Instance…), network components and the application design by itself. Each of these above component involved in the architecture may impact heavily the BizTalk server performance.The basic recommendation of an architecture that will ensure the high availability is to have at least:_ a group of 2 BizTalk servers within a group_ a cluster SQL server instance hosting the BizTalk server databases_ a Master secret server running as a generic resource on the SQL server instanceIn the next pages, I'll be reviewing each component and I'll mention what to check in order to make sure if the ......

18 of 989 | Getting the product key of a BizTalk installation - I received an unusual phone call from a co-worker today: he wanted to find out the product key of BizTalk Server 2006 installed on a server (I didn’t go as far as asking why – lost disk probably). After a few minutes this is where I got to: open regedit...(read more)...

19 of 989 | what is new for EDI/AS2 in BizTalk 2009 - Below is excerpts from BizTalk 2009 documentation about new features in BizTalk EDI /AS2 (BizTalk 2009):  EDI Enhancements Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is one of the most prevalent means by which businesses exchange data electronically. It represents approximately 75 percent of all business-to-business electronic transactions and grows at about 5 to 7 percent per year. EDI usage entails message syntax and standards (including ANSI X12 and UN/EDIFACT), messaging protocols, and transports. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 introduced the ability to process EDI messages using EDI pipeline components, as well as AS2 support. BizTalk Server 2009 improves EDI support with the following features......

20 of 989 | Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) : barramento de serviços e seus desafios. - Olá pessoal, tudo certo? Recentemente, acompanhei uma discussão de arquitetura onde me foi apresentado um desenho de infra-estrutura simplificado, como esse: Até aqui, nada de novo, tenho certeza que muitos de vocês já viram cenários como esse. O que chamou minha atenção foi o "barramento" no meio do desenho, o chamado Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). Após notá-lo entre as várias caixas de servidores, perguntei sobre a real necessidade do ESB na arquitetura e quais seriam as funcionalidades do barramento que seriam aproveitadas na solução. Ouvi como resposta um sonoro : "é óbvio!!! precisamos publicar os serviços num barramento de serviços!!" :) Certo! Um barramento de serviços é import......

21 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Exam (70-241) -   I’ve just taken exam Exam 70-241: TS: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions by Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and passed! This exam has been brought to my attention again two weeks ago by Nabeel from Microsoft Services in...(read more)...

22 of 989 | New video on using Team Foundation Server for BizTalk Server 2009 development with -   The Channel 9 Screencasts has a new video on using Team Foundation Server for BizTalk Server 2009 with Johan Hedberg from the BizTalk User Group in sweden. Johan goes over the basics of creating a new build type and building BizTalk 2009 projects...(read more)...

23 of 989 | We are hiring - Tellago, Inc (my new venture) is aggressively expanding its services in the U.S. East Coast and particularly in the South East. We are looking for developers and architects skillful with Microsoft Connected Systems technologies such as BizTalk Server...(read more)...

24 of 989 | Team Foundation Server for BizTalk Server 2009 development & deployment -                     Check the following presentation by Johan using Team Foundation Server for BizTalk Server 2009 development & unit-testing, automated builds and automatic deployment with custom tasks for msbuild. You don’t need to have Visual Studio.Net for build process.   http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/johanlindfors/MSDN-TV-Use-Team-Foundation-Server-for-BizTalk-Server-2009-development/     ...

25 of 989 | BizTalk 2009 - Build & Deploy automation with Team Foundation Server 2008 – Part 1 - BizTalk Server 2009 comes with support for MSBuild. The question is, how can we use it, and how does it help us? The obvious advantage is of course, that this enables Visual Studio BizTalk projects to be deployed to the production environment without...(read more)...

26 of 989 | BAM i dybden for utviklere - 'Et must' whitepaper - Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) er en modul i BizTalk Server som samler forretnings/organisasjonsdata og milepæler i prosesser og som gir beslutningstagere muligheten til å få bedre innsyn i prosessene. BAM er bygd på mye av Business Intelligence (BI) plattformen som er innebygd i SQL Server. Dette igjen betyr at brukere forholdsvis enkelt kan bruke BI verktøy (f.eks. Excel) for å forecast'e prosesstrender og overvåke prosesser i real time. BAM gir videre også en mekanisme til å sende alarmer til brukere om spesielle situasjoner som krever oppmerksomhet. For at utviklere skal få en bedre forståelse av hvordan denne infrastrukturen fungerer, har nå BizTalk teamet sammen med en partner (Te......

27 of 989 | BizTalk Server vs “Dublin” - Ever since PDC ‘08 and the announcement of “Dublin” the world has gone mad with the buzz. But what exactly is “Dublin”, where does it fit in with BizTalk? Does it replace BizTalk? All these are valid and interesting questions, questions that have been...(read more)...

