All posts by : Benny Mathews BizTalk Blog

1 of 12 | Links to materials on GoF Design Patterns - As I am into BizTalk consulting / development / training for quite sometime now, I feel that I am missing out on hardcore c# programming and the enchantment of object oriented concepts lately. For instance, the other day I was trying to recollect the implementation details of the Decorator design pattern, and searched for it on the Internet and in the process, got glued at the wealth of information available on design patterns. So I thought it would be helpful to have a quick reference list of the materials available so that i don't waste time searching for them again. Here goes: Abstract Factory http://www.dofactory.com/Patterns/PatternAbstract.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstr......

2 of 12 | Open Source BizTalk Utilities on CodePlex - I am sure most of you (not talking about the BizTalk gurus out there J) have worked with some of the open source utilities available for BizTalk such as the BizTalk Adapter Wizard or the BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard or BizUnit. However what some of you may not know is the wealth of other open source utilities for BizTalk available on CodePlex. Here are some of the interesting ones and their descriptions as found on CodePlex : SDC Tasks Library - . The SDC Tasks are a collection of MSBuild tasks designed to make your life easier. You can use these tasks in your own MSBuild projects. You can use them stand alone and, if all else fails, you can use them as sample code. BizUnit -......

3 of 12 | Latest BizTalk 2006 Documentation, PDF vs CHM, which is better? -     Everybody these days seems to be pretty excited about the new PDF version of BizTalk 2006 documentation (Btw, a latest .CHM version is out as well, but there is no hoopla around that). So thought I'll  download the PDF version and check it out as I have been using only the .CHM version extensively. But I was not very impressed with what I saw. To start with, the PDF version is really huge file 114 MB (whereas the .CHM version is only 44MB, the contents are the same), there is no way my PDA mobile device will load that kind of thing even with external memory card. The links in the PDF version are not active (not clickable), so you cannot navigate through the docume......

4 of 12 | Clean up your BizTalk databases - Here are a few scripts / stored procedures that most of the BizTalk newbies would love to know. These scripts are very useful in a development environment to clean up your MessageBox and Tracking databases.   To clean up the MessageBox First create the stored procedure bts_CleanupMsgBox by running the sql script found in <BizTalk Installation Folder>\Schema\msgbox_cleanup_logic.sql against your MessageBox database(BizTalkMsgBoxDb). Note that your BizTalkMsgBoxDb database will already have a dummy stored procedure by the same name which does nothing, so it is important that you run the above script if this is your first time. Stop all BizTalk services. Reset IIS serve......

5 of 12 | Books on BizTalk Server 2006 - Here is a handy list of books available on BizTalk Server 2006. Note that some of them are not published as of this writing:1. BizTalk 2006 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach by Mark Beckner, Ben Goeltz, Brandon Gross, and Brennan O'Reilly (Paperback - Sep 13, 2006)2. Pro BizTalk 2006 (Pro) by George Dunphy and Ahmed Metwally (Paperback - Oct 23, 2006)3. Foundations of BizTalk Server 2006 (Foundations) by Daniel Woolston (Paperback - Jan 8, 2007)Not yet published4. Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Unleashed by Stephen Mohr and Scott Woodgate (Paperback)5. Professional BizTalk Server 2006 by Darren Jefford and Kevin T. Smith (Paperback)-- RegardsBenny MathewSeamless Integration SolutionsBizTa......

6 of 12 | Did you know? (you can do XML debatching without custom pipeline) - Everybody knows that you need to use a custom pipeline to debatch an XML file, where you use a custom XML disassembler pipeline component to specify the Envelop schema and Document schema. Well, you can do it with the built-in XMLReceive pipeline as well, provided you don't require advanced features like preserving header information, 'Recoverable interchange processing' or validating document structure  etc. Do the following: 1. Create and deploy an envelope schema (Set the Body XPath property of the root node to the appropriate record in the envelope schema) 2. Create and deploy the document schema 3. Make sure the message you are receiving is an instance of the envelope schema 4. ......

7 of 12 | New in BizTalk 2006 - When I do corporate training, I always get asked this question... "So what is new in BizTalk 2006 when compared to BizTalk 2004?" mostly from people who have been using BizTalk 2004. So here I have tried to summarize some of the things. Note this is by no means an exhaustive listing as there are other small but significant improvements.   SETUP Automatic installation of redistributable components. In BizTalk Server 2006, the BizTalk team provide a single file that contains the latest version of all redistributable components required by BizTalk Server during installation, eliminating the need for users to individually search for the components. Simplified setup experience for first......

8 of 12 | Did you know? (XMLReceivePipeline, Schema validation, XMLDisassembler) - Did you know?The default XMLReceivePipeline does not validate the structure of the input XML message. Based on the MessageType of the input message, it will try to lookup a document specification (schema) and if it finds one, will do all the required property promotions / distinguish fields as specified in the schema and also promote the MessageType.If there is no schema deployed in BizTalk that match the MessageType of the input message, it simply throws an error as shown below. Finding the document specification by message type <MessageType of the input message> failed. Verify the schema deployed properly.  On the other hand, if you are using a custom pipeline with "XML disa......

9 of 12 | Middleware Mania 2007 - Last Saturday we had a one day event called Middleware Mania 2007 at BDotNet (http://groups.msn.com/BDOTNET), India's largest and most active .NET user group in Bangalore with 8750+ members. Held in one of Microsoft's building, which received a good number of people right from junior developers, solutions architects to project managers. I got invited to present 2 sessions at the event, one was on the New Features in BizTalk Server 2006 and the other was on Adapter Development in BizTalk 2006. You can download the presentations and code form the link below. http://www.seamless.in/files/NewFeaturesInBizTalk2006.zip http://www.seamless.in/files/AdapterDevelopmentinBizTalk2006.zip &nb......

10 of 12 | Debatching a flat file in BizTalk 2006 - Sometimes you receive a batch file containing multiple records and you have to split each record into a separate message and process them individually. This kind of splitting of a batch file is also known as debatching. Depending on your requirement, you can either debatch an incoming message inside the pipeline or inside the orchestration. The technique used to debatch a message inside the pipeline depends on whether the input is an XML file or a flat file. For an XML file, you will need to use an XML disassembler, an envelop schema and a document schema, which I will discuss some other time on separate blog post / article. Here I will show you how you can debatch a flat file. Let us......

11 of 12 | Joining Two Connect, Inc. - Jan 27th was my last day with IBM Global Services (India). I quit IBM, to join an american company (Two Connect, Inc.) as a Solution Architect. Two Connect is truely passionate about technology, having well known people like Javier Mariscal and Jesús Rodríguez onboard. Javier is the President of Two Connect, he has co-authored the best selling BizTalk book Integration Patterns (Patterns & Practices). Jesús is the Chief Software Architect of Two Connect, he won two awards at the recently held Microsoft Connected Systems Developer Competition for his Service Broker adapter for BizTalk Server. He is also a BizTalk MVP. I really look forward to learn a lot and also unleash my full poten......

12 of 12 | My article (Introduction to BizTalk Server 2004) on AspToday - Check out my article on AspToday Introduction to BizTalk Server 2004   RegardsBenny MathewSeamless Integration SolutionsBizTalk Consulting, Development, Traininghttp://www.seamless.in...