Error while calling Orchestration Exposed as Webservice

If you are trying to call the Orchestration that are exposed as webservice , You will come acros this error below . This usually happens in Dev machines where Biztalk as well as IIS is on the same machine.



The Messaging Engine failed to register the adapter for "SOAP" for the receive location "/VirtDir/App.asmx". Please verify that the receive location is valid, and that the isolated adapter runs under an account that has access to the BizTalk databases.

An attempt to connect to "BizTalkMgmtDb" SQL Server database on server "Server" failed with error: "Cannot open database requested in login 'BizTalkMgmtDb'. Login fails.".

The "SOAP" adapter is suspending an outbound message going to destination URL


1 ) This issue occurs because the App pool identity that is used by the application pool for the exposed Web service is not added as to the BizTalk Isolated Host Users group. This is needed because the message needs to get properly authenticated to get submitted.

2 ) Also this account needs permission to the %systemroot%\Temp folder on the server that exposes the Web service .This is needed as the web service (.asmx) files are JIT compiled to create DLLs in the %systemroot%\Temp folder.

Giving these correct access and permissions should solve the issue .

BTS 2006 MSI Issues

I have built a Biztalk 2006 Project and I added a Setup project and added the output of the Biztalk project, but when I try to import the MSI that I created using the Biztalk administration console. I get an error saying this is not a valid Biztalk MSI ?

Has anybody encountered this error ?

PS : But if I export a already deployed application as an MSI , I am able to import it into anothe BTS2006 VPC machine. So does Biztalk not support the Windows MSI Setup route ?

Calling receive Pipelines from Inside orchestrations BTS2006

I had some Aggregator Orchestration which were running into Zombie situations ,. So when I got the biztalk 2006 beta version I was anxious to try out the new functionality of being able to call your receive pipeline from inside your Orchestration .

You can enumerate through the EnvelopeMessage passed into the recieve pipeline just like you would enumerate in an ICollection or Recordset using .MoveNext()

This is how my built Orchestration looked like







I will briefly try to capture the steps that I took

1.) Create a Document Schema SingleOrder.xsd

2.) Create an Envelope Schema TotalOrder.xsd

3.) Create a receive Pipeline SplitOrder.btp

4.) Add the XML Dissasembler and select the Document and envelope Schemas as above.

5.) Create your Recieve Port and set the document type to your Envelope Schema , This Port now has XMLPassthru transmit , I am calling this message IncomingFullMessage

6.) Now we enter Splitting scope ( Pipelines can only be invoked from Atomic scopes, Also it does not support Recoverable interchange processing when called this way )

7.) Add Microsoft.XLANGs.Pipeline as Reference and then ;declare a variable for the pipeline in my case
OrderSplitter AS "Microsoft.XLANGs.Pipeline.ReceivePipelineOutputMessages"

8) In the expression Shape Call Order Splitter ,

OrderSplitter = Microsoft.XLANGs.Pipeline.XLANGPipelineManager.ExecuteReceivePipeline(typeof(SplitOrderReceivePipeline),IncomingFullMessage);


9) In the loop Get_Next-Order Shape iterate through each message using

OrderSplitter.MoveNext()

10.) Create an Orchestration variable "SingleOrder" of type Document Schema

11.) Create the Single Message you want in the message assignment Shape and set

SingleOrder = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
OrderSplitter.GetCurrent(SingleOrder);

12) Now you have the single Message that you want to process. You can send it to whatever process you want , In this example I am just sending the message to a Output folder.

Biztalk Server 2006 Review - Installation

I started this install on a Virtual PC and I was a bit skeptic if I would be able to finish installation that day , Configuring our development server last time required almost 3 days and another instance I remember configuring a machine with two SQL servers with Analysis server on a different machine almost took a week and a call to MS help desk for some gotcha's .So I was a bit skeptic





One of the first things that you will notice is that there is a set of ways to download all the pre-requisites. Often times in Biztalk Server 2004 , You will have to go and hunt lot of required files like SQL XML , MSXML 4 and SP1 and office Web Components Update and ... Oh You know what I mean . Now the cool thing in BTS 2006 is that you have an one click option of asking Biztalk to download whatever it wants directly off the web or download ONE Cab file containing everything in case your machine is not on the internet or in my case like a VPC




