Accessing an authenticated web service using BizTalk and impersonation

by community-syndication | May 8, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I need to access the SharePoint user profile service.

SharePoint quite nicely exposes:  http://{Server}/_vti_bin/userprofileservice.asmx

It is authenticated, quite rightly so, however the user I am
accessing it with has permissions, however it still asks for username and
password.

I was getting this error:

The adapter failed to transmit message going to send port
“WcfSendPort_UserProfileServiceSoapOneWay” with URL
“http://{Server}/_vti_bin/userprofileservice.asmx”. It will be retransmitted
after the retry interval specified for this Send Port.
Details:”System.ServiceModel.FaultException: <soap:Envelope
xmlns:soap=”http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/”
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xmlns:xsd=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema”><soap:Body><soap:Fault><faultcode>soap:Server</faultcode><faultstring>Server
was unable to process request. —&gt;
System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotFoundException</faultstring><detail
/></soap:Fault></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>

Server was unable to process request. System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotFoundException

Not much help to me

After some searching I found I needed to use impersonation.

The main reason was from .net I can simply do:

WSService.Credentials = System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

Now the current user is impersonated and if they have
permissions it works. GREAT.

I’m in BizTalk, and I’m on the WCF port

The port is using wcf-basichttp as the protocol, and it
should be able to just I have no idea how.

Well the solution I found is rather simple.

Use a wcf-custom port.  

Setup the basic-httpbinding.

First of all set the transport to client credential type
ntlm 

 

Then flip over to Behavior

It will be blank.  Right
click end point behavior: 

Select add extension.

Add client credentials and configure like so:

 After doing this my error went away.

Enterprise Mobility Best Practices With Chris Love

by community-syndication | May 8, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Enterprise mobility is one of the hottest trends in today’s IT industry. However, like any other emerging technology space, the industry is still trying to learn about the challenges and establish best practices and patterns that can help organizations…(read more)
Blog Post by: gsusx

Windows Azure-being renamed?

by community-syndication | May 8, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-renames-azure-services –
article talks about MS renaming services and essentially dropping the ’Windows’ out
of it.

My experience has seen this will appeal to the non-MS types that see ’Windows’ as
something they don’t want to go near.
I personally think it’s a good move as sure it’s Windows but the Azure Platform offers
so much more..

Here’s some of the proposed changes.

Blog Post by: Mick Badran

BizTalk Backup-Disaster Recovery – Log shipping is the only official option, why?

by community-syndication | May 8, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

When it comes to BizTalk environment "Backup and Disaster recovery", the only official supported option is Log shipping.

This applies to all the versions of BizTalk Servers listed below

BizTalk Server 2004 SP1, 2006, 2006 R2, 2009 and 2010

Log shipping was originally introduced in BizTalk 2006 and back ported to 2004 via SP1. MSDN article contains very good resources, explaining the steps involved in setting up and restoring BizTalk databases.

Microsoft story on BizTalk Server backup/restore has never changed for the past 6 years. When it comes to disaster recovery there are 2 standard industry terms people refer to

1. Recovery Point Objective (RPO), and
2. Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

RPO is the amount of data loss acceptable for business, and RTO is the amount of time it?s acceptable for business without a live environment. With BizTalk Server log shipping default settings, these values will be RPO value of 15 minutes (transaction log back up interval, which can be altered), and RTO will be approximately 1 hour.

Depending on your system volume and amount of background noise it can tackle, you can experiment with reducing the transaction log back up time from default 15 minutes.

Why Log shipping, not any other methods?

BizTalk Server uses multiple databases as part of its runtime requirement.  These databases need to be transactionally consistent (including DTC transactions) at any given point of time to ensure integrity of the server. 

As part of this solution, BizTalk uses Marked Transactions (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa577848(v=bts.20).aspx) that guaranties the transactional consistency for all of the databases included in the backup.   As part of the installation/configuration, BizTalk creates a SQL Agent Job that uses SQL log shipping for providing backup/recovery of its databases.  The backup/restore solution is implemented as an external SQL artifact and is not a native functionality/feature of BizTalk server.  The server runtime only expects availability of its databases in a consistent state and does not make any assumptions about the backup/restore mechanism.  The task of securing a backup and restoring the database in a transactionally consistent state is assumed to be an external activity.

What’s Microsoft stand on alternate solutions?

If you use BizTalk Server with any 3rd party database solutions other than Microsoft SQL Server Log shipping for backup/restore, your primary support contact is the third-party solution provider for any support issues that are related to this. BizTalk Server was developed and tested by using Microsoft SQL Server Log shipping. The Third-party solution provider should be your primary contact for any installation issues, performance issues, or backup\restoration issues. CSS provides commercially reasonable support for BizTalk server related issues as long as it is not related to the back\restore functionality provided by the 3rd party solution.

