BizTalk Server 2009 Cumulative update package 3 available

BizTalk Server 2009 Cumulative update package 3 available

Cumulative update package 3 for BizTalk Server 2009 is now available. The cumulative update package for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 contains hotfixes for issues that were fixed after the release of BizTalk Server 2009. This package is a rollup update that contains all previous hotfixes to date for BizTalk Server 2009, all hotfixes from the […]
Blog Post by: Sandro Pereira

BizTalk 360 – What’s the feature you want to see in vNext?

It’s exactly 1 month since BizTalk 360 went to production. We were overwhelmed by the response we received for BizTalk 360. Thanks for all of those who helped to spread BizTalk 360, here are some of the tweets we captured in the last few weeks. I’m sure we missed few others.

The next big thing for BizTalk 360 is the alerting capabilities, you can watch the preview videos here, we released those videos to get some early feedback, we redesigned and incorporated all the feedbacks. Functionality will be available by mid next week (10th August) as version 2.1.xxx.

We haven’t stopped developing BizTalk 360 yet, we know it’s an iterative process. Now our roadmap/future directions is in your hands. We are small company with limited resources, but laser focused on what we are doing. All we wanted to do is deliver a world class/high quality BizTalk support/monitoring tool that addresses some of the gaps/pain points customers are facing.

The success of BizTalk 360 will rely on addressing top pain points customers are facing. What’s your pain point? If there is one thing that you want to see in next version of BizTalk 360, what will it be?

Please post your views here getsatisfaction.com/biztalk360

Nandri!
Saravana Kumar

Social:
Join us on @biztalk360 | http://facebook.com/biztalk360 | http://getsatisfaction.com/biztalk360

Introducing SQL Server Developer Tools (code-named “Juneau”)

With SQL Server Denali CTP3 released just two weeks ago, I’ve been ramping up fast as I write the new edition of Tallan’s SQL Server book (Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2012, O’Reilly) and prepare for upcoming presentations at the NJSQL User Group (Sep 20) and the SDC event in the Netherlands (Oct 2/3). I recently […]
Blog Post by: Lenni Lobel

Interview Series: Four Questions With  Allan Mitchell

Interview Series: Four Questions With Allan Mitchell

Greetings and welcome my 33rd interview with a thought leader in the “connected technology” space. This month, we’ve got the distinct pleasure of talking to Allan Mitchell. Allan is a SQL Server MVP, speaker and both joint owner and Integration Directorof the new consulting shop, Copper Blue Consulting. Allan’s got excellent experience in the ETL […]
Blog Post by: Richard Seroter

Upcoming BizTalk Server 2010 Developer Training

With the recent release of the BizTalk Server 2010 Developer Training, I will be delivering the following course for Mexia:

  • Adelaide – August 8th – 12th (for information contact me)
  • Melbourne – August 15th – 19th (for information and registration go here)

The BizTalk Server 2010 Developer Training is an update version of the existing BizTalk training that now includes WCF send and receive adapter, a BizTalk Patterns module (correlation, sequential convoy and parallel convoy) and optional EDI components. The course is targeted at beginning BizTalk developer or developers that want to bring their skills up to 2010.

Mexia can also provide a customized on-site delivery of the BizTalk Server 2010 Developer Training if required.

Any question or discuss your BizTalk training needs please contact me

Resharper 6.0 – Key features

I’ve posted a screencast that goes through the key features that make ReSharper an invaluable tool for developers on the MS platform.
Note: I recommend watching this video in HD Mode, full screen.
(Video: Watch this video on the post page)
Screencast Download Link:
High Definition (.mp4) (85MB)
Please leave questions/concerns in the comments!

Blog Post by: Michael Gerety

Encoded Multi Part Messages to SOAP adapter

I had one of those old/non conforming to the standards web service of kinds Ineeded to call.

The ones you really hate, and wish they’d just upgrade them to WCF… but hey thats 90% of integration, old rotten systems… so I persisted.

It did accept xml messages, however was very fussy as it seemed to employ the good old, no xml translator, the one that is more of a text base, string manipulation xml decoder, where if you send quite valid xml, it will fail because they didn’t support it.