The next thing that one notices is that the whole installation is not one big piece of ALL or NOTHING , wherein some small change or issue would roll back the whole process and you need to go now and manually delete the BizTalk databases at times and that often leads the beginner Biztalk user to give up in frustration .. Also before installation it checks for pre-requisites and tell you what is available and not . Also it asks for one user credentials only if you have a single box scenario. rather than typing the same user name a zillion times




It also shows a smoother progress indication and unlike BTS 2004 , It shows you what is not installed and lets you reconfigure that piece alone later



Overall I must say I am impressed with the setup . The biztalk Server Explorer is completely revamped and
now there is a whole concept of artifacts grouped by applications ( Duh !!)
, our administrator's are already looking forward to Biztalk 200^

TO "UNDEPLOY" OR "NOT TO UNDEPLOY"

If you have been working with Biztalk for a considerable amount of time like me
you would have gone through the pains of the Undeploy Regac - Deploy loop , Sometime when you are making changes to Schema , it is quite unavoidable but at lot of time you really don't need to , Just re-gacing your dll and restarting the Biztalk service will do the trick . I have not seen a comprehensive documentation for the same . So the list below is mostly from my own experiences

Schemas
=======

Any changes to Schemas like Namespace , Root Node Name , Promoted properties require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY Cycle.

Changing a node which is not a promoted one and not a root node , you can get by with just a GAC and restart

The reason for the same is Your Schema#rootnode is used in subscription evaluation , A changes to this without deploy undeploy will give you an subscription not found error


Maps
====
Changing mapping or Functoids in maps DO NOT require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY unless the Schema itself has changed ( See schema Above )


Orchestrations
==============
Changes in Orchestration DO NOT require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY Cycle unless Send/receive Port shapes are changed

This is mostly because Schemas would change or you add a new port based on a new schema which needs to get updated in the subscription viewer and this requires undeploy - deploy

Pipelines
=========
Changes in Pipeline DO Require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY


Assembly
========

External Assembly change DO NOT require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY Cycle unless you change the version number

In VB assembly info if the assembly version is set to 1.1.* it will increment the assembly number for every small change. Though it is good from a certain point of view , it can quickly become a pain if you just want to make a little minor change .
So I suggest you control the version number manually , So you can just re-gac the assembly

Please note Gac-ing the change and restart of the BTSservice is needed for all steps

Last but not the least , you should learn ,try and use BTSNANT tool , It is well worth the effort you spent

Biztalk FlatFile Disassembler Processing behavior

Recently I had a scenario which involves processing a large amount of flat files; each of whihc went througha Flatfile Dissasembler before the business processing on that started. Here I record some points of interest of FFDASM behaviour. When FlatFile Disassembler is fed with a large amount of files biztalk waits for all files to unpack before it starts processing.

Our test environment had two boxes each both of which configured under the same host and having identical machine config with SQL on a seperate box was used for the test
For our Scenario we had little over 500 files being dropped simultaneously .The file batch size was set at 20 the default.. It was noticed that after picking up the first 20 and initiating disassembling this batch before the next set is picked up , it goes on picks up all the files.( See graph)

Essentially Biztalk seemed to wait for all the messages to get picked up and then flat file disassembler unpacks all of the flat files from the interchange before it starts processing. This is evident from the apparent lack of activity form the time the last file was picked up and when the first set of files started coming out ( See Graph) . I had seen this in one of prior instance and I recently ran some test and got similar results which made me write this post.



Biztalk Flat File Dissasembler Behaviour  

Path Finder , Yukon and Whidbey

After a long wait and amongst lot of confusion on Whidbey not releasing in 2005 , Now it seems all the three VisualStudio 2005 , SQL Server 2005 and Biztalk Server 2006 is all going to come out in the Week of November 7. This was announced at TechED 2005

Also the Community Tech Preview (CTP) editions are out for BTS 2006.

Biztalk and File Masks Bug /Feature ?

Recently I was debugging a Biztalk solution with a friend of mine Rajesh ,and we noticed a curious Masking issue with BizTalk

Suppose you give a mask

*.XML

Which of these files are picked up ?

A) Orders.xml
B) Orders.XMLTEST
C) Orders.XML.BAK
D) Orders.TXT
E) ORDERS.XMLINFO
F) ORDERS.XML_BACKUP

I am sure your answer is only A , but in reality Biztalk picks up all files except C and D for a mask *.xml

So instead of looking for a file which starts with * and ending with .xml,It seems Biztalk picks up any file which has wild character starts and has .xml in the name not necessarily ending

But the contradiction to that is if there is one more DOT [.] Case C which is not picked up

So the way the mask gets applied is wild character then matches the last Dot and then matches charecters followwing the dot

Is this an intended behaviour or Bug ?