Generally, support for any SQL specific 3rd party solutions are within the scope of support as outlined here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913945

What does the above mean?

Microsoft as a software vendor provides an out of the box solution for BizTalk backup and restore. If you are choosing a third party vendor or custom crafting something for your own benefit (ex: avoiding the extra SQL server instances required for Log shipping). Then the risk is either with you or with the third party vendor to restore the data/environment back. If in case you can?t restore your DR site using a third party solution, then simply don?t call Microsoft support.

If you look at the SQL server case, there are dozen third party vendors who supply backup/restore tools for SQL server. If you use any of them and you can?t recover the data, then logically you call the third party vendor helpline or sue them, rather than calling Microsoft.

Unfortunately for BizTalk server there are not any third party solutions available that can certify and take the risk. So you are left with Log shipping.

Nandri!

Saravana Kumar
Founder – BizTalk360
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Announcing Trojan Horse, the Novel!

by community-syndication | May 8, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Many of you have read Zero Day , my first novel. It’s a cyberthriller that features Jeff Aiken and the beautiful Daryl Haugen, computer security experts that save the world from a devastating cyberattack. Its reviews and sales exceeded my expectations…(read more)
Blog Post by: Mark Russinovich

UK Connected Systems User Group May 10th

by community-syndication | May 8, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

This week (thursday May 10th) I’ll be speaking at the UK Connected System user group, if you live close to London you should definitely join us there, here are the schedule: Signup: http://ukcsugmay2012-eorg.eventbrite.com/ Start Time: 6:30pm (doors open from 6pm) End Time: 9:30pm Location: Customer Meeting Room 05 Microsoft Cardinal Place London Signup: http://ukcsugmay2012-eorg.eventbrite.com/ Session
Blog Post by: Tord Glad Nordahl

BizTalk360 first anniversary

by community-syndication | May 7, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

In UK we got a policy of shifting the bank holidays that comes in the middle of the week to following Monday, so people can have an extended weekend. Last year’s 1st May bank holiday was shifted to 2nd May, on that day we released our very first version of BizTalk360 CTP to public. Today is 7th May, alternative to 2012’s 1st May holiday.

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We introduced BizTalk360 with a very powerful tag line "Worlds first BizTalk production support and monitoring tool". We clearly understood, being first doesn’t mean anything (Google is not the first search engine, iPOD is not the first MP3 player and Windows is not the first GUI OS to give few examples). It’s all about innovation and constant improvement that either makes or breaks the product.

In the following chart we summarize our improvement over the last 1 year. We release 4 major versions in the past 1 year. We simply didn’t increase the version number for every simple updates, each version came with substantial functionality that ease the life of BizTalk administrators and support people in a day to day activity.

In the past 1 year we got customers over 10 countries, covering various industry sectors. Most of the customers are large scale enterprise customers, some of them are well known retail brands. Never thought the shirts I wear and the world famous trainers I use for my tennis (companies) will become my customers one day!!.

I whole heartedly thank every one who helped us to achieve this milestone. All my MVP and community friends, my close family and friends. We haven’t paused yet, we already started planning for what’s coming after 4.0 (keep tuned).

NOTE: BizTalk360 got it’s own blog now, so if you want to keep up to date with product improvements, please subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/biztalk360

Nandri!

Saravana Kumar

Weekly Cloud Newsround 2012-18

by community-syndication | May 7, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Filtering the informative, insightful and quirky from the fire hose of cloud-based hype.

Mike Pearl from PWC Looks At Cloud Strategy Through The Lens Of Value in a guest post for Forbes, Michelle Boisvert discusses the Real and perceived security threats of cloud computing, abd Greenpeace is still mad about ’dirty cloudy computing’.

CTV News shares its opinions on Which cloud storage solution is best for your data?, whilst V3 discusses the security and performance issues that may slow the adoption of cloud storage. Addressing the security issues, the Washington Post looks at ways to keep the cloud secure.

On the Azure front, there is a nice story about how MediaValet are Thriving on Microsoft’s Cloud Platform, and Mary-Jo writes about How Twilio went from handshake to Microsoft Azure partner in a month-plus.

How BizTalk Maps Work – The sequence of links (Part 3)

by community-syndication | May 6, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

“The order in which we perform the links between the elements from source to destination has a huge impact in the final result”. This statement is true and false at the same time! In fact the order with which we associate links (Drag & Drop) from the source to different destination elements is irrelevant, since […]
Blog Post by: Sandro Pereira

How to fix BizTalk orchestrations opening in text view by default in Visual Studio

by community-syndication | May 5, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

If you’re like me (lazy), chances are that you’ve tried to take shortcuts when refactoring BizTalk projects and run into the same trouble that I have. What I’ve found is that if you open a BizTalk orchestrationfile in the Visual Studio XML viewer and made any changes to it (typical changes I would make here […]
Blog Post by: Johann