Biztalk Adapters

1301 of 1339 | Debatching Options and Performance Considerations in BizTalk 2004 - Download This Article and Sample Code Here: Debatching Options and Performance Considerations in BizTalk 2004 White Paper and Sample Code   Related Sample: Xml Envelope Debatching     In some business scenarios you may be required to receive a batch file that must be broken up and processed as single messages by BizTalk Server 2004.  This could allow for individual record level processing, selective content based routing, or single message mapping.      General Debatching Design Considerations Here are some general design considerations you might want to think about when planning a debatching approach with BizTalk Server 2004.    General Debatching Design Considerations Header and Trail......

1302 of 1339 | Configuring WebLogic Tuxedo Connector - The WebLogic Tuxedo Connector (WTC) is a JCA (J2EE Connector Architecture)-compliant software component that provides interoperability between Tuxedo services and WebLogic Server-deployed enterprise applications. WebLogic Server components can use the WTC to communicate with Tuxedo services, and reciprocally, Tuxedo services can invoke WebLogic Server-based EJBs....

1303 of 1339 | Naming Output Files in an Orchestration in BizTalk 2004 - In many cases it can be useful to know the exact name of your output file that will be sent from your Orchestration using the File Adapter.  This can be difficult if you are using the %MessageId%.xml macro to write the file since this it set after the message is sent from the Orchestration.    Delivery Notification can help you determine if your message was sent successfully but it can not give you the file name.   BizTalk 2004 has two ways to dynamically name your files from inside the Orchestration.  The two ways to accomplish this are either to use a Dynamic Send Port or to use the %SourceFileName% macro on the Send Port.   Dynamic Send Port Dynamitic Send Ports are powerful and useful ......

1304 of 1339 | BTS with MSMQ, NLB, Firewalls - courtesy of Brandon Gross - Brandon Gross, one of the BizTalk wizards at the Interlink Group, in Seattle, has a blog - subscribed.  I`ve been working with Brandon on an intriguing scenario that he has described, and it`s been great to work with Brandon with this client, and to see how BizTalk, MSMQ, NLB, and Firewalls really can all get along.  Brandon has posted about this in more detail here. The tip about 1) Creating a second IIS Web site, then 2) turning off the "Default Web Server" prior to installing WSS, so that WSS gets its hooks into the second web site is a great time-saver...  WSS doesn`t complain, I presume because it thinks that it has full control, and it doesn`t notice that the "Default Web Server" is h......

1305 of 1339 | Why BizTalk developers get SO and contract-first - To a BizTalk developer, you design applications based on message flow. A message goes in one port, and comes out another. What happens in between is completely black box. Simple.BTS 2004 is the most service-oriented product that MS ships, at least according to the four tenets. The beauty of BTS is that the architecture is based on SO, but grounded in reality. It acknowledges that SAP, Peoplesoft, etc., exist and cannot be ignored through it`s flexible adapter architecture. So BTS offers an SO future while connecting you with past investments.BTS has no illusions about the whole message vs. object debate, which drives some of us to the edge of madness. ;-) With BizTalk,it`s about messages. P......

1306 of 1339 | The fun of being `in-between` projects for a week - I had a great week last week. The project I was starting suddenly changed direction, in such a way that BizTalk was no longer needed. End of project to me and nothing in the pipeline yet (apart from some open issues).   Don`t worry though, my days are filled for next week and on. But not with BizTalk. SharePoint is hot all of a sudden. I have 6 projects scheduled, ranging from a couple of hours consultancy to starting up an implementation for company with several hunderd employees, all with SharePoint.   But to get back to the fun. I`ve had: a chance to play with the Information Bridge Framework. Didn`t get around to actually build something myself though, but the things I saw are all v......