Error Lookup Tool for BizTalk

You can lookup your Biztalk Error codes using this tool ,You can look at this tool from inside VS.NET .

Download it form Got Dot Net here

Once you unzip the tool . You can open up your VStudio->Tools ->ExternalTools and Add this Exe and give a descriptive name like "Biztalk Error Code Lookup"
So next time you get an Error , It is right there

Separate Host For Tracking

A recommended Biztalk best practice for performance is to have a separate Tracking Host . So when you add a separate Tracking host , you might encounter this scenario


Event Type: Error
Event Source: BAM EventBus Service
Event Category: None
Event ID: 25
Date: 5/7/2005
Time: 1:53:25 AM
User: N/A
Computer: BiztalkProd1
Description:
Either another TDDS is processing the same data or there is an orphaned session in SQL server holding TDDS lock.EXECUTE permission denied on object 'TDDS_Lock', database 'BizTalkDTADb', owner 'dbo'. SQLServer: mysql, Database: BizTalkDTADb.


Soln: This means that your one of your Hosts other than the Tracking Host has the Host Tracking property Checked . Uncheck this and you should be all set

SEHException While Enlisting Orchestration

I am posting one of the errors we encountered over which considerable time was spent debugging.

You will get the below Error in Event Log


Event Type: Error
Event Source: XLANG/s
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 5/5/2005
Time: 3:22:32 PM
User: N/A
Computer: Machine12

Description:
An SEHException exception occurred while the XLANG/s runtime enlisted a service.
Error message:External component has thrown an exception.
Call stack: at Microsoft.BizTalk.MetaDataOM. ICLRType.GetFields(UInt32 dwBindingFlags) at Microsoft.BizTalk.XLANGs.BTXEngine. BTXServiceStaticState._createStringLookup(String svcFullTypeName,
IAssemblyManager asmMgr) at Microsoft.BizTalk. XLANGs.BTXEngine.BTXServiceStaticState. PersistState (String mgmtDBServer, String mgmtDBName, String MsgBoxGroupName, String ApplicationName, String serviceAssembly, String serviceTypeName, Guid[] PortIDs, Guid[] LrpIDs, ITransaction transaction)
at Microsoft.BizTalk.XLANGs. BTXEngine. BTXService.GoLive (String configDBServer, String configDBName, String msgBoxGroupName, String applicationName, String servicePath, String serviceTypeName, Guid[] portIDs, Guid[] lrpIDs, ITransaction transaction)

Exception type: BTXEnlistmentException
Source:
Target Site:
Help Link:
Additional error information:

External component has thrown an exception.

Exception type: SEHException
Source: Microsoft.XLANGs.BizTalk.Engine
Target Site: System.Collections.IEnumerator GetFields(UInt32)
Help Link:
Additional error information:

This normally occurs when you don't have a dependent file of the assembly not in GAC . That is an orchestration which references other Dll's must have the dependencies already GAC'd

Another variation of this enlistment error is OutOfMemory exception which is due to some limitation of WMI , which can be increased with a custom Script


But in our case this was not the case I checked and rechecked the dependencies of our project they were all there .

What we found out was that our Production server did not have Biztalk SP1 applied whereas the dev machine had SP1.

So apparently the issue is still I guess of DLL's Missing in GAC but not of the application but that of Biztalk Later version Assemblies !!

Biztalk Subscription

I have often been asked What is the big difference between Biztalk 2002 and 2004 , There are a lot to be frank But if I have to pick one , It will be the much better and unified subscribtion mechanism . If you want to learn more about Biztalk subscribtion Charles Young's Blog Post is a good start

BizTalk Zombies and more..

You have got this error from biztalk "Completed with discarded messages" and are wondering what that means you could be potentially seeing what in BTS buzz world is called a Zombie . A Zombie is usually a valid message or a response that is left without a subscription to process at that point in time . Though this one liner definition is quite crude explanation . If you are dealing with scenarios like Sequential convoys and batching you are likely to witness this especially when you have large amount of transactions and when your system is operating near to high load conditions ( that is when I have witnessed it the most, though there are scenarios for encountering zombies even under little or No load ) .


