BAM

BAM Tip: Visual Studio External Tools

Chilberto — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:32:46 GMT

Here is a simple way to open a command window from within Visual Studio that is aware of the BizTalk Management Utility (bm.exe). I have found this useful while working with interceptor configuration files. This tip will add the Visual Studio Command Prompt to the Tools menu.

Nothing too dramatic here, just a time saver when defining interceptor configuration files from within Visual Studio without adding shortcuts on my desktop or quick launch bar.

Add Visual Studio Command Prompt to External Tools

Simply select the External Tools option off of the Tools menu. To keep thing simple, I basically duplicated the Visual Studio Command prompt settings by viewing its properties.

Modify Visual Studio Command Prompt's PATH

Depending on the operating system you are running Visual Studio on, the following will be different. To determine where to modify, open the file indicated in the command arguments. For me it was: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat.

In the file you will see a supplied parameter, e.g., x86, indicates were the settings are located for the specific operating system. Note that %~dp0 indicates the where the batch file was run from. For me it was: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat.

This file just pointed to another file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat. In this file is where the environment settings are stored. I modified the file to include the location of bm.exe as part of the PATH environment variable. The following line was inserted after the current @set PATH line:

@set PATH=C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006\Tracking;%PATH%

Another BizTalk Gotcha...

Chilberto — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:28:29 GMT

Similar to remembering to update the Activate property to true in your first receive shape in a BizTalk orchestration, there is a BAM whoops that catches me out occasionally.

If you find yourself looking at your aggregate view wondering why there is not any data while in the activity search it clearly shows there is... Ask yourself, "Did I remember to mark real time aggregation" while designing the view?

When you select the "Mark the selected pivot table as Real Time Aggregation" option when designing your view, triggers are created against the tables that store Active and Completed activity within your BAMPrimaryImport database. These triggers update the aggregate tables.

This is assuming you want the behavior of real time aggregation...

BAM 2006 with SQL Server 2005

Chilberto — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 16:32:32 GMT

Just a post to help those newbies to BAM, like me, out there in regards to an issue I encountered getting my OLAP cubes to display data.

The BizTalk 2006 R2 documentation describing getting BAM to work is based on using a SQL Server 2000 database, and in particular DTS. In an environment using SQL Server 2005, DTS is not used, but Integration Services. So if you encounter a situation where you are successfully adding to BAM (re., the primary import database), but your aggregation views are not displaying data:

Make sure Integration Services is running
Run the relevant BAM packages in the Integration Services (e.g., connect to Integration Services using SQL Server Management Studio and find the packages under the stored packages section)

WCF BAM Interceptors and primaryImportConnectionString

Chilberto — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:50:05 GMT

When trying to get the example in Instrumenting the WCF Getting Started Sample (BizTalk Server Sample) to run, I encountered the following error:

Server Error in '/servicemodelsamples' Application.

Configuration Error

Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Unrecognized attribute 'primaryImportConnectionString'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive.

Source Error:


            Line 50:       <endpointBehaviors>
Line 51:         <behavior name="bamBehavior">
Line 52: 			<BamBehaviorExtension primaryImportConnectionString=
"Integrated Security=SSPI;Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=BAMPrimaryImport;" PollingIntervalSec="1500"  >
Line 53: 			 </BamBehaviorExtension>
Line 54:

Source File: f:\inetpub\wwwroot\servicemodelsamples\web.config Line: 52

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.42; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.42

After using Lutz Roeder's Reflector, I was able to determine that the configuration should be changed to:

<behavior name="bamBehavior">
    <BamEndpointBehaviorExtension 
        ConnectionString="Integrated Security=SSPI;Data Source=.;Initial Catalog=BAMPrimaryImport;"
        PollingIntervalSec="1500" />
  </behavior>

I could not find a mention of this in Google, so hopefully this will save someone some time out there.