XML comment in BizTalk output message

We ran into an issue today when we had to have an XML comment just below the XML declaration in a message we’re producing in our BizTalk 2006 solution. We needed to produce something like the below.

<div><span style="color: #0000FF; "><?</span><span style="color: #FF00FF; ">xml version="1.0"</span><span style="color: #0000FF; ">?></span><span style="color: #000000; ">
</span><span style="color: #008000; "><!--</span><span style="color: #008000; "> Comment goes here </span><span style="color: #008000; ">--></span></div>

Our first approach was to create a map in the send port and to have a custom XSLT template in there that added the comment before the whole transformation process started. We actually got this to work but it meant that we had to have a whole new map with a separate XSLT document in the project!

Eventually we found a property called Xml Asm Processing Instructions (highlighted in the figure – click it to view it in original size) on the XML assembly component (used in the standard XMLTransmit pipeline).

We just put the comment as a value in this property and we were done! No new artifacts or code! Just a weird property – typical BizTalk behavior!

SPS to MOSS upgrade…some nice options.

From students one of my most asked questions about MOSS is….”Will it handle an upgrade?”…something
along the lines of ..”…you know we have a medium installation of 183 distributed
V2 sites with central portals, index propagation and search.”

So I thought I’d outline some of my initial upgrade experiences from MOSS RTM.
(On this install – used by a small-medium sized company, they were up for technology
so we had SPS2003+SP2…->MOSS Beta2 installed for a while. The RTM install wouldnt
kick off until I removed Beta2)

After the product key in the setup I got these upgrade screens….(once the product
is installed we can always run the psconfig.exe to start the ‘wizard’)

I’m doing all at once here – as this company is pretty standard in that fashion. Customisation
here weigh in at about 10% of the overall Sharepoint site functionality.

 

Here’s the screen for the File Locations – I moved these out to D-Drive (separate
disk) and all the Indexing will be hit pretty hard.
Rule of thumb is to allow 200% space increase for the indexed content. So if you’re
indexing 100MB, then 200MB free for indexing is recommended.

Actually the search/index process in MOSS is pretty well defined and taking its roots
from ‘Indexing Service’ many many moons ago. The indexes (known as Catalogs – you
can access these through the APIs etc) are stored in a highly optimised format. Compressed!
And the process of ‘indexing’ content can be ‘tweaked’ through things like ‘the number
of Word lists’ in memory, Shadow Indexing and finally the master Index.

Some one was smiling….:)

 

So at this point I have all the binaries installed and all the appropriate files registered.
The Wizard will go and (hopefully) create the first Admin Site, which from there I
can provision the actual Content based sites and the Shared Services (search, excel,
mysite etc)

(damn…got hit with a ‘we need to reboot to continue…’ – so rebooting now.)

Notepad Grows Up

Now that notepad is 20+ years old I guess Microsoft decided to beef it up a little.  XML Notepad 2007 is the new kid on the block and it is a nice little tool.  I will probably keep on using XmlSpy and the BizTalk Editor for schema creation, but I'll give a go at using XML Notepad to create those pesky instance documents for test submissions to my orchestrations.

It allows inplace editing of the xml document, it seems to be aware of enumeration values (always nice) and gives you a dropdown to select.  It also has date inputs which have always been on my wish list.  It also seems to have XSL abilities which (maybe) I could use to test biztalk maps (not the ones with scripts of course) on the XML instances that  I can whip up from this little tool

You can download XML Notepad 2007 here.

Sharepoint/WSS V3 – Templates galore….yes it’s Christmas!!!

Just came across this great info I thought I’d share with you all.

If you’re like me over Christmas you’d be giving some thought on how to make the most
out of your newly slated WSS/MOSS 2007 Server.

Hold onto your hats – stop all custom development and give your graphic designers
a buzz…….

Here’s something to keep an eye on in the coming weeks!! Over 40 new templates……

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/sharepoint/wssapps/v3templates.mspx

Here’s a snippet from the page…..(expense site, bug tracking….:)

Coming Soon: New Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Application Templates are out-of-box custom scenarios for the Windows SharePoint Services
platform, tailored to address the needs and requirements of specific business processes
or sets of tasks in organizations of any size.

Microsoft will release a new set of 40 application templates for Windows SharePoint
Services 3.0. Some of the previous scenarios, such as Help Desk, Project Site, Knowledge
Base and the Employee/HR templates will be improved to incorporate and highlight new
capabilities in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. New scenarios will also be added
to address specific customer needs and business requirements.

While Application Templates can be used to solve particular business needs, they can
also provide a starting point for partners and developers looking to build deeper
Windows SharePoint Services solutions. The new templates will make use of Windows
SharePoint Services 3.0 capabilities and be compatible with Office SharePoint Designer
2007 to help make customization easier.

<!–


Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Overview Demo


This demonstration will present the main functional areas of a SharePoint site. It will give you a virtual tour of how to use and customize several key features via a click-through demonstration of each topic.

–>

40 New Application Templates*

Forty new Application Templates are coming soon for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.
Twenty of the templates will be “site admin templates” and available in English only.
These templates will be easy for site administrators to install in a template gallery
without requiring server administration access.

