BizTalk Server

1 of 767 | Using BizTalk Server 2006 R2 with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V - While building up some BizTalk R2 developer images I can across the answer to my question "Is R2 supported on 2008 Hyper-V?" Look no further than here..... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5c5d86ad-5e17-4ff2-abc9-5a81177f4b30&DisplayLang=en ...

2 of 767 | How can I find the installed hotfixes on the server/workstation? - Looks like a silly question, but recently I struggled to find the installed hot fixes on our server. We install certain hotfixes on all of our BizTalk server. One of the critical ones is http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=943165 to solve the high CPU...(read more)...

3 of 767 | Biztalk pour les éditeurs - Introduction - Cette présentation est la première d’une série qui aura pour objectif de vous faire découvrir les bénéfices qu’un éditeur peut tirer de Biztalk Server. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 offre une infrastructure capable de connecter les applications existantes (quelle que soit la plateforme) et de constituer, d'exposer et de consommer de nouveaux services. C’est un outil qui permet donc aux éditeurs d’intégrer leurs applications dans des architectures SOA et et ainsi assurer l’interopérabilité de leurs outils au sein d'une plateforme unifiée. De plus, il existe une vaste gamme d'adaptateurs de technologies et d'applications pour BizTalk Server. Grâce à une pri......

4 of 767 | CreateXmlInstance() with Multi-Root Schemas - The DocumentSpec class in the Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.Interop namespace of the Microsoft.BizTalk.Pipelines assembly is commonly used in custom pipeline components (particularly assemblers in disassemblers) to represent a compiled BizTalk schema (a document specification). This class has one interesting method: CreateXmlInstance(), which can generate an sample instance XML based on the associated schema [1]. Recently I saw a question in the BizTalkGurus forum about how to use this functionality if you had a schema definition with multiple potential root elements. Turns out its pretty easy, once you understand how DocumentSpec works and how......

5 of 767 | Checklist for Reviewing Services for SOA Compatibility - I’ve got SOA on the brain lately.  I’m in the process of writing a book on building service-oriented solutions using BizTalk Server 2006 R3 (due out right around the product release), and, trying to organize a service review board at...(read more)...

6 of 767 | BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide + MsgBoxViewer - Microsoft has published a few days ago a new guide around optimization of BizTalk Server performance. This is a lengthy guide (over 200 pages), but it has a lot of very interesting information, some of which you can't find anywhere else, and there's...(read more)...

7 of 767 | BizTalk PERFORMANCE Optimisation Guide - First Edition!!!! - Guys - this document has recently hit the shelves and what a great guide it is. Written and reviewed by a huge team within MMS mostly - the two main authors Ewan Fairweather and Rob Steel (both MS and very much project/client oriented guys - out in the field!) did a superb job. Firstly - grab the Performance Optimisation Guide (checkout Ewan and Rob's blogs as there's some great bits on there, as well as a section dedicated to the BizTalk Performance Explorer) What's the meaty stuff I can expect to read? (I hear you ask...) 1. It serves as 2 things - a prescriptive guidance and two - best practices around optimisation (It's also great to see BizUnit in there for ......

8 of 767 | BizTalk: Distinguished fields and Promoted properties - additional information - Interesting information in KB: "How to use distinguished fields and promoted properties in a BizTalk Server project" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942250   "... A promoted property may not be available as a promoted property after you write a value into the message context. This situation can occur if the value that you write into the message context has the same name and namespace that was used to promote the property. Properties that have a null value are not permitted in the message context. Therefore, if a null value is written into the message context, this value will be deleted. ..."   BTW What is it "a null value"? Is i......

9 of 767 | Microsoft BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide has been released. -   The new Microsoft BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide has been released to the web. This document provides guidance & best practices on optimizing BizTalk Server performance for demanding production environments. It is based on numerous real-world engagements with customers by the BizTalk Customer Advisory Team CAT (Rangers), Premier Field Engineering and MCS.   The guidance consists of the following 4 sections: Getting Started: an overview of the BizTalk Server functional components that can affect performance. It also describes the phases of a BizTalk Server performance assessment. Finding and Eliminating Bottlenecks: The Fi......

10 of 767 | BizTalk Filters not Getting Imported - ... or how automatic formatting of XML files can make you miserable. During the last few days I've been helping out a client get ready for deploying a BizTalk solution. One of those things this involved was taking the existing BizTalk Binding XML files and making minor edits to them so they would match the new environment. I did the changes, and the BizTalk Administrator used the updated Binding Files to import them into the new BizTalk Servers. They imported without any errors at all. A couple hours later he noticed some test messages were getting incorrectly routed to the wrong send ports (there's a lot of messaging only stuff in this solution)......

