BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Blogs and Sites To Keep on Your Radar

2008-07-25T08:23:00Z

We recently started the Connected .NET blog , where we’ll focus on the Windows Workflow Foundation ( WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) pillars of the .NET Framework. You definitely want to follow this blog which targets to make content more discoverable and will be frequently updated by members of our product team with interesting news and tips. Two other great resources are our MSDN sites for WF and WCF which we recently relaunched. These portal-like sites will be frequently updated...(read more)

InfoPath Rules Grouping Behavior (And New BizTalk Posters)

2008-07-24T22:06:27Z

A buddy at work is designing an InfoPath form and was befuddled by some awkward behavior in the way InfoPath executes its rule conditions. So let’s say that you want to execute the following comparison: “If the sum of the order is greater than $500, and, the customer is from either CA or FL, then set [...]...(read more)

Adapter Pack Poster from Microsoft

2008-07-24T17:06:00Z

Announcing the Biztalk Adapter Pack Poster We are happy to announce the availability of the new BizTalk Adapter Pack Poster. This poster covers interoperability with Line-of-Business Applications using the BizTalk Adapter Pack and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) LOB Adapter SDK. This poster depicts the functionality, components, architecture, and usage/hosting scenarios of BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 and of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK. When printed in full scale, this poster size is 38”x 26”...(read more)

Announcing the Biztalk Adapter Pack Poster

2008-07-24T16:24:00Z

We are happy to announce the availability of the new BizTalk Adapter Pack Poster. This poster covers interoperability with Line-of-Business Applications using the BizTalk Adapter Pack and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) LOB Adapter SDK. This poster depicts the functionality, components, architecture, and usage/hosting scenarios of BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 and of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK. When printed in full scale, this poster size is 38”x 26”. The poster in PDF format is available for...(read more)

Creating Linked Server to Informix

2008-07-23T19:52:33Z

I was given the task of connecting BizTalk to an Informix database. When the project was first kicked off, the client started exploring their options, one of the companies that they looked at was Attunity . I told them that the Linked Server option was a much better approach, while offering significant cost savings! So I started my research on how to get connected, and I came across a few pages of interest: The first is IBM documentation page about how to set up the actual connection within Enterprise...(read more)

Adding a new BizTalk Server Isolated Host needs a new Application Pool

2008-07-23T09:29:00Z

Recently, we tried creating a secondary Isolated Host to separate receive and send processing for WCF. After reconfiguring the servers, we were faced with the "Receive location for address '' not found. (The BizTalk receive location may be disabled)". Puzzled, we looked around for configuration issues. After some reading (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa559328.aspx), we remembered a new isolated host needs a new application pool. Adding another application pool to the...(read more)

Word Document Formats

2008-07-22T23:20:49Z

In generating an xml from a word document we were required to extract data from different formats. An example of each is below (the differences can be subtle sorry if its monotonous). The documents were generated by a software from White Hill Technologies (now Skywire Software )....(read more)

Parsing Timecard from Word to XML

2008-07-22T22:11:50Z

We had to take a timecard that was in MS Word 2003 format and create XML. An example of the word document is as follows. The red box indicates text that was hidden in the document which I have made visible for clarity. The program reads through the document, extracts text from the fields we are interested in and then converts it to XML as follows: <? xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> < ns0:file xmlns:ns0 ="http://schemas.stottis.com/thomson/3e/proforma/detail"...(read more)

Here it is: the answer to all SOA and ESB questions....

2008-07-22T18:43:32Z

[[ OK, I am writing this with tongue-in-cheek, which for anyone not familiar with that term, means "not really serious"!!! ]] Funny thing happened today on the ESB project that I'm on.... After a day of hard work, solving some really tough technical challenges (the kind that makes your head throb, your eyes glaze over and make you think that becoming a carpenter could be a smart career move), I leaned back in my chair and surveyed the landscape (my desk). A piece of tattered paper caught...(read more)

Joe does SOA

2008-07-22T14:23:00Z

Tomorrow Joe Klug will be presenting a session about Microsoft’s Real World SOA vision at the Microsoft’s offices in Downers Grove, IL. As part of the session Joe will present a version of a demo we built last year as an example of how to use Microsoft...( read more )...(read more)

Liberty Alliance awards

2008-07-22T14:17:00Z

For the last few years the Liberty Alliance project has published a lot best practices and specifications around identity solutions. Specifically, the Liberty Alliance has had a deep impact on Service Oriented Identity Federation solutions as a complement...( read more )...(read more)