1307 of 1339 | The fun of being `in-between` projects for a week - I had a great week last week. The project I was starting suddenly changed direction, in such a way that BizTalk was no longer needed. End of project to me and nothing in the pipeline yet (apart from some open issues).   Don`t worry though, my days are filled for next week and on. But not with BizTalk. SharePoint is hot all of a sudden. I have 6 projects scheduled, ranging from a couple of hours consultancy to starting up an implementation for company with several hunderd employees, all with SharePoint.   But to get back to the fun. I`ve had: a chance to play with the Information Bridge Framework. Didn`t get around to actually build something myself though, but the things I saw are all v......

1308 of 1339 | Overwriting the %SourceFileName% macro to build dynamic filenames in BizTalk 2004 - I have a scenario where I receive a Purchase Order named as PO_.xml where ID is a unique identifier contained within the message. I need to send back POCAN_.xml or POACK_.xml through the same send port where ID is the same ID I received with the original PO. I could use a dynamic port to achieve this but I want to be able to define my transfer type at run time through a binding file. I also want to be able to support numerous transfer methods without changing any code.   The solution overwrite the %SourceFileName% macro.   Within a construct message block inside the orchestration use something like the following:   Message_2 = Message_1; Message_2(FILE.ReceivedFileName) = ”POCAN_”+System.Co......

1309 of 1339 | Overwriting the %SourceFileName% macro to build dynamic filenames in BizTalk 2004 - I have a scenario where I receive a Purchase Order named as PO_.xml where ID is a unique identifier contained within the message. I need to send back POCAN_.xml or POACK_.xml through the same send port where ID is the same ID I received with the original PO. I could use a dynamic port to achieve this but I want to be able to define my transfer type at run time through a binding file. I also want to be able to support numerous transfer methods without changing any code.   The solution overwrite the %SourceFileName% macro.   Within a construct message block inside the orchestration use something like the following:   Message_2 = Message_1; Message_2(FILE.ReceivedFileName) = ”POCAN_”+System.Co......

1310 of 1339 | Using the BizTalk 2004 HTTP adapter with a trading partner that doesn`t support HTTP Chunked Encoding (Introduced in HTTP 1.1)... - I was working on a project where we needed to send messages from BizTalk to and HTTPS web page on a server that was running HTTP 1.0 and didn`t support HTTP Chunked Encoding... http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec3.html... The BizTalk 2004 HTTP adapter automatically chucks http posts into 48kb blocks, it has been discovered that when sendingmessages larger than 48kb towebservers that don`t support chucking the following error will be raised in the event log - "The adapter failed to transmit message going to send port ““. It will be retransmitted after the retry interval specified for this Send Port. Details: "Chunked encoding upload is not supported on the HTTP/1.0 protocol."... ......

1311 of 1339 | Using the BizTalk 2004 HTTP adapter with a trading partner that doesn`t support HTTP Chunked Encoding (Introduced in HTTP 1.1)... - I was working on a project where we needed to send messages from BizTalk to and HTTPS web page on a server that was running HTTP 1.0 and didn`t support HTTP Chunked Encoding... http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec3.html... The BizTalk 2004 HTTP adapter automatically chucks http posts into 48kb blocks, it has been discovered that when sendingmessages larger than 48kb towebservers that don`t support chucking the following error will be raised in the event log - "The adapter failed to transmit message going to send port ““. It will be retransmitted after the retry interval specified for this Send Port. Details: "Chunked encoding upload is not supported on the HTTP/1.0 protocol."... ......

1312 of 1339 | The "Use MSMQ Authentication" Option - I recently went through a really nast bout of troubleshooting with the client I currently work with, related to MSMQT.  Hopefully, my tale can save you similar pain.   The core issues was this: The BizTalk MSMQT adapter can be configured during installation to integrate with Active Directory.  The default is that it will not operate in this fashion, but rather in "workgroup" mode.  There are (at least) two reasons why you might want to have MSMQT integrate with Active Directory: 1) you want to make use of an MSMQ router in your environment or 2) you want to use certificate-based authentication at a protocol level (where the public certificate is ma......

