BizTalk Server

951 of 989 | MSDN TV: Advanced Orchestration Concepts in BizTalk Server 2004 - Convoy Processing - Erik Leaseburg demonstrates an advanced BizTalk orchestration design pattern called Convoys (more formally known as concurrent or sequential correlated receives)....

952 of 989 | Shared Config Files........ - BizTalk server relies on a config file to store certain application information. This config file is located in \Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 and is named BTSNTSvc.Exe.Config.  View your file here (DO NOT CHANGE THIS FILE WITHOUT BACKING UP!!!). Let`s say that you have some .NET components that you want to consume from your BizTalk solution.  Let`s also assume that these components are possibly shared with another solution, and make use of a config file for things such as connection strings, directory locations, etc., a fairly common situation.  Now, keep in mind when you call a component, and that component makes use of a config file, it uses the config file of the calling a......

953 of 989 | How DTS can assist your automated unit testing - The reason I blogged earlier about Yukon DTS is that, as part of my build, a database is created and DTS loads up the data. This is handy, but the approach can be expanded to help with unit testing.Each time a unit test is run the data should be restored to a known point so that unit tests (and the order they run in) don`t affect each other. DTS can be called to keep reloading the data.On larger projects different developers or teams of developers may have completely different sets of test data to one another to support their different tasks. Just as likely is that different sets of tests require a very different set of underlying test data. DTS can be used here to delete/truncate tables (i......

954 of 989 | Role Link Sample.....better late than never..... - I applogize for being anything but prompt on this. The zip file can be found here. Steps for setting up Role Link Sample - 1. Create a receive port in BTS Explorer2. Create 2 send ports - RoleLinkTest_Approver1 and RoleLinkTest_Approver23. Set your transports, send or receive locations, etc for your ports4. Create a party called Approver1.  Choose RoleLinkTest_Approver1 as their send port.5. Create a party called Approver2.  Choose RoleLinkTest_Approver2 as their send port. At this point you should be able to deploy the project.  Once the project has been successfully deployed, you should now have a new Role listed in BTS Explorer called RoleLinkSample.RoleLinkTestOrchestration.Purchasi......

955 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2004: Receive Pipeline woes v2 - A few days ago I posted an article on certain behaviours we had observed and investigated in relation to BizTalk receive pipelines. If anyone has been reading the feedback to the post, you will be aware that since then I’ve managed to make some further headway in this matter. My previous article simply described the behaviour and offered some speculation. I now know more about the causes. This new article is intended to replace the previous article....

956 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2004: Receive Pipeline woes v2 - A few days ago I posted an article on certain behaviours we had observed and investigated in relation to BizTalk receive pipelines. If anyone has been reading the feedback to the post, you will be aware that since then I’ve managed to make some further headway in this matter. My previous article simply described the behaviour and offered some speculation. I now know more about the causes. This new article is intended to replace the previous article....

957 of 989 | Is BizTalk supported when running under Virtual PC / Virtual Server - Since Virtual Server has been released, I got asked the question several times so I figured I`d put the answer here where everybody can find it. Knowledge Base Article 842301 says something like: Current released versions of BizTalk (2000, 2002 ,2004) in any flavor (Enterprise, Developer ...) are "best effort support" on virtual machines (Virtual PC and Virtual Server). Any case opened with Microsoft Support will be supported on a best effort basis and you may be asked to reproduce the problem on physical hardware during the course of troubleshooting the issue. Not supported does not mean that it will not run: it may very well run fine or you may run into subtle issues. Not long ago a Micro......

958 of 989 | Is BizTalk supported when running under Virtual PC / Virtual Server - Since Virtual Server has been released, I got asked the question several times so I figured I`d put the answer here where everybody can find it. Knowledge Base Article 842301 says something like: Current released versions of BizTalk (2000, 2002 ,2004) in any flavor (Enterprise, Developer ...) are "best effort support" on virtual machines (Virtual PC and Virtual Server). Any case opened with Microsoft Support will be supported on a best effort basis and you may be asked to reproduce the problem on physical hardware during the course of troubleshooting the issue. Not supported does not mean that it will not run: it may very well run fine or you may run into subtle issues. Not long ago a Micro......