BizTalk Setup: System.EnterpriseServices.TransactionProxyException

2008-07-21T21:44:46Z

This is now the second time that it has happened, and I didn't write about it before. I am setting BizTalk up in a multi server environment where the SQL Server exists on a different machine. I got the following error after applying the configuration: System.EnterpriseServices.TransactionProxyException After a couple of hours of going thru database permissions, checking MSTDC settings in component services. I found that on the SQL Server MS DTC was not installed (Add/Remove windows components...(read more)

Changes to the WCF LOB Adapter SDK in SP2

2008-07-21T18:15:09Z

If you’re developing your own adapters against the WCF LOB Adapter SDK, then it might be worth your while to try out the June CTP of the SP2 of the WCF LOB ASDK. There are a few minor changes, but we might make more based on your feedback. I’m mentioning the changes from SP1 to the June CTP of SP2 in brief. For more details, you should refer to the documentation. Pre SP2, the ASDK allowed all input channel shapes – IInputChannel, IInputSessionChannel, IReplyChannel, and IReplySessionChannel. In SP2...(read more)

A Great BizTalk Scenario - Two Way Port being Serviced by two one way backend ports

2008-07-21T09:04:00Z

This one came from Paolo Salvatori (a senior PM within the MS Connected Systems Division Team... I know a bit of a mouthful) whom has gotten in touch with his creative side and drawn a picture for all us common folk :) - well done Paolo. The scenario is - a Request/Response Port is published at the 'front end', goes through BizTalk and the work is done by a backend system that operates via a One-Way Send and BTS gets the response via another One-Way Receive . The thing I like about Paolo's...(read more)

Using BizTalk Server 2006 R2 with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V

2008-07-19T04:04:30Z

While building up some BizTalk R2 developer images I can across the answer to my question " Is R2 supported on 2008 Hyper-V? " Look no further than here..... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5c5d86ad-5e17-4ff2-abc9-5a81177f4b30&DisplayLang=en...(read more)

Creating a PIDX Partner Interface Process (PIP) in BTARN 3.5

2008-07-18T20:51:00Z

The next step in developing your PIDX / RNIF solution using the BizTalk Accelerator for RosettaNet (BTARN 3.5) is to create a new Process Configuration from your PIDX PIP. I’m going to use the PIDX “Invoice” and “Invoice Response” PIPs (P21 & P22) in this example since they are generally the most important in the Energy, Oil & Gas industry right now. 1. You begin by opening the BTARN Management Console and right-clicking on the Process Configuration Settings node in the left-hand pane and...(read more)

BizTalk Services “R12” Release – Workflow

2008-07-18T16:55:00Z

Drum roll please….for those of you are as interested in the advent of cloud services, this is big. Today, we released BizTalk Services “R12” Community Technology Preview (CTP). Just as a refresher : “BizTalk Services” is the code-name for an incubation for our SOA platform-in-the-cloud offering from Microsoft. BizTalk Services provides Messaging, Identity and Workflow (our latest addition) enabling developers to extend existing premises applications and build new composite applications. See my previous...(read more)

Validating Schemas During Runtime

2008-07-18T14:59:00Z

I recently came across an interesting scenario. In my application, we are transforming multiple incoming messages to a a canonical format. We then take the output and place it in the MessageBox for some other downstream subscriber to process. The Mapper did the transformation and created the output, however, based on the processing that we were doing during the mapping we found that some of the output messages we created did not always get created so that they would pass validation against the canonical...(read more)

Our first UK SOA/BPM User Group Meeting

2008-07-18T10:21:18Z

Last night we had our first UK SOA/BPM user group meeting held at Microsoft office in London Victoria. Thanks goes to Jonathan Woodward, Michael Stephenson , Andy James for organising this. It was a good turn around for the first meeting, around 30 people. It's good to get in touch with some of the folks you have only known in the online world. I think its very healthy knowledgeable crowd, with fellow MVP's ( Yossi Dahan , Santosh Benjamin , Robert Hogg ), few people from Connect Systems...(read more)

How can I find the installed hotfixes on the server/workstation?

2008-07-18T08:47:16Z

Looks like a silly question, but recently I struggled to find the installed hot fixes on our server. We install certain hotfixes on all of our BizTalk server. One of the critical ones is http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=943165 to solve the high CPU usage on a 64 bit machine. Like any other normal person I opened the "Control Panel\Add Remove Programs" and to my surprise I didn't see any entry about the hotfixes (I can see one or two .NET framework related hot fixes, which caused the...(read more)