If you really want to learn more about Zombies read this Blog from Biztalk Core Engine Team


Now If your solution involves a while loop surrounding a listen with one branch having a receive and the other having a delay shape followed by some expression shape that sets the loop counter and controls the loop termination .You would more than likely see this scenario as delay could be triggered and the message could be delivered after.

Now the condition for delay and time out is we don't want to wait for a message forever . So we timeout after an interval (Tn) but this (Tn) is non-deterministic and is usually set to a small number.


For an app that we had increasing the delay from 10 Secs to 2 minutes( chosen at random)
did away with Zombie occurrences . I would also suggest decreasing the default retry of 5 minutes to a lesser value if you are in a aggregated scenario where you are collecting one message at a time. 2 minute looks like a large interval to wait for one message but keep in mind that this delay is not arithmetic and does not occur for each listen . Most often the message is already there to be consumed and this delay happens ONLY when there is no message to consume. In a stressed Biztalk box our scenario which is an EOD movement had given us a liberty of waiting an extra couple of minutes.



Another solution that works is after the loop is over to have another loop with the same correlation set(following) to drain these instances for a certain amount of time ( DRAINING ). You can do this before or after you send out the final message . in the latter case you can send these drained ones as a second message or log them as errors .

Also a WMI event is generated for a Zombie occurrence , I haven't hit across the details of the same .

Middleware Mantra - Contract First

When you are designing large middleware integeration efforts , it is quite easy to get into code first integerate later but From classic COM to Biztalk integeration it is always Contract First. Be it an IDL or a Schema . This is generally considered the best way to approch service design. The approach is to design schemas first then generate code from that.

More on Contract First approach ..
http://www.thinktecture.com/


http://www.iona.com/blogs/vinoski

Meanwhile I heard MS is planning to drop support for IDL . Remeber those good old COM days where you could cleanly differntiate the interface from the implementation
Sign the pettition to save IDL here

Choosing between Distinguished vs. Promoted Properties

In Biztalk you can promote a property as either distinguished or promoted properties. Choosing what to use is tricky

Distinguished fields

In general use Distinguished fields if you want to just use them in Orchestration

Summary

- No restriction on field length

- No participation in Routing

- No seperate property Schema

- Not accesible by std pipeline components
( workaround exists in cutom pipeline components “http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/btsDistinguishedFields” namespace using XPath on their name

Promoted Properties

These are generally used with Routing

Summary

- Used in publish and subscribe in the Msgbox

- Field Restictions ( 255)

- Seperate Property schema

- Restricted in the XSD types support compared to distinguished properties

ThumbRule

Use Distinguish properties as they are lightweight unless you need them for any special stuff like Routing ,Tracking ,Correlation or custom pipeline behaviour

Biztalk 2004 Naming Conventions

I have been looking around for a good Set of Biztalk naming conventions and I came acros this from Scott .

Biztalk 2004 Naming Conventions

Unconstructed Message even when Constucted

Ok you get this

use of unconstructed message "Message Name" .

1) This means what the error message says you are using an unconstucted message in a send shape without creating it

2) You have indeed constucted the message - Biztalk still complains . Do you have parallel actions in your orchestration . Is it possible that you are using the message whihc was consturcted in a parallel shape and being used outside it. Now Aren't you glad Biztalk complained !

BTS 2004 Flat File Issues

There are lot of inherent nittygrittys and hack that you need to know when you have Flatfiles with Records and the root node both being ended by CRLF's

I did look around quite a bit before I finally came across this link

Flat file Schema Tutorial 1

Flat file Schema Tutorial 2

and Oh ! to prevent empty nodes from not occuting you need to set Suppres Empty Nodes property to TRUE

Biztalk Explorer Extension

Wouldnt it be nice to click a DLL and see it's internal schemas and objects contained in a Biztalk DLL , IF you have used ildasm for .net asemblies you know what I am talking about . There is a feature in Biztalk for that , YOu ned to register that dll to get the view in your explorer


The extension is the BtsAsmExt.dll and is located in the \Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004\Developer Tools subdirectory.
To enable this functionality
regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004\Developer Tools\BtsAsmExt.dll"

You will see the BizTalk Server Assemblies icon in Windows Explorer alongside the drive letters.



When you click on the BizTalk Server Assemblies you will a list of all of the deployed assemblies. You can then click on each of the assemblies and you will see the BizTalk artifacts that are used in that specific assembly. These includes Orchestrations, Schemas, Maps and Pipelines. In addition, if you double click on an individual artifact, the Type Content Viewer windows pops up and will show you an XML representation.



