by community-syndication | Oct 6, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
It is best practice in my opinion when installing BizTalk to follow BizTalk installation manuals. Microsoft provides manuals for each supported operating system or multi-server installation. BizTalk 2010 is supported on:
%u25aa Windows Server 2008 R2
%u25aa Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2
%u25aa Windows 7
%u25aa Windows Vista with Service Pack 2
%u25aa Windows XP with Service Pack 3
Other requirements are:
%u25aa Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 or 7.5
%u25aa Microsoft Office Excel 2010 or 2007
%u25aa Microsoft .NET Framework 4 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
%u25aa Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 with Visual C# .NET. Required for BizTalk Server applications development and debugging; not required for production-only systems
%u25aa SQL Server 2008 R2 or SQL Server 2008 SP1
%u25aa SQL Server 2005 Notification Services with Service Pack 2
%u25aa The Windows SharePoint Services adapter Web service requires SharePoint Server 2010, SharePoint Foundation 2010, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with Service Pack 1, or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
What interesting is SQL Server 2005 Notification Services with Service Pack 2 in combination with SQL Server 2008 R2. If you follow the manual and proceed step by step you eventually are going to configure BizTalk 2010. When you reach step to configure BizTalk BAM Tools and Alerts you can stumble on this kind of error:
Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManagerException: Failed to set up BAM database(s). —> Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManagerException: There was a failure while executing nscontrol.exe. Error:"Microsoft Notification Services Control Utility 9.0.242.0 c Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved. An error was encountered when running this command. Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo, Version=9.0.242.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89845dcd8080cc91’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. " at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.AlertModule.ExecNSControlCommand(String commandArg) at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.AlertModule.SetupAlertInfrastructure() at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManager.SetupDatabases() — End of inner exception stack trace — at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManager.SetupDatabases() at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManagementUtility.BamManagementUtility.HandleSetupDatabases() at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManagementUtility.BamManagementUtility.DispatchCommand() at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManagementUtility.BamManagementUtility.Run() at Microsoft.BizTalk.Bam.Management.BamManagementUtility.BamManagementUtility.Main(String[] args)
I stumbled on it and so did other people I noticed on BizTalk General Forum (see this thread). Solution to this problem is by installing SP3 for SQL Server 2005. I installed BizTalk 2010 on different environments and what I did when following manual instructions is to install SQL Server 2005 Notifications Services through one of SQL Server 2005 ISO’s and then applied first SP2 and later SP3. When you install SQL Server 2008 R2 later on you will see this screen.
When you reach this screen you will first see it has Named instance selected, but I changed it to Default instance and proceeded further with my installation. During configuration of BizTalk 2010 BAM Tools and Alerts everything went smoothly. I guess is that requirement should be SQL Server 2005 Notification Services with Service Pack 3. At least in the case when you want to use SQL Server 2008 R2. The suggested feature pack mentioned in installation document is not going to work, because you will get an error as displayed above.
Cheers!
Technorati: biztalk biztalk server 2010
by community-syndication | Oct 6, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Hi all
Last week I participated in a pretty insane and intensive 5-day course covering the
TOGAF 9 Foundation and TOGAF 9 Certified curriculum.
We were 11 people form Logica Denmark doing the course, and on Friday we all took
the Foundation exam just after lunch. Luckily we all passed and then at 2pm we all
took the Certified exam. The colleagues I have heard from by now all passed, and I
am happy to announce, that so did I.
So I can now call myself TOGAF 9 Certified! 
You can read more about The Open Group, TOGAF and the certifications at http://www.opengroup.org/, http://www.opengroup.org/togaf/ and http://www.opengroup.org/togaf9/cert/.
—
eliasen
by community-syndication | Oct 5, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I had an interesting gotcha today.
I recently deployed a BTS App and then decided to clean it up and move it to more
appropriately named Hosts/Host Instances.