1313 of 1339 | BizTalk Adapters for SAP and MQSeries - Two new adapters for BizTalk have launched recently, the BizTalk Adapter v2.0 for mySAP Business Suite, and the BizTalk Adapter for MQSeries v2.0.  There`s a fee for the mySAP Adapter, but the MQSeries adapter is FREE! - It is included with the BizTalk Server 2004 license.  So, let`s get queuing today...  Other queue adapters - BizTalk Server 2004 shipped with an included adapter for MSMQ v2.  A new version, which will support MSMQ v3 is being developed.  If you live in the Northwest, and are interested in learning more about this, please let me know....

1314 of 1339 | Hosts and Host Instances - Before I begin, I promise I am working on getting my role link example up here.  There was some confusion with server space to upload the example to. Ok....I know when I first started with BTS`04, it was slightly confusing to me what the whole host/host instance thing was.  A fairly new concept from the previous versions.  But, once the concept sinks in (things take longer for me ;-) ), it`s actually extremely useful. So, we know that the Host is a “logical container”, and the Instance is the “physical container” for all your adapters, orchestrations, etc.  What can we do armed with this knowledge  When we`re developing, everything runs under the default BizTalkServerApplication, and life i......

1315 of 1339 | Deploying a custom BizTalk Adapter in a merge module (and registry trouble) - I`ve been struggling the last two days to deploy a custom BizTalk adapter using a merge module. My idea was to deploy the binaries and add the necessary registry keys using standard installer technology and then run a custom script to register the adapter in BizTalk using WMI. It didn`t work in one go.If you create a adapter project using the adapter wizard, a registry file gets created as well that you need to merge into the registry to get the stuff working. These keys are allin the space HKCR\CLSID\. As you can read in this Registry Architecture articlefrom the Windows IT Librarythe HKCR is in real life a merged key consisting of the HKLM\Software\Classes and the HKCU\Software\Classes ke......

1316 of 1339 | Deploying a custom BizTalk Adapter in a merge module (and registry trouble) - I`ve been struggling the last two days to deploy a custom BizTalk adapter using a merge module. My idea was to deploy the binaries and add the necessary registry keys using standard installer technology and then run a custom script to register the adapter in BizTalk using WMI. It didn`t work in one go.If you create a adapter project using the adapter wizard, a registry file gets created as well that you need to merge into the registry to get the stuff working. These keys are allin the space HKCR\CLSID\. As you can read in this Registry Architecture articlefrom the Windows IT Librarythe HKCR is in real life a merged key consisting of the HKLM\Software\Classes and the HKCU\Software\Classes ke......

1317 of 1339 | MQSeries adapter release - Now this is something I could have used in my current project where I need to tie Oracle and BizTalk together. We now go via the filesystem, with all issues like no garanteed delivery, no garanteed message order, etc. We could have solved these issue much easier when we would have used MQSeries. The announcement by Scott Woodgate is here, the download is here....

1318 of 1339 | MQSeries adapter release - Now this is something I could have used in my current project where I need to tie Oracle and BizTalk together. We now go via the filesystem, with all issues like no garanteed delivery, no garanteed message order, etc. We could have solved these issue much easier when we would have used MQSeries. The announcement by Scott Woodgate is here, the download is here....

1319 of 1339 | Operational Requirements - the less exciting stuff... - A key part, and sometimes overlooked part of any integration project are the operational requirements.  Everyone is very busy trying to figure out how the whole solution is going to work, but someone needs to determine how this thing is going to continue to operate.  Keep in mind that there are all kinds of thing that can make your solution stop working such as passwords getting changed (a typical enterprise security requirement), software patches getting installed, etc.  Additionally, things need to be thought about early in the process, like how are we going to make updates to assemblies with minimal (or NO) downtime.   I have put together a list (perhaps just the beginnings) of some key ......

1320 of 1339 | Why does BizTalk display "Status unavailable" for Isolated Hosts - Yet another frequently asked question. When using the BizTalk 2004 Administration Console, isolated hosts always report "Status unavailable" (see below).     BizTalk Server 2004 offers two kind of hosts: In-Process Hosts and Isolated Hosts. In-Process Hosts run in the same process as BizTalk and can be used to run orchestrations, run any send adapter and run the MSMQ or FILE receive adapters. Isolated Hosts can only run HTTP/HTTPS/SOAP receive adapters. From a pragmatic point of view, an Isolated Host is essentially an ISAPI extension running under the control of IIS. In BizTalk 2004, this ISAPI is called BTSHTTPReceive.dll. The documentation page "About Hosts" explains:   Isolated hosts p......