11 of 767 | BizTalk Server 2006 R2: To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before! - This week I’m going to embark on a dark and mysterious journey, fraught with great danger, both real and imagined. I’m about to begin development of a BizTalk Accelerator for RosettaNet (BTARN 3.5) project with the assistance of Microsoft Consulting Services...(read more)...

12 of 767 | PipelineTesting 1.1.3.0 Released - I just uploaded a new update to my PipelineTesting library. This one comes courtesy of Gregory Van de Wiele, who kindly made me aware of a nasty bug: The library wasn't handling schemas with no targetNamespace correctly when adding them to the pipeline context. Because of this, you needed to specify the documentSpec name as "#root" instead of simply "root". This has now been fixed in this version and I added a new unit test to make sure it doesn't come up again. Thanks a lot Gregory! As usual you can download the updated code/binaries from here. BizTalk Server, Testing ...

13 of 767 | BizTalk RFID sessions at Tech-Ed Dev week - This week at Tech-ed dev week I had 1 session on BizTalk RFID titled "Microsoft BizTalk RFID in Real World Deployments: Connecting Movements in the Physical World to Enterprise Applications". We showed how developers could use BizTalk RFID and very easily collect events from RFID devices and integrate those events into backend applications using BizTalk Server. I think session was well received. We had 65+ attendees in the session with overall score of 7.73 which is in top 5 sessions in our track. Other than this I also recorded a video for my first video podcast. Tech-ed team had done a great job of having production team onsite to record 20 minutes sessions. Title of our sess......

14 of 767 | My Tech Ed Demos - Thanks to everyone who came to my session on port binding options in BizTalk Server yesterday.  You can find the demos here including the visual studio solution, binding files for BizTalk and the PowerShell script I used for setting up and running my demos.  ...

15 of 767 | TechEd US - highlights coming - including Silverlight 2 announcement - Bill Gates kicked of TechEd US with a  keynote that included some important announcements. Keep an eye on the following site for all the news over the next few days: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/teched/default.mspx This press release summarises the key announcements: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jun08/06-03TechEdDevPR.mspx - headlines copied below to help you quickly see. "Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 will be available this August in 20 languages worldwide. Internet Explorer 8 is the next version of Microsoft’s popular browser, and in beta 1 it delivers significantly improved standards support and developer platform investments with enhanced use......

16 of 767 | Updated site for BizTalk Server - We've updated the BizTalk Server web site, it looks pretty nice.  I think the 3D warped spiderman web graphic thingy is going to sell a lot of enterprise software!  ;) Seriously, though, the content is quite good.  I think it's remarkable that we have so many customers – you can read about 'em there on the site.  It's nice to be able to tout the Gartner Magic Quadrant recognition.  For those who don't know, Gartner's an industry analyst and a couple weeks ago they updated their view of Microsoft as a provider of Enterprise Application Server technology.  We were pleased with their analysis.  The linked content off the BizTalk site is good to......

17 of 767 | Convert existing 2004 or 2006 HIPAA, BaseEDI, or Covast maps to BizTalk Server 2006 R2 - I am on a project that requires that I take all EDI maps that were created using BizTalk preR2 and convert them to the new schemas. I looked here to be disappointed to find that everything except maps were listed. I started re mapping (dragging lines...(read more)...

18 of 767 | TechEd 2008 talk on unattended deployments... - Are you going to be at TechEd this week?  I’ll be delivering an expanded version of the talk I gave on May 15 at the last Twin Cities BizTalk User Group.  The talk (mostly demos!) is all about achieving unattended deployments with BizTalk using Team Foundation Server (with TFS Deployer.)   The session is on Wednesday at 12pm, titled “SOA07–TLC  – Automated Remote BizTalk Server Deployments with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server” in Green Theater 2.  (That’s a mouthful…) See you there! ...

19 of 767 | BizTalk "Message Aggregation For Email" Pattern - One of our BizTalk developers had a requirement to collect related messages and send a single email summary with details about those messages. I built the example below to help her out. In this scenario, a series of independent, but related, messages are sent to BizTalk. Each of these messages will have a “batch ID” which connects them as well as a “batch count” value which identifies the total number of messages in the batch. As you might expect, I’ll need a convoy to collect these messages. The interesting part was how to build up the email data which summarized the results of the processing for a given batch. First, I have a schema that represents an individual message. As you can see,......

