BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 announced at WPC

by | Jul 11, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

This week I returned to my home state of Texas to attend the Worldwide Partner Conference.  Returning to my home state didn’t get me back to speaking in my southern-drawl, but it did get me speaking with partners about something we are both excited about.  The news may not be as big as the state of Texas (but what is?); however, the BizTalk Adapter Pack 2.0 is far from a Rhode Island sized announcement. 


So what is it?  The BizTalk Adapter Pack is a separate SKU from the rest of the BizTalk Server family of products.  It continues to simplify the ways that customers and partners can connect to line-of-business systems (LOBs).  Generally speaking, when developers want to build an application that draws information from an LOB, they use a message broker technology with an application adapter or they write directly to the LOB APIs.  Neither is particularly productive especially in simple scenarios.  The BizTalk Adapter pack changes this by giving developers simple technology to connect directly to the LOB system without using a heavy mid-tier server.


What’s new in V2?  Specifically in the V2, we are delivering new adapters for the Oracle E-Business Suite and SQL Server. This builds on existing functionality from first version, which RTM’d a few months ago, and includes adapters for SAP R/3, Siebel and Oracle DBMS.  A key value for partners is the WCF LOB Adapter SDK (available as a free download from MSDN) on which Microsoft has built the Adapter Pack.  The SDK enables a platform that makes Adapter development much easier by providing support for key capabilities (like Metadata browse & search and connection pooling) out of the box.  


Overall, the BizTalk Adapter Pack is another demonstration of Microsoft’s long term commitment to interoperability. Customers choose how they want to connect application platforms and people, and we provide them with the tools.

BizTalk: Interview Skill measurment

by | Jul 10, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

This is a Part4 of the Interview articles.
Part 1: “BizTalk 2004, Questions for interview without answers” http://geekswithblogs.net/LeonidGaneline/archive/2006/05/22/79267.aspx
Part 2: “BizTalk interview questions and principle” http://geekswithblogs.net/LeonidGaneline/archive/2007/07/03/113663.aspx
Part 3: “WCF: Questions for studing and interview” http://geekswithblogs.net/LeonidGaneline/archive/2008/01/07/wcf-questions-for-studing-and-interview.aspx
Please, mark your skills in the table.
I completely understand that nobody ever tried ALL the BizTalk features.

Name Number of the Projects Months Skill Mark (1..10 or A,B…)

artifacts:
applications
ports, groups, locations
FTP
SOAP
HTTP
SQL
WCF
SMTP, POP3
MSMQ
SharePoint
LOB: EDI base, Siebel, etc. (name them)
pipelines
schemas
maps
database functoids (or custom DB mapping)
Xslt
Xslt templates
orchestrations
transactions
atomic
long-running
compensation
exceptions
persistent points
correlations
helper .NET classes
SQL data bases (with relation to the BizTalk)
hosts, instances
adapters
parties
EDI, AS2 system
policy, rules, vacabularies
BAM
BAS
Development:
orchestrations
port-to-port
helper .NET classes
custom adapters
custom pipeline components
custom functoids
rules
BAM
BAS
ESB
Debugging Tuning-Up:
VS
Nunit
BizUnit
LoadGen
stress testing
performance metrics
different utilities (name them)
multi-server debugging
MOM
HAT
Adm.Console
PerfMon
Deployment:
BTSDeploy
BTSTask
MSI, Binding
multi-server deployment
clustered MessageBox
WMI scripts
Development techniques:
– correlation
– convoy parallel
– convoy sequential unified
– convoy sequential non unified
– long-running transaction
– transaction compensation
– FIFO
– send data to SQL
– receive data from SQL
– data validating
– error handling in the BizTalk applications
– BizTalk to/from WS/HTTP apps
* test-driven development
* .NET development tools
Programming skills:
* test-driven programming
* VS.NET
* script languages, utils
* SQL: database normalization, programming
Web-programming
low-end programming

Several questions (sorry, no more than 2-3 min for answer):
  • How do you study BizTalk? what are the main sources of the information?
  • Describe creating the full-featured BizTalk application. Just the steps.
  • Describe debugging the full-featured BizTalk application.
  • Describe deploying the full-featured BizTalk application.
  • Monitoring the BizTalk application:

Skill Mark Legend:

1can describe purpose and functionality
2made Sample(s)
3used in one project
4used in one project recently
5used in several projects
6used advanced functionality
7can show my answers in forums and articles in blog
8used API (in code)
9can teach other developers, can show pro and cons
OR
Aknow something
Bcan use in standard cases
Ccan use advanced features, API
Dexpert

Creating Home Organizations & Partners in BTARN 3.5

by | Jul 10, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

This is a fairly straight-forward task but since it’s the first thing you’ll need to configure in the BizTalk Accelerator for RosettaNet 3.5 (BTARN 3.5), I thought I’d walk through it anyway.

Creating a Home Organization

1. You begin by opening the BTARN Management Console and right-clicking on the Home Organization node in the left-hand pane.

2. Next you’ll need to add the home organization’s name, DUNS number (circled in red below), a brief description and then choose a Home organization classification from the drop-down menu.

3. Next you’ll need to add some contact information as shown here below.

4. Click Apply and OK to save your new Home Organization. It’s that simple.

Creating a Partner

1. This is virtually the same as creating a Home Organization and you’ll first create the Partner and then the partners’s name, DUNS number (circled in red below), a brief description and then choose a Partner classification from the drop-down menu. This also where you’ll set the Partner’s signature and encryption keys (certificates).

2. Next you’ll need to add some contact information as shown here below.

3. Click Apply and OK to save your new Partner. Again, it’s that simple.

If you take a look at the BizTalk Server 2006 Administration Console under the Parties node, you’ll see your new Home Organization and Partner in the list just as you would expect.

As I said, all very straight-forward! Don’t let this fool you however, later I’ll post about how to create a new Agreement and you’ll probably end up just as confused as I was the first time!

Currently listening to: Martina McBride’s For These Times

BizTalk HL7 MLLP Adapter Key Settings

by | Jul 10, 2008 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

A couple of Key registry settings for the HL7 adapter that I thought I’d jot down
onto my online diary.

Some tweaks to apply under heavy load to the HL7 adapter

  1. Create the registry key MLLPSendFlushTimeout
    1. Create new registry key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk
      Accelerator for HL7/Version 2.0       with following details:
    2. Name : MLLPSendFlushTimeout
    3. Value : 0
  2. Set MaxReceiveInterval to 50 ms
    1. Open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio.
    2. Expand Databases node and select BizTalkMgmtDb database.
    3. Expand Tables node and open table adm_ServiceClass.
    4. Set the value of MaxReceiveInterval to 50ms corresponding to the Name=Messaging
      InProcess.

      Initially it is 500ms.

    >