by community-syndication | May 31, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
This post is about using a recursive XSLT Call Template to create many elements from one using an incrementing counter. I found this example interesting and thought it was worth sharing. This post is for James just to show that I will use XSLT if I really have to. Recently I was presented with the […]
Blog Post by: mbrimble
by community-syndication | May 31, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
This part will focus on installing and configuring Microsoft BizTalk 2013 R2 Accelerator for RosettaNet. Make sure that you have installed all the prerequisites and prepared you environment for the RosettaNet accelerator. Install Microsoft BizTalk 2013 R2 Accelerator for RosettaNet BizTalk Accelerator for RosettaNet is available in the BizTalk Server installation disk (ISO) under: “BizTalk […]
Blog Post by: Sandro Pereira
by community-syndication | May 29, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
This may be the most important section in order for you to accomplish a successfully BTARN installation and configuration and at the same time preventing further additional problems. Again, the installation and configuration process is very simple, however be able to correctly configure the accelerator in order to work properly can be difficult if you […]
Blog Post by: Sandro Pereira
by community-syndication | May 28, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
This series of post will explain in detail – a step-by-step guide – how to install and configure Microsoft BizTalk 2013 R2 Accelerator for RosettaNet (BTARN) on a standalone environment running Windows Server 2012 R2 and BizTalk Server 2013 R2. RosettaNet is a business protocol that enables enterprises to conduct business over the Internet. The […]
Blog Post by: Sandro Pereira
by bchesnut | May 27, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
It has been a couple of weeks since I returned from attending the 1st ever Microsoft Ignite conference, it was held in Chicago and had around 23,000 attendees and heaps of really good sessions.
I think probably one of the biggest issue with IT currently is keeping up with the rate of change, this is one reason I really enjoyed attending Ignite, it gives people the ability to catch up on lots of different technologies in a short period of time, even though your brain feels like it is filling up within the 1st day or so of a week long conference. It never fails that when I am getting ready to attend an event like Ignite, I start creating my schedule and as always I have 4 to 5 session I want to attending at the same time, this year it was the 9:00am slot on both Tuesday and Wednesday that have 5 different topics that I wanted to attend, but the good thing about Ignite is that the session are recorded and available to view after the event.
Here are my highlights of the sessions I attended:
Windows 10 / Windows Server 2016
- Universal Apps – really think this technology will help developers deliver better cross device support and I am looking forward to start working on a couple of pet projects that I have had in the back of my mind for several year.
- Domain Joining machines to Azure Active Directory – with some of our recent BizTalk Integration projects we have create BizTalk Server environments in Azure IaaS, to do this with BizTalk it required a virtual machine running as a Domain Controller, this feature of being able to join machine to an existing Azure Active Directory will simply and extend the capabilities of BizTalk Server running in Azure IaaS.
- Windows Hello – I have always been a believer that strong authentication is a must, I have seen too many cases where it was not. Windows Hello with both facial recognition and enhanced finger print recognition will go a long way to making strong authentication quick and easy.
API Management
- PowerShell and C# SDK Preview – though this was only talked about a Ignite, since returning from Ignite it has been release, this is help strengthen the DevOps story around API Management
- Policy Expressions – As with many of the Azure Technologies, API management keeps adding to the capabilities and feature at a feverish pitch.
- Control Flow Policy –
- Self-signed backend certificates – probably does not effect many production scenarios but this helps heaps with your dev and test scenarios with API Management
- Source Control with GIT – the API Management team has exposed the API Management instance as a GIT repository so you can use commands to both import and export you API definition and configuration, again a big win for DevOps with API Management
TFS / Visual Studio Online Build.Preview (or sometime referred to as VNext.Build)
- Task Based Build – Yes, no more fighting with XAML (XAML based build workflows are still their if you have them), I am very impressed with this new engine, I was able to do in just a few hours what had taken me days to do in XAML. It has now been enabled on Visual Studio Online.
- All Task Base Build Task Source on GITHub – So if you like one of their task, but want to do a bit of customisation for your particular environment, you have access to all of their code. I have plans for a couple of custom tasks around the BizTalk Deployment Framework.
- XCopy build agent install – I the past you needed a build server for each team project collection, now you can have a single build server (in my case BizTalk) for a number of team project collections.
