BizTalk 2006

201 of 233 | Biztalk Design Contest - Dynamic Transforms in Biztalk 2006 - I should start by saying I was much happier with last year’s entry.  Last year, I used an Orchestration to limit other running Orchestrations.  It could be configures on the fly using the Rules Engine.  I should note that in Biztalk 2006 you will now have the ability to limit running Orchestrations since you now have per-host configuration.    Since last year I didn’t place in the top 5, I decided to take a difference approach this year.  I decided to take a look at something simple and build on that.  So, I picked mapping.  Simple, right   Transforms are a critical component in nearly every integration project.  The Transform design pattern is largely taken for granted since mapping is a ......

202 of 233 | Canadian Developers: Are You Ready - Canadian Developers! Get your calendars ready! Here`s a sneak peek at the Canadian launch for Biztalk 2006, SQL Server 2005, and Visual Studio 2005: Tuesday, November 8, 2005: Toronto, Ontario Toronto Congress Centre Thursday, November 10, 2005: Ottawa, Ontario Crowne Plaza Ottawa Tuesday, November 15, 2005: Edmonton, Alberta SilverCity West Edmonton Mall Thursday, November 17, 2005: Victoria, British Columbia SilverCity Tillicum Tuesday, November 22, 2005: Vancouver, British Columbia Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre Thursday, November 24, 2005: Calgary, Alberta Calgary Stampede & Exhibition Centre Tuesday, Novem......

203 of 233 | Canadian Developers: Are You Ready - Canadian Developers! Get your calendars ready! Here`s a sneak peek at the Canadian launch for Biztalk 2006, SQL Server 2005, and Visual Studio 2005: Tuesday, November 8, 2005: Toronto, Ontario Toronto Congress Centre Thursday, November 10, 2005: Ottawa, Ontario Crowne Plaza Ottawa Tuesday, November 15, 2005: Edmonton, Alberta SilverCity West Edmonton Mall Thursday, November 17, 2005: Victoria, British Columbia SilverCity Tillicum Tuesday, November 22, 2005: Vancouver, British Columbia Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre Thursday, November 24, 2005: Calgary, Alberta Calgary Stampede & Exhibition Centre Tuesday, Novem......

204 of 233 | Simple Biztalk Server Development Helper Tool - A lot can be said about development with Biztalk Server.  For someone new to Biztalk it takes a little practice to learn some of the non-intuitive tasks related to assembly redeployment and basic Biztalk Development.   One common error message is: “Some items in the removed assembly are still being used by items not defined in the same assembly, thus removal of the assembly failed. Make sure that items in the assembly you are trying to remove fulfill the following conditions: 1. Pipelines, maps, and schemas are not being used by Send Ports or Receive Locations 2. Roles have no enlisted parties.”   The most common problem I see is what is required to redeploy an assembly.  To redeploy an ass......

205 of 233 | Simple Biztalk Server Development Helper Tool - A lot can be said about development with Biztalk Server.  For someone new to Biztalk it takes a little practice to learn some of the non-intuitive tasks related to assembly redeployment and basic Biztalk Development.   One common error message is: “Some items in the removed assembly are still being used by items not defined in the same assembly, thus removal of the assembly failed. Make sure that items in the assembly you are trying to remove fulfill the following conditions: 1. Pipelines, maps, and schemas are not being used by Send Ports or Receive Locations 2. Roles have no enlisted parties.”   The most common problem I see is what is required to redeploy an assembly.  To redeploy an ass......

206 of 233 | Biztalk 2006 Questions and Answers from the Biztalk TAP Program - Doug Girard with Microsoft recently posted some great Frequently Asked Questions gathered from the Biztalk Server 2006 Beta newsgroup and TAP program. It has a lot of good stuff and it worth a look at. ...

207 of 233 | Biztalk 2006 Questions and Answers from the Biztalk TAP Program - Doug Girard with Microsoft recently posted some great Frequently Asked Questions gathered from the Biztalk Server 2006 Beta newsgroup and TAP program. It has a lot of good stuff and it worth a look at. ...

208 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 Application in Visual Studio 2005 - One of the new features of BizTalk 2006 is the concept of an Application.  An Application is simply a collection of BizTalk artifacts such as schemas, maps, orchestrations etc.  This definitely helps with the management of a BizTalk Application.  If you add a new project in Visual Studio and look at the properties, there is a new property named Application.  This allows you to specify the Application Name: Here I have simply entered Expense Report as the Application Name.  If I deploy the application, you can see the changes in the BizTalk Administration Console.  Under the Applications Folder, I now have a new Applicaiton named ExpenseReport: I can now easily see all artifacts for my app......