All appeared to work well I even reinstalled a new MSI AND updated the BTS App bindings
I have a Dynamic Send Port that I decided to stop for a last change
(before telling the business to commence testing) – 10 mins I thought. How wrong
BTS Admin console reported back an error with ultimately the BizTalk.ExplorerOM =
grief.
There’s a hotfix for BTS2006 – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932700 for
this exact error.
How happy was I that I found thisshame I was working on BTS2009! I downloaded and
try to apply the fix on my box, and the hotfix was smart enough to detect I wasnt
on bts2006 x86 🙁
Roll up the sleeves time.
Digging further in the event viewer I noticed 2 entries talking about not being able
to connect to the MsgBoxDB and the other not being able to find a stored proc
The
following stored procedure call failed: " {
call [dbo].[bts_AdminOperatorsStartAndStopService_BTSHOSTNOTTHERE]( ?, ?, ?, ?)}".
SQL Server returned
error string: "Could
not find stored procedure 'dbo.bts_AdminOperatorsStartAndStopService_BTSHOSTNOTTHERE'.".
NOTE: BTSHOSTNOTTHERE = a previous host that was used and was deleted
as part of the ’cleanup’. You’d think that if they were lingering references I shouldn’t
have been able to delete this guy.
I tried many things in the admin console and WMI to try and remove this guy but no
go.
After a little digging I went to the BizTalk Management DB and found
a table called bts_dynamicport_subids which held the stale info I
needed to change.
Here’s the magic I executed these queries against the Management
DB, restarted the BTS Admin Console and we’re back in the game 🙂
SELECT * FROM
bts_dynamicport_subids where nvcHostName=’BTSHOSTNOTTHERE’
UPDATE bts_dynamicport_subids SET nvcHostName = 'BizTalkServerApplication’ Where
nvcHostname=’BTSHOSTNOTTHERE’
Now to reclaim that lost time
Have a great day!
by community-syndication | Oct 5, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
After Richard Seroter and the guys visit to Stockholm I ended up being given the 4 questions. They are here.
The complete, always entertaining, categorized series is here.
Richard notes in the introduction to the questions that I am a passable ship captain, which probably relates to the archipelago trip we did. I tried to find a good picture to post from that, but the ones I did have were taken with my mobiles camera and not very good and I’m still waiting for those that have them to upload them so I can steal some (*subtle hint*)
by community-syndication | Oct 5, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Introduction Today I kicked off the install of BizTalk 2010 RTM. On Friday of last week the BizTalk 2010 downloads were made available to MSDN customers and over the weekend the ESB Toolkit 2.1 RTM downloads also became available (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8b24d2a7-f079-4123-8428-7699e732a736). For some reason the Standard and Enterprise edition downloads are now almost twice the size […]
by community-syndication | Oct 5, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Before I uninstall BizTalk Server 2010 Standard Edition and go back to Developer I thought I’d run one additional test that points to a limit with Standard and a peculiarity “discovered” earlier this year that I can’t take any credit for noticing. It’s blogged about here – In essence: BizTalk Server 2009 Standard supports 6 “custom” BizTalk applications, not just the five that the license mentions. Or rather – It supports 5 additional applications on top of the ones created by install/configure by default (for those of you that do not understand what the term application means at this point, and how it affects us, can read this link). So the question then is – Does this hold true for the 2010 Standard RTM as well?
Sure enough, as you would expect, I am stopped from creating more than 5 additional applications by the following dialog.
I can however rename BizTalk Application 1 and use that for whatever purposes.
I can also just delete the BizTalk Application 1 and create a new application named whatver-I-want.
