by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
As promised, we’re launching our July series of WF and WCF Influencer MSDN Webcasts. You can find links to them on our MSDN Webcasts site here: http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/msdnnetframework35.aspx?tab=webcasts&id=liveall
Make sure to catch these amazing sessions with our industry experts.
Enjoy!
Marjan Kalantar
by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Quick Learn one of our training partners has announced upcoming training’s on BizTalk RFID. Following are the training dates. BizTalk Expert Series – RFID August 25-26 http://www.quicklearn.com/newsletters/news061808c.htm BizTalk Expert Series – RFID…(read more)
by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
You might be wondering what do all these guys have in common….good question….
🙂
We’re currently building an RFID enabled System where complex processes
are handled by BizTalk Server, and data being pushed down to Silverlight V2.0 clients
via a WCF Silverlight ‘Eventing System’ (which really is polling under the hood, but
to us in developer land – it’s cool and it’s Events)
Scotty has
the full write up of some of his learning experiences through this – well done Scotty,
he’s been in that place where there are no manuals, no documentation, no previous
code, just a gut feel and a compass to sail the seas.
We demo-ed the system at our last user group (or more over used them a guinea pigs
🙂
Token Screen shot: (we’ve associated tags with people information
and this is what is displayed when TagReadEvents are captured. We need a little work
to avoid being underneath or on top of a previous animation)
FULL
DETAILS HERE
Artists impression!
by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
In this post, I’m going to demonstrate how the Polling feature in the WCF SQL Adapter can be used to read messages from SQL Service Broker (SSB) queues and publish them in the BizTalk MessageBox. And to make it really simple, we’re going to do it without an orchestration.
(Note – most of the SSB portion in this post has been based on the SSB tutorial available at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb839489.aspx).
The scenario:
- An external source publishes messages into a SSB queue.
- At fixed intervals (the polling interval), the adapter checks the SSB queue to see if a message is available.
- If a message is available, the adapter performs the actual RECEIVE operation to remove the message from the SSB queue and publish it in BizTalk – these operations are performed within the same DTC transaction.
- A filter is used to send the data to a folder on the file system (using the File Adapter)
Creating the database artifacts required for the SSB conversation:
The artifacts which we need to create are:
- A message type, which denotes the format of the messages in the queue
- A contract, which denotes the conversation between a sender and a receiver (the contract also specifies the type of the message which will flow between them)
- The Initiator and Target queues, in which the messages are stored
- The Initiator and Target services, utilizing the above-mentioned queues.
I’m not going to explain the SQL
statements below in detail, mainly because this post is not meant to be a tutorial on SSB – you can refer to SQL Server Books Online for more information on SSB.
USE master;
GO
ALTER DATABASE <your db name here>
SET ENABLE_BROKER;
GO
USE <your db name here>;
GO
CREATE MESSAGE TYPE
[//SqlAdapterSSBSample/RequestMessage]
VALIDATION = WELL_FORMED_XML;
CREATE CONTRACT [//SqlAdapterSSBSample/SampleContract]
([//SqlAdapterSSBSample/RequestMessage]
SENT BY INITIATOR
);
CREATE QUEUE InitiatorQueue1DB;
CREATE SERVICE
[//SqlAdapterSSBSample/InitiatorService]
ON QUEUE InitiatorQueue1DB;
CREATE QUEUE TargetQueue1DB;
CREATE SERVICE
[//SqlAdapterSSBSample/TargetService]
ON QUEUE TargetQueue1DB
([//SqlAdapterSSBSample/SampleContract]);
At this point, we’ve created the main database objects required for the SSB side of things.
Creating the BizTalk Artifacts
- Start the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console.
- Create a new BizTalk application – let’s call it “SSBPollingApplication”.
- Create a new 1-way Receive Port – call it “SqlReceivePort”. Create a new Receive Location – call it “SqlReceiveLocation”.
- Choose the Transport Type (in the Receive Location Configuration dialog) as “WCF-Custom”. Choose “PassThruReceive” for the Receive Pipeline.
- Click configure, the WCF-Custom adapter configuration dialog pops up.
