Want to know what EDI support is in BizTalk 2006 R2

by community-syndication | Apr 9, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

With over 6000+ EDI schemas and a brand new home grown EDI engine that WORKS!!!! (like
BTS2000/2002 days)

Here’s a great article that talks about the support for various schemas from the BizTalk
Team.
http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalkb2b/archive/2006/10/14/edi-support-in-biztalk-server-2006-r2.aspx

—snip —

EDI support in BizTalk Server (BTS) 2006 R2

Hello
all:

BTS2006
R2 provides for design and run time support for six encoding standards and includes
over 8000 ’standard’ XSD schemas ‘in the box’ ready for implementation. Please do
understand that these schemas will only operate with EDI systems in BTS 2006
R2 and are not compatible on Base EDI Adapter (BTS 2004 and 2006 versions). In
forthcoming topics I will include documentation on how to modify/customize these
schemas.

One
of the most asked question is the on a listing of the Version/Release schemas supported
in BTS2006 R2 – Microsoft EDI. So here goes:

           
* included in Beta 2 release.

NOTE: VICS
and UCS will not be included in BizTalk Server 2006 R2.

UK SDC BizTalk 2006 Documenter: ‘192’ is not a valid value for Microsoft.Sdc.BizTalkOM.TrackingType

by community-syndication | Apr 9, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

As stated by other BizTalk developers as well, I think the UK SDC BizTalk 2006 Documenter is a great tool! It creates a good looking .CHM file which documents your entire BizTalk installation.

Unfortunately I found another error, or actually Brent Anderson did. He found out that when you have either or both Track Message Properties enabled on a Send port, the Documenter does not generate the documentation.

fig. 1 – Send Port Properties

The Documenter shows the following popup:

fig. 2 – Error popup

Under the hoods (with DebugView), the UK SDC Documenter gives more information:

TraceErr : Microsoft.Sdc.BiztalkDocumenter.Documenter.GenerateDocumentation: System.InvalidOperationException:

Instance validation error: ‘192’ is not a valid value for Microsoft.Sdc.BizTalkOM.TrackingType.

Research learned that the values from the Track Message properties, don’t match the values from the enumeration Microsoft.Sdc.BizTalkOM.TrackingType, resulting in the error above.

Depending on which of the Track Message Properties are checked, another value will appear in the error message.

The consequence of this is that, until the bug is solved, it is not possible to use the documenter as long as you have one of the Track Message Properties checked.

I can’t wait for the next release J

Readify Holding another Master Class

by community-syndication | Apr 9, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I was luck enough to attend the last Master Class that Readify held on WCF, we have now scheduled another master class, this time it is WPF. Ian Griffiths will be coming out from the UK to deliver Applied WPF in Sydney the week if the 23rd of April 2007, for details see – http://www.readify.net/Default.aspx?tabid=254.

From my experience with the WCF master class I can say the to get the depth of information delivered in these classes is second to none and not available anywhere else in Australia. If you want to take your WCF knowledge to the next level don’t miss this opportunity.

Error while using the UK SDC Documenter as a Post build event

by community-syndication | Apr 9, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

We were contacted by Brent Anderson from RBA Consulting. He ran into some errors while using the UK SDC BizTalk 2006 Documenter as a post build event.

Error initialising documentation publisher
Brent found out that using the documenter in a post build event works fine, as long as you just use the /def[ault] parameter.
When we tried to use the /o[utput] parameter (to set another output directory), we were confronted with an ‘Error initialising documentation publisher’. We also tried other parameters, but that resulted in the same error.

Solution
After some research we found out that when you want to use other parameters, than the /def[ault] parameter, you must supply the /p:chm parameter to make sure the document publisher can be initialized.

MS BRE: Controlling rule side effects

by community-syndication | Apr 9, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

For almost two years now, I’ve been intending to write an article about the mysterious ‘side effects’ flag used in Microsoft Business Rule Engine policies.  Microsoft documents this feature (see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa559124.aspx), and describes very briefly how to control it.   The mystery that surrounds this flag arises because it is represented by an attribute named ‘sideeffects’ in Microsoft’s BRL (Business Rule Language) although it actually controls a caching mechanism, and because Microsoft has not provided access to the flag in their Rules Composer, thereby giving the impression that it is not a ‘first-class’ feature of rule definitions.   In reality, this flag is an important aspect of the functional approach adopted in Microsoft’s Business Rule Language (BRL), and can have a significant effect on both behaviour and performance of your policies.  Understanding the flag also requires a greater understanding of the way in which BRL binds functions to custom code, providing a clean mechanism for implementing domain-specific extensions to the rule language.

Incidently I apologise that, for a few hours after my initial posting, I had to withdraw the article.   No sooner had I posted than I realised that I had not adequately investigated one aspect of MS BRE functionality.   I have now corrected and extended the original version.   I’m sorry if anyone found their aggregator reporting a page that wasn’t there.