959 of 989 | Is BizTalk supported when running under Virtual PC / Virtual Server - Since Virtual Server has been released, I got asked the question several times so I figured I`d put the answer here where everybody can find it. Knowledge Base Article 842301 says something like: Current released versions of BizTalk (2000, 2002 ,2004) in any flavor (Enterprise, Developer ...) are "best effort support" on virtual machines (Virtual PC and Virtual Server). Any case opened with Microsoft Support will be supported on a best effort basis and you may be asked to reproduce the problem on physical hardware during the course of troubleshooting the issue. Not supported does not mean that it will not run: it may very well run fine or you may run into subtle issues. Not long ago a Micro......

960 of 989 | Is BizTalk supported when running under Virtual PC / Virtual Server - Since Virtual Server has been released, I got asked the question several times so I figured I`d put the answer here where everybody can find it. Knowledge Base Article 842301 says something like: Current released versions of BizTalk (2000, 2002 ,2004) in any flavor (Enterprise, Developer ...) are "best effort support" on virtual machines (Virtual PC and Virtual Server). Any case opened with Microsoft Support will be supported on a best effort basis and you may be asked to reproduce the problem on physical hardware during the course of troubleshooting the issue. Not supported does not mean that it will not run: it may very well run fine or you may run into subtle issues. Not long ago a Micro......

961 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2004: Receive Pipeline woes - In the last few weeks, we`ve encountered a set of problems when using custom pipeline components in Receive pipelines.   After some testing, I have managed to produce a fairly definitive description of the behaviour we have encountered.   I have no very compelling explanation for what we have found, but the problems are entirely repeatable, and it is obvious from looking at BizTalk newsgroups that we are not the only people who have suffered from these problems.   To find out more, read the article....

962 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2004: Receive Pipeline woes - In the last few weeks, we`ve encountered a set of problems when using custom pipeline components in Receive pipelines.   After some testing, I have managed to produce a fairly definitive description of the behaviour we have encountered.   I have no very compelling explanation for what we have found, but the problems are entirely repeatable, and it is obvious from looking at BizTalk newsgroups that we are not the only people who have suffered from these problems.   To find out more, read the article....

963 of 989 | Msgbox Operations Advanced Queries Download available - Okay, GotDotNet is way too slow getting stuff up. I guess they have to proofread and be careful since it is a public site. So, in the mean time, my friend (not my boss which appears to be the impression some people have. Scott and I got a good laugh) Scott Woodgate has let me put the doc on a private site of his. So this doc is now available at: http://home.comcast.net/~sdwoodgate/BizTalkServer2004AdvancedMessageBoxQueries.doc Take a look, read it over, use it when appropriate, send feedback. It has a lot of useful information on how to gather information programmatically from the msgbox. Hopefully all of this type of information will be exposed as perf counters, or through a BTS UI or some......

964 of 989 | Msgbox Operations Advanced Queries Download available - Okay, GotDotNet is way too slow getting stuff up. I guess they have to proofread and be careful since it is a public site. So, in the mean time, my friend (not my boss which appears to be the impression some people have. Scott and I got a good laugh) Scott Woodgate has let me put the doc on a private site of his. So this doc is now available at: http://home.comcast.net/~sdwoodgate/BizTalkServer2004AdvancedMessageBoxQueries.doc Take a look, read it over, use it when appropriate, send feedback. It has a lot of useful information on how to gather information programmatically from the msgbox. Hopefully all of this type of information will be exposed as perf counters, or through a BTS UI or some......

965 of 989 | Cool XSD Validation Function for Orchestration - As I promised in an earlier post, here`s a cool XSD validation function that can be called from within orchestration. Just add to a library - I tend to put it into a BizTalk Utilities library full of useful little functions that complement orchestration (most of which should be provided by the orchestration engine, but that`s a rant for another day!).public static void ValidateDocument( XmlDocument businessDocument, string schemaStrongName ){  // Constants  const int PARTS_IN_SCHEMA_STRONG_NAME = 2;  const int PART_CLASS_NAME = 0;  const int PART_QUALIFIED_ASSEMBLY_NAME = 1;  // Parse schema strong name  string[] assemblyNameParts = schemaStrongName.Split( new char[] { `,` }, PARTS_IN_SCHEM......

