by community-syndication | Nov 10, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The Commerce Server product team will no longer be monitoring the Commerce Server newsgroups. Instead, we have nifty new forums set up on MSDN for both Commerce Server 2007 and earlier versions of the product. I think you’ll agree that this provides a significantly better experience for all of those concerned. Searchability is much better, for example, you can rate posts, and we can maintain a static FAQ there as the need arises.
Here’s the link: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=294&SiteID=1
See you on the forums!
by community-syndication | Nov 9, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Just finishing up a week-long 12-hour-a-day BizTalk workshop for my SoCal customers, and wanted to post a few bits I built for the class. This post focuses on using promoted properties and distinguished fields on web messages.
One apparent challenge when consuming an existing web service from within a BizTalk orchestration is the fact that you don’t appear to have a schema added to your project. Oh, you get “web message types” and so forth, but that’s not the same. What if you need to access a field in the input/output message in a message assignment shape, or, need to initialize a correlation set when you call a one-way service?
When you add a “web reference” to your project, you get something like this …
However, if you open up the reference all the way, you can drill through the references.map and you’ll find references.xsd. This XSD schema holds all the types used in the WSDL.
So, if you want to distinguish a field, or promote a property, it’s as easy as opening up this schema, and making that choice. Then you can easily access web message fields from within orchestration shapes, or, initialize new correlation sets on web service calls.
The obvious disclaimer applies: this is a auto-generated schema, and if I “update reference” I’d lose any promoted or distinguished distinction.
Technorati Tags: BizTalk, Web Services
by community-syndication | Nov 9, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
No organisation in their right mind would install a non trivial SQL Server system without furnishing a qualified DBA to look after it. Why do organisations not treat BizTalk in the same way?
On a scale of 0 to 10 where zero equals “If BizTalk stopped working someone might notice after a couple of weeks” and 10 equals “If BizTalk got borked, we would lose ELEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS every 10 mins” where is your BizTalk installation?
Ifthe Business impact of a BizTalk failure is low, say less than 2 or 3, then maybe this post doesn’t apply to you. Anything greater than 3 and you would do well to heed the following advice.
BizTalk isn’t a trivial product. Neither from a developer perspective nor an operations perspective. Its really important that the operations people responsible for keeping BizTalk running are adequately trained and knowledgable on how it works, what all its moving parts do, how to backup and restore etc. The worst case is when a Windows infrastructure guy (or team) or a SQL DBA is given the responsibility for managing BizTalk but isn’t given the training to do the job properly. Yes its a Windows Server product and Yes it uses SQL Server extensively but neither of these two groups of people are necessarily well qualified (with out specific training) to maintain a BizTalk installation.
At the very least, BizTalk operations people should be FORCED to read the manual – and given the time to get comfortable playing with BizTalk (not in production of course!).
There is BizTalk administration training available from various places (Microsoft included). I would say if your BizTalk installation is greater than a 5 on the business critical scale, proper formal BizTalk administration training for the operations team should be MANDATORY. (If for no other reason than as risk minimisation).
And my last question asI round out this post is: When was the last time your BizTalk Operations Team did a BizTalk failure/restore drill?
I would say, take your number on the scale, divide it by 2 and thats how many times per year you should run a restore drill.
Mark
Ps: ELEVENTY BILLION is my favourate fictional number.
by community-syndication | Nov 9, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
WF designers can be re-hosted in many places, but here’s a couple that are browser
based
Jon Flanders wrote one in Atlas, (AJax for .NET ) or what ever name it’s called this
week which uses Atlas
and is pretty cool out of the browser
Ghenadie from MS has been very busy and
created a Javascript based Workflow
Designer – believe that!
Ghenadie is wanting to create a central repository of Activities etc. for
all to use through this.
These appear to be work in progress – but hats off for their efforts.
Jon’s –
NETFXLIVE –
by community-syndication | Nov 9, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
My fellow partner in crime from our Sydney User Group has
taken up the challenge and launched a blog!!!
Mark Burch has been solving all sorts of Microsoft
PSS BizTalk ‘challenges’ – great to have you onboard Mark!
He’s got a wealth of knowledge and he’s on the ‘inside’ (works for MS) – so he might
tell you the best tips for the next race or some get down dirty into the land of BizTalk
(as we know, that land is growing)
Watch out Mark…these blogs are addictive…
Mark’s Blog –http://biztorque.net/
by community-syndication | Nov 9, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Just came across a very interesting article on MSDN titled “The EFx Architectural-Guidance Software Factory”.