- In the General tab, enter the URI denoting your SQL Server. The format is “mssql://servername/instancename/databasename”. For example, on my machine (since I am using the default instance of SQL Server, the uri I entered is “mssql://localhost//SSBTestDb” (my database is named “SSBTestDb”)).
- In the Binding Tab, choose the binding as “sqlBinding”. In the configuration properties which are displayed below, set these:
- pollingIntervalInSeconds = 2
- polledDataAvailableStatement = SELECT COUNT(*) FROM TargetQueue1DB WITH (NOLOCK)
- pollingStatement = (note, multi line statement follows):
DECLARE @DlgHandle UNIQUEIDENTIFIER;
DECLARE @RecvMsg XML;
RECEIVE TOP (1)
@DlgHandle=conversation_handle,
@RecvMsg = CAST(message_body as XML)
FROM TargetQueue1DB;
IF NOT (@DlgHandle IS NULL)
BEGIN
END CONVERSATION @DlgHandle;
SELECT @RecvMsg AS ReceivedMessage;
END
- A brief explanation of the 2 SQL blocks above:
- In the polledDataAvailableStatement, we’re checking if there are any rows in the SSB queue. It is this statement which is going to execute every “pollingIntervalInSeconds” seconds. If a non-zero value is returned, the adapter interprets it to mean that data is available, and only then proceeds to execute the pollingStatement.
- In the pollingStatement, we are selecting (and removing – the RECEIVE syntax removes the message, while SELECT would just peek at it) the first message in the SSB queue. We’re also selecting the conversation handle for that message. Also, if we did indeed successfully pick up the message from the queue (maybe someone got to it first?), we end that specific conversation.
- In the Behavior tab, right click on the ServiceBehavior, and choose “Add Extension”. Add the “sqlAdapterInboundTransactionBehavior” behavior. You can control the transaction isolation level (the default is ReadCommitted). It is this transaction isolation level which will be applied to the DTC transaction spanning the BizTalk Message Box and your SQL Server (from where you’re pulling messages from the SSB queue).
- In the Other tab, choose None for credentials (if you want to use Integrated Security) – or specify a username + password.
- Click OK as many times as required to close the Receive Port configuration dialogs.
- Create a new static 1-way send port named “FileSendPort”. Configure the transport type as FILE, and configure the port to drop messages to a valid folder on your file system. Select PassThruTransmit as the Send pipeline.
- Also, in the Send Port configuration dialog, click on “Filters” in the left pane. Add a filter condition:
- Property = BTS.ReceivePortName
- Value = SqlReceivePort
- Click OK to complete the configuration of the Send Port.
At this point, the configuration of the BizTalk application is complete. Start the application.
We’re now going to send messages to the SSB queue (I’m using SQL Server Management Studio – you could also use osql.exe). I used the following SQL block to send a message to the queue:
DECLARE @RequestMsg XML;
SELECT @RequestMsg = N'<TestMessage>Hello, World</TestMessage>’;
DECLARE @DlgHandle UNIQUEIDENTIFIER;
BEGIN DIALOG @DlgHandle
FROM SERVICE
[//SqlAdapterSSBSample/InitiatorService]
TO SERVICE
N’//SqlAdapterSSBSample/TargetService’
ON CONTRACT
[//SqlAdapterSSBSample/SampleContract]
WITH ENCRYPTION = OFF;
SEND ON CONVERSATION @DlgHandle
MESSAGE TYPE
[//SqlAdapterSSBSample/RequestMessage]
(@RequestMsg);
Once you send the above message to the SSB queue, within a short while, you should see it in the folder specified in the FileSendPort. The message I see is:
<Polling xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/Sql/2008/05/Polling/”>
<PolledData>
<DataSet xmlns=”http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/System.Data”>
<xs:schema id=”NewDataSet” xmlns:xs=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema” xmlns:msdata=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata”>
<xs:element msdata:IsDataSet=”true” name=”NewDataSet”>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element minOccurs=”0″ maxOccurs=”unbounded” name=”NewTable”>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element minOccurs=”0″ name=”ReceivedMessage” type=”xs:string”/>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>
<diffgr:diffgram xmlns:diffgr=”urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-diffgram-v1″>
<NewDataSet xmlns=””>
<NewTable>
<ReceivedMessage><![CDATA[<TestMessage>Hello, World</TestMessage>]]></ReceivedMessage>
</NewTable>
</NewDataSet>
</diffgr:diffgram>
</DataSet>
</PolledData>
</Polling>
As can be seen above, the adapter has returned the message in System.Data.DataSet format. You could ofcourse use an XPath query to extract only the body of the message. Here’s how –
- Navigate back to the SqlReceivePort configuration. Bring up the WCF-Custom configuration dialog (the dialog which contained the General tab, the Binding tab, the Behavior tab, etc).
