Commerce Server 2007: Max’s Training Resources

by | Nov 26, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Max Akbar [MSFT] has put together an excellent post with all the currently available sources of Commerce Server 2007 training. This includes Webcasts, white papers, online docs, virtual labs and blogs. It's a great resource for folks looking to learn more about Commerce Server 2007. Take a look!

Commerce Server Pre-Training Resources

Technorati Tags: Commerce Server

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How to get workflow data/properties at runtime

by | Nov 25, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I’ve seen many people in the forums trying to figure out the best way to get data from a workflow at runtime. The root of the problem lies in the fact that while you can get a handle to a WorkflowInstance from the runtime, this is really a template and does not contain the values of properties on the workflow. It is a common need to get the current state of your process, or get values from the class.
One solution is to use the local communications activities and call back to the host and have a local service manage the values. But, who wants to drop a bunch of CallExternalMethod activities in all of their workflows. No the answer, not surprisingly, lies with tracking.
Tracking in workflow provides so much power and flexibility to extract data that you are interested in. I’ve created a custom tracking service which tracks the workflow properties at runtime and stores them in a dictionary in the service. When you want to get the current property values for a workflow, you get the tracking service from the runtime, then ask it for the properties which you get back as a Dictionary<string, object> just like the parameters you passed into the workflow.
There are two keys to getting this work and both revolve around the tracking profile. First, it is important to know that when you define an ActivityTrackPoint, you can add data extracts which define the data to extract and send to the tracking channel. But those extracts can either be activity extracts, or workflow extracts. So, I define an activity track point to track all activities on close and add Workflow level extracts to pull the properties off of the workflow at that point. The second key piece is figuring out what properties are available on each workflow type. This service would be pretty limited if it were tied to a specific workflow type. Instead, when the profile is created based on a workflow type, I reflect on the type to get the public properties defined in this type (not the base classes though you can do that too) and build the extract definitions from them.
So, when a workflow is run, the profile is created indicating that on each activity closed, the properties of the workflow should be sent to the tracking channel. In the channel, I simply update the dictionary of values stored in the service. Finally, when an instance completes or terminates, I remove the values from the dictionary.
You could track more often by using other statuses on the activity tracking location, but beware of the overhead tracking may add in these cases.
I hope this is helpful. As always, comments and feedback are welcome.

SQL Adapter changes in BTS 2006!

by | Nov 24, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

This is been an old post lying in my drafts…apologies if it is slightly not in sync.
While migrating our applications from BizTalk Server 2004 to BizTalk Server 2006, we came across a weird error when we were trying to debatch a message received from sql server 2000/2005:
“Unexpected event (”document_start”) in state”processing_empty_document”.”
This error occurs due to […]

Useful links on Windows Workflow Foundation!

by | Nov 24, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Recently, after a project requirement, i was asked to look into Windows Workflow Foundations and i found out that it more or less borrowed its concepts from biztalk server.
Tracking,persistance, rules engine, etc..are all almost same. However, workflow foundation is more of a language driven workflow (unlike biztalk, which is orchestration driven workflow)….
So, for a first […]

SSOConfig issues can be resolved soon

by | Nov 24, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Check out the new BizTalk SSO Configuration and Troubleshooting Tool available on gotdotnet.
SSO issues are usually related to network settings, MSDTC settings, service settings, account permissions, account group memberships, etc. This tool generates a report about this information. It also dumps out all mappings of all affiliate applications. Optionally it can also output BizTalk configuration […]

How to extract email body and attachements using POP3 Adapter in BTS 2006!

by | Nov 24, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Hi,
Many people have been asking me this question for a long time now…hence, check out my answer in my usergroup (http://groups.msn.com/BUG-i) as below:
UsingEncoded MIME message-Bydefault, the encoded mime message is passed to yourorchestration.You can get this message and then execute a series of Receive Pipelines in the orchestration to extract the different parts of the […]