According to the introductory paragraph “ The Enterprise Framework Factory (the EFx Factory) is an architectural-guidance software factory. It provides Microsoft partners with a software-factory implementation of the Microsoft Distributed Architecture for .NET Applications for building applications and services on the .NET platform. The software factory is founded upon an application framework (Enterprise Framework) that combines Enterprise Library, a number of the Microsoft Application Blocks, and best practices in .NET solution development, and supplements those with specialized class libraries for creating service-oriented, enterprise-level applications.”
Its a nicely written article showcasing the power of EFx. Many of the ideas implemented there resonated with my thoughts on implementing something similar for my development team. Wonder if MS will make it available for download or if its a MCS only internal product. I tried contacting the author, Jezz, but the contact form on his blog doesnt work. I’ll keep trying. Its good to see MS aligning all their guidance and standards into automated tools. Makes it so much easier than having to point people to massive PDFs online.
by community-syndication | Nov 9, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Lets just say that there is a set of published companion documents that a client has distributed to a client. In there, the list of valid values are even more restritive than what is published publicly. These codesets are valid only for this client, and addional codesets are valid for another client.
The ability to make partner specific schemas is possible! Yes, I know, this is what we all have been losing sleep over!
If you really want to make specific schemas it is possible. This works on both the v3.0 and v3.3.
It is pretty straight foward:
- Make sure that you have the party defined
- In the schema that you want to be specifically defined for, click on the root node of the schema, in the properties there is a Partner URI drop down list.
- Choose the partner you wish to make the customization for from the drop down list.
- Change the target namespace to make it unique for that partner
- Make your modifications to the schema.
- Validate the schema so the customization is uploaded to the database.
- Deploy
You now have a specific partner schema that BizTalk will parse depending on the party definition you have defined. There you can make your specific mapping for that client. In my case I am able to have the accelerator parse the client’s file using their additionally restrive schema definition, and the subsequently map it to the standard schema wherein it then goes into the universal mapping that has been developed for all of the clients.
Not too bad.
by community-syndication | Nov 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The DevConnection conference in Las Vegas this week offers developers and IT professional alike great opportunities to learn the latest Microsoft technology offerings……(read more)
by community-syndication | Nov 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Hi all,
I added the following walkthroughs to BizTalk Server documentation recently. Please download the latest documentation from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3294DDAF-9F67-409F-A92D-2F6070DC0D1A&displaylang=en
- Walkthrough: Creating a Simple Policy
- Walkthrough: Testing the Policy
- Walkthrough: Invoking the Policy from an Orchestration
- Walkthrough: Creating and Using a Vocabulary in the Policy
- Walkthrough: Adding a Rule to the Policy
- Walkthrough: Modifying the Policy
- Walkthrough: Tracking Policy Execution
- Walkthrough: Deploying the Policy
- Walkthrough: Executing the Policy Programmatically
- Walkthrough: Creating a Fact Creator
- Walkthrough: Using Database and .NET facts (You will see this one in the next update, not in this one).
As always, any feedback is welcome and appreciated. After you open the BizTalk Server documentation CHM file, navigate to Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Help\Development\Developing BizTalk Server Applications\Creating and Using Business Rules\Business Rules Framework Walkthroughs.
Regards,
Sreedhar
by community-syndication | Nov 8, 2006 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The BizTalk Server HTTP adapter does not support having the login credientals in the URL.
For example, you can’t have a URL like the following configured in the HTTP send port.
https://www.example.com/webservice.aspx?fileType=MyFile&by=username:password
If you do that you will get an error like this:
Event Type:Error
Event Source:BizTalk Server 2004
Event Category:BizTalk Server 2004
Event ID:5754
Date:7/11/2006
Time:1:50:17 AM
User:N/A
Computer:MACHINE
Description:
The “HTTP” adapter is suspending an outbound message going to destination URL:”https://www.example.com/webservice.aspx?fileType=MyFile&by=username:password”. Details:”The remote server returned an error: (411) Length Required.”.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Obviously having the credientals in the URL is a very bad idea but if you absolutely must do it, you could configure a dynamic send port and supply the URL at run time. Alternatively, you could write a pipeline component which appends the login details to the URL.
Mark