20 of 767 | Sydney BizTalk User Group On Tonight - Hi folks, love to see you there Check the details out at - http://sydbiz.org/Lists/Events%20Calendar/DispForm.aspx?ID=15&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fsydbiz%2Eorg%2Fdefault%2Easpx Also one of the things we've been working on in the last month is a Private BizTalk User Group mailing list oztalk@groups.yahoo.com This mailing list is 'invite only' and is intended to enhance learning within the community, as well as an avenue to get bts (&related) problems solved - delivered straight to your inbox. There are currently Brisbane & Sydney User Group members on board (more groups to come shortly) How to get on: - an invite was sent to your email address registere......

21 of 767 | Duplicate Column Name When Deploying BAM Definition - I've been playing around a bit with Business Activity Monitoring in BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and ran into a problem deploying a BAM definition XML file I had just created in Excel. When I tried to deploy the definition, I'd get an error similar to this one: Deploying Activity... Done. Deploying View... ERROR: The BAM deployment failed. Encountered error while executing command on SQL Server "NEWTON". Column names in each table must be unique. Column name 'abc_id' in table 'bam_AbcEvents_Dim_abc' is specified more than once. I checked my BAM definition several files (even checking IDs on the raw XML) ......

22 of 767 | SF Bay Area Connected Systems - San Francisco Bay Area Connected Systems User Group On June 26, 2008, please join us for the next scheduled Microsoft Bay Area Connected Systems Division User Group meeting. This month’s topic will be “Patterns for Delivering Enterprise Class Services”. If you would like to join us for this event, please click here to register!   Location:Microsoft San Francisco OfficeGolden Gate Conference Room835 Market Street7th FloorSan Francisco, CA  94103 Time: 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM Food and Beverage will be served at 6:30 PM and session will start at 7:00 PM. Prizes will be raffled off at the end of the session.   Patterns for Delivering Enterprise-Class ServicesPresenters: Brian Gaffney......

23 of 767 | Speaking at Teched US - Teched US is here!!!, this year I am presenting two sessions in the SOA track and I have the honor of co-presenting with my good friend Joe Klug who used to be a Product Manager on the BizTalk Server team. On Tuesday 3 rd I will be presenting a session...(read more)...

24 of 767 | Profesional 5 Estrellas - Biztalk Server 2006 - Hola a todos... Dando un pequeño paseo por la web de Desarrollador 5 Estrela y Profesional 5 Estrellas, ahora tu puedes comenzar tu capacitación en BizTalk Server 2006 dentro del programa Profesional 5 Estrellas. En esta nueva certificación, comprenderás una tecnología de servidor de administración de procesos de negocios, que permite a las compañías automatizar y optimizar su productividad. En el mismo sentido, puedes tomar curso tambien de SQL Server 2005, Unified Comunications y Biztalk. la direccion del programa aqui. Mirenlo esta interesante, posteare al respecto del programa en unos dias, y les contare como me fue :P Saludos......

25 of 767 | WOW! It's the Technology of TechEd Track - Following Kleefy's not so unexpected announcement, I've taken over the Technology of TechEd Track for this year's TechEd Australia event. Here's the spiel that I wrote for the track. Come on a journey behind the scenes at Tech•Ed. This track will take you end-to-end in the technology deployed to make the event the showcase it is. From hardware planning through network analysis and contingencies to application development and deployment including stops in Security and Management, mobility and virtualisation. Hear how it was done from the practitioners who made it happen. Here's our current thinking for the track sessions - let me know what you think: Track KickOff What is this ......

26 of 767 | Resizing A Virtual PC Hard Drive - Holy Diver... The other day I was working on one of my Virtual PC demo images, when I noticed I was running out of disk space. When I originally created the Virtual Hard Drive (.VHD) I just accepted the default size of 16GB without thinking, but more and more often I find I need to install other products such as SharePoint Server, BizTalk Server, PerformancePoint Server, which inevitably require extra disk space. After a little "liveling" (what is the live.com equivalent of "googling"?) I found a...(read more)...

27 of 767 | BAM Tracking and Failed Messages - Mikael Håkansson has a post called How to Replace Tracking with BAM in BizTalk that features a performance comparison he made for disabling global tracking in BizTalk Server 2006 and how that would look if you replaced that with BAM - in hard figures...(read more)...

28 of 767 | BAM Poster available at Microsoft Download - The BizTalk Team anounced that a new poster, the BAM poster , will see the light of day. I really like the posters that have been released as companions to the BizTalk Server documentation. I'm not really the grapical guy, at least not when it comes...(read more)...

29 of 767 | BAM Poster for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 - BAM Poster for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 has been published by BizTalk Server Team. Click Here to download BAM Poster. ...

