by community-syndication | Sep 5, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Monitoring is essential to keep your BizTalk environments healthy and running smoothly. With monitoring you have a couple of options. Either using System Center Operation Manager, a combination of SCOM and third party tooling or solely use third party tooling.
1. Monitoring the BizTalk environment with SCOM can be done with using the management pack for BizTalk Server or AVIcode .NET Application Management Pack.
2. An alternative monitoring solution is BizTalk360, which you can combine with using SCOM. This means you can have best of both worlds.
3. In case your enterprise does not have SCOM or is planning to deploy SCOM, BizTalk360 itself can be an excellent choice for monitoring BizTalk environments.
To efficiently monitor a BizTalk environment people with different roles are involved like:
%u00b7 System Administrator,
%u00b7 Database Administrator and
%u00b7 BizTalk Administrator.
Each has different needs for information to be able to resolve or prevent issues. BizTalk360 can aid in full filling the needs for a BizTalk administrator as it will give him/her the fine grained detail of the environment and in-depth information. Besides that it has many capabilities onboard that SCOM lacks. For instance fine grained governance, throttling analyzer, Message Box Viewer Reports and Graphical Message View. The productivity of a BizTalk administrator can be dramatically enhanced using BizTalk360. BizTalk360 is provided by Kovia ltd and about to release the fifth release. The new capabilities are:
Monitoring Dashboard
Backup – Disaster Recovery configuration visualizer
Process monitoring for receive locations and send ports (aka silence/inactivity monitoring)
HP Operation Manager Integration
Support for Message Box Viewer (MBV) 12
Run MBV anytime directly from UI
New Event Viewer notification channel Disable individual alerts
Performance Improvements
Better applications loading time
Improved Environment/Platform setting dashboard loading time
Improved monitoring service performance
The new capabilities and improvements represent another cycle of evolution this product is going under. Which means that it continues to grow to a fully-fledged product with an outstanding set of capabilities for monitoring your BizTalk environment. BizTalk360 supports BizTalk versions 2006 and up. You can download the BizTalk360 version 5 Beta now and try it yourself on your local or test BizTalk environment.
by community-syndication | Sep 5, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I like to share a website I frequently use to format any code (C#, XML or T-SQL) to HTML for using on my blog. Other possibilities are to format VB, HTML or msh, but I haven’t used these myself yet.
You can also add things like line numbers, or use alternating backgrounds. And to modify the colors of the output, you’ll just need to change the css style sheet.
Also because everytime I need it, I’ll have to search the website again on google. So this way I’ll save some time for me too :).
Here’s the link: http://www.manoli.net/csharpformat/
by community-syndication | Sep 5, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
It isn’t that hard to create a flat file from XML file, but I had a bit of trouble to find out how to create a header line with the column names, so I thought I would write a short blog post to describe this.
The following steps are needed:
- Take a copy of your flat file schema. Remember to change the file name and type name of the schema
- Open the new schema and change the name of your root element or your target namespace. Otherwise you will get an error that BizTalk can’t find your schema as it might not have been added to the GAC. The reason for this error is that BizTalk needs a unique combination of target namespace and root element.
- For each element in your schema you have to set a default value (the name of the column) and it needed change the datatype of the element to string.
- In the send pipeline flat file assembler component you have to point this new schema that you have created.
- This should be it. Of cause you need to deploy, restart and so on, but you know this 😉
Now you have a flat file with header column names as some systems like.
by community-syndication | Sep 5, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The SQL Server agent job “Backup BizTalk Server” will not delete the generated backup files automatically. The job does clear the backup history table in the database, but it will never delete the backup files from the disk. Which will of course result in the disk to fill up eventually and the backup job will fail from then on.
Here’s a simple stored procedure to call from the “Backup BizTalk Server” job in the “Clear Backup History” step. Just follow these steps:
- Open SQL Server management Studio
- Open a new query window and connect to the BizTalkMgmtDb database
- Execute this script to add a new stored procedure called sp_DeleteBackupHistoryAndFiles
USE [BizTalkMgmtDb]
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_DeleteBackupHistoryAndFiles] @DaysToKeep smallint = null, @UseLocalTime bit = 0
AS
BEGIN
set nocount on
IF @DaysToKeep IS NULL OR @DaysToKeep <= 0
RETURN
/*
Only delete full sets
If a set spans a day such that some items fall into the deleted group and the other don't don't delete the set
Delete history only if history of full Backup exists at a later point of time
why: history of full backup is used in sp_BackupAllFull_Schedule to check if full backup of databases is required or not.
If history of full backup is not present, job will take a full backup irrespective of other options (frequency, Backup hour)
*/
declare @PurgeDateTime datetime
if (@UseLocalTime = 0)
set @PurgeDateTime = DATEADD(dd, -@DaysToKeep, GETUTCDATE())
else
set @PurgeDateTime = DATEADD(dd, -@DaysToKeep, GETDATE())
DECLARE DeleteBackupFiles CURSOR
FOR SELECT 'del "' + [BackupFileLocation] + case right(BackupFileLocation,1) when '\' then '' else '\' end + [BackupFileName] + '"' FROM [adm_BackupHistory] [h1]
WHERE [BackupDateTime] < @PurgeDateTime
AND [BackupSetId] NOT IN ( SELECT [BackupSetId] FROM [dbo].[adm_BackupHistory] [h2] WHERE [h2].[BackupSetId] = [h1].[BackupSetId] AND [h2].[BackupDateTime] >= @PurgeDateTime)
AND EXISTS( SELECT TOP 1 1 FROM [dbo].[adm_BackupHistory] [h2] WHERE [h2].[BackupSetId] > [h1].[BackupSetId] AND [h2].[BackupType] = 'db')
DECLARE @cmd varchar(400)
OPEN DeleteBackupFiles
FETCH NEXT FROM DeleteBackupFiles INTO @cmd
WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)
BEGIN
IF (@@fetch_status <> -2)
BEGIN
EXEC master.dbo.xp_cmdshell @cmd, NO_OUTPUT
delete from [adm_BackupHistory] WHERE CURRENT OF DeleteBackupFiles
print @cmd
END
FETCH NEXT FROM DeleteBackupFiles INTO @cmd
END
CLOSE DeleteBackupFiles
DEALLOCATE DeleteBackupFiles
END
- 5.Modify the “Clear Backup History” step of the Backup BizTalk Server job to call sp_DeleteBackupHistoryAndFiles, instead of calling the stored procedure sp_DeleteBackupHistory
- Make sure xp_cmdshell for the SQL Server instance is enabled. this will be disabled by default. To enable this, execute following SQL script:
EXEC master.dbo.sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1
RECONFIGURE
EXEC master.dbo.sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1
RECONFIGURE
This stored procedure is made for BizTalk Server 2010.
Because with the release of BizTalk 2010 there have been changes to the sp_DeleteBackupHistory stored procedures. They added a parameter to the stored procedure to use local time and changed the query to prevent the deletion of the history from the last full backup set forward.
For older versions of BizTalk you should use this script instead:
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[sp_DeleteBackupHistoryAndFiles] @DaysToKeep smallint = null
AS
BEGIN
set nocount on
IF @DaysToKeep IS NULL OR @DaysToKeep <= 0
RETURN
/*
Only delete full sets
If a set spans a day such that some items fall into the deleted group and the other doesn't, do not delete the set
*/
DECLARE DeleteBackupFiles CURSOR
FOR SELECT 'del "' + [BackupFileLocation] + '\' + [BackupFileName] + '"' FROM [adm_BackupHistory]
WHERE datediff( dd, [BackupDateTime], getdate() ) >= @DaysToKeep
AND [BackupSetId] NOT IN ( SELECT [BackupSetId] FROM [dbo].[adm_BackupHistory] [h2] WHERE [h2].[BackupSetId] = [BackupSetId] AND datediff( dd, [h2].[BackupDateTime], getdate() ) < @DaysToKeep )
DECLARE @cmd varchar(400)
OPEN DeleteBackupFiles
FETCH NEXT FROM DeleteBackupFiles INTO @cmd
WHILE (@@fetch_status <> -1)
BEGIN
IF (@@fetch_status <> -2)
BEGIN
EXEC master.dbo.xp_cmdshell @cmd, NO_OUTPUT
delete from [adm_BackupHistory] WHERE CURRENT OF DeleteBackupFiles
print @cmd
END
FETCH NEXT FROM DeleteBackupFiles INTO @cmd
END
CLOSE DeleteBackupFiles
DEALLOCATE DeleteBackupFiles
END
GO
Source: http://www.biztalkbill.com/Home/tabid/40/EntryId/81/Update-to-Stored-Procedure-to-delete-Backup-BizTalk-Server-SQL-Agent-backup-files.aspx
by community-syndication | Sep 4, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Since a couple of days Microsoft enabled Windows Azure users to create Virtual Machines, which are based on BizTalk 2010 R2 CTP. This is great, because it offers those users to have a preview at that release, combined with some of the new related products, like SQL Server 2012 and .NET 4.5.
However, given the screenshot below, which was taken from the BizTalk 2010 R2 Installation Wizard, it looks like Microsoft expected to release the next version of Visual Studio sooner 🙂
by community-syndication | Sep 2, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I’ve been working on a BizTalk solution which includes a scenario in which I am receiving envelope messages that are to be debatched in a receive pipeline using an XML Disassembler pipeline component, correlating the debatched messages which will be of different message types to relevant orchestrations where they will once again be batched up […]
Blog Post by: Johann
by community-syndication | Sep 1, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Some colleagues of mine called me over for some advice on a problem they were having in a BizTalk orchestration the other day. They were using a message assignment shape to set the bodies and context properties for a multi-part message which contained two parts which were to be sent out over SMTP on a […]
Blog Post by: Johann
by community-syndication | Aug 31, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
So over the years I’ve had my share of “meltdowns” or failures in BizTalk. I pretty much feel like I’ve seen them all, and I would like to contribute some of the errors and solution to this problems, call it a teaser since there is a lot, this will be the first post in a
Blog Post by: Tord Glad Nordahl
by community-syndication | Aug 31, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
I have just been looking at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2012/08/29/getting-started-with-biztalk-server-2010-r2-ctp-in-windows-azure-virtual-machines.aspx to understand some of the new features. I am not going to wax on about any of the new features here because other people are already doing a good job at this (See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2011/12/08/biztalk-server-2010-r2.aspx) but I want to highlight how refreshing it is to preview a new product […]
Blog Post by: mbrimble
by community-syndication | Aug 31, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
When choosing a color in the properties window in visual studio, there is the possibility to choose from so called System Colors. An example for this is the color ‘Window’, which is the default for a textbox.
Now, I tried to set the BackColor of a Textbox programmatically back to this system color ‘Window’. Turned out not to be as easy as I thought it would be.
I tried things like Color.? … I hoped to find the color in this namespace, or even a System subsection for the systemcolors. Nothing to be found however.
Nor was there any namespace like System.Color to be found.
But how can these system colors be set from C# code than?
Well, one way turned to be using this command:
System.Drawing.Color.FromKnownColor(KnownColor.Window)
And, as you’d expect, the KnownColor enumeration contains all of the other user-definable colors.
Or even an easier method to achieve this is
System.Drawing.SystemColors.Window
