Host Integration Server 2006 – Service Pack 1: Now Available

by community-syndication | Feb 3, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Wow, it must be the week for Service Pack announcements. First we see the BizTalk 2006-R1 SP and now HIS 2006 gets its very own SP.  Details from about the release are below. Please note, that the Knowledge Base articles listed below might not be active for a couple of days. So if you try and them and they don’t work, give it a day before you hammer me on posting dead links.

>>>>

Host Integration Server 2006 Service Pack 1 is now available for download at the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c0cc5e8d-fc47-41ac-bcad-67832249eb41

Host Integration Server 2006 Service Pack 1 provides the latest updates for Microsoft Host Integration Server 2006 and Microsoft BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems. It delivers customer requested hotfixes that improve the quality, reliability and supportability of Host Integration Server 2006 and BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems. The following two Knowledge Base articles will be available soon to describe the list of fixes and how to download the service pack:

KB 979238 – A list of the bugs that are fixed in Host Integration Server 2006 Service Pack 1 – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979238

KB 979497 – How to obtain the latest Host Integration Server 2006 service pack – http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979497

Congratulations to the HIS Product Team, BPD Engineering Services team and CSS engineers who made this happen.  Having this service pack available for our customers now allows us to efficiently support customers and focus on future releases of Host Integration Server.

>>>>

Cheers and keep on BizTalking

Peter

WCF Rocks!

by community-syndication | Feb 3, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

About a month ago, Ed Pinto and I did an interview with the .NET Rocks guys on What is new in WCF for .NET 4 and it just went live today.  Ed covered most of the detailed technical stuff, I filled in more along the value proposition side of things, and Carl and Richard added their usual comic relief and excellent interviewing skills.  It was fun.  Hope you enjoy!

I guess I could consider this a compliment, but I’m not happy!

by community-syndication | Feb 3, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Wrong impressions with MaxConnection

by community-syndication | Feb 3, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

ESB Itinerary Selector: Parameter name cannot be null or an empty string. Parameter name: key

by community-syndication | Feb 2, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Event Type:Error

Event Source:BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0

Event Category:None

Event ID:6060

Date:1/31/2010

Time:7:06:00 AM

User:N/A

Computer:WS03_OFFICE07

Description:

Parameter name cannot be null or an empty string.

Parameter name: key

Source: Microsoft.Practices.ESB.Resolver.ResolverMgr

Method: System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[System.String,System.String] Resolve(Microsoft.Practices.ESB.Resolver.ResolverInfo, Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage, Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.Interop.IPipelineContext)

Error Source: Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching

Error TargetSite: Void ValidateKey(System.String)

Error StackTrace: at Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.Cache.ValidateKey(String key)

at Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.Cache.GetData(String key)

at Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Caching.CacheManager.GetData(String key)

at Microsoft.Practices.ESB.Cache.Cache`1.Get(String key, Boolean returnAndRemove)

at Microsoft.Practices.ESB.Cache.Cache`1.Get(String key)

at Microsoft.Practices.ESB.Resolver.ResolverMgr.GetResolver(ResolverInfo info)

at Microsoft.Practices.ESB.Resolver.ResolverMgr.Resolve(ResolverInfo info, IBaseMessage message, IPipelineContext pipelineContext)

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

The issue was that I had the BRI string like this: BRI:// instead of BRI:\\ in the pipeline component’s configuration. The latter is the correct way

How the Parallel Actions shape works

by community-syndication | Feb 2, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Hi all

Lots of people think, that if they use a Parallel Actions shape, they get things done
in parallel. Well, rethink that. An orchestration executes in just one thread, so
no chance of getting anything to run in parallel. At runtime, the shapes in the parallel
shape are simply serialized.

But what is the algorithm, then?

Well, I did some tests. First of all, I created this simple orchestration:

It’s a receive shape to fire up the orchestration and then a parallel shape with four
branches and five expression shapes in each. The code in each expression shape is
this:

 1: System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("X.
Y");

where X is a number indicating the branch and Y is a sequence number within the branch.
This means that X=2 and Y=3 is the third expression shape in the second branch and
X=4 and Y=1 is the first expression shape in the fourth branch.

Running this orchestration I get this result from DebugView:

So as you can see, the entire first branch is executed, then the entire second branch,
and so on until the fourth branch has finished. Sounds easy enough. But lets try some
other scenarios like this one:

In essence I have thrown in a receive shape in branch 2 to see if branches three and
four will still have to wait until branch 2 has finished.

The result can be seen here:

So as you can see, the second branch stops after the second shape because now it awaits
the receive shape. Branches three and four are then executed and after I send in a
message for the receive shape, the second branch completes.

So some form of parallelism is actually achieved, but only when a shape takes too
long to handle. Lets see what happens with a Delay shape instead like this:

I have switched the Receive Shape for a Delay shape, and I have set the Delay shape
to wait for 100 milliseconds. The result of this is the same as with the Receive shape:

Then I tried setting the Delay shape to just 1 millisecond, but this gave the same
result.

With shapes that take time in two branches, like this:

And the Delay is still set at one millisecond. I get the following result:

So as you can see, the Receive shape causes branch 2 to stop executing, and the Delay
shape causes branch 3 to stop executing, allowing branch 4 to execute. Branch 3 is
then executed because the Delay shape has finished and finally once the message for
the Receive shape has arrived, branch 2 is executed to its end.

Another thing to note is, that the Delay shape actually doesn’t make the thread sleep.
If it did, we couldn’t continue in another branch once a Delay shape is run. This
makes perfectly sense, since the shapes in one branch are to be seen as a mini-process
within the big process, and the delay that is needed for that mini-process shouldn’t
affect the other branches. This is exemplified in this process:

The third expression shape in the first branch has been updated to this code:

 1: System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("1.
3");

 2: System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(2000);

So as you can see, even though the first branch must wait for 2 seconds, it still
executes completely before the second branch is started.

So, takeaways:

1. The Parallel Actions shape does NOT mean you get any multi-threading execution environment.
2. Think of the PArallel Actions shape as a way of letting multiple Business Activities
   happen and you don’t know in what order they will occur.
3. The Delay shape does not use Thread.Sleep, but instead handles things internally.

—

eliasen

MSDN Webcast: Improving Business Agility with Enterprise Service Bus

by community-syndication | Feb 2, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

If you have been wondering so far whether an ESB implementation is the right solution for your integration problems, let us help you make the right decision.

On Feb 11th, Peter Kelcey (Technical Sales Professional from Microsoft Canada) and I, will be co-presenting an MSDN Webcast. Peter has extensive experience helping customers with ESB implementation using the BizTalk ESB Toolkit. We will articulate the business values that an ESB brings to integration solutions, specifically how it can promote flexibility and reuse. Being able to adapt rapidly to new business or technical requirements while minimizing development efforts, costs and risks is crucial in the current tough economic climate.

This is going to be a demo intensive session to illustrate with a series of live short demos the advantages and use cases of the BizTalk ESB Toolkit. 
More details are included below as is the link to register. Hope to see you there.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032440359&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Language(s):
English.
Audience(s):
Pro Dev/Programmers. (would be also useful for Enterprise/Solution Architects)
Duration:
60 Minutes
Start Date:
Thursday, February 11, 2010 1:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Event Overview
Businesses across the globe are trying to cope with a faster rate of change. The need to adapt rapidly to new internal and external requirements is pushing organizations to look for more flexible solutions to build and connect their applications. At the same time, IT departments are also pressured to reduce costs and reuse software assets and services. Enterprise Service Bus has emerged as an architectural pattern that can help achieve these goals. In this webcast, we introduce the Microsoft BizTalk Enterprise Service Bus Toolkit 2.0 and explain how it accelerates the implementation of a very dynamic and reusable messaging and integration infrastructure on top of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009 and the Microsoft .NET Windows Communication Framework.

We hope this session will convince you to stop procrastinating and “dive into the ESB pool”

Cheers,

Ofer

Multi-Server ESB Toolkit 2.0 Install (including the Management Portal)

by community-syndication | Feb 2, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

The future of Complex Event Processing

by community-syndication | Feb 2, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Mark Palmer , CEO of StreamBase , has posted a series of predictions about the Complex Event Processing (CEP) market in 2010. Generally, I am not a big fan of making or commenting on predictions related to the technology market but I wanted to add a few…(read more)

Optimizing XML Queries in SQL Server

by community-syndication | Feb 2, 2010 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

In creating a process where SQL Server takes XML data that is stored in a table and populates a table, I have learned a few things on how to get SQL Server to more efficiently query XML data.

Setup:

Let’s first create a table to store the data:

CREATE TABLE dbo.XMLDataStore(
  link nvarchar(100) NULL,
  data xml NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

Let’s take a look at the XML that we are going to query (yes I know is is a large xml document, but I wanted to show the peformance in a real world situation, not a 3 node xml document that is normally demonstrated)

Now let’s insert it into the table:

INSERT INTO [XMLTutorial].[dbo].[XMLDataStore]
           ([link]
           ,[data])
     VALUES
           ('ABCDEFGHIJ'
           ,'<ns0:ORU_R01_231_GLO_DEF xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:ns0="http://labratory/DB/2X">
               ...
            </ns0:ORU_R01_231_GLO_DEF>')
GO

The first query starts at the Observation record (all 64 records) and traverses the xml document and creates the necessary columns in 16 seconds.