- Navigate to the Messages Tab.
- In the “Inbound BizTalk Message Body” section
- Select “Path”. Enter this XPath query: /*[local-name()=’Polling’]/*[local-name()=’PolledData’]/*[local-name()=’DataSet’]/*[local-name()=’diffgram’]/*[local-name()=’NewDataSet’]/*[local-name()=’NewTable’]/*[local-name()=’ReceivedMessage’]
- For the Node Encoding, select “String”.
The data in the file should now just be:
<TestMessage>Hello, World2</TestMessage>
by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
A group I’m working with was looking to use SharePoint to capture data entered by a number of international employees. They asked if SharePoint could restrict access to a given list item based on the value in a particular column. So, if the user created a line item designated for “Germany”, then automatically, the list […]
by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Yet more great content over on the (RedGate sponsored) Simple Talk blog, this time an excellent article on tracking down deadlocks using SQL Profiler by Brad McGhee, well worth a read before your production system starts to exhibit this behaviour!
by community-syndication | Jun 30, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Hi All,
In the past few months I been hit with so many technical problems running biztalk 24 * 7.com. I’m currently with 1and1 for my hosting, I been with them for past few years now. Everything is well and good until you hit a problem, but once you got some you are in real trouble.
In my past few months experience I never got a single issue solved by their technical team (this is just my experience).
At last I decided to take the plunge and move to a different hosting company. That’s the only way I can come with next version of biztalk 24 * 7 confidently. Now I need your help on making my decision, here are my criteria’s
1. Preferably in UK, since it will help me solve the issue during UK office hours. With 1and1, even though I’m a UK customer their server department is in US and most of the time I simply need to wait until US wakes up.
2. Windows Server 2003 virtual or dedicated sever hosting.
3. Support for ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server
I’m sure lot of you out there reading my blog will have experience in this area. Please feel free to drop your comments.
Nandri!
Saravana
by community-syndication | Jun 29, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
We’ve had a recent deployment to production that did not go according to plan, or so we thought at first.It is an upgrade of aBizTalk solution from BizTalk 2004 to 2006 R2. It integrates a website, a CRM system, a bank system, and a fulfillment house.
We deployed the solution to our test environment, fixed some […]
by community-syndication | Jun 28, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Thanks to all who attended my talk on VSX & Software Factories at VBUGlast week. It was a decent turnout considering the last minute change of venue. The slides should be available from Chris Mitchell at VBUG and I’m also posting them here on this blog for anyone else who is interested in the topic.
As […]
by community-syndication | Jun 27, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Assume you’re using the WCF SQL Adapter (part of the BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0). You decide to create 2 Receive Locations (RL), in order to poll the database. Each RL polls a different table (e.g., the “PollingStatement” binding property in the first RL is “SELECT * FROM T1”, while the “PollingStatement” binding property in the second RL is “SELECT * FROM T2”).
Since the tables are present in the same database on the same SQL Server instance, the URI which you enter is the same in both RLs (e.g., something like “mssql://servername/instancename/databasename”).
However, BizTalk doesn’t allow you to create multiple RLs in the same BizTalk application with the same URI. From the BizTalk point of view, it’s like having 2 RLs competing in the same BizTalk application for the same incoming messages. Even though in this (the WCF SQL Adapter) case, both RLs are pulling in messages from different sources (the “PollingStatement” controlling the message source).
There is a pretty simple workaround for this. You can use the following (different) URIs in each ReceiveLocation:
“mssql://servername/instancename/databasename?SomeUnusedQueryParameter=1”
“mssql://servername/instancename/databasename?SomeUnusedQueryParameter=2”
“mssql://servername/instancename/databasename?SomeUnusedQueryParameter=etc”