This tool also includes additional functionality. It adds a BizTalk Server Search pane (found under the View ->Explorer Bar->BizTalk Server Search) which lets you search across the deployed assemblies for any of the BizTalk types. So, I could do a search for any schemas that are referenced by pipelines across all assemblies or Correlation Types referenced by Orchestrations found in assembly X.

Monitoring Biztalk performance

Biztalk applications have now become matured enough and are now getting scrutinized for performance. Often this scrutinizing of results in capturing some key performance counters and you will eventually chose a set of counters to measure and run your tests. But often on later analysis you realize that you missed capturing certain key counters . So what is a good subset to be captured. The counters below offers a good start as any

Biztalk Box General

\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Exceptions(_Global_)\*
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\# Bytes in all Heaps
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\# GC Handles
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\# Gen 0 Collections
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\# Gen 1 Collections
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\# Gen 2 Collections
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\# Total committed Bytes
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\# Total reserved Bytes
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\% Time in GC
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\Allocated Bytes/sec
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\Gen 0 heap size
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\Gen 1 heap size
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\Gen 2 heap size
\\BTSBOX\.NET CLR Memory(_Global_)\Large Object Heap size
\\BTSBOX\ASP.NET Applications(_LM_w3svc_1_ROOT_BTARNApp)\Anonymous Requests/Sec
\\BTSBOX\ASP.NET Applications(_LM_w3svc_1_ROOT_BTARNApp)\Requests In Application Queue
\\BTSBOX\ASP.NET Applications(_LM_w3svc_1_ROOT_BTARNApp)\Requests Total
\\BTSBOX\ASP.NET Applications(_LM_w3svc_1_ROOT_BTARNApp)\Requests/Sec
\\BTSBOX\BizTalk:Messaging(*)\*

Memory

\\BTSBOX\Memory\Available MBytes
\\BTSBOX\Memory\Available MBytes
\\BTSBOX\Memory\Committed Bytes

DISK

\\BTSBOX\PhysicalDisk(_Total)\% Disk Time
\\BTSBOX\PhysicalDisk(_Total)\% Idle Time

PROCESS
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#1)\Handle Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#1)\ID Process
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#1)\Private Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#1)\Thread Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#2)\Handle Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#2)\ID Process
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#2)\Private Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#2)\Thread Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#3)\Handle Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#3)\ID Process
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#3)\Private Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#3)\Thread Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#4)\ID Process
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#4)\Private Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#5)\ID Process
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc#5)\Private Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\% Processor Time
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\Handle Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\Handle Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\ID Process
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\ID Process
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\Private Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\Private Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\Thread Count
\\BTSBOX\Process(BTSNTSvc)\Virtual Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(w3wp#1)\Private Bytes
\\BTSBOX\Process(w3wp)\ID Process
\\BTSBOX\Process(w3wp)\Private Bytes

\\BTSBOX\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time
\\SQLBOX\PhysicalDisk(_Total)\% Disk Time
\\SQLBOX\PhysicalDisk(_Total)\% Idle Time
\\SQLBOX\PhysicalDisk(2 D:)\% Disk Time
\\SQLBOX\PhysicalDisk(2 D:)\% Idle Time
\\SQLBOX\PhysicalDisk(2 D:)\Avg. Disk Queue Length
\\SQLBOX\PhysicalDisk(2 D:)\Disk Read Bytes/sec
\\SQLBOX\PhysicalDisk(2 D:)\Disk Write Bytes/sec
\\SQLBOX\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time


\\SQLBOX\SQLServer:General Statistics\User Connections
\\SQLBOX\SQLServer:Locks(_Total)\Average Wait Time (ms)
\\SQLBOX\SQLServer:Locks(_Total)\Lock Requests/sec
\\SQLBOX\SQLServer:Locks(_Total)\Lock Timeouts/sec
\\SQLBOX\SQLServer:Locks(_Total)\Lock Wait Time (ms)
\\SQLBOX\SQLServer:Locks(_Total)\Lock Waits/sec
\\SQLBOX\SQLServer:Locks(_Total)\Number of Deadlocks/sec



I am sure the list is quite extensive but will give you a good start on what to monitor or not monitor

Debatching and Batching in Biztalk 2004

One of the fairly common issue that most Biztalk designers face is the issue of Debatching and then Batching . Having faced a similar situation myself I must say that there is no best solution for this problme that I have so far come up with . Though there are different solutions that you could employ
Just to explain the problem first you have a set of files coming in say a folder ( transport does not matter ) and then each file consists fo a set of transcations . you need to process them indicvidually and then send them out as one file

The first instict is to use a Biztalk XML or flatfile dissasembler and then send the message to Messagebox ,and then process them independently. THe problem now comes of batching them back together.

Solution 1

Now if you have one file comeing in during an EOD process , doing ths split and then writing it to a file with append mode TRUE would do the trick ost of the times

But this is not a clean solution If you have more than one file coming in almost simultaneously this solution will not hold water as once Biztalk does thwe split it is not possile to identify the transactions to it's original source

Solution 2
A solution to this is to promote a context property in the pipeline and then in the orchestration decide which instance it belongs to create a unique guid based on the the context and then set the SourceFileName property and then use the append method
This is slightly more complicated as writing pipeline components is not the easiest things to do and you have to take care of your compoent to be streamig . Why it needs to be streamsing Read This

Pros: This is real Fast and great for CBR uses streaming XPATH

Cons: All or nothing. If something fails in the pipeline or map the entire message will be lost.


Solution 3

Another solution is not to split the message using the Docuement /Envelope schema and do this using XPATH . This solution makes us of XPATH to count and then uses XPATH to loop around message elements .To see a sample and a write up on this implementation try this


Pros: Excellent flexibility inside the Orchestration. Great control of the processing of your document! This process is sequential and ordered by default. Ability to loop over anything you can XPath and can easily (this is always a relative term) build mini-batches if needed. This is something Receive Pipelines are not able to do without extensive custom code.

Cons: Performance degrades quickly as message size increases. Downright slow on large messages and a resource hog. In some cases, the sequential and ordered processing of this type of debatching may be limiting to the process.



Solution 4
Ths issue with solution 3 above is performence when it comes to large messages ,Read the story of Biztalk and large files from Lee

The solution that we tried for our issue was to use a two stage orchestration. The first orchestration contains a map that promotes a unique value to an additional Node (effectively creating an intermediate schema) for every instance of the file.
This is then fed to a dissasembler but now each file retains information about its parent using the guid and then write out the guid value as file name with append mode on .

Solution 5

Send your output file out tho SQL and promote business fields that help you identify the batch use a SQL Receive port at periodic intervals to aggregate the result using some intelligent querying



So what is the best solution , It depends , as I said before there is no clean solution or a magic bullet .Depends really on the app that you are trying to build
but a thumb rule is for small messages you can get by with XPATH and go for pipeline based splitting for large messages

I welcome comments and opinions
Ciao

Accessing Standard Context properties in Biztalk pipelines like FileName

If you wnated to access context properties in pipelines and have spent needless time figuring out the correct schema for each property here is a comprehensive list

This content is taken as is from Stephen Kaufman's WebLog

There are a number of 'built in' promoted properties that provide important information. There are different items for the receive and send pipelines.



The 14 receive pipeline items are (including the associated namespace):

1. ReceivedFileName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/file-properties)

2. InboundTransportLocation (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

3. InterchangeID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

4. ReceivePortID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

5. ReceivePortName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

6. WasSolicitResponse (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

7. AuthenticationRequiredOnReceivePort (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

8. InboundTransportType (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

9. LRPMsgBodyTracking (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

10. MessageExchangePattern (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

11. PortName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/messagetracking-properties)

12. ReceivePipelineID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

13. MessageType (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

14. SchemaStrongName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)



While the 31 send pipeline items are

1. CopyMode (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/file-properties)

2. LTPMsgBodyTracking (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

3. ReceivedFileName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/file-properties)

4. SPID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

5. ActualRetryCount (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

6. FileName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/file-properties)

7. PartyName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/messagetracking-properties)

8. ReceivePortName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

9. WasSolicitResponse (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

10. AllowCacheOnWrite (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/file-properties)

11. RetryInterval (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

12. OutboundTransportCLSID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

13. SPName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

14. InboundTransportLocation (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

15. InterchangeID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

16. ReceivePortID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

17. SPTransportID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

18. TransmitPipelineID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

19. AuthenticationRequiredOnReceivePort (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

20. InboundTransportType (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

21. LRPMsgBodyTracking (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

22. MessageExchangePattern (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

23. OutboundTransportLocation (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

24. PortName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/messagetracking-properties)

25. ReceivePipelineID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

26. SourcePartyID (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

27. MessageType (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

28. OutboundTransportType (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

29. PartNames (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/messageagent-properties)

30. RetryCount (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)

31. SchemaStrongName (http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties)





To get access to these properties you need to get access to the context object. The following method shell shows how we can do that.



