June, 2005

What are Promoted Properties and why does BizTalk have them? Long and short of it: Property promotion is about getting easy and fast access to data. Easy: Because you typically do not have to know anything about your data to get access to it. Example: Message(some property). Rather then some long and error prone xpath query. Fast: Because you do not have to load the whole message into memory to get access to the data. It is placed inside the message context (a collection of key-value pairs that are...

Have you seen this error when installing BizTalk 2004 ? Failed to deploy BizTalk system assembly "C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004\Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas.dll". Unspecified exception: An error occurred while enlisting in a distributed transaction. I ran into this a few weeks ago when trying to install BizTalk 2004 on a Windows 2003 Server with SP1 preloaded and using a remote SQL Server. It appears that like Windows XP SP2, Windows SP1 changes some DTC settings. This...

With the release of BizTalk 2006 Beta just around the corner, why not get a head start by seeing how to call a Receive Pipeline from within an Orchestration. For starter, why would you want to call a Receive Pipeline from within an Orchestration? I had to struggle for a bit to come up with a good reason… I can find it useful in debatching Scenarios that require mapping prior to debatching or for debatching into smaller batches using a map. I could also find it useful when working with flat...

Curious on how you can use Sharepoint, InfoPath, and BizTalk 2004 together? This hands on lab will take you through a simple integration scenario step-by-step using Sharepoint and InfoPath to display delivery exceptions using Delivery Notification inside an Orchestration using BizTalk 2004. This lab will take around 60 minutes to complete and is based on Microsoft’s hands-on-labs. Sharepoint (or Windows Sharepoint Services) and the Sharepoint Adapter for BizTalk 2004 (available on GotDotNet...

Here is a 45 minute, step-by-step lab showing how to use the Flat File Disassembler, Delivery Notification, and a Sequential Convoy to map a large flat file document in BizTalk 2004. This lab will break up a large flat file into single messages, map each message, and write the ordered output to an output file. This lab takes you through it in three Exercises. It is based on Microsoft’s hands-on-labs. Download: Sequential Message Processing Hands On Lab Setup is simple. Unzip the download to...

Just a quick note about calling a BizTalk Orchestration exposed as a web service with the input and output schema that have the same type. In this case, the web service wizard creates the input as byref rather then byval.

Many of these were released a few months ago in a beta form but now they are available on the Microsoft website. They include the following: BizTalk Server 2004: A Messaging Engine Overview BizTalk Server 2004 and Web Services Connecting to the Elemica Network with BizTalk Accelerator for RosettaNet 3.0 Developing Integration Solutions with BizTalk Server 2004 Implementing UAN on BizTalk Server 2004 to Integrate Siebel and SAP Risk Scoring with BizTalk Server 2004 and the Business Rules Framework...