BizTalk
Ive recently really seen some of the benefits in action from the work we have been doing to introduce Behaviour Driven Development techniques into our BizTalk development process.A couple of months ago one of the members of our team was unavailable and he was the expert with one of the BizTalk Applications we had developed. The team was small and we have a lot of processes and this particular application was quite complex and no one had the level of experience that this team member had with the business...
For a while I’ve been working on an idea and whitepaper around analyzing source code to measure the size and complexity. There are some tools around which can do this but my differentiator is that I was interested in BizTalk projects and wanted to look at how these could be measured. Note however this can be easily used for non-BizTalk projects too. The aim is to be able to understand the size and complexity of a solution and to allow some real metrics to contribute to your understanding of the Total...
A while back I did the user group sessions and cloud case video about Behaviour Driven BizTalk Development and talked about how you could use SpecFlow with Visual Studio 2010, BizUnit 4 and BizTalk 2010 to create acceptance tests for your solution. The video is on the below link: Part 1: http://cloudcasts.cloudapp.... Part 2: http://cloudcasts.cloudapp.... Of the many advantages of this approach one of the...
I've been back working with BizTalk 2006 R2 for a customer recently and I've become such a fan of the BDD style acceptance tests I've done in the past with BizTalk 2010 that its quite frustrating working back in Visual Studio 2005 and not being able to use Specflow alongside BizUnit 4 like I described in the recent videos on these subjects BizTalk & BDD Part 1 BizTalk & BDD Part 2 In BizTalk 2006 development your back to the older style xml bizunit tests and we were looking at some old tests...
We are currently evaluating BizTalk 360 at one of my clients at the moment and I plan to write a more detailed post in the future about our experiences but in the meantime I wanted to make a comment about something this week which was particularly useful. We have a very large project with many teams and vendors and in our first integration test environment all of the delivery teams do daily deployments to this test environment. From here a successfully tested release could be promoted to other environments...
The biztalk videos for BDD and acceptance testing are now on cloudcast http://www.cloudcasts.net/D
Ive recently done some user group sessions around BizTalk and Behaviour Driven Development and Acceptance Testing. Ive uploaded the videos and samples for these sessions to the following codeplex site. http://biztalkbddsample.cod... They will also be on CloudCasts soon Enjoy
Ive just released an update to the codeplex project so that there are test steps which are also compatible with BizUnit v4 which has recently been released http://btsloggingeventsinbi
I was chatting the other day with someone about adapters for connecting to LOB applications and an interesting point came up which I thought id share my thoughts on. The scenarios is that if you have a line of business application for arguments sake lets say its dynamics CRM which has a BizTalk adapter available but also has an existing web service API (or some other protocol based API). Which should you use for integration? In my opinion the answer to this is the usual "it depends" answer. I think...
A few weeks ago I did the video about how we were testing what happens inside BizTalk by using the CAT Team Logging Framework and the ETW trace events and then testing the information coming out from our tracing to prove what was happening inside BizTalk. Ive updated the codeplex project so that the code is a little easier for people to use and is packaged better. Also the source code is now available in codeplex and there is some additional documentation. Note that it now works slightly differently...
Ive recently just setup BizTalk 360 (http://www.biztalk360.com/) to try out the monitoring capabilities. I also thought it would be interesting to see how things go since this given environment was a BizTalk 2006R2 environment and fairly old stuff now. I had a couple of issues during the install/setup but i was able to solve all of these using the troubleshooting page on the BizTalk 360 website and a little common sense. To be honest a couple of them were me being a bit lazy and not reading the install...
Ive eventually had time to migrate the build generator to work with BizTalk 2010. Ive released this as a beta for now and would love to hear any feedback from others who might be using it while i work on getting some more testing with other migrated projects. If your interested in taking a look please refer to: http://biztalkmsbuildtool.c
The next uk connected systems user group event is open for registration: 11th May 2011 @ EMC http://ukcsbugmay2011.event
Ive just posted a paper on the technet wiki about BizTalk RFID and NServiceBus used as a publishing component http://social.technet.micro
Just to let everyone know the BizTalk Light and Easy Webcast Series has been updated with some new BizTalk 2010 videos http://www.cloudcasts.net/D
As BizTalk developers we all know that one of the common challenges is how to test your BizTalk solution once it is deployed to BizTalk. Hopefully most of us are using the BizUnit framework for testing, but we still have the limitation that it's a very Black Box test. I have put together a sample and video to show a technique where I'm using the Logging Framework from the BizTalk CAT Team at Microsoft and where by BizUnit test is able to make assertions against the instrumentation going through the...
I have been chatting with Maurice den Heijer recently about his codeplex project for the BizTalk Map Testing Framework (http://mtf.codeplex.com/). Some of you may remember the article I did for BizTalk 2009 and 2006 about how to test maps but with Maurice's project he is effectively looking at how to improve productivity and quality by building some useful testing features within the framework to simplify the process of testing maps. As part of our discussion we realized that we both had slightly...
Ive just recently done a video about BizTalk and Visual Studio 2010 Layer Diagrams which Alan Smith has kindly published on cloudcasts http://www.cloudcasts.net/V
To follow up a previous article about timeouts and how they can affect your application I have extended the sample we were using to include WCF. I will execute some test scenarios and discuss the results. The sample We begin by consuming exactly the same web service which is sitting on a remote server. This time I have created a .net 3.5 application which will consume the web service using the basichttp binding. To show you the configuration for the consumption of this web service please refer to...
Background One of the clients I work with had been experiencing some issues for a while surrounding web service timeouts. It's been a little challenging to work through the problems due to limitations in the diagnostic information available from one of the applications, but I learned some interesting things while troubleshooting the problem which don't seem to have been discussed much in the community so I thought I'd share my findings. In the scenario we have BizTalk trying to make calls to a .net...
I've been meaning to write a blog post for a while about how we implemented a scatter gather pattern at one of my clients. Ive recently been reading Richard and the gangs new book which discusses a very similar pattern but with a different design decision. Based on that I have decided to expand on the original planned post to talk about what we did and our decision process using the decision framework discussed in the book. The aim here is to show that the "it depends" principle means that there...
Recently we had a couple of defects in the development of one of our integration solutions where we hadn't handled date times correctly in relation to day light saving. When we looked for some guidance to help us it seemed that there is a fair bit of discussion around .net implications of this but little recent content about BizTalk. Probably the most useful background articles are the following: http://msdn.microsoft.com/e... http://geekswithblogs.net/d...
Just wondering how many people actually do dynamic versioning of their BizTalk projects with Cruise Control or Team Build. The reason I ask is you dont see that many things on the forums or blogs about it. I find that it can be quite challenging at times so Im not sure if we are just doing it the hard way or its something most people dont do
Ive been having some problems with versioning for BizTalk recently and in particular it was centred around one map. Initially the problems were related to the configuration manager but then when this was resolved there was another little gotcha which is probably worth bearing in mind. So on the development machine everything versions as 999.999.999.999 and this is usually pretty pain free. On the build server though a version number is applied from cruise control and replaces anything with 999.999.999.999...
You may have read on my recent posts about how the Visual Studio Configuration Manager again caused me problems for my BizTalk 2006 R2 project where the release/debug/deployment/de... configuration settings seem to get out of sync and it ends up causing you various problems. I got sick of this happening so I've created an MsBuild task which I can use in my build script to inspect the solution file and highlight any issues with the configuration. Basically the task will read through the file...
I had a very painful experience this week on a project. We were implementing some new features in an existing BizTalk application and the first builds on the build server were good then suddenly a number of the tests started failing with the below error in the event log. Event Type: Error Event Source: XLANG/s Event Category: None Event ID: 10030 Date: 8/4/2010 Time: 1:36:21 PM User: N/A Computer: ------------------ Description: Uncaught exception (see the 'inner exception' below) has suspended an...
Introduction On many BizTalk projects you have to deal with managing mapping of reference data. A number of times in the past I've spoken about the features in BizTalk for mapping reference data however they do have some limitations which mean that it is very common for a project to implement their own tables in a custom database to hold mapping reference data. While this is entirely valid you often end up with the pain of how do you manage the reference data mappings. One of the simplest ways is...
I have recently been having discussions with some of the guys from our Ops Team about the GAC and BizTalk. One of the things they had observed was that when we upgraded some of our BizTalk applications using the technique where you are able to drain the system and fully remove then replace the application the uninstallation and reinstallation process left the assemblies from the previous version in the GAC. I explained the relationship between the management database in BizTalk and the storage of...
Background While the xpath function in a BizTalk orchestration is a very powerful feature I have often come across the situation where someone has hard coded an xpath expression in an orchestration. If you have read some of my previous posts about testing I've tried to get across the general theme like test-driven or test-assisted development approaches where the underlying principle is that your building up your solution of small well tested units that are put together and the resulting solution...
Just wanted to pass out a reminder about tomorrow nights user group meeting with Udi Dahan Registration link:http://sbugmay2010.eve... User group link: http://ukconnectedsystemsus
Scenario I came across a nice little one with multi-part maps the other day. I had an orchestration where I needed to combine 4 input messages into one output message like in the below table: Input Messages Output Messages Company Details Member Details Event Message Member Search Member Import I thought my orchestration was working fine but for some reason when I was trying to send my message it had no content under the root node like below <ns0:ImportMemberChange xmlns:ns0="http://---------...
Background Mapping reference data is one of the common scenarios in BizTalk development and its usually a bit of a pain when you need to manage a lot of reference data whether it be through the BizTalk Cross Referencing features or some kind of custom solution. I have seen many cases where only a couple of the mapping conditions are ever tested. Approach As usual I like to see these things tested in isolation before you start using them in your BizTalk maps so you know your mapping functions are...