966 of 989 | Cool XSD Validation Function for Orchestration - As I promised in an earlier post, here`s a cool XSD validation function that can be called from within orchestration. Just add to a library - I tend to put it into a BizTalk Utilities library full of useful little functions that complement orchestration (most of which should be provided by the orchestration engine, but that`s a rant for another day!).public static void ValidateDocument( XmlDocument businessDocument, string schemaStrongName ){  // Constants  const int PARTS_IN_SCHEMA_STRONG_NAME = 2;  const int PART_CLASS_NAME = 0;  const int PART_QUALIFIED_ASSEMBLY_NAME = 1;  // Parse schema strong name  string[] assemblyNameParts = schemaStrongName.Split( new char[] { `,` }, PARTS_IN_SCHEM......

967 of 989 | Biztalk Blogs Aggregation - Last Updated 08/09/2004The RSS feed was for aggregation was getting very large (almost 1 meg), so the feed now only publishes the latest 20 items to the site, and size has dropped to about 200kb, much more managable. I`ve started searching for Biztalk related blogs recently given that it is now my primary focus at work. I found a few and decided to make use of Addy Santo`s excellent Blogwave to create an aggregated version of the weblogs I have found. Effectively this creates something similar to Longhorn Blogs, an aggregated site on a specific topic. So. You can point your aggregator to my "Biztalk Blogs" aggregation which is updated every 30 minutes (so long as I leave my workstation on a......

968 of 989 | BAM Deployment Issue - I discovered a weird problem recently when deploying a BAM definition spreadsheet using the bm.exe program.Basically, I was getting multiple message boxes containing fn_GetString in the title, plus some other blank message boxes until finally the process ended. It looked pretty terminal!The problem turned out to be that on my machine the locale was set to English (United Kingdom) and it looks like the BAM deployment process doesn`t like it. The message boxes look like they come from Excel so I guess the BAM Excel spreadsheet macro code is to blame.Changing the locale to English (United States) solved the issue and the bm.exe program was able to export the BAM definition XML successfully fro......

969 of 989 | Bug in CustomPartyResolution SDK Pipeline Sample... - Owen found a bug today in the custom party resolution SDK pipeline component located in @ $:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004\SDK\Samples\Pipelines\CustomPartyResolution.    The bug is in the Read() method in the PartyResolutionStream class:   public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count){      int ReturnValue = mBaseStream.Read(buffer, offset, count); if(mFirstRead)      {            mFirstRead = false;            if(mFirstReadCallback != null)                  mFirstReadCallback();      }      if(ReturnValue != 0)            if(mReadCallback != null)                  mReadCallback();      else if(mLastReadCallback != null)            mLastReadCallback();       ......

970 of 989 | Bug in CustomPartyResolution SDK Pipeline Sample... - Owen found a bug today in the custom party resolution SDK pipeline component located in @ $:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004\SDK\Samples\Pipelines\CustomPartyResolution.    The bug is in the Read() method in the PartyResolutionStream class:   public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count){      int ReturnValue = mBaseStream.Read(buffer, offset, count); if(mFirstRead)      {            mFirstRead = false;            if(mFirstReadCallback != null)                  mFirstReadCallback();      }      if(ReturnValue != 0)            if(mReadCallback != null)                  mReadCallback();      else if(mLastReadCallback != null)            mLastReadCallback();       ......

971 of 989 | Bug in CustomPartyResolution SDK Pipeline Sample... - Owen found a bug today in the custom party resolution SDK pipeline component located in @ $:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004\SDK\Samples\Pipelines\CustomPartyResolution.    The bug is in the Read() method in the PartyResolutionStream class:   public override int Read(byte[] buffer, int offset, int count){      int ReturnValue = mBaseStream.Read(buffer, offset, count); if(mFirstRead)      {            mFirstRead = false;            if(mFirstReadCallback != null)                  mFirstReadCallback();      }      if(ReturnValue != 0)            if(mReadCallback != null)                  mReadCallback();      else if(mLastReadCallback != null)            mLastReadCallback();       ......

972 of 989 | BizTalk Super Efficient and Effective Deployment - When BizTalk Server 2002 introduced SEED package technology, I spent quite some time trying to find out what `SEED` stood for.   A couple of years later, I have at long last got the answer...and I don`t believe it!!   See the title of this post for more info :-)...