This kind of set up is… sadly… quite common….

It would not handle xml tags that had no content, but had a closing tag.

EG: <salary currency=”en-AU”></salary>

It needed to have them encoded differently:

<salary currency=”en-AU”/>

Now both of these examples are valid xml, however good old string parser went the easy route and didn’t cater for an end tag.

The problem is that you can’t exactly tell biztalk to not put the end tag, it’s going to put xml, valid xml, and thats what it does….

Further more… it also complained about white space in my xml message…. ??? you say???

<salary currency=””><salary> <standout logoid=””1111″><standout>

The white space it didn’t like was between the tags, <salary>[— white space —]<standout>

Now how on earth do you cater for this?

A custom pipeline component to the rescue, just before it sends the message I would “FixUP” the xml by removing the end tags, and white space between tags, using my old favourite, c#.net .

So I go to the trouble of making a custom pipeline component, hook it up to a custom send pipeline, and then attach the pipeline to the send port.

BANG, nothing happens… it stil fails for the same reason.

At this point I’m a little annoyed, and more p’d off than i’d care to mention.

I spend the next hour trying to figure out why……

Firstly the web service is a SOAP web service, I have to use the SOAP adapter because it’s a multipart message, I check with Yossi. http://blog.sabratech.co.uk/2009/08/biztalk-wcf-adapter-and-multipart.html to discover that even if I went to WCF and fudged a wcf-http port to work it would not make much difference.

I then try and pump the message out to the file system, using a send port in the orchestration. I get a message, with only the first part. It throws me for a second, then I realise that the FILE adapter does not support multi part messages. Weird, considering all messages are multi part messages, most with one part, but I prevail.

How do I see what is going to the adapter? I really need to see the message, I mean I have tested by component, and it is good, it works and does the trick, its .net, so I of course have a .TEST project to test it…

How… Ah..ha… You can stop the send port, not unenlist it, but stop it, the message will still go to the port however sit there waiting for you.

I can then see the message from the admin console, ALL parts of the message, a much better way to debug messages BTW, I notice the message part has been encoded, the multi part message takes two strings, the second of which is my xml message. So the message is wrapped in a <string> tag, with the contents…. no longer in XML format, they are html encoded. My lovely <salary> tag is now a horrid, & lt;Salary& gt; the xml is hardly readable…. I cringe, it’s destroyed my lovely xml…

Now I can see what’s going on, before it even gets to my custom pipeline, my xml is encoded, therefor my pipeline which is looking for xml, does not find any, and does not work…. UGH!

Interestingly when I assign the value of the xml in the outbound message, I do it from a message assignment shape, I have the xml in my grasp…

I do a cheeky thing in BizTalk, turn the message into an xml document, which I can turn into text. Luckily I wrote the pipeline by using a separate class for the tagging and white space cleaning. So I can call the methods from the message assignment shape, and I process the xml, clean and massage it.

I then set the xml document back up by loading the NEW xml into to, and then set the value of the parameter of the outbound message to the xmldocument.

The message is now encoded before it goes to the port. I send the message to the port and wolla, response message, in xml… that tells me it worked.

This is a bit of a hack and a workaround, it does work, however I would have preferred the pipeline to work.

I do note with interest that only the SOAP adapter is able to process this multipart message, because it’s an OLD soap web service, I did hear of talk of scrapping the SOAP adapter, however multipart messages are VERY common on soap web services, and this would be foolish to scrap it. I’d like to see support for multi part messages in the WCF set of adapters, with more backwards compatible support, so I don’t have to use an out dated SOAP adapter.

Export Powershell Objects to Xml – in a more natural format than Export-CliXml

Export Powershell Objects to Xml – in a more natural format than Export-CliXml

Introduction On a recent project I was calling a PowerShell script and wanted to return Xml from the script so that I could iterate on an object using Linq to Xml. I investigated options available for exporting an object in Powershell to Xml and looked at some built-in cmdlets like Export-CliXml: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd347657.aspx, but I could […]
Blog Post by: clineer