28 of 989 | Buenas noticias para BizTalk - En estos tiempos tan complicados que se están viviendo, en todos los aspectos y en todo el mundo, se agradece, creo yo, leer alguna noticia, en este caso aplicacada al mundo de la tecnología y, por qué no, aplicada también a Microsoft, con algún tono positivo. En la última conferencia de SOA & BPM que se ha celebrado en el campus de Microsoft en Redmond, se ha podido ver cómo Microsoft está promoviendo su posicionamiento en los últimos cuadrantes mágicos de Gartner, donde aparece como líder en áreas como Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects. Este esfuerzo de modernización de sistemas ‘legacy’, BPM y SOA está fundamentalmente basado en BizTalk Server.......

29 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2009 is almost there! -   as of today we have customers running BizTalk Server 2009 in production and our bug count is low for the release candidate. Onward to release!...

30 of 989 | BizTalk Posters Updated for BizTalk 2009 - The MS Technical Editors responsible for the BizTalk posters have recently updated some of the posters for BizTalk 2009.  Check them out at the following URLs: · BizTalk Server 2009 Scale-out Configurations Poster · BizTalk Server 2009 Database Infrastructure...(read more)...

31 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2004 Mainstream Support Ends July 14, 2009 - For all those still running BizTalk Server 2004, they should be aware that the Microsoft Mainstream support will end this year ( http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=2004&Filter=FilterNO ). One other point to...(read more)...

32 of 989 | Building BizTalk Solutions with Visual Studio 2008 Team System deck - The deck from today’s Developer Tools Power Hour session, Building BizTalk Solutions with Visual Studio 2008 Team System, is available from the following SkyDrive location: http://cid-bfc5a11b75eac1c9.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Building%20BizTalk%20Solutions%20with%20Visual%20Studio%202008%20Team%20System.ppt   Lots of great resources are listed at the end of the deck, be sure to check them out. As well, be sure to check out the BTS 2009 Beta release that you can grab from the connect...(read more)...

33 of 989 | How Many are using BizTalk Server!!! -   I really proud of working in such a wonderful product from microsoft which occupies most of the enterprise integration area. Look at the below enterprise statistics for biztalk server. * Taken information from this blog. ...

34 of 989 | Enterprise Statistics for BizTalk Server - Following are some amazing statistics about BizTalk Server. :) Really amazing stuff. ...

35 of 989 | Expanding Role - Solving Integration Challenges of our Customers - I started my career @ Baan Info systems in India as software engineer responsible for building Integration technology for Baan ERP. After Baan, I worked as solutions architect for e-ET, EAI solutions Designer for Nortel and Senior software architect for SAMSys/Sirit. Mostly working on integrating applications or building integration technologies. From 2000-2002 I designed an Integration platform based on Peer-2-Peer architecture at e-ET called Enterprise Process Manager.  Past couple of years at Microsoft I have worked on Product Development of VSTS Team Foundation Server and then as business owner for Microsoft RFID platform. After recent reorganization, along with Microsoft RFID Plat......

36 of 989 | New BizTalk User Group in Atlanta - Just got this from my friend and co-worker, Karl Rissland.  What a great opportunity. Finally just what we have all been waiting for!  A BizTalk Server User Group in Atlanta!  Come Join Us as we kick off the New Year with a New User Group. We will discuss the features of BizTalk Server 2009 and even give you Real World Examples of How BizTalk is being Used in Businesses today. Tuesday, February 10, 2009 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm 5:30 – 5:45      Networking/User Group Announcements 5:45 – 6:15      BizTalk Use Case Scenarios Michael Maxon, Georgia Power             &#......

37 of 989 | BizTalk 2009 Beta Docs & BAM Guidance - Microsoft just published a very interesting an in-depth 86-page document about BAM, one of the most under-used features of BizTalk Server, “Business Activity Monitoring in Depth for Developers”. You can download if here , and find more overview info about...(read more)...

38 of 989 | Interesting Downloads for Week Ending 23-1-2009 - Hi All, Please find attached the listings of new or updated downloads for the week ending 23rd January 2009.  Key ones include: Infrastructure Development, Operations & Maintenance • Release Documents for this Beta Release of Windows Server 2008 R2 • 2007 Office Resource Kit Technical Library in Compiled Help format • Microsoft Exchange Online Service Level Agreement (SLA) • Microsoft SharePoint Online Service Level Agreement (SLA) Solutions & Solution Development • Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Data Mining Add-ins for Microsoft Office 2007 • BizTalk Server 2009 Database Infrastructure Poster • Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 2.0 Community Technology Preview (January 200......

39 of 989 | Slides for my Capabilities of BizTalk Server 2009 talk for ACSUG - Just a quick note that the slides for my talk on BizTalk 2009 on the 22/01/09 for the Auckland Connected Systems User Group can be downloaded from the Attachments section of this page: http://www.acsug.co.nz/Meetings/New-Capabilities-of-BizTalk-2009—Thiago...(read more)...

40 of 989 | Why am I getting a binding error on an *.msi file for a re-deployment of a BizTalk application that doesn't contain any bindings? - When this dreaded error crops up, its usually right in the midst of a fast and furious development effort. That's always been the case for me! To solve it in a hurry, I just dub the app with a higher version number, recompile and move on--at least that is what I did when I was a bts developer. Now that I'm a bts admin, I've delved into the topic more. Although the re-versioning scenario works, it is possible to re-deploy an *.msi package with the same version number using these few steps: Go to \Documents and Settings\[deployment acct username]\Application Data\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\Deployment\BindingFiles. (READ: you should see 2 on a reploy, one with a tilda [~]; 1 without) ......

41 of 989 | SQL Best Practices for Biztalk - As promised in my last post, here is the post for SQL Best practices for a Biztalk installation. Althought the majority of best practices for a SQL Server instance are still valid for a Biztalk implementation we should consider some points that are different. In a Biztalk instance: Auto create statistics must be disabled Auto update statistics must be disabled MAXDOP (Max degree of parallelism) must be defined as 1 in both SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 in the instance in which BizTalkMsgBoxDB database exists Indexes Most of the indexes in BizTalk Server databases are clustered (index ID: 1). The DBCC SHOWCONTIG command can be used to display fragmentatio......

42 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2009 session at TechDays 2009 - I will together with Johan Hedberg speak at TechDays 2009 in Västerås, and give a session about new features in the upcoming release of BizTalk Server 2009. We’ll also be present representing the Swedish BizTalk User Group. If you will be there, come...(read more)...

43 of 989 | Installing custom functoids - I just got bit by this one a second time.  So it is time to store the information here to avoid a third occurrence. If you get an exception that the functoid was not found. For example:- 'Exception Caught: Functoid not found: guid({5DE500CC-45BC-454b-A23D-24449899042C}) funcid(6123)' Check that the dll is installed in the mapper extension folder 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\Developer Tools\Mapper Extensions' as well as the GAC. Geordie ...

44 of 989 | New BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Guidance - Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is a module in BizTalk that captures business data and process milestones to allows business decision makers to gain insight of their in-flight processes.  Using BI tools to derive up-to-date metrics and key performance indicators from the BAM databases, users can forecast process trends and monitor processes in real-time. BAM also provides a mechanism to alert users to situations that require their intervention to prevent undesirable outcome or to encourage a beneficial result. We have released last week a new whitepaper and code samples targeted at developers who are developing BAM solutions. The whitepaper titled “Business Activity Monitoring in D......

45 of 989 | PipelineTesting 1.2.1.0 Released - Last week I spent some time working on a new minor release of my PipelineTesting library for BizTalk Server 2006/R2. The new release is available in the usual places: Binary and Source Snapshot, and the Source Repository at GitHub. The new release includes some minor documentation updates, a couple of bug fixes and a new wrapper for doing basic testing of flat file and xml schemas that provides a somewhat equivalent functionality to that offered by the TestableSchema class offered in BizTalk 2009 I’ve talked about before. Here’s the documentation and sample for the new functionality. Testing Schemas It is possible......

46 of 989 | Why am I getting the error: CLSID_BizTalkPropertyBagFactory error in the BTS Admin console - Perhaps you've experienced the scenario where you hit the F5 key on the Group Overview in the BizTalk Admin console and instead of seeing your message queues, you see instead the very ugly () message:  Failed to create a CLSID_BizTalkPropertyBagFactory COM component installed with a BizTalk server. A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed. (WinMgmt) Go to the event viewer and look for any COM/COM+ errors under applications. Chances are you will see a conflict with WMI services--perhaps a threading error. Since the SSO, BizTalk Admin Console, SCOM...(even event viewer) use WMI for the MMC console, one of the DLLs for WMI may have become unavailable. If WMI is not a......

47 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2009 beta documentation - If you're interested in the beta documentation for BizTalk Server 2009 beta, you can find it here....

48 of 989 | BAM whitepaper available on MSDN - After presenting our session about BizTalk Server Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) at Teched 2008, my partner in crime and CTO of Tellago Joe Klug and I decided to coauthor a paper that highlighted the capabilities and architecture of BAM from a developer...(read more)...

49 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2009 beta and “The project type is not supported by this installation” - Right after BizTalk Server 2009 beta was announced I worked on a virtual PC image to check this new stuff. I installed Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and of course BizTalk Server 2009 beta. When I tried to create a new Empty BizTalk Server Project in Visual Studio I ran into the exception "The project type is not supported by this installation". I thought it had something to do with my installation so I tried again and again with different settings, but with no result. I couldn't find much about this error on the internet so I suspected it to be my issue only. It must be something with Visual Studio so I tried a different version, the trial versio......

50 of 989 | Version 10 of the Message Box Viewer Tool (MsgBoxViewer) Release - Just a quick note to those that frequently use the tool (like me) while analyzing and gathering details from a BizTalk Server environment: I’ve just noticed that Jean-Pierre Auconie has released version 10 of his extremely useful Message Box Viewer tool...(read more)...