973 of 989 | BizTalk Super Efficient and Effective Deployment - When BizTalk Server 2002 introduced SEED package technology, I spent quite some time trying to find out what `SEED` stood for.   A couple of years later, I have at long last got the answer...and I don`t believe it!!   See the title of this post for more info :-)...

974 of 989 | Quick Tip: How to control XML encoding in BizTalk Server 2004 - A classic mistake in BizTalk is to think that you can control more than you really can through schemas.   For example, although you can specify default values within a schema (say for a attribute value), this has no effect on message construction and output.  Schemas are for validation, mapping, data-typing.etc.   They don`t control message construction or value output.A related issue that came up recently was how to control XML encoding.   BizTalk defaults to UTF-8 for XML encoding, and a client of ours had been trying to change this by modifying their XSDs.   This does not work.  You control XML encoding by using the XML assembler within the send pipeline .   By default, the XML Assembler......

975 of 989 | Quick Tip: How to control XML encoding in BizTalk Server 2004 - A classic mistake in BizTalk is to think that you can control more than you really can through schemas.   For example, although you can specify default values within a schema (say for a attribute value), this has no effect on message construction and output.  Schemas are for validation, mapping, data-typing.etc.   They don`t control message construction or value output.A related issue that came up recently was how to control XML encoding.   BizTalk defaults to UTF-8 for XML encoding, and a client of ours had been trying to change this by modifying their XSDs.   This does not work.  You control XML encoding by using the XML assembler within the send pipeline .   By default, the XML Assembler......

976 of 989 | BizTalk Deployment Gotcha - Over the past month or so I’ve been putting together some fairly extensive BizTalk training for customers and have just finished 3 deliveries so I’m trying to catch up! During this training I ran some labs, which seemed to went well but I came across some BizTalk deployment behaviour that had completely passed me by, mainly due to the un-deployment habit I’d got myself into. So, if you want to update your Orchestration with a new version, you Unenlist and/or Stop, this removes any Subscription records in the Message Box, and stops any Orchestrations from executing, during this process you get a dialog box that prompts you to Terminate Orchestration Instances, Stop Hosts, etc. I (for some r......

977 of 989 | Addressing BizTalk/NAnt comments - Update - see here. Addressing a few comments/questions that have appeared - 1) Bootstrapping your binding file: It was pointed out that a bootstrapping process is required for your initial BizTalk Orchestration binding file.  This is quite true - you either need to manually deploy your orchestration(s) and associated assemblies, and use the BizTalk Deployment Wizard to create a binding file, or you need to create a binding file by hand (using a previous file as an example...) 2) Automatic maintenance of your binding file: Hermo Terblanche would like the binding file to be maintained automatically (as part of the build process.)  One could imagine automat......

978 of 989 | MSDN TV: Building Your First Business Process - Watch Scott Woodgate show how easy it is to build a business process using Visual Studio .NET and BizTalk Server 2004, expose that business process as a Web service, and then consume the business process inside InfoPath all within 20 minutes....

979 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2004 Configuration Management Report Generator - In case you`ve missed it, Scott Woodgate has published a new reporting tool on his blog site.   The BizTalk Server 2004 Configuration Management Report Generator offers both console and Windows.Forms interfaces, and an optional facility to exploit the SQL Server Report Services.  It provides three report types for orchestrations, schemas and hosts.  Each report type allows you to drill down to relevant configuration information, such as bindings between orchestration ports and messaging ports, or which orchestrations and maps uses a particular schema....

980 of 989 | BizTalk Server 2004 File Dump utility - BizTalk server 2004 compiles assemblies containing orchestrations, schemas, pipelines, maps, etc., by first generating transitory C# source code. A number of people have asked how you get access to the C# code generated by BizTalk Server 2004.   I have published a utility that will dump these files for you to an output folder of your choice.  This utility allows you to save copies of that source code for post-compilation inspection. The source code can be used to gain a deeper understanding of BizTalk Server 2004, or as a tool to troubleshoot and debug deeper problems in BizTalk-generated code. The BizTalk Server 2004 File Dump utility can be downloaded from the User Samples section of www......