1321 of 1339 | Why does BizTalk display "Status unavailable" for Isolated Hosts - Yet another frequently asked question. When using the BizTalk 2004 Administration Console, isolated hosts always report "Status unavailable" (see below).     BizTalk Server 2004 offers two kind of hosts: In-Process Hosts and Isolated Hosts. In-Process Hosts run in the same process as BizTalk and can be used to run orchestrations, run any send adapter and run the MSMQ or FILE receive adapters. Isolated Hosts can only run HTTP/HTTPS/SOAP receive adapters. From a pragmatic point of view, an Isolated Host is essentially an ISAPI extension running under the control of IIS. In BizTalk 2004, this ISAPI is called BTSHTTPReceive.dll. The documentation page "About Hosts" explains:   Isolated hosts p......

1322 of 1339 | Why does BizTalk display "Status unavailable" for Isolated Hosts - Yet another frequently asked question. When using the BizTalk 2004 Administration Console, isolated hosts always report "Status unavailable" (see below).     BizTalk Server 2004 offers two kind of hosts: In-Process Hosts and Isolated Hosts. In-Process Hosts run in the same process as BizTalk and can be used to run orchestrations, run any send adapter and run the MSMQ or FILE receive adapters. Isolated Hosts can only run HTTP/HTTPS/SOAP receive adapters. From a pragmatic point of view, an Isolated Host is essentially an ISAPI extension running under the control of IIS. In BizTalk 2004, this ISAPI is called BTSHTTPReceive.dll. The documentation page "About Hosts" explains:   Isolated hosts p......

1323 of 1339 | Why does BizTalk display "Status unavailable" for Isolated Hosts - Yet another frequently asked question. When using the BizTalk 2004 Administration Console, isolated hosts always report "Status unavailable" (see below).     BizTalk Server 2004 offers two kind of hosts: In-Process Hosts and Isolated Hosts. In-Process Hosts run in the same process as BizTalk and can be used to run orchestrations, run any send adapter and run the MSMQ or FILE receive adapters. Isolated Hosts can only run HTTP/HTTPS/SOAP receive adapters. From a pragmatic point of view, an Isolated Host is essentially an ISAPI extension running under the control of IIS. In BizTalk 2004, this ISAPI is called BTSHTTPReceive.dll. The documentation page "About Hosts" explains:   Isolated hosts p......

1324 of 1339 | Neglect - Okay, I have been neglect and am trying to remedy this. I have a couple of papers I am working on which will get posted here very shortly. Hopefully one will be here by end of the week. I am also busy at work on BTS stuff trying to make your life easier (I hope). Finally I was away visiting some customers and getting some good real world experience. I have actually visitted lots of customers but it is always good to stay knowledgable because it is too easy to get it the glass ball world over here and forget about everyone who really uses this stuff and the problems they face. Never want to have that happen. So first off, I just read a write up from Charles Young (who I have now added to my ......

1325 of 1339 | Neglect - Okay, I have been neglect and am trying to remedy this. I have a couple of papers I am working on which will get posted here very shortly. Hopefully one will be here by end of the week. I am also busy at work on BTS stuff trying to make your life easier (I hope). Finally I was away visiting some customers and getting some good real world experience. I have actually visitted lots of customers but it is always good to stay knowledgable because it is too easy to get it the glass ball world over here and forget about everyone who really uses this stuff and the problems they face. Never want to have that happen. So first off, I just read a write up from Charles Young (who I have now added to my ......

