I am removing this post as it is no longer needed. With SP2 for 2004 public now, we have backported the Backup / Restore work from 2006 which includes scripts for automating the recovery of the system after a failure (which is what I had posted here). Those files are vbs scripts so there is no mystery as to what they are doing, and you should use them, following the DR instructions in our online docs.
Thx
Lee
First, sorry I have disappeared for a while. I seem to say sorry a lot. We are pushing hard over here to build an awesome next version of the product and to fix up a number of things you guys have given us feedback on. I’m also still working on my Tech-Ed presentation so, well, life is busy in BizTalk world. However, that is no reason for me to not try and help your life be less busy. Here is a question I often hear posed and I thought I would give a couple of pointers.
BizTalk itself has a number of databases. The base engine has a mananagement database, a tracking database, a messagebox database. It also uses the SSO database and then you have BAM and BAS and HWS to add into the mix. When things go bad, and one of those databases goes down due to an unrecoverable hardware failure, you want to be able to restore the database to a new machine and get up and rolling quickly. There is actually some pretty decent documentation out there at http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/operations/htm/ebiz_ops_backuprestore_inpu.asp. This should walk you through what we do and why. Basically, because at times we use distributed transactions across our databases, we require the use of transactional log marking of the logs across our databases. Luckily we provide a sql agent job which you can configure to do this marking and backups for you. Note, configuring this should not be considered an option, but a must. Not only will you have no recovery story without backups, but our dbs are marked as recovery model full, so without doing the log backups, the log will grow forever and you will fall over from out of disk space errors. In SP1, we also included a feature to automate the log shipping so that you can have a warm backup. Docs for this are on http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/7/c/07c3598d-0f27-4d7d-a471-fad9b7da4fbd/Readme.htm. I wanted, though, to share a couple of sample vbs files which I have written to automate the updating of biztalk after you have restored the databases to a new set of servers. One is for updating the databases. The other updates the registry. Both are driven by an xml file which will contain the information about which databases you moved and from where to where. If you did not move all of the database, but instead restored some in place and just rolledback to a point in the log, you don’t need to update them. The scripts are okay with you not putting all the databases in the .xml. However, make sure you get all databases into a consistent state. You don’t want to restore some and not others since we will then be out of sync. THESE ARE SAMPLES. You should try them out and make sure they work for you. I have actually only had a chance to try them out on the next release which we are working on, but since we have not changed the docs on how to restore, they’ll work for the 2004 too, but you need to test them and make sure. These are not “supported” but if you think you found an issue, let me know and I will update the file. The follow the steps outlined in the restoration process. Please read the docs and look at the scripts and test things out. In the next release, we will ship ones which look just like this as part of automating the restoration process, but I figured there is no point in not sharing them now since you have to do it now. Thx
So basically you would have a situtation where the hardware died and you needed to restore to a new machine, you would:
1)Make sure all bts related resources are turned off.
2) restore the databases to the new machines hopefully all you have to do is restore the last one if you were using our log shipping solution.
3) Fill in the xml script with the to and from values for all of your databases
4) Run the update registry script on each bts machine
5) Run the update database script on each machine
6) Turn everything back on and you are ready to go
Again, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS TRY THIS IN A TEST ENVIRONMENT. It would suck if you were in production and this issue hit you and you had never walked through what it took to restore and as such you realize that you had forgotten something which cost you. Test things so that you know how to do it if it ever occurs. Hope this stuff helps.
Thx
Lee
Each script takes one parameter which is the location of the .xml file which contains the update information.
