New Interesting BizTalk Adapters from our Partners

I  just wanted to point out a couple of interesting adapters that our partners are providing for BizTalk 2006.


Zouak consulting is providing a beta version of an adapter for integrating with RIM’s Blackberry. You can find info about it at.


http://www.zouak.com/Products.aspx


Another partner, TwoConnect, has put together a full feature adapter for Salesforce.com’s CRM solution. You can find info for it at.


http://www.twoconnect.com/pages/product_solutions/salesforce.aspx


Now I was fortunate enough to be able to talk with someone in our services division that has already used the salesforce adapter. He was in a great position to speak about the value of the adapter as he had also used the standard salesforce.com web services.  He felt that using the adapter saved him about 2-3 weeks of development time over using the base web services interface. Now 2-3 weeks is a fair bit of time, so it seems like TwoConnect is providing a fairly valuable and affordable adapter here.


Cheers and keep on BizTalking

BPM/I Conference Details Announced

In my last post, I spoke about the upcoming BPM/I conference that the product team is hosting in October. Registration



Registration: (http://www.impactevents.com/biztalkconference/) This site also has an agenda posted.


It’s running at the Microsoft Conference Center from October 3-6, 2005. Registration is $199.00, with an early bird discount price of $149.00 if you register by July 21st.


Cheers

YASR: Editable List/Document Library Pages

YASR: Editable List/Document Library Pages

One of the more common things to customize in SharePoint 2003 (both WSS and SPS) are the pages that display lists or document libraries. Users end up on those pages when they click on the list/document library in the Quick Launch, or on the web part title that’s displaying the list/document library data. Those pages can be customized but you need to build your own site definition or you need to use FrontPage.


The good news is that in SharePoint 2007 (both MOSS and WSSv3) those pages are editable from within the web user interface. Just navigate to the page and click Edit Page in the Site Actions menu.



Once you are in edit mode you can customize the page by adding web parts to it. Or you can choose to edit the web part that is displaying the list/document library data!


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1.1. Identify the application requirements. Exam Aid

1.1. Identify the application requirements. Exam Aid


A BizTalk “Application” is a general term that can refer to many different designed implementations.  BizTalk Server 2006 can implement Messaging Solutions, Orchestration or “Process” solutions, Workflow “Process” Solutions and a plethera of many others.


Specifically, when referring to Messaging Solutions, the BizTalk Orchestration engine is not used. BizTalk relies solely on the internal Messaging engine, the BizTalk SQL databases.


Given a specific scenario, let’s see if we can identify applicaiton requirements and extract out all of the posibilities that merit a good BizTalk Design.



Let’s say you are designing a BizTalk messaging solution for your company. Within this solution, documents need to be routed using some specific unique identifier within the document itself. Let’s also throw in the mix that the document spawns another related document whose structure is considerably different and it includes a header section populated with values from a Database table. And as a final requirement, the output document is encrypted for transmission to a selected partner. You’re the software architect, and you need to design a solution by using minimum coding effort. What solution design would you recommend?


Answer to come…

BTS Diary II – 7 – Ordered Delivery, SSO and Workgroups

BTS Diary II – 7 – Ordered Delivery, SSO and Workgroups

Ordered Delivery: So, continuing on the issue of ordered delivery and queuing, one important point which Tomas pointed out in the newsgroup is that it is not enough to just send to the queue whether it be MSMQ or MSMQT in sequence, but the orchestration that subscribes to it must also be a singleton if we want to ensure the sequencing. This makes sense because if we put a ton of messages into MSMQT or MSMQ then automatically a lot of subscribing instances are going to kick in to consume the messages and if in a set of messages, one instance is slightly slower to execute than another (say, a particular branch of the orchestration has been picked which the other instances didnt get), then it might happen that a message intended for later appears at the destination first. So if you wanted to keep inserts and updates in sequence and the update reached first because of the processing situation, then the destination system could throw an exception. The singleton would stop this, but we would sacrifice some processing speed. Without the singleton we would have to put in custom logic in an orchestration to handle the exception. For example, if we are sending an update or delete message and we recieve an exception, we could invoke a branch which set a delay interval and tried again for a few times and if the final attempt didnt work, it could put the message in a business exception queue which should be monitored and picked up. It all depends on how many messages are being pumped in at the source. If that is controlled then singletons and sophisticated exception handling is not needed. If a small number of messages are flowing the singleton could be good enough (assuming you do face situations where the messages have overlapped). If there are hundreds of messages coming in at source, then throughput becomes extremely important and the exception handling would be the better approach [if you are aware of something even better, then do let me know]. I’ll prototype this and let you all know what I find. In order to avoid changing the design of the orchestration later, i am leaning toward the exception handling approach now (just to be safe).


SSO in distributed environments. Heres a tip in case you encounter this annoying SSO error message. We finally got round to deploying the code into DEV and immediately hit a snag. We had been using MSDE on our workstations and giving the ASPNET user the needed access to the Biztalk databases. Once we got to a distributed environment, of course the ASPNET user on the app server couldnt be given any access to the database server. This access is very important to us because we have orchestrations published as webservices. We hit the familiar error message saying ; SSO AUDIT GetConfigInfo failed. Access Denied. etc. We used impersonation and gave the domain user access to the database  and made them members of the Biztalk groups and all that and eventually when we set the user to be a member of SSO Administrators and SSO Affiliate Administrators on the application server, the problem got solved.


Workgroups: Its amazing how no matter how many times you install Biztalk 2004, theres always a problem in configuration. 2.5  years ago when i first started with it, i spent nearly a week installing and uninstalling and deleting databases for the config to work. About a month ago i managed to get it to work with only 1 rollback. That was my best experience so far. Yesterday, I was not so lucky. My previous laptop had been stolen from my desk at the office and so i was given a replacement (just 512MB RAM mind you, in contrast to the 2GB on the old one.. sniff!! sob!!) . I managed to install VS.NET and SQL and then when it came to Biztalk i dredged up the old articles from memory and set the registry permissions for EnableAuthEpResolution, enabled RPC Endpoint authentication etc so that SSO wouldnt give me the stupid “The Enterprise Single Sign On service failed to start” error that plagues folk when they install BTS. I also made the BiztalkUser account that runs all services a member of the Admins on the box. Drastic measure, i know, but sometimes when you just want to get the dratted thing installed on a laptop, priveleges dont really matter. Besides, i dont think there is any accurate doc on MS that says exactly which accounts need to be setup for development and what priveleges they need (for BTS). Anyway, i thought i had been smart. Boy, was i wrong!!! I didnt get the expected error message but got another one “Failed to generate the master secret”. This plagued me for the rest of the evening. Finally i didn what this article says and since i got the return code =2, i removed the laptop from the domain and then the configuration worked!!!


I think its quite sad that MS doesnt have another SP or hotfix with a set of scripts that can do all these settings before you start configuring Biztalk 2004. MS has moved onto Biztalk 2006 and Biztalk2006 R2 and planning for vNext, but a lot of people are still on Biztalk 2004 for various reasons and we would appreciate the install and configuration experience being made just a little bit better till the day we can move to 2006 or whatever comes next. I installed 2006 on a spare workstation the other day and there were no errors whatsoever. (I did use a account with admin priveleges again) and it even connected to the net to download missing prequisites and automatically installed them. Is it so difficult to patch the 2004 configuration engine to do something similar? Or even if it cant do this, why not give us the ability to simply SAVE the configuration settings which we so laboriously set up (user accounts, database connections etc), before proceeding to execute the configuration so that if it rolls back , we can fix whatever is needed, reload the configuration and go on instead of having to start from scratch? I hope someone from MS is listening but i fear its too late. They didnt care to do it these past 3 years and i doubt they are going to start now.


If you havent started Biztalk yet, i’d advise you to avoid v2004 and go straight to 2006. The install experience alone is worth the switch.

Of mice and product managers


Guess it’s time for my monthly blog post. I could have sworn that my New Years resolution called for a post a week. Well best laid plans of mice and product managers and all that


 


Tech Ed US has come and gone. I’ve heard some unofficial feedback and even got a late night cell phone call from some of the guys doing extra-curricular, after hours, ahhhh. work. I didn’t attend the show this year (which I really regretted – I’ll certainly be back next year) so I’m not going to post any details myself but Kris and Steve were there. I expect some scoop from them soon (Right Kris? Steve? Bueller?).


 


We’ve got a lot more details on the October BPM & I conference though:


 


———————–


 


Business Process Management and Integration Conference


 


Microsoft’s Business Process Management and Integration Conference, hosted by the BizTalk Server product group, is the event for our partners, customers and Microsoft personnel to learn about new and updated solutions for Business Process Management (BPM), SOA and Workflow. Over 4 days, attendees will hear about the strategies and technologies that Microsoft is delivering over the next year, such as BizTalk Server 2006 R2, the .NET Framework 3.0, and 2007 Microsoft Office system. Three technical tracks will provide depth and detail into best practices for building BPM solutions, SOA guidance, and implementing BizTalk Server. A business development track will focus on the business value of BPM for both customers looking for way to optimize their processes and for partners looking to expand their practices. Whether you need to get up to speed, or are ready to dive deep, this is the event for technical training, networking, and business development for Microsoft’s partners and customers interested in BPM, SOA, and Workflow.


 


Registration: (http://www.impactevents.com/biztalkconference/)


 


Join Microsoft staff, valued partners, customers and industry thought leaders at the Microsoft Conference Center from October 3-6, 2005. Registration is $199.00, with an early bird discount price of $149.00 if you register by July 21st.


 


Agenda & Sessions


 


Each session, meeting, and program event at the Microsoft Business Process Management and Integration Conference is designed to expand your knowledge of key emerging technologies, demonstrate proven strategies for implementing solutions, explain Microsoft’s long-term strategy and roadmap, and add value to your organization’s integration and workflow solution portfolio.


 


Sponsors & Exhibitors


 


Over 20 Microsoft partners are expected to showcase their latest solutions and technologies demonstrating their newest innovations- allowing attendees to test-drive key technologies and receive one-on-one, informed answers to questions.


If you are interested in sponsorship, please contact Robert Bannerman at robann@microsoft.com.


 


Community & Networking


 


Beyond the structured sessions, the Microsoft Business Process Management and Integration Conference will also provide many networking opportunities with people who share your professional interests.  We will be hosting several evening events to help encourage and foster community-building activities between partners, customers, and Microsoft employees. 


 


Instructor-Lead Training


 


Conference sponsor and BizTalk Server training partner, Quicklearn, is offering a series of classes before and after the conference for the convenience of attendees. Furthermore Quicklearn is providing a 35% price discount for conference attendees


 


9/25-9/29 (5-days) – BizTalk Server 2006 Deep Dive


9/30-10/2 (3-days) – BizTalk Server 2006 – Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)


10/9-10/13 (5-days) – Double Header – Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) & Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)


 


Quicklearn contact:


Greg Bulette  gregb@quicklearn.com
Quicklearn  “Technology Training Solutions”
www.QuickLearn.com  425-256-2573 


 


———————–


 


I think the blurb for the conference above says it all but I will unequivocally state that planning and holding the show is a huge bit of work for us on the BizTalk team and we’re excited about the opportunity to create and deliver all of the new content. The only thing better than that will be hanging out with all of you for the run of the show.


 


Finally if you’re interested in presenting a session please send us a short session abstract with your contact info and we’ll get in touch with you as soon as you do.


 


Regards,


mike


What!?! More BizTalk Server Samples?? Score!!!!

Hey there….11 more samples for you to kick around are now on the BizTalk Server Developer Center! Check them out when you have time!! And let Eric, Mike, Sreedhar, Young, Jack, or myself know if you have any questions or problems with them! Heck, do you have sample requests??? Let us know!!!! We *are* listening!



Publishing and Consuming Web Services with SOAP Headers
This sample demonstrates how to publish a BizTalk orchestration as a Web service with a SOAP header and how to consume the SOAP header from a Web service request message.


BAM and HAT Correlation
This sample demonstrates how to use the enhanced BAM features, and how to customize BAM and HAT integration. This sample also includes a Windows Forms application customizing BAM and HAT integration for the sample BizTalk solution.


Consuming Web Services with Array Parameters
This sample demonstrates how to consume Web services with array parameters.


Extending the BizTalk Server Administration Console
This sample demonstrates how to use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK) to extend the functionality of the BizTalk Server Administration console with your own custom menu items, node items, new data items and views, or different views of existing data.


Viewing Failed Tracking Data
This sample uses Windows Forms to provide a simple interface to view and resubmit failed messages.


Inserting XML Nodes from Business Rules
This sample demonstrates how to insert nodes into an XML document and set their values from a business rule by using the XmlHelper class.


Using the Mass Copy Functoid
This sample demonstrates the use of the Mass Copy Functoid to map a source hierarchy to a destination hierarchy without mapping each individual element by hand.


Using Role Links
This sample demonstrates how to use role links and parties.


Split File Pipeline
This sample uses the FILE adapter to accept an input file containing multiple lines of text into a receive location.


Using Enterprise Library 2.0 with BizTalk Server
This sample demonstrates how to use Enterprise Library 2.0 with BizTalk Server.


Consuming Web Services
This sample demonstrates how to consume Web services in a messaging-only scenario, and without using the Add Web Reference option.

BizTalk Server 2006 RTW Documentation Refresh

The content keeps coming!!
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3294ddaf-9f67-409f-a92d-2f6070dc0d1a&displaylang=en


Today we are announcing the release of our documentation refresh for BizTalk Server 2006. This bag of goodies (.chm format) contains everything in the RTM version and the following:



  • Complete documentation for all BizTalk Server Line of Business Adapters, including new tutorials, one for each adapter. See the section “Using Adapters.”
  • Troubleshooting guidance for each of the native BizTalk adapters. See the section “Troubleshooting Adapters.”
  • Troubleshooting Instructions for how to capture a memory dump. See the section “How to Capture a Memory Dump of a BizTalk Process.”
  • Disaster recovery instructions for backing up and restoring your BizTalk Server and databases. See the section “Backing Up and Restoring BizTalk Server”
  • Updated Tutorials. See the section, “BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials”
  • Information for improving fault tolerance. See the section “Planning and Architecture”
  • Updated Developer’s Reference that now includes the BAM namespaces that were not included in the RTM documentation. See the section “Developer’s Reference”

In addition there are numerous fixes based heavily on YOUR feedback that was gathered through our documentation feedback mechanism. Keep sending that feedback!


Note: This content will be available through MSDN shortly, but is all yours in .chm format right now!


Enjoy!


 

Accepting Nominations for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Technolgy Adoption Program (TAP)

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 will add several new features to the BizTalk product such as native EDI B2B services and RFID Framework plus it will include enhancements to improve compatibility with Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 products.


Summary of new features include:


%u00b7         Microsoft’s B2B EDI/HIPAA Solution


%u00b7         Microsoft’s RFID Framework


%u00b7         BizTalk Adapter for Windows Communication Foundation (formerly called Indigo)


%u00b7         .Net Adapter Framework


%u00b7         .Net Line-of-Business (LOB) Adapters (formerly BizTalk LOB Adapters)


%u00b7         BizTalk Dev Environment Compatibility with Windows Vista


%u00b7         BizTalk WSS Sharepoint Adapter Compatibility with MS Office 2007


BizTalk Server 2006 R2 TAP nominations are open through July 31, 2006 and space is limited.  This program is filling up quickly so if you would like to participate we would encourage to submit a Nomination form now.  Nomination forms and additional program details are available from BizTalk Server 2006 R2 TAP website.


To access this website please follow these instructions:






  1. Sign in using a valid passport account


  2. Select  Available Connections


  3. Look for  BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and select the Apply link on the right hand site


  4. Note: The BizTalk Server 2006 R2 program will not appear unless you are signed in with a valid passport account.


  5. Select I Agree


  6. Complete the Registration form


  7. Once logged on to the BTS 2006 R2 Site select Downloads


  8. Select the BizTalk 2006 R2 TAP Nomination Form link

Please mail your questions to btsr2tap@microsoft.com


 


Best Regards and we look forward to hearing from you,


The BTS 2006 R2 TAP Team!