209 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 Beta 1 First impressions Part 4 Mapper Improvements - I wanted to test the new Mapper of BTS2006 and I saw that they added some new functoids (IsNil (Logical), Nil Value (Advanced) and Assert (Advanced)). Today I saw a post from Stephen W. Thomas about his experiences with the new Mapper. Read his blog here  ...

210 of 233 | Microsoft Technology Summit - Houston and Dallas - Jonathan Summers and I will be presenting at the Microsoft Technology Summit in Houston and Dallas.  Our session will be on BizTalk Server 2006 and I think the formal title is BizTalk 2006 Uncovered.  If you would like additional details on the events, please check out the following links: Houston - August 30th - Event DetailsDallas - August 31st - Event Details As we dive into BizTalk 2006, there are some great new features and improvements.  Let`s just hope I can find some additional time to share the improvements with everyone!!...

211 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 Beta 1 First impressions Part 3 Workaround Group Hub Query - Yesterday I received an email from Microsoft with a workaround of issue (bug) I mentioned earlier , see  here. Indeed the error is a bug in Beta 1 and will be fixed in Beta 2. For a workaround follow the following instructions : ...

212 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 Beta 1 First impression part 2 (BAM Portal) - Today I dived in the new BAM Portal of BTS2006 Beta 1 and had it up and running BAM in about 1 hour. First of all I Migrate a simple project EAISolution (from the Labs of BTS2004 maybe u know it) and I had a BAM xls SalesManagerView.xls copied to my project directory. The migration from VSS2003 to VSS2005 went perfectly. I filled in a new application EAISolution and deployed it. After the deployment of the orchestration and the EAISchemas I started up my new Application. So far so good.  Alse a new feature is the Zoom function This orchestration I zoomed out for 50%.  Now the Business Activity Monitoring was ahead. The first thing I did was search for the BAM.xls as in BTS2004. I couldn`......

213 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 Beta 1 bug First impression part 1 - This week I have time to look at the new version of BizTalk and I participate with the BizTalk 2006 Beta program. Im really impressed to see how this Beta 1 version is rolled out. I`ve got some problems to install Windows Sharepoint Services , but when u follow the Install Instructions it will be solved. The only thing I saw was a Query Error in the BizTalk Administration Console so far. When I do a refresh on the BizTalk Group I see the following error : I run Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with SP4. Anyone have an idea Of course I submit this issue to Microsoft. Hope they will come with an answer very soon. ...

214 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 - BTSTask - BizTalk 2006 comes with a new handy tool called BTSTask. For more information about this new tool read here : http://blogs.conchango.com/matthall/archive/2005/08/02/1908.aspx Its the new version of the BTSDeploy.exe of BizTalk 2004 with much more new features like import export MSI files.  ...

215 of 233 | A better way to get Beta1 of BizTalk 2006 - Go to http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/evaluation/bts2006beta.mspx ...

216 of 233 | BizTalk Server 2006 Beta Program -  Biztalk 2006 Beta is now available for public sign up.   Biztalk Server 2006 greatly simplifies the administration and deployment process.  Some of the other key enhancements are the flat file schema wizard, calling pipeline from an Orchestration, improved BAM, and suspended message routing, just to name a few.  To sign up for the beta program follow these easy steps:  1.  Go to http://beta.microsoft.com  2.  Sign in with your passport  3.  At the top of the page it should say something like “if you have a Guest Id click here”.   4.  Enter: BizTalkBetaTeam (case sensitive) as your guest id.  5.  Fill out the survey.  I think the link is located on the left side of the screen.  Make s......

217 of 233 | Biztalk 2006 Beta - Microsoft’s official release of the Biztalk 2006 Beta program is now online.    It goes into more detail about what is new in Biztalk 2006 and it also says how to sigh up.   It can be found here: Biztalk 2006 Beta.  ...