UpdateDatabase.vbs
******************************************************************************************************
oldMgmtDBServer = “Not Specified”
oldMgmtDBName = “Not Specified”
newMgmtDBServer = “Not Specified”
newMgmtDBName = “Not Specified”
oldMasterMsgboxDBServer = “SubscriptionDBServerName”
oldMasterMsgboxDBName = “SubscriptionDBName”
newMasterMsgboxDBServer = “SubscriptionDBServerName”
newMasterMsgboxDBName = “SubscriptionDBName”
oldRuleEngineDBServer = “RuleEngineDBServerName”
oldRuleEngineDBName = “RuleEngineDBName”
newRuleEngineDBServer = “RuleEngineDBServerName”
newRuleEngineDBName = “RuleEngineDBName”
oldTrackingDBServer = “TrackingDBServerName”
oldTrackingDBName = “TrackingDBName”
newTrackingDBServer = “TrackingDBServerName”
newTrackingDBName = “TrackingDBName”
TrackingDatabaseMachineName = “TrackingDatabaseMachineName”
TrackingDatabaseName = “TrackingDatabaseName”
oldAnalysisDBServer = “TrackAnalysisServerName”
oldAnalysisDBName = “TrackAnalysisDBName”
newAnalysisDBServer = “TrackAnalysisServerName”
newAnalysisDBName = “TrackAnalysisDBName”
oldBamDBServer = “BamDBServerName”
oldBamDBName = “BamDBName”
newBamDBServer = “BamDBServerName”
newBamDBName = “BamDBName”
oldHWSAdminDBServer = “”
oldHWSAdminDBName = “”
newHWSAdminDBServer = “”
newHWSAdminDBName = “”
””””””’
Dim configObj, loaded, WshShell
Set configObj = CreateObject(“MSXML2.DOMDocument”)
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
configObj.async = false
loaded = configObj.load(WScript.Arguments(0))
if not loaded then
wscript.echo “Failed to load the document: ” & configObj.parserError.reason
‘return the error string
end if
dim node : set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/ManagementDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
oldMgmtDBServer = node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”)
oldMgmtDBName = node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”)
newMgmtDBServer = node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”)
newMgmtDBName = node.getAttribute(“newDBName”)
else
newMgmtDBServer = WshShell.RegRead(“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Administration\MgmtDBServer”)
newMgmtDBName = WshShell.RegRead(“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Administration\MgmtDBName”)
end if
set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/HWSAdminDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
oldHWSAdminDBServer = node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”)
oldHWSAdminDBName = node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”)
newHWSAdminDBServer = node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”)
newHWSAdminDBName = node.getAttribute(“newDBName”)
else
On Error Resume Next
newHWSAdminDBServer = WshShell.RegRead(“HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WebService\AdminDBServer”)
if (err = 0) then
newHWSAdminDBName = WshShell.RegRead(“HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WebService\AdminDBName”)
end if
newHWSAdminDBServer = WshShell.RegRead(“HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WMI\AdminDBServer”)
if (err = 0) then
newHWSAdminDBName = WshShell.RegRead(“HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WMI\AdminDBName”)
end if
On Error Goto 0
end if
set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/MessageBoxDB[@IsMaster=’1′]”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
oldMasterMsgboxDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”) & “‘”
oldMasterMsgboxDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”) & “‘”
newMasterMsgboxDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”) & “‘”
newMasterMsgboxDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBName”) & “‘”
end if
set node = nothing
set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/TrackingDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
oldTrackingDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”) & “‘”
oldTrackingDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”) & “‘”
newTrackingDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”) & “‘”
newTrackingDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBName”) & “‘”
TrackingDatabaseMachineName = newTrackingDBServer
TrackingDatabaseName = newTrackingDBName
end if
set node = nothing
set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/AnalysisDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
oldAnalysisDBDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”) & “‘”
oldAnalysisDBDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”) & “‘”
newAnalysisDBDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”) & “‘”
newAnalysisDBDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBName”) & “‘”
end if
set node = nothing
set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/BamDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
oldBamDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”) & “‘”
oldBamDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”) & “‘”
newBamDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”) & “‘”
newBamDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBName”) & “‘”
end if
set node = nothing
set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/RuleEngineDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
oldRuleEngineDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”) & “‘”
oldRuleEngineDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”) & “‘”
newRuleEngineDBServer = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”) & “‘”
newRuleEngineDBName = “‘” & node.getAttribute(“newDBName”) & “‘”
end if
””””””’
wscript.echo “Attempting to connect to server “”” & newMgmtDBServer & “””, database “”” & newMgmtDBName & “””…”
dim cnString : cnString = “Driver={SQL Server}; Trusted_Connection=yes; Server=” & newMgmtDBServer & “; Initial Catalog=” & newMgmtDBName
dim MgmtDbConn : set MgmtDbConn = GetConnection(cnString)
dim MgmtDbCmd : set MgmtDbCmd = CreateObject(“ADODB.Command”)
set MgmtDbCmd.ActiveConnection = MgmtDbConn
wscript.echo “Updating the adm_Group table with new information”
MgmtDbCmd.CommandText = “Update adm_Group SET BamDBServerName = ” & newBamDBServer & “, BamDBName = ” & newBamDBName & “, TrackAnalysisServerName = ” & newAnalysisDBServer & “, TrackAnalysisDBName = ” & newAnalysisDBName & “, TrackingDBServerName = ” & newTrackingDBServer & “, TrackingDBName = ” & newTrackingDBName & “, SubscriptionDBServerName = ” & newMasterMsgboxDBServer & “, SubscriptionDBName = ” & newMasterMsgboxDBName & “, RuleEngineDBServerName = ” & newRuleEngineDBServer & “, RuleEngineDBName = ” & newRuleEngineDBName
wscript.echo MgmtDbCmd.CommandText
MgmtDbCmd.Execute
wscript.echo “Updating the list of messageboxes in the management database”
for each node in configObj.selectNodes(“/UpdateConfiguration/MessageBoxDB”)
oldDBName = node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”)
oldDBServer = node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”)
newDBName = node.getAttribute(“newDBName”)
newDBServer = node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”)
‘ Perform the Update here
MgmtDbCmd.CommandText = “Update adm_MessageBox set DBName = ‘” & newDBName & “‘, DBServerName = ‘” & newDBServer & “‘ WHERE DBName = ‘” & oldDBName & “‘ AND DBServerName = ‘” & oldDBServer & “‘”
wscript.echo MgmtDbCmd.CommandText
MgmtDbCmd.Execute
MgmtDbCmd.CommandText = “Update TDDS_Sources set SourceName = ‘” & newDBServer & “_” & newDBName & “‘, ConnectionString = ‘Pooling=false;Current Language=us_english;Integrated Security=SSPI;Data Source=” & newDBServer & “;Initial Catalog=” & newDBName & “‘ WHERE SourceName = ‘” & oldDBServer & “_” & oldDBName & “‘”
wscript.echo MgmtDbCmd.CommandText
MgmtDbCmd.Execute
next
wscript.echo “updating the list TDDS Destinations with the new tracking database names”
set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/TrackingDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
oldDBName = node.getAttribute(“oldDBName”)
oldDBServer = node.getAttribute(“oldDBServer”)
newDBName = node.getAttribute(“newDBName”)
newDBServer = node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”)
MgmtDbCmd.CommandText = “Update TDDS_Destinations set ConnectionString = ‘Pooling=false;Current Language=us_english;Integrated Security=SSPI;Data Source=” & newDBServer & “;Initial Catalog=” & newDBName & “‘ WHERE ConnectionString = ‘Pooling=false;Current Language=us_english;Integrated Security=SSPI;Data Source=” & oldDBServer & “;Initial Catalog=” & oldDBName & “‘”
wscript.echo MgmtDbCmd.CommandText
MgmtDbCmd.Execute
end if
‘update HWS_Core in HWS Admin database
if ( (newHWSAdminDBServer <> “”) AND (newHWSAdminDBName <> “”) ) then
wscript.echo “Attempting to connect to server “”” & newHWSAdminDBServer & “””, database “”” & newHWSAdminDBName & “””…”
cnString = “Driver={SQL Server}; Trusted_Connection=yes; Server=” & newHWSAdminDBServer & “; Initial Catalog=” & newHWSAdminDBName
dim HWSDbConn : set HWSDbConn = GetConnection(cnString)
dim HWSDbCmd : set HWSDbCmd = CreateObject(“ADODB.Command”)
set HWSDbCmd.ActiveConnection = HWSDbConn
HWSDbCmd.CommandText = “Update HWS_Core set BizTalkServerLocation = ‘” & newMgmtDBServer & “‘, BizTalkManagementDBName = ‘” & newMgmtDBName & “‘, TrackingDatabaseMachineName = ” & TrackingDatabaseMachineName & “, TrackingDatabaseName = ” & TrackingDatabaseName & “, ConstraintsDatabaseMachineName = ‘” & newHWSAdminDBServer & “‘, ConstraintsDatabaseName = ‘” & newHWSAdminDBName & “‘”
wscript.echo HWSDbCmd.CommandText
HwsDbCmd.Execute
end if
‘ ===============================================================
‘ GetConnection(cnString)
‘ This function accepts a connection string and opens
‘ a connection by using it. It returns the connection
‘ back
‘ ===============================================================
Function GetConnection(cnString)
dim conn : set conn = CreateObject(“ADODB.Connection”)
conn.ConnectionTimeout = 30
conn.Provider = “MSDASQL”
conn.Open cnString
Set GetConnection = conn
End Function
***************************************************************************************************
UpdateRegistry
***************************************************************************************************
Dim configObj, loaded, WshShell
Set configObj = CreateObject(“MSXML2.DOMDocument”)
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
configObj.async = false
loaded = configObj.load(WScript.Arguments(0))
if not loaded then
wscript.echo “Failed to load the document: ” & configObj.parserError.reason
‘return the error string
end if
On Error Resume Next
dim node : set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/ManagementDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
newDBServer = node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”)
newDBName = node.getAttribute(“newDBName”)
bKey = WshShell.RegRead(“HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Administration\MgmtDBServer”)
if (err = 0) then
WScript.Echo bKey
WshShell.RegWrite “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Administration\MgmtDBServer”, newDBServer, “REG_SZ”
WshShell.RegWrite “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Administration\MgmtDBName”, newDBName, “REG_SZ”
end if
else
wscript.echo “Management Database was not updated”
end if
set node = configObj.selectSingleNode(“/UpdateConfiguration/HWSAdminDB”)
if not (node Is Nothing) then
newDBServer = node.getAttribute(“newDBServer”)
newDBName = node.getAttribute(“newDBName”)
bKey = WshShell.RegRead(“HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WebService\AdminDBServer”)
if (err = 0) then
WScript.Echo bKey
WshShell.RegWrite “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WebService\AdminDBServer”, newDBServer, “REG_SZ”
WshShell.RegWrite “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WebService\AdminDBName”, newDBName, “REG_SZ”
end if
bKey = WshShell.RegRead(“HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WMI\AdminDBServer”)
if (err = 0) then
WScript.Echo bKey
WshShell.RegWrite “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WMI\AdminDBServer”, newDBServer, “REG_SZ”
WshShell.RegWrite “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0\Hws\WMI\AdminDBName”, newDBName, “REG_SZ”
end if
else
wscript.echo “HWS Admin Database was not updated”
end if
*****************************************************************************************************
Sample .xml for driving these scripts. You should be editting this obviously. I just put the names of the dbs in here.
*****************************************************************************************************
<UpdateConfiguration>
<MessageBoxDB oldDBName=”BizTalkMsgboxDb” oldDBServer=”asdf” newDBName=”BizTalkMsgboxDb” newDBServer=”fdsa” IsMaster=”1″/>
<TrackingDB oldDBName=”BizTalkDTADb” oldDBServer=”asdf” newDBName=”BizTalkDTADb” newDBServer=”fdsa”/>
<RuleEngineDB oldDBName=”BizTalkRuleEngineDb” oldDBServer=”asdf” newDBName=”BizTalkRuleEngineDb” newDBServer=”fdsa” IsMaster=”1″/>
<BAMDB oldDBName=”BizTalkDTADb” oldDBServer=”asdf” newDBName=”BizTalkDTADb” newDBServer=”fdsa”/>
<ManagementDB oldDBName=”BizTalkMsgboxDb” oldDBServer=”asdf” newDBName=”BizTalkMsgboxDb” newDBServer=”fdsa” IsMaster=”1″/>
<HWSAdminDB oldDBName=”BizTalkDTADb” oldDBServer=”asdf” newDBName=”BizTalkDTADb” newDBServer=”fdsa”/>
</UpdateConfiguration>
I suppose my first entry in this blog should be some insightful post about the BizTalk Rules Engine (BRE). Sorry, move along please, nothing to see.
You see, I want to record my journey through a whole new technology. The BRE is that technology. I’m lucky – I’ve been given the opportunity to specialise in one facet of a BizTalk, and I want to share that experience – even the good, bad and ugly times.
