Today I was working on some content for Tech Ed when I found a major error in a sample I posted about 4 months ago. The error caused the CR-LF’s between records to be included in the positional character count during debatching and actually into the messages themselves. This through off the file layout but did not give any errors. In fact, the expected result of three files were received. They just did not have the right data in them. I have seen similar problems in the past were the Flat File...

Recently I have seen a lot of talk about large message support in BizTalk 2004. The most interesting and depressing was on the BizTalk Core Engine WebLog . It seems that large messages do not work as well in BizTalk 2004 as I would have hoped. I have had success with some types of large messages using the file adapter and mapping. I have gotten it to work with messages up to 500 MB but in a production environment this would not be a viable or supported solution. During some recent testing, I discovered...

It is a common request. How can I debatch a message into smaller batches rather than single messages inside BizTalk 2004? I have tried many times to get this accomplished natively inside the pipeline. One would think it would be as easy as setting the group property to 10 if you wanted a batch size of 10, but that does not seem to work. The only way I have been able to break up a message into smaller batches has been inside custom code. I wrote a .net component that can be called using an atomic...

The help guide gives many excellent examples of using WMI to perform a large variety of useful tasks in BizTalk 2004. One of the little known features is the ability to have suspended messages saved to a file at the time of suspense. I would assume this is govern by the same rules of viewing tracked messages in HAT, that is the stream must be seekable for the message to be tracked and in this case saved (see Christof’s Blog Post ). What makes this feature so nice is it saves both the message...

Yesterday Microsoft released a BizTalk 2004 Adapter for MSMQ v2.0. This works with MSMQ 2.0 and 3.0. Here are the key features from the download site: The BizTalk 2004 Adapter for MSMQ provides support for sending and receiving messages using MSMQ 2.0 and 3.0, and takes advantage of the new features in MSMQ 3.0. Major features of the adapter include support for: • MSMQ 2.0 and 3.0 • Multi-threading option for faster performance • Guaranteed delivery when using transactional queues...

I guess these came out several days ago. I did not hear about it until now. Anyways, updated BizTalk 2004 Documentation is available here .

I have talked a lot in the past about Convoys. But, under the covers what really makes Convoy message processing different? What makes a Convoy a Convoy? To sum it all up into one sentence: Convoys require database level message-to-Orchestration correlation independent of any running Orchestration instances. Is this confusing? Yes. But trust me, more detailed information is coming soon on this topic. For now, I want to briefly go over the basic internals of how Convoys work in BizTalk Server 2004...

This is a cool feature of BizTalk 2004! It allows you to map many documents into one or map one document into many. In either case, your inputs will not equal your outputs. This type of mapping does require some up front planning and careful consideration. First off, this type of mapping is only allowed inside the Orchestration. Basically, what the mapper does is creates a kind of multi-part message for either the input, output, or both. The parts of the multi-part message are the different input...

Recently on a project I was required to filter out single records from a large batch that were not required to be processed inside the business process. In this case, the vast majority of the thousands of input records would not be required in the Orchestration. Rather the load the whole document into the Orchestration or break the document up into single messages, I decided to just suppress the non-required nodes in the mapper. This would greatly reduce the number of input records into the system...

The long awaited Service Pack 1 for BizTalk 2004 is now available. Get some more details on Scott’s Blog . Go directly to the Microsoft Download Site .

The BizTalk 2004 Exam is now available! The exam number is 074-135: Developing E-Business Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 (English). Get some more details on Scott’s Blog . Best of luck! PS: Sorry for the long delay in posting. More content and samples are coming soon!

I have seen a lot of posts on various news groups over the past few months about the Flat File Dissembler and how it produces output. I think it is rather confusing so I put together a sample that I hope will shed some light on the subject. Download: Flat File Disassembler Output Sample Watch the video: Flat File Disassemblier Output Options Video The Flat File Disassembler is used to convert flat file documents (either positional, delimited, or a supported combination) into XML based on a defined...

Download This Article and Sample Code Here: Debatching Options and Performance Considerations in BizTalk 2004 White Paper and Sample Code Related Sample: Xml Envelope Debatching In some business scenarios you may be required to receive a batch file that must be broken up and processed as single messages by BizTalk Server 2004. This could allow for individual record level processing, selective content based routing, or single message mapping. General Debatching Design Considerations Here are some...

What? How? When? Why? Useless? You have no clue what I am talking about? What are BTXTimerMessages? They are messages BizTalk uses internally to control timers. This includes the delay shape and scope shapes with timeouts. How will you see BTXTimerMessage? You will see these messages in HAT. They will be associated with running Orchestations. If they show up, they will be in the Delivered, Not Consumed (zombie) message status. When will you see BTXTimerMessages? I see these messages when I am working...

In many cases it can be useful to know the exact name of your output file that will be sent from your Orchestration using the File Adapter. This can be difficult if you are using the %MessageId%.xml macro to write the file since this it set after the message is sent from the Orchestration. Delivery Notification can help you determine if your message was sent successfully but it can not give you the file name. BizTalk 2004 has two ways to dynamically name your files from inside the Orchestration....

In the past, I have tended to focus on sequential convoys. Now, I decided to take a look at Concurrent Convoys. First off, I was sure in older versions of the documentation they were called Parallel Convoys? Maybe I’m mistaken or maybe the name changed over the past few months…. In any case, I will get with the times and call them Concurrent Convoys. No matter what you call them, the power and usefulness of this type of convoy is the same. Why use Concurrent Convoys? Concurrent convoys...

It can sometimes be challenging when mapping schemas in BizTalk 2004. One common problem is when the inbound document has one record and the source creates multiple records based on the data inside your single record. The root problem arises because you have nothing to loop around in the inbound document and need to create multiple nodes on the output. How can this be handled in the mapper? Two ways: Functoids or XSLT Template BizTalk 2004 introduces a new Functoid just for this situation. It is...

Working with XPath inside Orchestrations is a powerful and simple feature of BizTalk 2004. The help guide does a good job describing the process (under Using XPath in Message Assignment). I have found that the XPath queries can only be done against a Message and the results can be set to a Message, XML Document or other orchestration variables. XPath queries can also be executed against untyped messages. That is, a Message that is of type System.Xml.XmlDocument. CRITICAL: BizTalk xpath can be used...

InfoPath is something I heard a lot about several months ago, but not much since then. Recently, I had to set an InfoPath template to a message in BizTalk 2004. This is something that is rather simple, as long as you know what properties you need to set. To set an InfoPath template for use on an outgoing message just use this code inside the Message Assignment shape. This is set up to use an InfoPath template that has been deployment to a Sharepoint site. Other options are a Web Server or File Location...

Have you seen an error that looks like the one below on your Send Pipelines? There was a failure executing the send pipeline: "Microsoft.BizTalk.DefaultPipelines.XMLTransmit" Source: "XML assembler" Send Port: "some location" Reason: This Assembler cannot retrieve document specification by using this type: "namespace#rootnode". This is caused by not having a unique combination of namespace and root node (MessageType). BizTalk by default does not like unrecognized messages. The XML Disassembler has...