981 of 989 | What is a BizTalk `application` - The Standard edition of BizTalk Server 2004 is restricted to "10 internal applications with up to 20 external trading partners".   A colleague just asked what the definition of an `application` is I believe the answer is as follows.   An `application` in BizTalk is a synonym for a host.  The term `Application` is used in relation to the MessageBox, whereas the term `Host` is used in management and administration of BizTalk.   Note that default name for the default in-proc host is BizTalkServerApplication.  The MessageBox maintains an `Application` table and BizTalk dynamically creates multiple queue tables in the MessageBox database for each application (i.e., each application has its own ......

982 of 989 | How messages work in BizTalk Server 2004 Orchestrations - The finer points of message handling in Biztalk Server 2004 are not always well understood.   This article attempts to shed some light on how messages are handled with Orchestrations, and the more confusing aspects of message initialisation....

983 of 989 | New updates BizTalk Server 2004 now available - For the BizTalkers be aware of the new Hotfixes !! Also the new BizTalk Server Orchestration Designer for Business Analysts is out now. I already got the Beta version and its nice. Business Analists can paint their own processes in Visio and export it to the BizTalk Orchestration. Take a look at the Weblogs of Scott Woodgate and download these stuff : http://blogs.msdn.com/scottwoo/. ...

984 of 989 | New updates BizTalk Server 2004 now available - For the BizTalkers be aware of the new Hotfixes !! Also the new BizTalk Server Orchestration Designer for Business Analysts is out now. I already got the Beta version and its nice. Business Analists can paint their own processes in Visio and export it to the BizTalk Orchestration. Take a look at the Weblogs of Scott Woodgate and download these stuff : http://blogs.msdn.com/scottwoo/. ...

985 of 989 | Download now the updated BizTalk Server 2004 Documentation - The documentation of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 was very limited. Today the updated version of the BizTalk Server 2004 documentation is available. When you use BTS2004 download it now ! Bizalk Server 2004 Product Documentation—Downloadable BizTalk Server 2004 User Guide for Information Workers—Online...

986 of 989 | Download now the updated BizTalk Server 2004 Documentation - The documentation of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 was very limited. Today the updated version of the BizTalk Server 2004 documentation is available. When you use BTS2004 download it now ! Bizalk Server 2004 Product Documentation—Downloadable BizTalk Server 2004 User Guide for Information Workers—Online...

987 of 989 | Browse the April 2004 Update of BizTalk Server 2004 Product Documentation - Read new in-depth topics on migration, deployment, samples, and more in the updated April documentation for BizTalk Server 2004. Includes significantly more information than the RTM edition....

988 of 989 | Something went wrong II BizTalk Mapper 2002 - Vandaag weer een leuk probleempje tegengekomen met BTS 2002. Via een erg onduidelijke foutmelding in de Eventlog : node komt niet voor in DTD / Schema of zoiets op zoek gegaan naar de oorzaak van dit probleem. In een message stroom revieve funtion , channel(mapping) , port , FILE transport type werd deze fout veroorzaakt. Wat bleek nu het probleem uiteindelijk te wezen : De Mapping ging mis welke de bovenstaande foutmelding veroorzaakte.Via de optie tools Instance XML to XML werkte alles prima. Wanneer er te veel values binnen een attibute als datatype Enum worden gedefinieerd kan de mapper hier niet goed mee omgaan. Ik heb dit attribute als string data type gedefinieerd , dus de datatype......

989 of 989 | Something went wrong II BizTalk Mapper 2002 - Vandaag weer een leuk probleempje tegengekomen met BTS 2002. Via een erg onduidelijke foutmelding in de Eventlog : node komt niet voor in DTD / Schema of zoiets op zoek gegaan naar de oorzaak van dit probleem. In een message stroom revieve funtion , channel(mapping) , port , FILE transport type werd deze fout veroorzaakt. Wat bleek nu het probleem uiteindelijk te wezen : De Mapping ging mis welke de bovenstaande foutmelding veroorzaakte.Via de optie tools Instance XML to XML werkte alles prima. Wanneer er te veel values binnen een attibute als datatype Enum worden gedefinieerd kan de mapper hier niet goed mee omgaan. Ik heb dit attribute als string data type gedefinieerd , dus de datatype......