1326 of 1339 | MSMQT Observations... - A lot has been said regarding the MSMQT adapter for BizTalk 2004 already, but below are a few recent observations that may be of help to you.    When people ask me what MSMQT is, my short answer goes something like this: "MSMQT is the name of the BizTalk 2004 adapter that implements the MSMQ network protocol directly within BizTalk.  It allows BizTalk 2004 to send/receive MSMQ messages directly, and move messages to/from the MessageBox very quickly - without external (DTC) transaction coordination.  Only private queues are supported for receives."   Using the MSMQT adapter you can:   Use Send Ports to send to public or private qu......

1327 of 1339 | BizTalk Server 2004: FTP guaranteed delivery - The BizTalk Server 2004 FTP adapter offers a `guaranteed delivery` feature, the details of which are not documented by Microsoft.  The mechanism is very straightforward, however, and involves the use of a temporary folder.   Files are staged by BizTalk in this folder before being moved to the destination folder.   BizTalk supports this for both Send and Receive handlers.  To use this feature, simply set the "Temporary Folder" property of the FTP adapter.   For Send ports, this will be the name of an FTP folder on the server, rather than a local folder. The main advantage of using this feature is that retries can be performed in the event of a transport failure, with multiple copies of the ......

1328 of 1339 | BizTalk Server 2004: FTP guaranteed delivery - The BizTalk Server 2004 FTP adapter offers a `guaranteed delivery` feature, the details of which are not documented by Microsoft.  The mechanism is very straightforward, however, and involves the use of a temporary folder.   Files are staged by BizTalk in this folder before being moved to the destination folder.   BizTalk supports this for both Send and Receive handlers.  To use this feature, simply set the "Temporary Folder" property of the FTP adapter.   For Send ports, this will be the name of an FTP folder on the server, rather than a local folder. The main advantage of using this feature is that retries can be performed in the event of a transport failure, with multiple copies of the ......

1329 of 1339 | Is there a pub/sub system underneath BizTalk -     Okay, according to the stats, you guys stopped reading when I posted the convoy topic, but, well, I`ll keep throwing stuff at you and hope you enjoy it.   This is the first installment of the bizTalk pub/sub infrastructure talk. I have met lots of people who are confused about this (some of them are on my team). So the short answer is yes, BizTalk processing is built on top of a sql based pub/sub infrasctructure which you know as the messagebox. The longer answer involves explaining how you interact with it since BizTalk does not tout itself as a pub/sub product or really expose a lot of views into its pub/sub nature (except for the subscription viewer which is a good demonstration of ......

1330 of 1339 | Is there a pub/sub system underneath BizTalk -     Okay, according to the stats, you guys stopped reading when I posted the convoy topic, but, well, I`ll keep throwing stuff at you and hope you enjoy it.   This is the first installment of the bizTalk pub/sub infrastructure talk. I have met lots of people who are confused about this (some of them are on my team). So the short answer is yes, BizTalk processing is built on top of a sql based pub/sub infrasctructure which you know as the messagebox. The longer answer involves explaining how you interact with it since BizTalk does not tout itself as a pub/sub product or really expose a lot of views into its pub/sub nature (except for the subscription viewer which is a good demonstration of ......

1331 of 1339 | Acknowledgments and Negative Acknowledgments (Part 1) - The Biztalk engine has the notion of publishing system level (positive) Acknowledgments (ACK’s) which indicate a successful message transmission and Negative Acknowledgments (NACK’s) which indicate the suspension of a message; these are extremely powerful and can be used for handling the outcomes of asynchronous operations in the engine. For example, consider the scenario whereby an Orchestration transmits a one-way message over HTTP, the Orchestration will publish the message to the Message Box which will route it to the appropriate send port. The transmission of the message is completely decoupled from the Orchestration publishing to the Message Box, so the Orchestration has no notion of......

1332 of 1339 | Acknowledgments and Negative Acknowledgments (Part 1) - The Biztalk engine has the notion of publishing system level (positive) Acknowledgments (ACK’s) which indicate a successful message transmission and Negative Acknowledgments (NACK’s) which indicate the suspension of a message; these are extremely powerful and can be used for handling the outcomes of asynchronous operations in the engine. For example, consider the scenario whereby an Orchestration transmits a one-way message over HTTP, the Orchestration will publish the message to the Message Box which will route it to the appropriate send port. The transmission of the message is completely decoupled from the Orchestration publishing to the Message Box, so the Orchestration has no notion of......