(See update below)
If you have attempted to send email from BizTalk, you’ve gotten pretty comfortable
with this documentation
topic.
It discusses how to use a sample class (Microsoft.XLANGs.CustomFormattersSDK.RawString)
and associated custom formatter to deal with messages that contain raw string content.
As the docs say, “Sending a message of type System.String will not work, because
the string gets formatted as an XML document in the message, which is not your desired
solution.” (In other words, whether you send or receive, using System.String
as a message type means you are dealing with a wrapping tag.)
However, though the docs cover sending RawStrings, it is less clear how you
can use the RawString class when you want to receive messages as such. Just
typing the port operation as RawString will yield a UnexpectedMessageTypeException,
because none of the default receive pipelines will set the MessageType context property
on inbound messages to be RawString – and this type matching is what orchestrations
expect.
We need a custom receive pipeline that will set the MessageType context property equal
to the fully qualified type name for RawString. Jon’s discussion of receiving
binary messages provides some background here, and Jon’s ContextAdder pipeline
component can make the MessageType context property assignment very easy.
Here are the steps required to receive RawStrings:
Now you will have full access to the raw string content, and can do whatever you need
to do…You might want to declare an orchestration variable of type RawString,
and assign it to the RawString message so you can access properties/methods like ToString(),
which returns the underlying string content.
>
Update:
Greg Van de Wiele has pointed
out the other way to go about this (and Jon has talked
about this approach in his recent posts as well.) It can be less work
in that no custom pipeline is required (a one time task) – though perhaps a little
harder to explain to the “next guy“…you can decide!
It goes like this:
Note that not wrapping the RawString in a multipart message doesn’t work
– you will get a compiler error indicating that assignments can’t be made between
XmlDocument and RawString types. Also note that introducing an intermediate
message has a performance cost.
(See update below)
If you have attempted to send email from BizTalk, you’ve gotten pretty comfortable
with this documentation
topic.
It discusses how to use a sample class (Microsoft.XLANGs.CustomFormattersSDK.RawString)
and associated custom formatter to deal with messages that contain raw string content.
As the docs say, “Sending a message of type System.String will not work, because
the string gets formatted as an XML document in the message, which is not your desired
solution.” (In other words, whether you send or receive, using System.String
as a message type means you are dealing with a wrapping tag.)
However, though the docs cover sending RawStrings, it is less clear how you
can use the RawString class when you want to receive messages as such. Just
typing the port operation as RawString will yield a UnexpectedMessageTypeException,
because none of the default receive pipelines will set the MessageType context property
on inbound messages to be RawString – and this type matching is what orchestrations
expect.
We need a custom receive pipeline that will set the MessageType context property equal
to the fully qualified type name for RawString. Jon’s discussion of receiving
binary messages provides some background here, and Jon’s ContextAdder pipeline
component can make the MessageType context property assignment very easy.
Here are the steps required to receive RawStrings:
Now you will have full access to the raw string content, and can do whatever you need
to do…You might want to declare an orchestration variable of type RawString,
and assign it to the RawString message so you can access properties/methods like ToString(),
which returns the underlying string content.
>
Update:
Greg Van de Wiele has pointed
out the other way to go about this (and Jon has talked
about this approach in his recent posts as well.) It can be less work
in that no custom pipeline is required (a one time task) – though perhaps a little
harder to explain to the “next guy“…you can decide!
It goes like this:
Note that not wrapping the RawString in a multipart message doesn’t work
– you will get a compiler error indicating that assignments can’t be made between
XmlDocument and RawString types. Also note that introducing an intermediate
message has a performance cost.
Abstract: this seems an easy question, but I have not found a proper answer yet feel free to give your answer and a little justification.
The complete question is:
What should I secure? the access to the resources, or the content of the resources?
Securing the access means controlling who sees the resources, in terms of who can read files, databases, etc.
Securing the content means encrypting the file content or the data inside databases, so everybody can read but only a few can understand.
Meanwhile you think a response,
– There is an application, let’s say, and ASP.NET application.
– Then there is IIS authentication, let’s say, Windows Integrated Authentication.
– Then there is .NET Framework Code Access Security settings, let’s say, system administrators configuring execution permissions to the assembly.