So. The answer to the question I asked above is – Yes it holds true. BizTalk Server 2010 Standard allows 6 applications on top of the BizTalk.System application, which is read-only. Nothing has changed from 2009 on this account.
by community-syndication | Oct 5, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
One of the common tasks in StreamInsight is to use a reference stream to integrate metadata or reference data from a relatively static source (such as a SQL Server table – a walkthrough of this technique will be described in an upcoming blog post). One of the challenges in integrating the reference stream has to do with liveliness; that is to say:
In this diagram we see two streams (data and reference) joined together to create a joined stream, with a LINQ syntax such as:
CepStream<SensorReading> dataStream = ...;
CepStream<SensorMetadata> metadataStream = ...;
var joinedQuery = from e1 in dataStream
join e2 in metadataStream
on e1.SensorId equals e2.SensorId
select e1;
From the diagram above, we see that we’ll only get two output events for (1) and (2). This is as a result of how the StreamInsight engine produces output – based on the application time (which is updated by the CTIs – current time indicators, or how the StreamInsight engine knows it has all of the data required to calculate results). In this case the engine sees:
- I have a time of T5 on the data stream
- I have a time of T0 (ish) on the reference stream
- Since I have joined these two streams together I can only produce output when I have received all of the events for a given time period. Since the reference stream lags behind the data stream, I can only output events at the speed of the reference stream.
In general, this is absolutely the correct behavior. However, we know something about the reference stream that the StreamInsight engine does not – that the reference stream is slowly changing, and we don’t want to wait for it to catch up. That is to say, we want to produce output at the pace of the data stream. How do we do this?
By importing the CTIs from the data stream into the reference stream:
This operation is performed by one of the overloads on the CepStream<>.Create() method, as per the syntax below (reading from this csv file as the sample data source, and this csv file as the sample reference source). The entire project can be downloaded from here (look in the SimpleJoin.cs class).
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Create a time import settings definition that states that a stream
// will import its CTI settings from dataStream
var timeImportSettings = new AdvanceTimeSettings(null,
new AdvanceTimeImportSettings("dataStream"),
AdvanceTimePolicy.Adjust);
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Create a reference data stream from the refStream.csv file; use
// the CTIs from the dataStream as defined by the timeImportSettings
// object
CepStream<SensorMetadata> metadataStream = CepStream<SensorMetadata>
.Create("refStream", typeof(TextFileReaderFactory),
new TextFileReaderConfig()
{
CtiFrequency = 1,
CultureName = CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Name,
Delimiter = ',',
InputFileName = "refStream.csv"
}, EventShape.Point, timeImportSettings);
Note that this syntax assumes the presence of a “dataStream” stream. At this point, we should be able to join the two streams and see a steady flow of output. However, if we simply want to look at the raw output of metadata stream as per:
var rawData = metadataStream.ToQuery(cepApp, "MetadataStream", "",
typeof(TracerFactory), traceConfig, EventShape.Interval,
StreamEventOrder.FullyOrdered);
Here is the error that is returned:
Error in query: Microsoft.ComplexEventProcessing.ManagementException:
Advance time import stream 'dataStream' does not exist. --->
Microsoft.ComplexEventProcessing.Compiler.CompilerException:
Advance time import stream 'dataStream' does not exist.
|
Huh? What do you mean the time import stream does not exist? I already defined it! What’s actually happening here is that the import stream has not yet been physically joined with the stream. In order to resolve this issue, you need to join the two streams before binding an output adapter (i.e. creating a query).