The article is located at http://geekswithblogs.net/cyoung/articles/111169.aspx

Programmatically generating orchestrations

by community-syndication | Apr 7, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Martijn Hoogendoorn has re-posted the link to his utility to programmatically generate orchestrations (now that he is working for Microsoft the old link on his previous blog no longer works). Check it out at:  http://blogs.msdn.com/martijnh/default.aspx . He has used the Microsoft.Biztalk.IMS.dll which contains interfaces such as IBtsVsDocument and the Biztalk Object Model dll to do most of the generation. This is quite different to Jon Flanders Pattern Wizards which have a wizard written over a bunch of VS2005 templates to generate what you need. In this codebase, Martijn has one class which generates a sample akin to the SDK CallOrchestration sample. Its pretty nifty and demonstrates how one can use the Biztalk TypeSystem to generate ports, message references etc. One thing which puzzled me is where he got the Biztalk.IMS.dll from!! Jon has that in his codebase too but i couldnt find that anywhere on my machine! Does anyone know where we can get that or where some documentation would be available?

So when would you want to code gen orchestrations? After all, using the orchestration designer isnt exactly rocket science and now that there is a wealth of community wisdom in the realm of patterns (encapsulated in Jons tool), why do we need this? I look at this technique as facilitating one layer of abstraction over the designer itself. Take the “Solution Designer” that Eddie Churchill demo’ed in a channel9 video  If you look at that, it shows how the Team Architect AD surface can be used to sketch your solution end to end and then generate the solution structure with stub orchestrations, schemas, maps etc. Thats a good application of DSL technology (although in the demo version it used windows forms, not the DSL toolkit which wasnt stable enough to be used at that time).

Anyway, back to the discussion. One thing about good architectures is that they should also be consistent (along with being flexible). So if you have a bunch of backend systems that expose similar interfaces to be integrated with (WS, queues, file ports etc) and if you have a choice of which interface to use, while you are well within your rights to use any way of connecting to them, IMO, a better way would be to establish a consistent pattern of connecting to them so that you can make sure your bases are all covered, your development team knows whats expected and you have a standard base for delivering estimates. So if you do this, then you can fairly well predict exactly what your “connector” looks like and then, if you have worked out the contract for your schemas etc, then you can just go ahead and code gen the entire lot. Use the VS automation model to generate the solution structure, add the various projects in programmatically and then inside each of them, use these utilities (like Martijns) to generate the rest (and in a future version of BizUnitExtensions, autogen your tests as well). This way we can maximize our “design contracts”.

I do wish the Biztalk team would make the WebService Publishing Wizard available programmatically. (I guess the WSE publishing wizard is probably on its way out now that WCF is in production). This would help even more code generation. By the way, i heard that Eddie has left the BTS team and so the
solution designer has been discarded. Anyone know the skinny on this? I
would be terribly disappointed if this is the case because to me, that was the
most compelling feature in the “future/vNext” Biztalk release (perhaps
it was post R2).

By the way, I also came across another tool named BridgeWerx sometime ago that used a custom interface to sketch your biztalk solution and generate the codebase. I wonder if they have moved into the Microsoft DSL space now.

I’ve asked Martijn about the possibility of making this into a CodePlex
project (although the source code is available with the download, putting it up as a project would make it more visible and get more collaboration). I’m sure that with more hands and more time (overall) there
could be much more powerful things that could be done with the tool.

Getting the Sharepoint Conference Sorted

by community-syndication | Apr 7, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

In case you’re not up on it, there’s a great Sharepoint conference in the winds (well
less than 6 wks away actually) – in Sydney at the Hilton

Here’s the conference
registration details if you’re up to come.

I’ve been asked to present a couple of sessions at the conference which I can now
share with you guys:

Session Title: Essentials 2: ASP.NET Web Parts, Master Pages, and Data Rendering
Audience: Developer

I’ll be talking about Web Parts and Web Part structure, also how to create your own
Master Pages to fully customise your sites (far cry easier than Sharepoint V2.0….but
I won’t go there……my therapist says I’m doing fine ).

As always the DataView webpart is essential and we can do some pretty phenominal things
with the latest version included in WSS V3.0.

Session Title: Essentials 4: Templates, Definitions, and Solution Deployment
Audience: Developer

Have you been getting tied up in CAML, dreamt about it lately? nightmares…….well
in V3.0 we want to move far away from it.

Deployment of Sharepoint customisations/sites and your fantastic new webparts generally
involve a great number of files and assemblies not to mention App.Config files that
may need modifications.

In WSS 3.0 – your next new…sorry best friend should be features!!! These
are the best things since sliced bread…….they affect future creation of items
as well as current sites, lists etc etc.

Come along and hear the full story…….. 🙂

 ————————————–

Angus Logan has done (as always) a great job in organising this event and there are
some serious Sharepoints heavyweights presenting at the conference as well as the
key members from the Prod. Team coming from the US.

—————————————


 Can’t
make the conference……….get some serious Sharepoint
Bootcamp Training that we are partnering with DDLS provide public training all around
Australia  


It’s been going like wild fire with courses filling up faster than we can put them
on.

One thing I can tell you about Sharepoint V3.0 is that it’s a huge product. Come and
explore it together……

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by community-syndication | Apr 6, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

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Wish you all a happy Easter

by community-syndication | Apr 6, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Here’s wishing you all a happy Easter!

Programmatic BizTalk Server Orchestrations – code repost

by community-syndication | Apr 6, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

A previous post of mine had some sample code on creating BizTalk Server Orchestrations programmatically, opening up template based guidance packages. The sourcecode for the sample can now be found here.