– Then there is more Code Access Security (developer’s), so the .NET assembly asks declaratively for a read permission to a resource file.
– Then there is the resource file, encrypted, of course, to store a Connection String.
– Then there is a connection to a database engine, with user/password challenge for authentication.
– Then there is database authorization, give access to a concrete database object.
– Then there is a query, that returns an encrypted column (lovely Yukon).
– Then there is a database-level encryption user key, using a password or passphrase provided by the user, so the executing assembly can read the column data.
– So the column data goes in clear to the assembly, which returns the information to the IIS to be returned to the human-being at the other side of the network. Of course IIS uses a HTTPS connection, beware of hackers
back to que question… Encrypt files or protect them from being read? or both? most important: why?
Andy Morrison wrote
about a technique for identifying the correct host instance to attach to when
debugging components associated with orchestrations.
A potentially easier solution is to keep perfmon running with the counter shown below
(BizTalk:Messaging/ID Process – all instances.) The counter values will update
every time a host instance recycles. The Debug-Processes dialog in Visual Studio
will show you (and allow you to sort by) process IDs to make this easy.
Then put PerfMon in “report view” to easily see process IDs by host instance:
Andy Morrison wrote
about a technique for identifying the correct host instance to attach to when
debugging components associated with orchestrations.
A potentially easier solution is to keep perfmon running with the counter shown below
(BizTalk:Messaging/ID Process – all instances.) The counter values will update
every time a host instance recycles. The Debug-Processes dialog in Visual Studio
will show you (and allow you to sort by) process IDs to make this easy.
Then put PerfMon in “report view” to easily see process IDs by host instance:
There have been several folks who have discussed how to create messages “from scratch”
within an Orchestration context – you can read Matt’s
thoughts and check out a BizTalk documentation
excerpt. This is a common question, and I had an additional technique I thought
I would share…
Background: When you have a schema that has many promoted properties (or distinguished
fields), or many elements that can be set via xpath expressions easily, it can be
useful to simply start with a “template” document instance and populate the element
content that you are interested in.
In this situation, you will often have a “Message Assignment” shape that looks something
like this:
xmlDoc.LoadXml("<ns0:BizTalkSampleS3
xmlns:ns0="http://BizTalkSample.Schemas.BizTalkSampleS3">
<SomeElement></SomeElement></ns0:BizTalkSampleS3>");
someMsg = xmlDoc;
someMsg.SomeElement = "some content";
// (or xpath(someMsg,someElementXPath) = "some content" if we don't have a
// distinguished field.)
One disadvantage of loading up “template” xml documents from either expression shapes
or code (via XmlDocument.LoadXml) is that those xml fragments can get easily “lost”,
and are hard to update early in the development cycle when schemas may still be in
flux. Loading the template files from the file system is problematic because
the question arises “where should I store these files, so that I can find them in
any environment I deploy to?” (Solvable, but a hassle.)
Instead, why not embed the template xml documents as assembly resources? For
those unfamiliar with that process, I have a short tutorial here (& a helper class.)
sampleUsingTemplate =
BizTalkSample.Components.EmbeddedResourceCache.
GetXmlDocResource("BizTalkSampleS3_output.xml");
// Populate the "rest" of the message with distinguished fields, promoted
// properties, xpath expressions, etc.
sampleUsingTemplate.SomeElement = "foo";
The class I have supplied will cache the loaded resources in a hashtable for performance
sake, and allow you to load resources as both strings and XmlDocuments.
A last thought: Many people ask, “Why can’t I just create a message using a new operator
or a default constructor of some sort?” Well, because few XSD schemas sufficiently
constrain the set of valid instance documents enough for that to be useful – what
form would a “default message” take? (Would it have the optional elements you need?
Some elements that you don’t want?)
Enjoy – feedback appreciated!
I found a post on the BizTalk Discussion Groups about SQL Server 2000 SP4 in combination with BizTalk Server 2004
Here his post :
Installed SQL Server 2000 SP4 on two development servers over the weekend
with no problems and on two production server on Monday with only slight
problems during the Analysis Server SP4 installation. The problem (bug) has
been reported to MS and they’re issuing a KB article. It’s related to the
MDAC update on servers running MOM2005.