Release Management
- Web Based – No more thick client / server to install, it is going to be part of Visual Studio Online
- Integrated with VS Online – so when do a build you can then kick off deployments to your dev/test environment and even those higher environments with a nice approval structure
- Same Client as Build.Preview – Leveraging the work done on the XCopy deployment for the Build.Preview agent, the release management uses the same agent.
Azure Stack
- Run Azure on your own hardware – a feature that lots of people have been asking for, the previous Azure Pack did some, but Azure Stack has most of the Azure features.
SQL Server 2016
- Changed from 2015 to 2016 – There are several products that have been changed from 2015 to 2016, from what I can tell, related to Windows Server 2016, BizTalk has also been changed to 2016
- MSDTC support for AlwaysOn Availability Groups – Hopefully with this feature and BizTalk 2016 we will no longer have to rely on Log Shipping for BizTalk Server DR
Azure Service Fabric
- Can run Azure Redundancy on you own hardware – One of the great features of Azure is that for storage you get 3 copies and for virtual machines and several other services you get 3 copies of you instances so if hardware fails you don’t notice, they have opened this up for people that want this kind of HA on their own hardware, thus removing a lot of those requirements for large clustered infrastructure servers, the recording of these session is very informative.
API Apps / Logic Apps
- Heaps of changes since Preview Release – Again like many of the Azure products, heaps of changes in the 6-8 weeks since it was released into preview and many more changes coming before GA (sometime this summer (US))
- Some ALM, with more coming – they have shown how to export your Logic Apps with a PowerShell command and then create a project in Visual Studio to update/change and deploy back to Azure
- Market Place – they have talked about having different levels of Market Place and for many Enterprise Customers, this is going to be very helpful, having a Enterprise Market Place where other developers in your Enterprise can discover and reuse your API Apps and Logic Apps
There were many other session at Ignite 2015, so please go to http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015 and view the session that you are interested in
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by community-syndication | May 27, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I just finished up speaking at a run of conferences (Cloud Foundry Summit, ALM Forum, and the OpenStack Summit) and the recorded presentations are all online. The Cloud Foundry Summit was excellent and you can find all the conference videos… Read More ›
Blog Post by: Richard Seroter
by community-syndication | May 27, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I have just started to work with a new set of schemas that has required me to use tricks I did not know about. The first problem that I struck was that when I added the schema into a BizTalk project I got the following error on opening it. This schema is an invalid XSD […]
Blog Post by: mbrimble
by community-syndication | May 26, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Originally posted on Connected Pawns:
The Auckland Systems User group(ACSG) will be holding a one day mini-symposium on Saturday July 18th in Datacom’s cafe. Please see the ACSG site for further details and how to register. This is a free event and will be restricted to the first 70 people who register . This will…
Blog Post by: Johann
by community-syndication | May 25, 2015 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Published By: Bill Chesnut
Over the years working with BizTalk Server I have discovered a couple of things that have been left out of the base BizTalk Server Product, the 1st and foremost is that the Backup BizTalk Server SQL Agent job does not delete the backup files, it has a step to delete the backup history from the database, but not the files from the file system. The other 2 things that can cause issues are related to BAM, when a BAM activity is deployed into BizTalk, it creates a SSIS package that does the Archiving and Deleting of the BAM data, but if you don’t remember to schedule this SSIS package it never happens, the last BAM related one is Scheduled Aggregations. If you are using SQL Server Standard Edition, you cannot enable Real Time Aggregation in your BAM Activity and you must schedule the created Scheduled Aggregation SSIS package to run.
Now that we have discussed these 3 missing components to the base BizTalk Server product, lets look at how to solve these issues.
SSIS Package to Delete BizTalk Server Database Backups
In the past I have created a replace stored procedure that will delete the history and files created by the BizTalk Server Backup SQL agent job, the issue with this SQL Stored Procedure was that it required SQL Command Exec to be enabled on the SQL Server and this is considered a security risk by many SQL DBAs.