public IBaseMessage Execute(IPipelineContext pContext, IBaseMessage pInMsg)

{

IBaseMessageContext context = pInMsg.Context;
.
.
.
}


Now that we have a method to gain access to the context, what if we want to get access to the internal promoted properties? We can iterate through all of the default promoted properties by using the context.ReadAt method (which produces the list of the items above). This method takes an index and returns, through 2 out parameters, the name and namespace of the properties.

We can also use the context.Read method to access the value of each of these promoted properties. The Read method returns an object type containing the value of the promoted property when passing in the name and namespace of the property.


So, to retrieve the source file name we would use this following line of code:



string srcFileName = context.Read("ReceivedFileName", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/file-properties").ToString();

Biztalk Cool stuff

Some of the good Biztalk cool Stuff available out there

BizTalk Server 2004 "deploy with Nant" template
Integrating BizTalk Server with Nant

BizTalk Server 2004 Pipeline Component Wizard 
VS.NET addin for quickly building pipeline components

BizTalk AutoDeploy Utility
VS.NET addin for quickly (re)deploying BizTalk Server solutions.  No need for Ant

BizTalk Server 2004 Performance Tool
Tool that allows for BizTalk Server tuning.

BizTalk Server 2004 Transactional .NET Adapter
adapter that allows for transactional message transmission to any .NET component.

BizTalk Server 2004 Tracking Playground
Tracking demo application showing how to make use of the tracking db views and WMI.

BizTalk Server 2004 Management Tool
This is good...

BizTalk Explorer
Doing what VS.NET allows you to do, without VS.NET :-)

BizTalk Server Service Windows
Allows for more flexible service windows.

BizTalk Server POP3 Adapter
Inbound email messages in BizTalk Server

BizTalk Server TIBCO Adapter
Rudimentary sample

BizTalk Server SQL BLOB Adapter
Readingand writing message to binary SQL columns.

Biztalk Accelerator for Rosettanet Releases

Biztalk 2004 Accelerator for Rosettanet released.I have been involved with the accelerator for some time in 2003 so I feel very good personally about this. It was really a great experience working at microsoft although I later moved on from seatlle

I think this is the last of the Biztalk 2004 accelerators from Microsoft

The key features
Certified RosettaNet Ready™ RNIF 2.0. Full compliance with the RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF) versions 1.1 and 2.
Rapid development. Out-of-the-box implementation of all existing Partner Interface Processes (PIPs)
Support for CIDX. Support for the Chemical Industry Data Exchange (CIDX) Chem eStandards version 2.0.2
Built-in management console. Built-in management tools for managing all RosettaNet-based trading partners and existing processes from a single console
Orchestration of RosettaNet processes. BizTalk Orchestration Designer makes it easy for users to visually modify private processes and orchestrations that integrate with public RosettaNet business processes.
Definition and documentation of schema. BizTalk Editor enables users to easily define and edit document schema for any structured document type, including all RosettaNet messages.
Flexibility for custom RosettaNet solutions. The software development kit and comprehensive documentation help users develop tailored RosettaNet solutions.

Finding Orchestration ID

Recently I had to do some reporting for which I was not able to use BAM . So i had to write some custom code to track data from promoted properties by populating a seperate DB . One of the interesting problem was to also report the stat of the orchestration.

This is possible in BizTalk as each orchestration
has a unique Instance ID you can take that out in an expression shape

OrchInstGuid = System.Convert.ToString(Microsoft.XLANGs.Core.Service.RootService.InstanceId)

We can then check for status of the orchestrations using this instance ID

The QuickStart Guide to Installing & Configuring BizTalk Server 2004 for Windows Server 2003

There was lot of times when I wanted a good documentation for installign Biztalk and I feel the Installation guide but every other minute you eil be downloading some service pack or the other . this is one concrete place where everything is listedThe QuickStart Guide to Installing & Configuring BizTalk Server 2004 for Windows Server 2003

BizTalk Feed

I like this feed linkBizTalk FeedThis has some great tips and great links

Biztalk 2004 pipeline components

If you are thinking of writing a Custom BTS 2004 pipeline component . This would be my number on recommended article written by Christof

It goes ito how to promote properties from inside your pipeline ;It discusses why your component needs to be streamed and some of those nifty things; that you tend to forget and even if you have written one before I still think this is a good read.

