Problem
We have been experiencing the most annoying of IDE bugs recently when working on BizTalk applications. Basically the scenario is when you open a BizTalk map. If it is an existing map you get a prompt indicating the schema can not be loaded. If you try to pick the schema again from the map the schema picker just flickers then dissappears. From here the IDE becomes very unstable and you repeatedly get the following error:
Unexpected error encountered. It is recommended that you restart the
application as soon as possible.
Error: HRESULT: 0x80131527
File: vsee\internal\inc\vscomptr.inl
Line number: 473
Once this happens you basically have to restart the IDE.
I have found a number of posts discussing this issue but none seem to have the answer. It also seems it is difficult to recreate this problem when you dont have it. The links i found are:
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=103750 (This one isnt about BizTalk, but similar error)
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=814000&SiteID=1
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=640378&SiteID=1
In the various examples of the problem we found the following:
1. One developer had the problem and found that when he added all of the BizTalk artifacts to the same project he stopped getting the problem. This was okay for weeks then only today it has again started happening. As a test we have just tried point 2 below. We removed the C# test project from his solution (it had tests to use BizUnit) once the project was removed the map started working fine again. When we re-added the project the map immediately stopped working.
2. One other developer has been getting the problem and found that if he drops the C# Unit Test projects from his solution he stops getting the problem. It reappears as soon as he re-adds the test project. (note he has multiple biztalk projects ie: one for schemas and one for maps)
Note: In all cases we had other C# projects within the solution, it was just removing the test ones which made it work.
Workaround
Based on the other posts above it is difficult to identify if the test projects are always the cause of the problem, but they seem to be for us. We have used the following work arounds
- Remove the test projects from the solution
- Work on your map and get it how you want it
- Re-add your test project
or a second option is to have a seperate solution for the tests a bit like enterprise library does.
Let me know what you think of this or if you have any other work arounds.. Hopefully Microsoft will resolve this in R2
UPDATE!!!!
There is now a hotfix to resolve this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926344