YABB!

True Stories of the XSD Editor

2007-11-07T22:24:25-06:00:00

Sometimes when you're working, late at night, hunched over the BizTalk Schema Editor, things just don't seem to work right.

Case in point: right now.

I have a map with a section in the middle of it that looks something like:

<CustPO>DXXXXX</CustPO>

</Project>
...

While working with the project containing this schema definition I started running into errors. Specifically, <ContractId> was okay, but <CustPO> seemed to be suddenly invalid. Messages start blowing up coming into the system.

The fix for this:

open your offending schema definition with the editor.
delete all of the nodes inside the record
re-create all of the nodes you just deleted
validate - now it works!
redeploy 'new' schema definition and be on your merry way.

The schema in questoin does import a couple of definitions from a 'global' schema project, but <Project> isn't a part of any of those other than being part of the schema that uses the definitions...

Neuron ESB vs. Microsoft ESB Guidance: A Quick Comparison

2007-11-05T09:49:28-06:00:00

At the SOA and BPM Conference in Redmond last week Neudesic had a booth that discussed their Neuron ESB product. At the same time, Marty Wasznicky was wrapping up the final release of the ESB Guidance for BizTalk, accompanied by several presentations discussing what it was, how it works, etc.. It should be noted that Neudesic consultants (along with other Microsoft partners) helped build the ESB Guidance effort with Marty.

So what's the difference?

The key fundamental difference is that the Neuron ESB plugs into, but does not reside within, BizTalk Server. For those that haven't yet made the plunge into purchasing BizTalk licenses but looking to reap the benefits of SOA, this could be a great start.

Other than that, however, they provide strikingly similar functionality. The Neuron platform is .NET-based and leverages WCF, SQL Server, MSMQ and WMI. The two packages provide pretty similar functionality: intelligent routing, mediation, SLA awareness, monitoring, endpoint management and, of course, EAI and integration. Here's a snippet out of their documentation:

For a deeper technical dive, I suggest getting contacting Neudesic or a Microsoft partner for more info.

(Disclaimer: I am not a Neudesic employee)

Error X2289 - A Port Binding Error

2007-10-08T09:09:57-05:00:00

I ran into this error while undergoing a renaming effort in a project of mine, and in my haste I could not understand what this error meant, or why I was getting it. Specifically, it looked like this (incriminating names relegated to %n notation):

D:\ BTPROJECTS\ <ProjectFolder>\ <BizTalkServiceName>\ <OrchestrationName>.odx(471,49): error X2289: '%1': must be a port in service '%2' of polarity 'uses' and with porttype '%3'.

Whenever I start building a BizTalk project, I have a habit of renaming things. A lot. I constantly look for ways to improve the naming conventions of every artifact that makes up a BizTalk project in order for everything to make sense to whoever might look at it next. My philosophy: if the inevitable BizTalk novice comes to pick up where I left off in a project, and they can intuitively 'see' my intent through a well-organized, well-named project layout, it means less questions are asked, and subsequently, more work is done - and that I've laid a good foundation for them to build upon. But I digress...

Long story short - I have a port set up in my orchestration as a partner direct bound port, so it's binding to itself. When I renamed my port, the binding information did not update, so the binding configuration was invalid and caused this error.

To fix, simply go to your port configuration and select the 'correct' (or newly-renamed) port. This error should easily disappear.

For more information about partner direct bound ports (and an excellent collection of blog postings on port bindings in general), please visit Ken Lam's excellent blog site here.