218 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 Beta1 is available... - ... from https://beta.microsoft.com If you are not registered there, you`ll have to pass through sign-off approval process first, because that`s the generic place where Microsoft products betas are available. Notice that once you logged in with your Passport ID, you need to use (on the second screen) GuestID BizTalkBetaTeam to get straight to BizTalk 2006 Beta 1 form. If you use the Guest ID published on the passport login screen of the Beta place, it will take much more steps to get there. More complete instructions were posted in the Beta newsgroup....

219 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 Beta1 is available... - ... from https://beta.microsoft.com If you are not registered there, you'll have to pass through sign-off approval process first, because that's the generic place where Microsoft products betas are available. Notice that once you logged in with your Passport ID, you need to use (on the second screen) GuestID BizTalkBetaTeam to get straight to BizTalk 2006 Beta 1 form. If you use the Guest ID published on the passport login screen of the Beta place, it will take much more steps to get there. More complete instructions were posted in the Beta newsgroup....

220 of 233 | Biztalk 2006 Beta Program Sign up Now! - Biztalk 2006 Beta is now available for public sign up.    Biztalk Server 2006 greatly simplifies the administration and deployment process.  Some of the other key enhancements are the flat file schema wizard, calling pipeline from an Orchestration, improved BAM, and suspended message routing, just to name a few.   To sign up for the beta program follow these easy steps: 1.  Go to http://beta.microsoft.com 2.  Sign in with your passport 3.  At the top of the page it should say something like “if you have a Guest Id click here”.  4.  Enter: BizTalkBetaTeam (case sensitive) as your guest id. 5.  Fill out the survey.  I think the link is located on the left side of the screen.  Make sure you ......

221 of 233 | TechEd Europe - I’ll be working on the “Ask the Experts” stand for BizTalk Server at TechEd in Amsterdam next week, along with other MVPs and Microsoft staff. Feel free to drop in if you have any BizTalk related questions. There’s a lot of BizTalk 2006 presentations that I want to catch, I got an early build of 2006 a couple of weeks ago, and I’d be keen to see a run-through of the new features. The new admin console is great, and the setup and config is a lot easier (have not tried a multi-box install yet though…), and working in Visual Studio 2005 is very sweet.  If any “Bloggers Guide” contributors can catch me anywhere near a bar next week, you are welcome to a free beer (or drink if you are wise enoug......

222 of 233 | Calling A Receive Pipeline Inside an Orchestration in BizTalk 2006 - Impresive! from Steve W Thomas: For starter, why would you want to call a Receive Pipeline from within an Orchestration?  I had to struggle for a bit to come up with a good reason… I can find it useful in debatching Scenarios that require mapping prior to debatching or for debatching into smaller batches using a map.  I could also find it useful when working with flat file. [...] Super Cool: Supports receiving multiple messages returned from the pipeline and can use enumeration to process each message. more on his blog...

223 of 233 | TechEd 2005 and DevCon presentations... - TechEd 2005 was a great time, and I really enjoyed the extended look at BizTalk 2006 - lots of great presentations.  Much more has been done in this release than I had anticipated, and I look forward to digging into the CTP build. Thanks to those who attended my talk on automating BizTalk application deployments - the questions asked during the session were great!  It was fun to talk to the folks who are using the Deployment Framework stuff...The deck I presented is here.  BizTalk 2006 is doing a lot to make deployment easier - no comparison to 2004!  I expect a subset of the tools in the Deployment Framework to remain useful - but that is another post for a......

224 of 233 | TechEd 2005 and DevCon presentations... - TechEd 2005 was a great time, and I really enjoyed the extended look at BizTalk 2006 - lots of great presentations.  Much more has been done in this release than I had anticipated, and I look forward to digging into the CTP build. Thanks to those who attended my talk on automating BizTalk application deployments - the questions asked during the session were great!  It was fun to talk to the folks who are using the Deployment Framework stuff...The deck I presented is here.  BizTalk 2006 is doing a lot to make deployment easier - no comparison to 2004!  I expect a subset of the tools in the Deployment Framework to remain useful - but that is another post for......

225 of 233 | Calling A Receive Pipeline Inside an Orchestration in BizTalk 2006 - With the release of BizTalk 2006 Beta just around the corner, why not get a head start by seeing how to call a Receive Pipeline from within an Orchestration.   For starter, why would you want to call a Receive Pipeline from within an Orchestration  I had to struggle for a bit to come up with a good reason… I can find it useful in debatching Scenarios that require mapping prior to debatching or for debatching into smaller batches using a map.  I could also find it useful when working with flat file.   Limitations: Calling a Receive Pipeline inside the Orchestration does not support recoverable interchanges (more on this later) and it must be run inside an Atomic Scope.   Super Cool: Supports......

226 of 233 | Calling A Receive Pipeline Inside an Orchestration in BizTalk 2006 - With the release of BizTalk 2006 Beta just around the corner, why not get a head start by seeing how to call a Receive Pipeline from within an Orchestration.   For starter, why would you want to call a Receive Pipeline from within an Orchestration  I had to struggle for a bit to come up with a good reason… I can find it useful in debatching Scenarios that require mapping prior to debatching or for debatching into smaller batches using a map.  I could also find it useful when working with flat file.   Limitations: Calling a Receive Pipeline inside the Orchestration does not support recoverable interchanges (more on this later) and it must be run inside an Atomic Scope.   Super Cool: Supports......

227 of 233 | Bloggers Guide to BizTalk 2006* - Theres a new edition out now, get it here. Ive added a BizTalk Server 2006 section, theres only one post there, but this should change in the next edition as you guys get your hands on the TechEd builds, and the beta becomes available. Im thinking of keeping the 06 stuff in the same guide rather than creating a new guide. As the orchestration and messaging engine are the same, a lot of the stuff is relevant to both products. Im thinking of adding a header to the articles depending on which version they are relevant to, and keeping the structure the same, rather than creating a separate 06 structure (the 06 folder I added is just for the Whats New stuff etc). I also need to streamline the ......

228 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 Installation - A Success - Well I finally received a CTP copy of BizTalk 2006 from Microsoft and decided to see if I could get it up and running this weekend.  As with BizTalk 2004, there is a long list of pre-reqs for installation.  These are similar to to the previous version with a couple of exceptions. First, BizTalk 2006 runs on Visual Studio 2005.  You must install Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 prior to installation.  Just don`t forget to do a custom install an uncheck SQL Server 2005 Express which is on by default.  The other notable change is that the product now takes advantage of SQL Notification Services.  This is a simple install, but just another step in the process and you must have SQL XML installed before......

229 of 233 | Tech-Ed Announcements - BizTalk 2006 Launch - A lot of folks heard at the Tech-Ed Keynote address on June 7 that we will have a joint launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 on November 7, 2005. Please do NOT confuse this with the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) date of BizTalk Server 2006.  BizTalk Server 2006 is still scheduled to RTM during the 1st Quarter of 2006.   November is just when the Joint  Launch "Party" will take place...

230 of 233 | BizTalk 2006 will make it to CTP next week. - Scott Woodgate has confirmed that BizTalk 2006 will make it to CTP (Community Technology Preview) before Tech Ed starts next week in the US. http://blogs.msdn.com/scottwoo/archive/2005/06/02/424428.aspx This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. ...

231 of 233 | Tech-Ed 2005 Get It Now! - Let`s try this again... for some reason the server ate the post I did on Saturday! The early bird catches the worm... and this time it`s no different! Charles "Chuck" Sterling has added the latest track list to his blog for Tech-ed 2005 I know there is a few hyper link and abstract problems (that will hopefully be sorted shortly) but allot of our current thinking around session planning (although this is no ways final) is up there and I implore you to go and check it out... The best news is that you can register now for tech-ed for $1,499 (plus GST)... this price is more than %15 cheaper than what it will cost if you leave it until after the 1st of July. We are on the home stretch with so......

232 of 233 | Pssst... I`ll let you in on a little secret. - The days of walking up to an event and expecting to be able to buy a ticket are over... think back to when you missed out on that Big Day Out ticket because you left it to the last minute and thought "hey BDO never sells out"... or tonight when you were planning on walking up to buy a ticket to the Blues - Hurricanes match but half of Wellington had flown up and beaten you to it...  the score 22-10 to the canes, just as well Carlos wasn`t playing! ... Well the same goes for Tech-Ed tickets this year! That`s right they will become the next hot item on Trademe ...  so if you`re not doing anything (or even if you are) on August 29-31 buy you ticket and come along to the biggest conference of t......

233 of 233 | BizTalk Server Future plans PathFinder BizTalk 2006 / LongHorn BizTalk 2007 - Computerworld has published an article describing some of the futures for BizTalk Server.   However, for an even better description of what is coming, go straight to the source - Woodgate`s blog entry from last December....