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Create a join of the two streams, and bind the output to the
// console
var joinedQuery = from e1 in dataStream
join e2 in metadataStream
on e1.SensorId equals e2.SensorId
select e1;
var query = joinedQuery.ToQuery(cepApp, "JoinedOutput", "",
typeof(TracerFactory), traceConfig, EventShape.Interval,
StreamEventOrder.FullyOrdered);
Ok, now let’s look at the output:
REF,Interval from 06/25/2009 00:00:00 +00:00 to 06/25/2009 00:00:00 +00:00:,MySensor_1001,1001,14
REF: CTI at 06/25/2009 00:00:00 +00:00
REF: CTI at 06/25/2009 00:00:09 +00:00
REF: CTI at 12/31/9999 23:59:59 +00:00
|
Huh? Where’s all of my output? Look at the data sources in question – the reference data is a sequence of point events. If we want to truly use it as a reference stream, we need to convert the series of point events into edge events (i.e. this value is good until replaced by a new value). In order to do this, we need to apply an AlterEventDuration and a Clip operator:
// Convert the point events from the reference stream into edge events
var edgeEvents = from e in metadataStream
.AlterEventDuration(e => TimeSpan.MaxValue)
.ClipEventDuration(metadataStream, (e1, e2) => (e1.SensorId == e2.SensorId))
select e;
What this bit of code does is:
- Stretch the point events out to infinity (i.e. these reference values are good “forever”)
- Clip each point event by any arriving event with the same sensor ID. For example, given a value of (1001, SensorId_1001), if another event later arrives with the values (1001, MySensor), the initial event will be clipped off and the new value will be MySensor
Then, putting the whole thing together:
// Convert the point events from the reference stream into edge events
var edgeEvents = from e in metadataStream
.AlterEventDuration(e => TimeSpan.MaxValue)
.ClipEventDuration(metadataStream, (e1, e2) => (e1.SensorId == e2.SensorId))
select e;
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Create a join of the two streams, and bind the output to the
// console
var joinedQuery = from e1 in dataStream
join e2 in edgeEvents
on e1.SensorId equals e2.SensorId
select new
{
SensorId = e1.SensorId,
Name = e2.Name,
Value = e1.Value
};
Results in:
REF,Interval,12:00:00.000,12:00:00.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,14
REF: CTI at 06/25/2009 00:00:00 +00:00
REF,Interval,12:00:01.000,12:00:01.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,4
REF,Interval,12:00:02.000,12:00:02.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,77
REF,Interval,12:00:03.000,12:00:03.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,44
REF,Interval,12:00:04.000,12:00:04.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,22
REF,Interval,12:00:05.000,12:00:05.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,51
REF,Interval,12:00:06.000,12:00:06.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,46
REF,Interval,12:00:07.000,12:00:07.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,71
REF,Interval,12:00:08.000,12:00:08.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,37
REF,Interval,12:00:09.000,12:00:09.000,,MySensor_1001,1001,45
REF: CTI at 12/31/9999 23:59:59 +00:00
|
by community-syndication | Oct 5, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The BizTalk version number table has been updated with the latest BizTalk release. Thanks to Imre Zolnai for triggering me to update it. Tagged: BizTalk, BizTalk 2010
by community-syndication | Oct 4, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
A while back I blogged about a service that would go fetch Natural Gas Prices, the price of Oil and Stock Quotes from Yahoo. The information that is returned from BizTalk is surfaced in an Xcelsius dashboard along with a lot of other business critical data from SAP. Our executive team accesses this information from a web part in SharePoint site. As people launch their browsers, they see the Stock Quotes and other commodity prices get updated. Since this is a dashboard, people will view the data for a few minutes and then close their browser. This type of user behavior never uncovered a flaw in the application. It is not like someone sat on the dashboard all day long waiting for the stock price to change.
A request came in to turn this Dashboard into a Windows 7 widget. Once this widget was in place, we uncovered that the stock quotes were not being updated. The Widget simply acts as a container for the dashboard. So we dug out Fiddler and could determine that the BizTalk service was not being called on a regular interval. The reason? Caching. There was no cache command or expiration date sent on the HTTP header going back to the dashboard so it would not be called on a regular basis. Since this Widget does not get restarted like a Web Browser does, the stock quotes would remain static for the duration of a user’s desktop session.
To avoid this situation, I needed to provide an explicit command in a Message Assignment Shape to prevent my responses from being cached:
msgStockQuoteResponse(HTTP.UserHttpHeaders) ="Cache-Control: no-cache";
Since the client was instructed not to cache the response, it would now go ahead and call the service when it goes to refresh the rest of its data.