30 of 767 | Microsoft has released BAM Poster for BTS 2006 R2! - Microsoft has recently added another addition to their Poster Series. They have now added Business Activity Montoring Poster which provides an overview of the entire life cycle of a BizTalk BAM implementation. It illustrates the design of the observation...(read more)...

31 of 767 | Announcing the BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Poster - I’m glad to announce the latest addition to our BizTalk posters series. We have just published the new BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Poster. You can find it in the Microsoft download center here.   This poster provides an overview of the entire life cycle of a BizTalk BAM implementation. It illustrates the design of the observation model by the business analyst, mapping the observation model to the implementation by the developer, deployment by the system administrator, and the presentation channels of the information for business end users. We hope to promote the usage of the BizTalk BAM infrastructure by enabling both new and experienced users to bet......

32 of 767 | Free resources for learning Microsoft Technologies (BizTalk and SharePoint) - Here are some excellent FREE resources for BizTalk Server, SharePoint and other Microsoft technologies:    BizTalk Server Code Samples: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/aa937647.aspx   BizTalk Server 2006 Documentation:    PDF format - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=8f3ec693-2865-4b85-8455-745511ea4267&displaylang=en    CHM format - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=3294ddaf-9f67-409f-a92d-2f6070dc0d1a&displaylang=en   BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6a5f6ef4-aeb8-4d8d-a521-37333a875ce4&displaylang=en   BizTalk Free e-Learning: https://www.microsoftelearni......

33 of 767 | BizTalk Support with TFS - We get a reasonable amount of feedback from BizTalk users that would like a more seamless experience working with Team System and BizTalk.  The number one complaint that I hear is that building BizTalk with Team Build is very difficult.  The underlying reason for this is that BizTalk does not use msbuild for building their projects. I've been working with the BizTalk team for the past several months to try to figure out how to fit this support in.  I'm very happy to say that I've just been informed that they will be getting it into the upcoming BizTalk Server 2006 R3.  I think this will be a nice improvement for all of you BizTalk/TFS users out there.  You can read......

34 of 767 | Is support coming for BizTalk builds on TFS? - According to Brian Harry[1] , he has been working with the BTS folks to get this put in place.  He has been assured that this will be part of the R3[2] release of BizTalk Server that is due out next year.  Finally, automated builds for BizTalk without all the hassle, I hope this definitely makes it into the product, as right now it is one more thing that makes people think BizTalk is not for .NET developers.    [1] BizTalk Support with TFS [2] http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2008/04/23/biztalk-server-platform-updates.aspx...

35 of 767 | Reed Elsevier mejora su call center - El enorme grupo de medios (con fuerte implantación en España) estaba experimentando problemas de crecimiento en su call center, y especialmente en el trabajo de los agentes a las aplicaciones de suscripción. Esta es la parte operativa y menos sexy de muchos medios, que ha podido tradicionalmente escaparse de tener una relación directa con los clientes/usuarios. Las tendencias tecnológicas y de negocio que estamos viviendo son paradójicas, porque cada vez avanzamos a lo digital pero también hacia lo interactivo, y en esa relación directa ("conversación" le llaman los de la 2.0) vamos a notar una progresiva presión de gente que qui......

36 of 767 | BizTalk Server R3 trickle feed - Isn’t it fun how Microsoft trickle feeds us BizTalk information hungry souls with details about BizTalk Server R3? It is already in a TAP program so surely they know a lot about it… Like Nick Heppleston’s “BizTalk to Incorporate...(read more)...

37 of 767 | Commerce Server 2007: Importing Excel Catalog Data - This just came up in the Commerce Server forums and I wanted to remind everyone that FarPoint Technologies has an Excel parser component ( FarPoint Spread for BizTalk Server 2006 ) that can be used to create a simple process for uploading Excel catalog...(read more)...

38 of 767 | 32-bit & 64-bit BizTalk Servers in the same BizTalk Group? - A customer is looking to scale-out their current BizTalk Group by adding additional processing nodes. The current nodes are 32-bit only and I’m keen to have them move to 64-bit for the new servers, with the older 32-bit servers being phased out...(read more)...

39 of 767 | BizTalk database sizing statistics - In the hope that this might help someone who is tasked to estimate the size of BizTalk Server 2006 databases, I'm offering a few statistics. These statistics comes from a current engagement that uses very few orchestrations and more or less does messaging...(read more)...

