Re-testing the tutorials with a twist

by community-syndication | May 22, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

As you can see from the numerous issues posted on this blog, the tutorials are not as perfect as I had planned. While these tutorials went through a number of formal test passes, there still remain discrepancies between the tester experience and the user experience.

The change I’m making to my personal test pass is that I’ve installed the Developer edition of Visual Studio 2005. Now that may be a no-brainer, but I only recently started suspecting that this may be an issue. It turns out that the platform I’ve been using includes the Team Architect edition.

More later on the results of this experiment.

Tutorial – Lesson 3 Step 5 Problem

by community-syndication | May 22, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

From the newsgroups:

Advanced BizTalk 2006 Course by Breeze Training!

by community-syndication | May 22, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I was on IM with Mick Badran (the man behind Breeze Training) last week and he sent me a link to his new training course for those experienced Aussie BizTalk Developers! He is calling the training:

Upgrading Your Skills and Beyond…. 

and is targeting IT professional with previous experience working with BizTalk 2002/2004 .Net development. I like it! Check out the synopsis below;

Handling Exclusive XML Canonicalisation in .NET 1.1

by community-syndication | May 22, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

A colleague is currently extending an existing .NET 1.1 application, and is adding functionality to handle SAML tokens provided by an identity provider web site.   He came across the problem of handing exclusive XML canonicalisation in the older version of the framework.   Microsoft supports the use of pluggable ‘transform’ classes to handle XML digital signature transforms (as specified using the element in the XML Digital Signature standard.   The trouble is that version 1.1 of the framework does not contain a transform class for exclusive XML canonicalisation.   Every time he tried to validate the digital signature in the token he got an error message saying:

    “Could not create the XML transformation identified by the URI http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#.”

Version 2.0 of the framework has a suitable transform class called XmlDsigExcC14NTransform in the System.Security.Cryptography.Xml namespace (System.Security assembly).   However, this is no use to my colleague, as the code he is working on is written for 1.1.   It turns out that WSE 2.0 has a suitable class of the same name, but different namespace (Microsoft.Web.Services2.Security.Xml).   This is in the Microsoft.Web.Services2 assembly.

In order to handle exclusive XML canonicalisation in Framework 1.1, install WSE 2.0 SP3.   You must also register the transform class in your machine.config file.   Here is the XML you need to add to machine.config:

Don’t forget to reboot your machine after changing machine.config.

This actually configures two transform classes.   XmlDsigExcC14NWithCommentsTransform has the same functionality as XmlDsigExcC14NTransform, but will handle the serialisation of XML comments.   The ‘name’ attributes of the elements specify the URIs that can be used in the of the digital signature.   Now, when you call Checksignature() on an instance of SignedXml, the code should be able to handle the transform.

BizTalk Schema Publishing Tips: Scripting

by community-syndication | May 22, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

After schemas have been published using Web Services Publishing wizard there’s a high chance we’d want to update and re-publish them later on. In the post about web services deployment automation I mention the way of scripting publishing process. Here is some more information on it.

Web Services Publishing wizard creates temp folder under the publishing target directory. There’s a file confusingly named WebServiceDescription.xml (does not have anything to do with WSDL). It contains complete information about web service publishing configuration. We can use this file to edit existing service definition. To load configuration into publishing wizard use this command:

  BTSWebSvcWiz.exe config=”<WebServiceDescriptionXmlPath>”

For example you’ve published schema to http://localhost/MyServices where MyService is pointed to local physical path: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\MyServices then WebServiceDescriptionXmlPath would be C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\MyServices \temp\WebServiceDescription.xml. The schema of this xml is straightforward so you can edit manually if you want.

This is all good when we iterate and interactively apply changes to the published schemas during development cycle. For unattended builds it’s better to use web services publishing API programmatically like this:

using Microsoft.BizTalk.WebServices;
using Microsoft.BizTalk.WebServices.Description;

public static void Publish(string path)
{
  WebServiceDescription desc = WebServiceDescription.LoadXml(path);
  WebServiceBuilder builder = new WebServiceBuilder();
  builder.WebServiceDescription = desc;
  builder.ProgressCallback += new ProgressEventHandler(OnProgress);
  builder.BuildWebService();

  Trace.WriteLine(“Completed publishing web services“);
}

private static void OnProgress(object sender, ProgressEventArgs e)
{
  Trace.WriteLine(String.Format(“OnProgress: {0} {1}“, e.Value.ToString(), e.Message));
}

As you see we even get an event that can be used for monitoring progress steps.

Microsoft Exam 74-135 Developing E-Business Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004

by community-syndication | May 22, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I finally got a chance to take the certification last friday, and I PASSED, It wasnt easy, needs to have lot of development experience on BizTalk, It’s been in my mind since last year but due to the hectic schedule couldn’t make it,

FYI: This is now considered as a ’Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist’ certification, note: this is not mentioned in the list of exams on the MCTS page (http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcts/default.asp)

Credential: ’Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist’
Certification/Version: ’BizTalk%u00ae Server 2004: Custom Applications’
Exam guide: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/74-135.asp)

There is no skill assessment available for BizTalk 2004 certification, how ever if you are planning to go for the BizTalk 2006 then Microsoft has come up with Skills Assessment for Exam 70-235, you can take the assessment here, http://assessment.learning.microsoft.com/test/test_options.asp?regtestid=2420304&s=233
It contains around 30 -questions.

If you want some insight on the 74-135 certification,
Better have some strong development skill set on BizTalk 2004, there might be some lucky ones who might have passed, but in general I feel if you are strong in your development skills with BizTalk, then you would sail through easily, else spend time knowing the kind of errors BizTalk applications might throw and start debugging them,