1333 of 1339 | Hello! - Ok, so who the heck is this Kevin B Smith chap Well, until recently I spent the bulk of my Microsoft career in Redmond working for the Biztalk Server product group where I shipped the Biztalk Server 2000, 2002 and 2004 releases. I spent all of that time working as a dev in the core engine team and for the 2004 release I had a huge amount of fun as the Technical Lead SDE for the messaging engine. In previous verisons I worked on the many areas within the messaging engine, did work on pretty much all of the adapters that we shipped, and worked on Biztalk Framework (BTF). After shipping BTS 2004 I moved back to the UK where I now work for Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) out of the Develope......

1334 of 1339 | Hello! - Ok, so who the heck is this Kevin B Smith chap Well, until recently I spent the bulk of my Microsoft career in Redmond working for the Biztalk Server product group where I shipped the Biztalk Server 2000, 2002 and 2004 releases. I spent all of that time working as a dev in the core engine team and for the 2004 release I had a huge amount of fun as the Technical Lead SDE for the messaging engine. In previous verisons I worked on the many areas within the messaging engine, did work on pretty much all of the adapters that we shipped, and worked on Biztalk Framework (BTF). After shipping BTS 2004 I moved back to the UK where I now work for Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS) out of the Develope......

1335 of 1339 | Kevin Smith has a blog! - Kevin Smith has just created a blog, he joined MCS in the UK a few months back and is a mine of knowledge with regard to BizTalk, especially the core engine and message infrastructure – and has been invaluable in answering the really hard “Just what does BTS do when…..” type questions. He’s just finished an Adapter Development guide and has loads of stuff in the pipeline, so keep an eye out!...

1336 of 1339 | Quick tip: How to submit messages to MSMQT locally - I`ve been investigating MSMQT and immediately ran into a basic problem.  I created an MSMQT Receive port and configured it appropriately.   I then tried to submit messages using the System.Messaging classes in .NET.   I couldn`t get this to work.   Every time I got an error message saying the MSMQ is not installed on my machine (which is quite true!).   I did some investigation, and soon found that indeed, you cannot submit messages to a local MSMQT Receive location using System.Messaging or any other API.   You could do this from another box which has MSMQ installed, but not from the local server.   Having said that, it is possible to set up MSMQ and MSMQT to run side-by-side on the same b......

1337 of 1339 | Quick tip: How to submit messages to MSMQT locally - I`ve been investigating MSMQT and immediately ran into a basic problem.  I created an MSMQT Receive port and configured it appropriately.   I then tried to submit messages using the System.Messaging classes in .NET.   I couldn`t get this to work.   Every time I got an error message saying the MSMQ is not installed on my machine (which is quite true!).   I did some investigation, and soon found that indeed, you cannot submit messages to a local MSMQT Receive location using System.Messaging or any other API.   You could do this from another box which has MSMQ installed, but not from the local server.   Having said that, it is possible to set up MSMQ and MSMQT to run side-by-side on the same b......

1338 of 1339 | Adapter Migration Toolkit BTS2002 - BTS2004 - Within the Webcast "MSDN Webcast: Migrating from BizTalk Server 2002 to 2004" one of the topics is the Adapter Migration Toolkit. This toolkit will be available this month (May 2004). So when you want to rewrite your AIC`s its handy to wait for the the toolkit. Just a tip :-).... What I saw that it works very well even with IPipeline components....

1339 of 1339 | Adapter Migration Toolkit BTS2002 - BTS2004 - Within the Webcast "MSDN Webcast: Migrating from BizTalk Server 2002 to 2004" one of the topics is the Adapter Migration Toolkit. This toolkit will be available this month (May 2004). So when you want to rewrite your AIC`s its handy to wait for the the toolkit. Just a tip :-).... What I saw that it works very well even with IPipeline components....