40 of 767 | Latest version of BizTalk Server - Microsoft recently announced a new version for BizTalk Server. It will be called BizTalk Server 2006 R3. Main aim of this version is to have parity with other related technologies and tools like .Net 3.5, VS 2008, SQL Server 2008 and WIN Server 2008. For more details: http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2008/04/23/biztalk-server-2006-r3-is-announced.aspx ...

41 of 767 | BizTalk Server 2006 R3 Announced! - Apologies…this post has been in my drafts and i assumed it was published..Well, without any more delay…please find enclosed the announcement on BizTalk Server 2006 R3! Steven Martin who is the Connected Systems Program Manager has announced...(read more)...

42 of 767 | BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer v1.1 has shipped! - The BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer performs configuration-level verification by reading and reporting only. The Best Practices Analyzer gathers data from different information sources, such as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes, SQL Server databases, and registry entries. The Best Practices Analyzer uses the data to evaluate the deployment configuration. The Best Practices Analyzer does not modify any system settings, and is not a self-tuning tool.   If you'd like to download this tool click here...

43 of 767 | Do we need schemas? - This is somewhat of a recurring theme with me recently, but I want to discuss the contents of the management database; more specifically I want to discuss the fact that schemas get deployed to it and that most other things deployed will have a strong dependency on schemas. As schemas are always at the bottom of the dependency chain, this means is that on top of the expected difficulties one can experience when needing to change schemas and the impact on other system, the actual act of deploying a new schema. At best this is simply an annoyance to a developer who needs to re-deploy his entire solution as the schema evolves through the development cycle (versioning is not applicable in thi......

44 of 767 | ?SharePoint ? BizTalk ??? (2)? SharePoint ???????????? - ??: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 (??? WSS 3.0) BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Visual Studio 2005 ?? ? ???????? ? ?????? ??????????????????InfoPath ???????? SharePoint ?????????BizTalk Server ????????????? CSV ????????????????????????? SharePoint ???????? BizTalk ?????????? BizTalk ??????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????? InfoPath 2007 ??????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????? CSV ????????????? ???????????????????? .csv ????????????????????(ANSI ?)...(read more)...

45 of 767 | UDDI support in BizTalk Server R3 or Windows Server 2008?? - As follow up on my previous post regarding the new capabilities in BizTalk Server 2006 R3 the following question may rise: What’s with UDDI, doesn’t Windows server 2008 have UDDI?  As part of this next BizTalk Server release, Microsoft will be transitioning the packaging/distribution of Microsoft’s UDDI capabilities from Windows Server over to BizTalk Server.  Given the close relationship of web service registries with metadata repository technologies, it makes sense to more closely align the distribution and evolution of Microsoft’s registry/repository functionality.   As a result, Microsoft will be deprecating UDDI v2 services out of the next......

46 of 767 | Failed Message Routing - BizTalk Server 2006 - A very common question I get very often in my presentations and workshops is about handling the suspended / failed messages. The mechanism is very simple to use in BizTalk Server 2006 and very well documented at MSDN. Using Failed Message Routing - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa578516.aspx How to Enable Routing for Failed Messages - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa578574.aspx Using Acknowledgements - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa559421.aspx Note:- - By default, Routing of Failed Messages is NOT enabled. - Failed messages contains copy of original message so, you should act accordingly to avoid information disclosures ...

47 of 767 | BizTalk Server Tutorials Updated - Microsoft released some great tutorials after BizTalk Server 2006 was released, and also updated them with BizTalk R2. At the beginning of this month they seem to have reviewed these tutorials, so what better time to go over them if you want to learn...(read more)...

48 of 767 | BizTalk R3 Announced - Steve Martin sent out the announcement yesterday that the BizTalk Server line of products would be getting an R3 update during the first half of 2009. BizTalk Server 2006 R3 moves the BizTalk platform to the Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and .NET Framework 3.5 wave of releases. In addition, there are feature enhancements planned for: Supporting UDDI 3.0 Improved integration and hosting with service-oriented applications Connectivity with RFID and mobile devices Enhanced interoperability for business protocols such as EDI and SWIFT You can read the original announcement by Steve on BizTalk Server 2006 R3 for more details. ...

49 of 767 | Consuming RESTful services from BizTalk Server using AtomPub - In a previous post I explained the importance for traditional integration servers and ESBs to embrace REST as one of the architecture styles used to interact and expose resources. For the simplicity of this post (and to avoid starting a religious war...(read more)...

50 of 767 | Consuming RESTful services from BizTalk Server using AtomPub - In a previous post I explained the importance for traditional integration servers and ESBs to embrace REST as one of the architecture styles used to interact and expose resources. For the simplicity of this post (and to avoid starting a religious war...(read more)...