by community-syndication | Jan 10, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
This article is a Part6 of the Interview Questions series.
Part 1: BizTalk: Questions for interview without answers
Part 2: BizTalk: Interview questions and principles
Part 3: WCF: Questions for studying and interview
Part 4: WCF: Questions for studying and interview: Discovery
Part 5: WCF: Questions for studying and interview: Routing Service
Part 6: BizTalk: Advanced Questions
It is time for fun!
Thesequestions are for an Advanced level of the BizTalk Developers. I hope you don’t have a single chance to answer these questions, if you don’t have a real life experience in BizTalk Server projects.
I would appreciate, if you write the answers in comments to this article. Thanks!
I will mark the questions which got a right/good answer.
If you have more advanced questions, please, comment them down and I will add them to this list under your name.
Advanced level
%u00b7 The error in BizTalk usually creates a suspended message. But routing error creates two messages. Why so? How we could utilize this feature?
%u00b7 Send ports have an “Ordered delivery” option. How it works for a File adapter, if the File protocol does not have a notion of file order?
%u00b7 Send ports have an “Ordered delivery” option but Receive ports do not have it. Why so?
%u00b7 You set up an “Ordered delivery” option in Send Port. What is special about Service Instance of this Port?
%u00b7 How to force an Orchestration do the ordered delivery? Is there a special “Ordered delivery” option in Orchestration? If it is not, why?
%u00b7 Send ports have the “Priority” options, but Receive ports and Receive Locations do not have them. Why so?
%u00b7 How does the Priority feature of the Send Port work?
%u00b7 Why the Priority option can be set up only for the Send Port?
%u00b7 Send ports have the “Retry” options, but Receive ports and Receive Locations do not have them. Why so?
%u00b7 How does the Retry feature of the Send Port work? In what scenarios this feature is helpful, in
%u00b7 Send ports have a “Backup Transport” but Receive ports do not have it. Why so?
%u00b7 Send ports have a “Filter” but Receive ports do not have it. Why so?
%u00b7 Send ports have the “Maps” and “Transport”; Receive ports have “Maps” but “Transport” is associated with Receive Locations. Why so?
%u00b7 What is the difference between “Send Port Group – Send Port” relation and “Receive Port – Receive Location” relation?
%u00b7 Receive Location have the Schedule parameters for date and time but Send Ports have the Schedule parameters only time. Why so?
%u00b7 Filter expression for the Send Port is defined at run-time, but Filter expression for the Orchestrations is defined only at design-time. Why so?
%u00b7 We created a custom pipeline component. Do we have to place it into the “<BizTalkFolder>\Pipeline Component” or install it to GAC or both?
%u00b7 How does an Orchestration make sure the message was sent successfully by one-way Send port? How does it changed for a two-way Send port?
%u00b7 What is it the “CodeList Database” property of the Schema? How to use it?
%u00b7 What is the “Property Schema Base” property of the Property schema element? It has the values: MessageDataProperyBase, MessageContextPropertyBase, and PartContextPropertyBase. What is the difference between using MessageDataProperyBase and MessageContextPropertyBase?
%u00b7 We bind the Orchestration with Send Port. What does it do regards of the subscription?
%u00b7 We bind the Orchestration with Receive Port. What does it do regards of the subscription?
%u00b7 How do Filters of the Send Ports and Send Port Groups work together? Say, a Send Port belongs to a Send Port Group. If this Send Port and this Send Port Group have the same Filter expression, does it create two subscriptions and, as a result, two messages are sent to the Send?
%u00b7 Why do we need a special Property schema for Promoted properties? What is the purpose of this schema? Distinguished properties do not use this kind of schema. Why so?
%u00b7 Properties of some BizTalk artifacts have the Tracking option. Right-click menu of some BizTalk artifacts have the “Tracking” command. Why there is such a difference between artifacts? Why Maps do not have any Tracking options? Why Schemas have only Tracking property? Why Send Port Groups do not have any Tracking options? Why Receive Locations do not have any Tracking options? Why BizTalk Applications do not have any Tracking options?
%u00b7 When the BizTalk Assembly is deployed, is it stored in the BizTalk database or it is just referenced in the BizTalk database?
%u00b7 Can you describe at least three scenarios where smart Orchestration Engine finds the errors in the messages patterns at design time (while build the BizTalk project)?
%u00b7 Could you create an XLANGMessage in the C#/VB code? Please, provide code.
%u00b7 You can use an XmlDocument class as a Message type for receive untyped Xml messages in Orchestration. What .NET classes we have to use for receive untyped text or binary messages in Orchestration. Why so?
%u00b7 Is the Publish-Subscribe BizTalk Engine API well defined? Where? If not, why so?
%u00b7 Does BizTalk use the strategy “First received, first processed” or “First received, last processed” of “First received, first processed, first sent” of something else? Why so?
Describe scenarios, when this strategy works better, and scenarios, when this strategy works badly.
%u00b7 Are Orchestration Instances processed in order? Why so? Describe scenarios.
