BizTalk

BizTalk Msi Export: Customisation

Chilberto — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:11:40 GMT

Here are some notes on customising exports created via the BizTalk Administration Export MSI file.

Before creating the export, add any externally referenced .Net assemblies by adding them as a resource in the BizTalk Application's Resources folder:

This will allow you to include the added resources in your export and will add them to the Global Assembly Cache during installation.

This is also a good means of deploying binding files for different environments.

Also, verify the Destination Location of all resources are set to install in the deployment folder. The following assembly

Should be modified so it will install in the installation folder:

A tool like Orca (available in vista SDK) can be used to modify the default deployment folder by changing the manufacturer property. The screen below shows the property to be modified:

Just some notes...

BizTalk Map: Comparison between Table Looping and Looping functoids

Chilberto — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:40:34 GMT

I had a surprise recently about the behaviour of the Table Looping and Looping functoids that I wasn't expecting and involves when the scripting functoid is evaluated.

For those of you only interested in the comparison...

In the following map, the highlighted scripting functoid will be evaluated once per Client element.

In the following map, the highlighted scripting functoid will be evaluated once per element in the Client element. In other words, for every Client element, the scripting functoid will be evaluated 11 times.

In other words, for an message containing 100 clients:

Looping Map: 1100 script evaluations

Table Looping Map: 121,000 script evaluations (100 clients * 11 script functoids * 11 elements)

Details of Comparison

Schemas

Both of the example maps accomplish the same thing, namely going from one schema to another where the content structure does not match.

An example source xml message:

An example destination xml message:

Note: The destination xml is based on the Sharepoint Lists.asmx UpdateListItems() method

Script Functoid

In this example, I am just calling an external assembly that updates a performance counter. In the real-world scenario, I was calling an external assembly that did a Sharepoint lists lookup to determine the lookup id for a lookup list. For clarity, the script functoid settings in the Table Looping Map are:

Where the IncrementTable in the Table Looping Map and IncrementLoop in the Looping Map method updates a Performance Counter BTSComparison for instance Table and Loop respectively.

Orchestration

The orchestration simply reads in a single xml file and using the maps generates two identical output files.

Summary

As there are a ton of resources on the net showing similar maps and orchestrations, I have not gone in to much detail. If anyone is interested in this example in more detail, let me know and I'll post a better explanation and source.

Obviously I am still getting my head around the mapping functoids as to when best to use which one. Like elsewhere in BizTalk there are more than one way to accomplish the same task...

BizTalk Map: Choice Element

Chilberto — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:01:50 GMT

In my schema file, I have a choice element that only contains a single child element. For example:

The above example is actually a crude schema of the where clause of a Sharepoint call to Lists.asmx where in the case I have only 1 item, I want to send a where clause of

<Where>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="ItemID"/>
<Value Type="Text">99900</Value>
</Eq>
</Where>

And in the case that I have multiple items, I want to send something like:

<Where>
<Or>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="ItemID" />
      <Value Type="Text">3394</Value>
    </Eq>
...
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="ItemID" />
      <Value Type="Text">9867</Value>
    </Eq>
</Or>
</Where>

In my map, it is a simple operation of using

A Record Count functoid to receive a count of the number of items
A Greater Than functoid to compare the result of the count of items against 1
A Equal To functoid to compare the result of the count of items against 1

The map is then composed by connecting the items record in the source document to the Record Count functoid, the result of the Greater Than functoid to the Or choice element, and the result of the Equal To functoid to the Eq choice element.

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...

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.