The remaining twenty will be “server admin templates” and available in eleven languages
(English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese Simplified,
Chinese Traditional, Korean, and Hebrew). These will be created as site definitions,
providing tighter integration and enhanced functionality within the Windows SharePoint
Services platform. They will require a server administrator to install.

*List of Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 subject to change.

Upgrades: Microsoft will release tools and guidance to help customers upgrade from
some of the previous Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 to
run on the new Version 3.0 platform. Application Templates for Windows SharePoint
Services 3.0 are not backwards-compatible with Version 2.0.

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BizUnitExtensions – First beta release

BizUnitExtensions – First beta release

I’ve finally made a release of BizUnitExtensions. R1 BETA is targeted at Biztalk 2004. It consists of the core BizUnit product (source and tests) as well as the Extensions (source and tests). The core code base has been bug fixed (for all steps we used in our projects). The tests for the core code base have been completely revamped. All XML comments were thoroughly revised (again, this was done only for steps that we used and we fixed warnings in all other files as well).


If you want to run the provided unit tests please remember that the unit tests are provided as a indicative sample of what may be achieved and not guaranteed to run on your machines. This is because unlike NUnit tests which test the assembly in question and can be assisted by mock libraries, the BizUnit assemblies actually control real orchestrations and other Biztalk artifacts which it is impossible to mock and provide.


The core product for v2006 comes with a sample solution but the v2004 does not (we inherited these products and only bug fixed the code where necessary) so dont accuse us of inconsistency!!We have run a couple of the test steps against the SDK samples and the documentation indicates which these are and you should have them deployed first before using the tests. 


The main thing is that the product works for all the steps we used (and there were quite a few that we used). But we didnt use ALL of the steps so it is quite possible that there are still some errors in the code base. Do report them and we will try and fix them. Or alternately if you can step through the code (which is very easy to understand) and provide a fix (and possibly a unit test-if it does not depend on your project assemblies) that would be very useful and we will include that in the code base.


As soon as a few people have used this and are happy that the product basically installs and works fine, we will upgrade it to the RTM release and barring bug fixes, we should be concentrating on v2006 after that, but 2004 WILL NOT be abandoned.


The changes to the core prooduct in v2006 would be a bit of a challenge because we have to merge our fixes from 2004 into the stuff that Kevin has written in 2006 and not lose any fixes he might have made.


We have fairly amibitious plans for v2006 including tests against the official MS tutorial scenarios that are more in-depth as well as some good tutorials based on our projects (without any confidential info of course), so please do support this effort. Theres actually a lot more on the cards, but we will reveal that when we make more concrete progress.


Another thing which would be useful for the community is people writing in to let us know how you are using BizUnit in your projects. Even if you cannot contribute code and support tools (for IPR and other reasons) it would be nice to know how its being used out there.

Requested registry access is not allowed

At the project I am working on I mainly use the Event Log to write progress statements from my orchestrations. On my develop-machine I ran into the error message ‘Requested registry access is not allowed’.

It appeared that the user account under which the processing host runs, did not have enough authorisations to access the Event Log.

This can be fixed by giving that user account full control to a certain Registry Key.
To achieve this you must start the Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog. Right click on the node and click ‘Permissions…’.
Next add the user account under which the processing host runs and give this user full control.
Close the dialog and the Registry Editor and finally restart the processing host.

You should now be able to write to the Event Log.

Configuring BizTalk 2006 MSMQ to Talk ActiveX format for Older Clients

(This is courtesy of Ross a collegue of where I’m working onsite currently)

What you need is:

(1) a Send Port with the MSMQ Send Adapter
(2) XMLTransmit pipeline

Within the MSMQ Send Port adapter – set the Body Type to a value of 30 (this
translates back to the Win32 API values and you can look them up for the enumeration,
so it’s not a value of 8=BSTR a trap which we may fall into)

Within the XMLTransmit pipeline – click on the ellipse
to set per instance configuration settings for this pipeline.

Set ‘Include XML Declaration’ =false

Set ‘Preserve BOM…’ = false (byte order mark – the 3 chars that
are a bomb, upside-down question mark etc) so the client wont receive it.

Once this is done – all good!

Your clients who expect just ActiveX formatted messages only, are happy to play with
BizTalk.

Thanks Ross!

Multi-Language Server Admin Templates
Absence Request and Vacation Schedule Management
Budgeting and Tracking Multiple Projects
Bug Database
Call Center
Change Request Management
Compliance Process Support Site
Contacts Management
Document Library and Review
Event Planning
Expense Reimbursement and Approval Site
Help Desk
Inventory Tracking
IT Team Workspace
Job Requisition and Interview Management
Knowledge Base
Lending Library
Physical Asset Tracking and Management
Project Tracking Workspace
Room and Equipment Reservations
Sales Lead Pipeline

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English Only Site Admin Templates>

Board of Directors
Classroom Management
Clinical Trial Initiation and Management
Competitive Differentiation Site
Discussion Database
Emergency Management for Government Agencies
Employee Activities Site
Employee Self-Service Benefits
Employee Training Scheduling and Materials
Equity Research
Manufacturing Process Management
Marketing Campaign Planning and Execution
New Product Development
New Store Opening
Product Portfolio and Profitability Management
Request for Proposal
Sports League
Team Work Site
Timecard Management
Vendor Performance Rating