BizTalk EDI Leap Year Fix FAQ

by | Feb 24, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

As you  may have heard, there is an issue in the BizTalk 2006 R2 and 2009 EDI Engines that results in a failed EDI transaction if the EDI message contains a date node that has a leap year value – for example 2/29/2012.  This issue and hotfix is documented at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2435900.  With 2/29/2012 just days away, this is a big deal and you will want to address this issue in your environment ASAP.

You can also get some great information about this issue at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/biztalkcrt/archive/2012/02/22/edi-leap-year-hotfix-biztalk-2009-and-biztalk-2006-r2.aspx.

I’ve also compiled a list of questions that have been asked about this issue over the last week and created a detailed FAQ document about this.  Check it out below. 

Also, to download the pipeline sample mentioned in the FAQ, click here.

(FAQ last updated on 02/29/2012 at 12:22PM Central Time)

BTSLeapYearFAQ.docx

Problem encountered during the install of the BizTalk EDI Leap Year Hotfix

by | Feb 24, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

This post is about an error we encountered during the installation of the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Leap Year Date Hotfix (See KB article 2435900 for details). The hotfix requires a certain product version key for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2, while this product version key is too low when the necessary prerequisites are installed. In this post you can also see the workaround I’ve found to deal with this error.

Azure: Useful bits and Pieces

by | Feb 22, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Folks I’ve decided to list some useful links and tips that I’ve come across as part
of our work we do. This list will grow and expand as time goes on.

  • Design/Pre Work
  •  Admin/Subscriptions
    • Currently each Role size has a minimum of 1.6GHz CPU
    • Environment variables available in Windows
      Azure (well done Toddy)
    • Hard limit of 20 storage accounts per subscriptions max – most will show smaller e.g.
      5 or 8
    • Troubleshooting Best Practice for Developing Windows Azure Applications WhitePaper
    • Encrypting Connection Strings – http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlazure/archive/2010/09/07/10058942.aspx
  • Roles
    • Role
      Architecture       – great explanation
    • Detecting whether you’re running in STAGING
      or PROD       – it’s all in the deployment id.
    • Worker Role – WaWorkerHost.exe – is the Windows Azure Worker Process
  • Azure Storage
  • SQL Azure
    • Cloud Numerics – allows analytics to be performed in Azure using extended .NET libraries
      – here.
    • Cloud
      Numerics Blog
  • Azure Service Bus
    • Creating new service identities – SBAzTool in Windows
      Azure Service Bus v1.5 SDK
    • Service Bus is implemented on top of SQL Azure.
  • WCF
    • Turn on WCF Tracing – Azure
      World
  • Monitoring
    • External Party – http://www.paraleap.com/AzureWatch

Blog Post by: Mick Badran

BizTalk 2010: Install once and SysPrep for the team

by | Feb 22, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

While currently setting up a BizTalk 2010 developer machine, I’ve got to do a couple
of others to do also for the team.

I figured ’we surely can copy/clone this’ – here’s a handy link for SysPrep and we
use files from the BizTalk SDK to work the magic.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee358636.aspx

Looking forward to it.

Enjoy.

Blog Post by: Mick Badran

Scheduling BAM Packages – failure in ’Set global connection string variables’

Scheduling BAM Packages – failure in ’Set global connection string variables’

by | Feb 22, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I recently hit an issue while configuring a sql job to process my BAM cubes by running the BAM_AN_* packages with the following error: Code: 0×00000000 Source: Set global connection string variables Description: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. I later found that this was due to the user under which […]
Blog Post by: DipeshA

How to initialize correlation set multiple times?

by | Feb 20, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

There was a question in Microsoft
BizTalk Server General Forum where the requirement was to promote values on
the messages extracted from a batch of messages using orchestration.

How it could be implemented?

To promote the properties in orchestration one need
to initialize the correlation set as demonstrated by Sarvana Kumar in his blog.
But you can initialize the correlation set only once

Creating TMG Firewall Rules for Azure Service Bus

by | Feb 19, 2012 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

As Mexia starts doing more and more Azure work, I am getting asked more frequently about firewall rules for accessing the Azure Service Bus.

At first this seemed a weird question to me, to communicate with Azure Service Bus it is all outbound traffic, but more and more companies lately are restricting outbound traffic, for example the default Microsoft Threat Management Gateway (TMG) outbound rule only allow 80 and 443.

So for my own reference and for others that may get asked the same question, here are the steps for create an TMG outbound firewall rule for Azure Service Bus:

In the TMG Management Console under Web Access Policy, we need to define the network object that represents our BizTalk or Windows Server that needs to access SB

We also need to create a Protocol rule that defines that SB Traffic, TCP 9350 to 9354

We then need to create the Web Access Policy for Azure ServiceBus

Protocols HTTP, HTTPS and the ServiceBus Protocols we defined earlier

The Source of the Traffic we defined earlier

The destination of the traffic, in our case the external interface on our TMG Server

Once the Web Access Policy is created you will have to activate the change to the TMG Server

The new Web Access Policy is now active, you BizTalk or Windows Server will now have access to the Azure Service Bus