My main problem in connecting to BizTalk Services on Monday 1st October 2007 was that the 'live' site provided by Microsoft was broken. SOAP requests to a web service made via SDK code with hard-wired URIs, for example, were met with an HTTP response containing a "The requested page is unavailable" HTML page. Not good, but when I tried this a few days later, the problem had gone away. Fortunately, Microsoft also currently runs a 'Pre-Production Environment' site in parallel with the live site, and this worked OK . The main point to note here is that, in accordance with their terms and conditions, Microsoft make no promises with regard to the availability of the CTP site and don’t offer any support. My experience, though, is that the guys at CSD at pretty responsive if you send them email.
The Pre-Production Environment is used to post versions of the SDK which have not yet been formally released. You may well find that the PPE SDK is more up-to-date and has more functionality than the Live SDK. This is certainly the case at the time of writing. The PPE SDK is release 9, whereas the Live SDK is still release 8. Release 9 has a number of new features, such as the Automatic Renewal Token Provider. Obviously, though, the PPE versions are likely to require further stabilisation before being released on the Live site.
As an indication of how fast things change in the PPE site, it appears that upgrades to release 9 were quietly deployed between initially writing these notes and publishing them a few days later. If you find the PPE suddenly appears to stop working, download the SDK and check to see if it has been updated. Keep older versions of the SDK download in order to work out if there have been changes or not.
A major problem is the strange case of the undocumented environment variable. The SDK code currently has several sets of hardwired URIs and certificates for different environments (Most of them, presumably, internal to Microsoft). You select the required set using an environment variable named 'RELAYENV'. Set it to 'PPE' for the pre-production environment and 'LIVE' for the live environment. The SDK code won't work unless this variable is set, but I can't find any mention of it anywhere in any of the documentation! It is mentioned on a blog site. I initially discovered the variable via Reflector. I was that desperate! I then found the blog site at http://connectedsystems.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!10E0A1CD60CAE1A9!263.entry by Googling for RELAYENV. That, in turn, alerted me to the existence of the pre-production site. You can understand why I found it all heavy going. I like the way the blog site 'reminds' people of the existence of the variable - like we had the opportunity to forget it in the first place!
If you have installed a previous version of the SDK, you must cleanly uninstall it before installing another version. I had major problems uninstalling a PPE version of the SDK. I went backwards and forwards between two different versions several times in the course of a few days, and discovered that, while the live version of the SDK installed and uninstalled cleanly, the PPE version certainly did not. I’m using Vista. Being a little slow, it took me a while to discover that if I ran the PPE version of the SDK with administrative permissions, things went far more smoothly.
Here are some thoughts on how to deal with installation problems if all else fails. As I say, running the installation with administrative privileges seems to solve most issues, but the following may be of use.
To install the SDK, run the self-extracting file. The installation may report an error running RelayConfigurationInstaller.exe. If this is the case, run the offending utility from a command line with the 'install' flag. e.g.,
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Services SDK\Assemblies\RelayConfigurationInstaller.exe" /i
You may be prompted with a dialogue box stating that the program is not installed correctly. Select the option to install with the default settings. I would also check that the "Microsoft BizTalk Services SDK" appears as an installed programme in the 'Programs and Features' control panel.
To get rid of the SDK you can to do the following:
· Run RelayConfigurationInstaller from the command line with the 'uninstall' flag. e.g.,
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Services SDK\Assemblies\RelayConfigurationInstaller.exe" /u
· Rename the self-extracting SDK Cab file with a '.cab' extension
· Open the newly named file in WinZip and extract the Product.msi file
· Use MsiZap.exe from the Windows Platform SDK to kill the installation. e.g.,
MsiZap T "C:\BizTalk\BizTalk Services\product.msi"
· Use the MS .NET Framework 2.0 administration tool to remove any remaining versions of System.ServiceBus.dll from the GAC
The Internet Service Bus is designed to negotiate firewalls and NAT routers as easily and painlessly as possible. However, when I was trying to set this up at our offices, I ran into firewall problems. I haven’t had a chance to investigate further. If you are behind an ISA Server firewall, and run into problems, you should try using the ISA Server client. I did have a quick attempt at doing this a few days ago, but still couldn’t connect. When I next get a chance, I intend to discuss this with our networking/system admin people to see if I can get a resolution. Everything worked fine across my (non-ISA Server) firewall at home, and I have also managed to get everything working without problems across Microsoft’s own firewalls at their UK headquarters.
Please note that, when using either the PPE or Live site, you must set up an account on that site and associate an Information Card with it. For example, if you have previously created accounts on the live site, those accounts won't be available for accessing the PPE site.