%u00b7 Is it possible to force Hydration / Dehydration of the Orchestration instances, Messaging instances? How to do this? Why do this?
%u00b7 In what scenarios you will use the Compensations in Orchestrations? Why so?
%u00b7 Atomic scopes in Orchestrations have a Retry feature. How it works? Describe scenarios when it is used.
%u00b7 What serializer does BizTalk use, XmlSerializer or DataContractSerializer? What implication it has for the real life scenarios?
%u00b7 What transform engine does BizTalk use, XslTransform or XslCompiledTransform? What implication it has for the real life scenarios?
%u00b7 BizTalk Business Rule Engine uses a Rete engine inside. In what scenarios this Rete engine is the more efficient / less efficient?
%u00b7 Let’s classify the applications as Front-end, Middle-level and Back-end. Where are the best places to use BizTalk? Please, provide scenarios. What are the most important features we have to take in account?
%u00b7 What BizTalk features are the differentiators, when you compare BizTalk Server with other alternatives? What are those alternatives?
by community-syndication | Jan 9, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The documentation for BizTalk Server 200X is very clear, and has been since BizTalk Server 2006. See the 2010 versions of technet wiki and download. It states:
“Named instances of SQL Server 200X Analysis Services are not supported”
But why is that? I set out to investigate if I could find a reason for it still being true.
Examining the history
In the beginning, there was a limitation with SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services (SSAS). It was not instance or cluster aware (much like SSIS today). Some time later with the help of service packs (if I can recall and use my search engine correctly) SSAS became cluster aware, but only supported running on the default instance. Thus the requirements and the reason that was true with BizTalk Server 2006 is crystal – due to the support of the underlying technology, namely SQL Server 2000, named instance of Analysis Service was not supported.
Present
I later versions of SQL Server, and the latest of SQL Server 2008 R2 specifically, there is no such limitation. Analysis Services is both cluster and instance aware and can be installed in a named instance. So the underlying limitation just isn’t there. But what about BizTalk? Does it have some built in limitation to how it uses Analysis Services that doesn’t allow working against a named instance?
The scenario
Two BizTalk Server Group installations – connected to their respective database instance – side-by-side. Both SQL Server instances has the database, agent and analysis services services installed. In the default instance I have a BizTalk Server Group configured with BAM tracking and Analysis, and a deployed activity and view when we start our journey. For the named instance I wanted to configure the same thing to see that there were no issue with
- running Analysis Service in a named instance, and
- running it side by side with the default instance and its Analysis Services on the same SQL Server machine.
Configuring BizTalk Server against a named instance of SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Services
First configuring the feature using BizTalk Server Configuration.
Then applying the configuration and view the result.
No issues.
Deploy BAM activities and views
Using bm.exe to deploy my BAM activity and view to my named instance.
No issues.
Using Tracking Profile Editor to connect my activity to an orchestration.
No issues.
Running some data through the integration
BizTalk Server behaves as expected. After running some sample data through the integration I could open my BAMPrimaryImportDb and run a Select against it to view my data.
Running my BAM_AN_<View> SSIS package
This was one of my prime candidates beforehand of where it could possibly go wrong. However as I used Business Intelligence Development Studio to inspect the package I could see that it was configured with datasources for the databases that it worked with, including the Analysis Services database, and it clearly points to the correct configured instance.
Running it caused no incidents that I could detect. After having run the package and processed the cube I was ready to look at the data in the cube to see if it got there as expected.
Viewing the Live Workbook
The first thing to check was the live workbook (useless as I find this feature I wanted to see if it could read the data as expected).
It could. And again, if we view the data connection properties here it point to my named instance.
(sorry about the swedish locale here, but you get the point)
Viewing data in the BAM portal
Next up, what about the BAM portal – would it be able to understand the named instance of SSAS and retrieve my data?
Yes. Both the Activity Search and the Aggregations show the data expected.
Conclusion
I can find no reason why SQL Server 2008 R2 Analysis Service cannot be used on a named instance with BizTalk Server 2010. Granted, this was just a small test and I certainly haven’t investigated this through every aspect (as per the usual disclaimer), but it “Works on my Machine”.
Do you know a reason that this will not work? Are you running this configuration yourself and can confirm further that it does work? Let me know
HTH
/Johan
Blog Post by: Johan Hedberg
by community-syndication | Jan 6, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
One problem with email notifications is it usually sends too many emails. Errors frequently happen in series. For example, a temporarily issue with network can result in hundreds repetitive emails. In result an email notification designed as a “VIP” notification is downgraded to the “annoying” status.
This email flooding could be mitigated with this solution.
A Sample demonstrates using the emails for sending notification in case of failed messages.
It compounds several similar errors in one email notification.
Recently I’ve downloadedthis sample
BizTalk: Samples: ErrorHandling: Notification emails
to MSDN Gallery.
It has all solution artifacts and can be used in real-life projects.
by community-syndication | Jan 5, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
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