My whitepaper discussing BizTalk and NService Bus is now available on MSDN http://www.microsoft.com/do... Thanks to Steve Lemkau for his contribution and to Udi Dahan and the NServiceBus User Forums for help with a few questions I had...
We are just putting together the details for the SBUG meeting in April, the registration page is already open on the following link http://sbugapril2010.eventb
A couple of people have asked me recently where the whitepaper is... its here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwl
Ive eventually managed to get the "Monitoring BizTalk with HP Openview" whitepaper complete and submitted to Microsoft to go through the publishing process. Not sure how long this takes? Anyway it should be around soon Big thanks to Saravana Kumar (BizTalk 24/7) and Dave Gerrish (a great HP Openview Consultant) for their input, and to Elton Stoneman for reviewing it Cheers Mike
A while ago I posted an article about an issue when the tracking information for BizTalk appeared not to be working and it was because the stream status was out of sync and information was not passing from the messagebox database to the tracking database. http://geekswithblogs.net/m... Since then I did a small SQL script which could be used to check if they were in sync and if not could fix the issue. This script is below incase anyone needs it. Note: I...
For a while ive had a bunch of resources of my own and some links to other community resources which are very useful for BizTalk testing. Ive pulled these all together into one chm file which can point you to all of the appropriate resources to make life easier. This is available on the below link: http://code.msdn.microsoft.... If anyone feels ive missed a good resource please let me know and ill update it...
Just to help put the word out about the upcoming SBUG meeting. Pluralsight have offered a free 1 year standard subscription to their on demand training library which will be raffled at the next SBUG meeting. All of the details are on the below link http://uksoabpm.org/Competi
A few SBUG members were asking about this recently, the slides from the UK Microsoft Integration Roadshow are available from the following link: http://technet.microsoft.co
At SBUG we are pulling together an aggregated news and blog feed to pull together SOA/BPM related content from SBUG Members and Partners. This news feed is available here: http://uksoabpm.org/UKAggre... If you are would like to contribute to this feed please let me know
Is it me or does there seem to be a lot of BizTalk Monitoring products appearing recently. In addition to the normal MOM/SCOM, HP Openview and other enterprise monitoring platforms there seem to be a few new(ish) ones around such as: - Minotaur = http://www.ragingbulltech.com/ - Frends Hellium = http://helium.frends.com/he... - BizMon = http://bizmontool.com/ Just Whats peoples view on why these other products seem to have found a gap Obviously if they are successful in selling their product...
Ive had a few people ask recently about getting the source code for the BizTalk Light and Easy videos I did about testing and build. The code is all on Codeplex where everyone should be able to easily get a copy. http://biztalklaealm.codepl... Enjoy Mike
Hi All, Following this evenings webcast the recording of the event is available from the following location: https://www311.livemeeting.... We were interested on feedback of what we would like to see at a future SBUG session, the suggestions were as follows: Getting more value from Sharepoint in a BPM solution Integrating BPM and Biztalk An industry sector case study More about the persona based approach Claims and case management Nationwide case study? Hands on where we can...
Theres a really cool looking event coming up in the UK in early december. There are also some great speakers Check it out http://msevents.microsoft.c
Ive been having a few discussions with Christos Karras and Jason Hyland about Bizmonade over the last few days as a followup to some thoughts and questions i posted about Bizmonade. Christos has posted a response to some of my questions on the below link, and i must say i think his plan for Bizmonade looks really good and it should become an important tool in the biztalk development cycle. Check out his response here : http://www.nootaikok.com/20...
Just a reminder about the SBUG webcast on tuesday Global 360 will be introducing themselves and looking for feedback on what topic members would like to see them present at the next full SBUG meeting All the details are here: http://sbugminihelloglobal3
There's been a few discussions going on recently with various colleagues and community members on the back of the SOA Manifesto announcement. In this discussions it made me think back to a year or so ago when I was watching some presentations about various SOA things. At the time there were discussions about why SOA was good, what it offered, why companies struggled with it and all of the usual stuff. At the time I was reflecting on things on the way home and was thinking you know SOA is really just...
I've just been looking over Bizmonade which is a testing tool for testing BizTalk orchestrations in isolation from the BizTalk execution environment. It's similar in concept to BizMock however the implementation is different. The simple way to describe how BizMock is implemented is that it uses a custom adapter which allows you to manipulate the messaging around an orchestration which is executing within BizTalk. Bizmonade is different in that it creates a custom version of the XLANG Engine which...
We had a situation last week where BizTalk really showed some of its value and it was nice to get some good feedback from one of the application service managers. I thought id share to brighten all of your days. So the situation was that we had a production incident where the volume of messages the BizTalk environment had been processing was well in excess of what had been performance tested. The performance tests had been done against assumptions for one of our processes which had been incorrect...
Full BizTalk Archive