There are many options that you can set within the HTTP Header. For example, if you wanted to expire content every 2 minutes, you could set your header to Cache-Control: max-age=120. If you are interested in what other features can be set in an HTTP Header, I recommend checking out this site.
by community-syndication | Oct 4, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The jQuery library has a passionate community of developers, and it is now the most widely used JavaScript library on the web today.
Two years ago I announced that Microsoft would begin offering product support for jQuery, and that we’d be including it in new versions of Visual Studio going forward. By default, when you create new ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects with VS 2010, the core jQuery library is now automatically added to your project.
Earlier this year at the MIX 2010 conference I announced that Microsoft would also begin contributing code to the jQuery project. During one of my keynotes, John Resig — the creator of the jQuery library – joined me on stage and talked a little about our participation and discussed an early prototype of a new client templating API for jQuery.
I later blogged more details about the jQuery Templates plugin, jQuery Data Link plugin, and jQuery Globalization plugin that the ASP.NET team has been working on in conjunction with the jQuery team and jQuery community. We’ve had a lot of requests from ASP.NET customers looking to enable this type of functionality. We followed the standard jQuery open source model and posted prototypes of the plugins to Github.com, participated in the jQuery forums, and incorporated design feedback from the community.
Official jQuery Plugins
Today, I am happy to make a joint announcement with the jQuery team that the jQuery project has accepted these three plugins (jQuery Templates, jQuery Data Link, and jQuery Globalization) as official jQuery plugins.
As official jQuery plugins, the plugins will be maintained as part of the jQuery project. Starting today, you can download these plugins by visiting the jQuery website. The documentation for these plugins is also now integrated within the official jQuery documentation site.
Furthermore, in the next major release of jQuery (jQuery 1.5), the jQuery Templates plugin will be included as a standard part of the core jQuery library. This means that the “jQuery Templates” functionality will be included in the jQuery.js file. And it means that developers will be able to take advantage of a standard templating library and syntax when working with jQuery.
Learning More
You can learn more about the plugins by watching the following Web Camps TV episode hosted by James Senior with Stephen Walther:
Web Camps TV #5 – Microsoft Commits Code to jQuery!
Below is additional information (and links to the official documentation on jQuery.com) for the three plugins:
jQuery Templates
The jQuery Templates plugin enables you to create client templates. For example, you can use the jQuery Templates plugin to format a set of database records that you have retrieved from the server through an Ajax request.
You can learn more about jQuery templates by reading my earlier blog entry on jQuery Templates and Data-Linking or by reading the documentation about it on the official jQuery website. In addition, Rey Bango, Boris Moore and James Senior have written some good blog posts on the jQuery Templates plugin:
When the next major version of jQuery is released — jQuery 1.5 — jQuery Templates will be included as a standard part of the jQuery library.
jQuery Data Link
The jQuery Data Link plugin enables you to easily keep your user interface and data synchronized. For example, you can use the Data Link plugin to automatically synchronize the input fields of an HTML product form with the properties of a JavaScript product object.
You can learn more about the Data Link plugin by reading my previous blog entry on jQuery Templates and Data-Linking. The documentation for the Data Link plugin is also now live at the official jQuery website.
jQuery Globalization
The jQuery Globalization plugin enables you to use different cultural conventions when formatting or parsing numbers, dates and times, calendars, and currencies. The Globalization plugin has information on over 350 cultures. You can use this plugin with the core jQuery library or plugins built on top of the jQuery library.
You can learn more about the jQuery Globalization plugin by reading my previous blog entry on the jQuery Globalization plugin.
Summary
My team is excited to participate and contribute to the jQuery project. We hope these three plugins make it easier for all web developers to build great sites and applications. We’ve made good progress the last few months, and are looking forward to making new announcements concerning jQuery in the future.
You can learn even more about today’s announcement from the jQuery team’s blog post about it.
Hope this helps,
Scott
P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu
