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,

BizTalk 2004: Service Instances: Orchestration and Messaging

by community-syndication | May 18, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Decoding UTF-16 Messages with the BizTalk Framework Disassembler

by community-syndication | May 18, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

A few days ago Sam Vanhoutte posted on the BizTalk newsgroups about an issue he was
having while trying to process Unicode encoded messages using the BizTalk Framework
Disassembler. Here’s the tale of what we discovered in the process.

Problem description
The error happened while trying to process an UTF-16LE encoded
XML message using the BizTalk Framework Disassembler component. The message in question
was received with no <?xml?> declaration and hence no encoding attribute, and
contained no BOM. This cause the operation to fail with the “None of the
components at Disassemble stage can recognize the data” error, suggesting that
the disassembler couldn’t figure out the document encoding.

After looking around a bit using Reflector, I noticed that the BizTalk Framework
Disassembler used the XML Disassembler (XmlDasm) underneath. Because of this I suggested
Sam he tried using my FixEncoding Pipeline component in the decode stage of his pipeline
to set the message’s Body part Charset to the correct encoding (UTF-16 Little Endian,
Codepage 1200). It worked, almost. Now the document was being recognized by the disassembler,
but the disassemble itself failed, with the following error:

System.Xml.XmlException : Name cannot begin with the ‘.’
character, hexadecimal value 0x00. Line 1, position 2.
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.NamespaceTranslatorStream.Read(Byte[] buffer,
Int32 offset, Int32 count)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Streaming.MarkableForwardOnlyEventingReadStream.ReadInternal(Byte[]
buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 count)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Streaming.EventingReadStream.Read(Byte[] buffer, Int32
offset, Int32 count)
 at System.IO.StreamReader.ReadBuffer(Char[] userBuffer, Int32 userOffset, Int32
desiredChars, Boolean& readToUserBuffer)
 at System.IO.StreamReader.Read(Char[] buffer, Int32 index, Int32 count)
 at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ReadData()
 at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.InitTextReaderInput(String baseUriStr, TextReader
input)
 at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl..ctor(String url, TextReader input, XmlNameTable
nt)
 at System.Xml.XmlTextReader..ctor(TextReader input)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Streaming.Utils.GetDocType(MarkableForwardOnlyEventingReadStream
stm, Encoding encoding)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.XmlDasmReader.CreateReader(IPipelineContext pipelineContext,
IBaseMessageContext messageContext, MarkableForwardOnlyEventingReadStream data, Encoding
encoding, Boolean saveEnvelopes, Boolean allowUnrecognizedMessage, Boolean validateDocument,
SchemaList envelopeSpecNames, SchemaList documentSpecNames, IFFDocumentSpec docSpecType,
SuspendCurrentMessageFunction documentScanner)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.XmlDasmComp.Disassemble2(IPipelineContext pc,
IBaseMessage inMsg)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.XmlDasmComp.Disassemble(IPipelineContext pc,
IBaseMessage inMsg)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.BtfDasmComp.DoLoad(IPipelineContext pc, IBaseMessage
inMsg)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.BtfDasmStateLoad.LoadMessage(IBtfDasmAction act,
IPipelineContext pc, IBaseMessage inMsg)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.BtfDasmComp.Disassemble2(IPipelineContext pc,
IBaseMessage inMsg)
 at Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.BtfDasmComp.Disassemble(IPipelineContext pc,
IBaseMessage inMsg)
 at Microsoft.Test.BizTalk.PipelineObjects.Stage.Execute(IPipelineContext pipelineContext,
IBaseMessage inputMessage)

This was a clear sign that the disassembler was somehow trying to interpret the document
using the wrong encoding, even though we were clearly specifying the correct Charset.
At this point, I asked Sam to pass on the problematic file to see what I could find
out.

The Real Problem

After a lot of digging, I think I’ve discovered what seems to be a bug in the way
the BtfDasmComp component works. It seems like it doesn’t correctly decode documents
encoding with anything else than UTF-8, unless the .NET Framework’s XmlTextReader
can figure out the document encoding on it’s own. None of the requirements to be able
to do this were met by the problematic document, so apparently the disassembler was
defaulting to trying to interpret the document using UTF-8, which caused the error.

The question was then why this was happening, when we were specifying the correct
Charset for the document, and it was pretty obvious that made a difference, since
probing was succeeding. Why was the correct encoding being used while probing but
not while disassembling?

A guess

After spending a couple more hours going though the BizTalk Framework disassembler,
I can venture an educated guess as to why the wrong encoding is being used.

The first thing I noticed was that the BtfDasmComp component, just like the XmlDasmComp
component, clearly looked specifically for the part’s Chartset property (IBaseMessagePart.Charset)
both before probing and before disassembling the document. So up to here, everything
was just fine.

However, during disassembling, eventually control lands on the BtfDasmComp.DoLoad()
method, where the body part data stream of the message is replaced with an instance
of the BTFDasmTranslator class:

stream1 = new BTFDasmTranslatorStream(pc, stream1, “http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/”,
“http://schemas.biztalk.org/btf-2-0/envelope”,
encoding1);
inMsg.BodyPart.Data = stream1;

Up to here, encoding1 correctly has the encoding created from the value of the part’s
Charset property. While the code correctly passes an encoding to the new stream, I
spotted that the BTFDasmTranslatorStream class is derived from the NamespaceTranslatorStream
class.

In one of the constructors for the NamespaceTranslatorStream class, a new XmlTextReader
class is created to process the document, but no encoding is specified for it; thus
letting the reader try to figure out itself what encoding the message stream has.
This makes no sense because by this point the disassembler knows exactly what encoding
to use. Here’s the relevant code:

public NamespaceTranslatorStream(IPipelineContext pipelineContext, Stream data, string
oldNamespace, string newNamespace, Encoding encoding) : base(new XmlTextReader(data),
encoding)

You can see that while the specified encoding is passed on to the base class (XmlBufferedStreamReader),
but it is not used in the creation of the XmlTextReader itself. Of course, the encoding
cannot be provided directly to it because the XmlTextReader class doesn’t contain
a constructor that contains an Encoding argument (which I think it should, really),
so instead you need to create a StreamReader object with the correct encoding and
construct the XmlTextReader on top of that, instead.

Workaround

It became clear with this that getting the messages to process correctly was not going
to be possible by simply selecting the proper Charset. Instead, Sam was able to work
around the problem successfully by creating a custom pipeline component that actually
transcoded the message from UTF-16 to UTF-8 and using that as part of the decoding
stage before the disassembler runs.

Service Instances: Orchestration and Messaging

by community-syndication | May 18, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication