ESB Toolkit 2.1 mess up Enterprise Library 5.0 big time

by | Sep 2, 2011 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I spend nearly 5 hours so far today trying to configure Enterprise Library 5.0 for one of our projects. The machine I’m working on got ESB 2.1 installed previously.

ESB Toolkit 2.1 utilises Enterprise Library 4.1. Among the various application blocks, it takes advantage of ConfigurationSource to point to ESB specific configuration information (esb.config and SSOConfigurationSource) from machine.config file.

When you open the machine.config file after ESB Toolkit 2.1 installation you will see the following information.

<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource" 
type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.Configuration.ConfigurationSourceSection, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" />

<enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource selectedSource="ESB File Configuration Source">
    <sources>
      <add name="ESB File Configuration Source" type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.Configuration.FileConfigurationSource, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common, Version=4.1.0.0,Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" filePath="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1\esb.config" />
      <add name="ESB SSO Configuration Source" type="Microsoft.Practices.ESB.SSOConfigurationProvider.SSOConfigurationSource, Microsoft.Practices.ESB.SSOConfigurationProvider, Version=2.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" applicationName="" description="Configuration Data" contactInfo="" userGroupName="" adminGroupName="" />
    </sources>
</enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource>

This will break all the applications that uses Enterprise Library 5.0, when you try to initialize the Enterprise Library objects you will encounter errors as shown below.

[A]Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.Configuration.ConfigurationSourceSection cannot be cast to [B]Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.Configuration.ConfigurationSourceSection. Type A originates from ‘Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35’ in the context ‘Default’ at location ‘C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common\4.1.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35\Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.dll’. Type B originates from ‘Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common, Version=5.0.505.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35’ in the context ‘Default’ at location ‘C:\Windows\assembly\GAC_MSIL\Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common\5.0.505.0__31bf3856ad364e35\Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.dll’

There is a suggestion on the BizTalk forum for this issue

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-CA/biztalkesb/thread/8dc6ecda-862c-415a-912c-8215caa67a85

but that doesn’t seem to work. When you try to use <enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource selectedSource="Local Application Configuration Source"> in your configuration file, you will receive the following error "Configuration system failed to initialize, Section or group name ‘enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource’ is already defined. Updates to this may only occur at the configuration level where it is defined.". That’s because the section is already added to the machine.config file by EST Toolkit 2.1 installation.

I couldn’t find a solution to the problem. I’m just posting this so people are aware of the consequences, before installing ESB Toolkit 2.1.

Nandri!

Saravana

New Job, Same Place

New Job, Same Place

by | Sep 2, 2011 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

I’m a bit of a restless employee who is always looking for new things to work on and new challenges to tackle. So, this recent change should hold me for a while. I’ve accepted a role as the lead functional architect for the Research and Development division of my biotechnology employer. What this means is […]
Blog Post by: Richard Seroter

Using BizTalk Config Explorer as a new way of documenting your BizTalk solutions

by | Sep 2, 2011 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

As most BizTalk developers/architects you have probably been in a situation were documentation of your integration solution has been discussed.  And you probably also been just as happy as me when you first found BizTalk Documenter. BizTalk Documenter is a great tool for extracting all that configuration data that is so vital to BizTalk and […]
Blog Post by: Richard

Using BizTalk Web Documenter as a new way of documenting your BizTalk solutions

Using BizTalk Web Documenter as a new way of documenting your BizTalk solutions

by | Sep 2, 2011 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

2012-09-30: I’ve renamed the whole project and moved it to GitHub. Hope to see you there!

As most BizTalk developers/architects you have probably been in a situation were documentation of your integration solution has been discussed. And you probably also been just as happy as me when you first found BizTalk Documenter. BizTalk Documenter is a great tool for extracting all that configuration data that is so vital to BizTalk and create a nice technical documentation of it.

There are of course several levels to documentation in BizTalk Server based solution were the technical information is at the lowest level. Above that you would then have you integration process descriptions and then possible another level above that where you fit the integration processes into bigger business processes, and so on – but let’s stick to the technical documentation for now.

BizTalk Documenter does a nice job of automating the creation of technical documentation, instead of basically having to all that configuration job a second time when documenting. Doing technical documentation by hand usually also breaks down after a while as solution setup and configuration changes a lot and the work is really time consuming. And as documentation that isn’t up to date frankly is completely worthless people soon looses interest in both reading and maintaining the technical documentation.

Using BizTalk Documenter however has a few problems …

  • The tool generates either a CHM file or a word file with documentation. As more and more organizations however move their documentation online new output formats are needed.

  • The latest 3.4 versions of the tools throws OutOfMemory Exceptions on bigger solutions.

BizTalk Config Explorer Web Documenter

As we started trying to find ways to solve the issues above we had a few ideas we wanted the new solution to handle better.

  • Web based documentation
    A web based documentation is both much easier to distribute and more accessible to read – sending a link and reading a web page rather then sending around a CHM file.

  • Easy way of see changes in versions
    Sometimes one wants to see how things have changed and how things used to be configured. The tools should support “jumping back in time” and see previous versions.

Check out an an example of a Config Explorer yourself.

Getting started

Config Explorer is a open source tool published on CodePlex GitHub – a good place to start to understanding the workflow of creating documentation and to download the tool itself.

Contribute!

This release is a 1.0 release and there will are many features we haven’t had time for, but a few of them we’ve planned for future releases. Unfortunately there will however also be bugs and obvious things we’ve missed. Please use the CodePlex GutHub Issue Tracker to let us know what you like us to add and what possible issues you’ve found.

I’ll of course also check for any comments here! Winking smile

Cumulative Update Package 2 for BizTalk Server 2010 and for BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010 are available

Cumulative Update Package 2 for BizTalk Server 2010 and for BizTalk Adapter Pack 2010 are available

by | Sep 1, 2011 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Microsoft just releases two cumulative update packages for BizTalk 2010! Cumulative update package 2 for BizTalk Server 2010 This cumulative update package for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 contains hotfixes for the BizTalk Server 2010 issues that were resolved after the release of BizTalk Server 2010%uff0e Important notes about the cumulative update package This cumulative hotfix […]
Blog Post by: Sandro Pereira

Interview Series: Four Questions With Ryan CrawCour

Interview Series: Four Questions With Ryan CrawCour

by | Sep 1, 2011 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

The summer is nearly over, but the “Four Questions” machine continues forward. In this 34th interview with a “connected technologies” thought leader, we’re talking with Ryan CrawCour who is a solutions architect, virtual technology specialist for Microsoft in the Windows Azure space, popular speaker and user group organizer. Q: We’ve seen the recent (CTP) release […]
Blog Post by: Richard Seroter