Biztalk 2004 Partner Competency Exam Training Guide

Biztalk 2004 Partner Competency Exam Training Guide was released .
Grab it here

So my next plan should be to see if can put myself through the certification engine. I have never done this certifiaction thing . IT certification value is largely at Debate mostly due to issue with dumps. How do you feel about certifications .
I would like to hear your opinion
abhilashms2--AT--GMAIL-NOSP@M-DOT-COM

Mini Visual Studio

Ever waited like a minute or so for Visual studio to load up and all you wanted to do was to test out some small console code to prove a concept, I am sure most of us have . and If you have you are gonna love this Snippet compiler

That reminds me while I was working in Redmond I have seen a stripped down verson of the IDE called RASCAL . I am not able to find any link to that now

Explaining Biztalk to your Grandma

I have heard this was apopular question at MSFT interviews "How do you sell excel to your grandmother ?" well No this blog is not about that but then this blog is about how to explain Biztalk to a Business Analyst.One who is not so comfortable with all the geeky terms that we are so used to . I recently had to do one of these myself and I had to kind of get creative with ti . So thought I would just blog about that and see how it goes
Let us first take a look at the architecture of Biztalk from The MSFT Site


To put things in perspective let us consider this Huge Shipping Port were there is lots of ships , barges coming and going . Now I am trying to draw a parallel here

The Port basically deals in containers to carry Goods and Biztalk in XML to carry data

Containers or goods could be brought in using different modes of transport
Big cargo ships , small passenger ships , By Road at times , small Boats, It does not matter how the cargo is delivered into the port , it does not change the later part of processing of the cargo . Same is true for Biztalk which has a number of transport mechanisms like FTP , HTTP, SQL , SMTP , as in the port it does not matter how the data came in what matters is their routing information or who tgat data needs to go .

For identifying the destination of the Goods , This may go through Customs , Transit Inspection and maybe finally broken down to individual goods at times and goes to a cleared warehouse from where they are dispatched based on destination . The same thing happens in the recieve pipeline stage of Biztalk . The file goes through Dissasembly , Party resolution to the SQL server Messagebox . By this time incoming XMLSchema#RootNode is promoted based on which the message is picked up Orchestrations which do some processing on them and return them back to message box .
Consider this as importing some raw material like wood and doing some value add ( make them chairs for instance )
and then on the send side pretty much the reverse happens they are prepacked assembled and encoded and send out using approporiate transports available

What I described above is a publish-subscribe model . Now you can have messages in Biztalk follow a CBR ( Content Based Routing MOdel ) . In that case tha anology is a a conatiner which reaches a port for forwarding . or a transit port , here there is no signinficant value add on the goods but you can change some fringe level properties or change the way the data is represented

Epilogue
There are lot of flaws in this theory but for a person who is wuite new to Biztalk this is as good as a start as any.


PS: The views expressed in these essays are those of the author, and in no way represent, nor are they endorsed by Microsoft oranyone else, as far as I know.

Boy you never know these days , this legal-mumbo jumbo

HAT and Biztalk Debugging

Biztalk Server 2004 follows a Hub-Bus hybrid model and why it is a better model is because it takes the best of each of these individual styles namely Scaling out , throughput and golden copy of data( Centralized data store ) . Every message gets tored in the messagebox . This is how Biztalk achieves Statelessness. This is one of the reason why the Debugging tool ( HAT) is like the way it is .
Although I have heard lot of people complaining about HAT and comparing them to Visual studio debugging support which are excellent many dont realise the nature of Biztalk . Unlike traditional debugging enterprise Stateless application like Biztalk being stateless in nature writes out events to a Database . and a tool like Kat is just a reporting screen of those events . ( You can do live debuggging -but only if you explicitly set it to)

Another way to get to see errors in Biztalk is to run Debugview from
www.sysinternals.com . Now you can write out your Debug messages using System.Debug Namespace

Biztalk 2004

It has been sometime since I started working with Biztalk and I have been thinking about blogging for quite sometime well quite a long time actually . I am not new to blogging. But I kind of thought of separating the tech stuff apart, I just wanted to get started So there.. That's it my first Post