So to please the SQL DBAs I decided that an SSIS package could do the same thing, without needing SQL Command Exec to be enabled, this SSIS package uses that same SQL query as the Clear Backup History step of the default Backup BizTalk Server SQL Agent Job. Below are the instructions to install the SSIS package:
- Download the DeleteBackupHistoryAndFiles SSIS package for your version of BizTalk and SQL from here
- Import SSIS Package into SQL Integration Services
- Select the SSIS Package from your download location
- Change the Protection Level to “Rely on server storage and roles for access control”, Click OK
- Open the Backup BizTalk Server SQL Agent Job, Click Steps, Click Clear Backup History, Configure as Shown (replace Server name with your SQL Server Name), Click Data Sources
- In the Data Sources update the name of the SQL Server, Click Set values
- In the Set values, enter the following 2 values (UseLocalTime should set to the value in Backup Full, DaysToKeep is up to you), Click OK
- \Package.Variables[User::UseLocalTime].Properties[Value]
- \Package.Variables[User::DaysToKeep].Properties[Value]
- The Backup BizTalk Server is now updated, test to make sure it is working
- Trouble Shooting
- make sure the account the SQL Agent is running under has permissions to delete the backup files
- Make sure the Backup BizTalk Server is creating full backups, the job will not delete any files newer than the last full backup
SSIS Package to run All BAM Archive Packages
This package was created to ease the efforts on the BizTalk Administrators, the recommend procedure in BizTalk Server is that every time a BAM activity is deployed the BizTalk Administrators need to create a SQL Agent job to run the BAM_DM_ SSIS Package, this can easily be forgotten and can result in a large performance impact on BizTalk Server, the worse case and the reason I wrote this SSIS package was 20,000,000 rows for a Single BAM Activity.
This package once install will run the BAM_DM_ SSIS Package for each BAM Activity that is currently deployed in the BizTalk Server, by reading the bam_Metadata_Activities table in the BAMPrimaryImport database.
- Download the Run All BAM SSIS Packages from here
- Import SSIS Package into SQL Integration Services
- Select the SSIS Package from your download location
- Change the Protection Level to “Rely on server storage and roles for access control”, Click OK
- Create a new job in the SQL Agent Jobs, Set the Job Name and Click Steps
- In Steps, Click New, configure as Shown (replace Server name with your SQL Server Name), Click Data Sources
- Update Data Sources with your SQL Server Name, Click OK, Click Schedules, Click New
- Enter Your Schedule Details (My recommendation is once a week on Sunday Morning), Click OK, Click OK
- The Run All BAM Archive Packages Job is now created, test to make sure it is working
- Trouble Shooting
- Make sure the account the SQL Agent is running under has permissions to read the bam_Metadata_Activities table.
- Make sure the account the SQL Agent is running under has permissions to run SSIS Packages
SSIS Package to run All Schedule Aggregation Packages
This package was again create to ease the workload on BizTalk Administrators, very similar to the package above, if you have SQL Standard Edition in your BizTalk Server Environment you cannot use Real Time Aggregation, you must use Scheduled Aggregations to update SQL Analysis Services for your BAM Views. This again requires your BizTalk Administrator to create a SQL Agent Job to run the BAM_AN_ SSIS Package, this can be easily forgotten and your views will not have the most current data.
This package once install will run the BAM_AN_ SSIS Package for each BAM View that is currently deployed in the BizTalk Server, by reading the bam_Metadata_AnalysisTasks table in the BAMPrimaryImport database.
- Download the RunAllScheduledAggregations SSIS package for your version of BizTalk from here
- Import SSIS Package into SQL Integration Services
- Select the SSIS Package from your download location
- Change the Protection Level to “Rely on server storage and roles for access control”, Click OK
- Create a new job in the SQL Agent Jobs, Set the Job Name and Click Steps, Click New
- On Steps, configure as Shown (replacing you SQL Server Name), Click Data Sources
- Update Data Sources with your SQL Server Name, Click OK, Click Schedules, Click New
- Enter Your Schedule Details (This depends on your data, I will show every 5 minutes during business hours), Click OK, Click OK
- The Run All BAM Scheduled Aggregations Job is now created, test to make sure it is working
- Trouble Shooting
- Make sure the account the SQL Agent is running under has permissions to read the bam_Metadata_AnalysisTasks table.
- Make sure the account the SQL Agent is running under has permissions to run SSIS Packages
I hope this post helps reduce the load on your BizTalk Administrators and keeps your BizTalk Server running efficiently.
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Tags: BizTalk SSIS