select  Observation.ref.value('((../../Patient/PID_PatientIdentificationSegment/PID_5_PatientName/XPN_1_GivenName/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as FirstName,
    Observation.ref.value('((../../Patient/PID_PatientIdentificationSegment/PID_5_PatientName/XPN_0_FamilyLastName/XPN_0_0_FamilyName/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as LastName,
    Observation.ref.value('((../../Patient/PID_PatientIdentificationSegment/PID_7_DateTimeOfBirth/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as BirthDate,
    Observation.ref.value('((../../Patient/PID_PatientIdentificationSegment/PID_2_PatientId/CX_0_Id/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as InsuranceNumber,
    Observation.ref.value('((../OBR_ObservationRequestSegment/OBR_1_SetIdObr/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)')as [OBRID],
    Observation.ref.value('((../OBR_ObservationRequestSegment/OBR_7_ObservationDateTime/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1])','nvarchar(10)') as ObservationDate,    
    Observation.ref.value('((../OBR_ObservationRequestSegment/OBR_4_UniversalServiceId/CE_1_Text/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as LabTestName,
    null as LabTestCode,
    Observation.ref.value('((./OBX_ObservationResultSegment/OBX_1_SetIdObx/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as [OBXID],
    Observation.ref.value('((./OBX_ObservationResultSegment/OBX_3_ObservationIdentifier/CE_4_AlternateText/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as LabResultName,
    Observation.ref.value('((./OBX_ObservationResultSegment/OBX_3_ObservationIdentifier/CE_0_Identifier/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as LabResultCode,
    Observation.ref.value('((./OBR_5_PriorityObr/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as [Priority],
    Observation.ref.value('((./OBX_ObservationResultSegment/OBX_14_DateTimeOfTheObservation/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as [ResultDate],
    Observation.ref.value('((./OBX_ObservationResultSegment/OBX_5_ObservationValue/CE_4_AlternateText/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as [ResultValue],
    Observation.ref.value('((./OBX_ObservationResultSegment/OBX_6_Units/CE_0_Identifier/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as [UnitOfMeasure],
    Observation.ref.value('((./OBX_ObservationResultSegment/OBX_7_ReferencesRange/text())[1])','nvarchar(100)') as [ReferenceRange]
from XMLDataStore x cross apply x.data.nodes('//Observation') Observation(ref)
where x.link='ABCDEFGHIJ'

The first optimization step is instead of using the Observation node and deriving all of the other columns from that, you can further use CROSS APPLY to create separate nodes to extract data from coupled with not using wild cards and diving directly to the exact node I need to. I went to the OBX_ObservationResultSegment as the originating node, and then from that node (named Observation), I derived two other nodes to reference in the query; Patient and Request.

This time the query completed in 4 seconds:

WITH XMLNAMESPACES ('http://labratory/DB/2X' AS "ns0")
select  Patient.node.value('(PID_5_PatientName/XPN_1_GivenName/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as FirstName,
    Patient.node.value('(PID_5_PatientName/XPN_0_FamilyLastName/XPN_0_0_FamilyName/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as LastName,
    Patient.node.value('(PID_7_DateTimeOfBirth/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as BirthDate,
    Patient.node.value('(PID_2_PatientId/CX_0_Id/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as InsuranceNumber,
    Request.node.value('(OBR_1_SetIdObr/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)')as [OBRID],
    Request.node.value('(OBR_7_ObservationDateTime/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1]','nvarchar(10)') as ObservationDate,    
    Request.node.value('(OBR_4_UniversalServiceId/CE_1_Text/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as LabTestName,
    null as LabTestCode,
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_1_SetIdObx/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [OBXID],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_3_ObservationIdentifier/CE_4_AlternateText/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as LabResultName,
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_3_ObservationIdentifier/CE_0_Identifier/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as LabResultCode,
    Observation.node.value('(OBR_5_PriorityObr/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [Priority],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_14_DateTimeOfTheObservation/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [ResultDate],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_5_ObservationValue/CE_4_AlternateText/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [ResultValue],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_6_Units/CE_0_Identifier/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [UnitOfMeasure],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_7_ReferencesRange/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [ReferenceRange]
from XMLDataStore x 
cross apply x.data.nodes('ns0:ORU_R01_231_GLO_DEF/CompleteOrder/Order/Observation/OBX_ObservationResultSegment') Observation(node)
cross apply Observation.node.nodes('../../../Patient/PID_PatientIdentificationSegment') Patient(node)
cross apply Observation.node.nodes('../../OBR_ObservationRequestSegment') Request(node)
where x.link='ABCDEFGHIJ'

Never being satisfied, let’s add an index to the data. However, to add an xml index to the data, we need to create a clustered index on the table. If we simply try to add an xml index to the current table with this command:

CREATE PRIMARY XML INDEX PrimaryXMLIndex ON
dbo.XMLDataStore(data)
GO

We get the following error:

Msg 6332, Level 16, State 201, Line 1
Table 'dbo.XMLDataStore' needs to have a clustered primary key with less than 16 columns in it in order to create a primary XML index on it.

Not descriptive, so let’s create a new table:

CREATE TABLE dbo.OptimizedXMLDataStore(
  id INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
  link nvarchar(100) NOT NULL,
  data xml NOT NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO

And creating the following indexes in the database:

CREATE PRIMARY XML INDEX PrimaryXMLIndex ON
dbo.OptimizedXMLDataStore(data)
GO
CREATE XML INDEX
XMLDataStore_XmlCol_PATH ON dbo.OptimizedXMLDataStore(data) 
USING XML INDEX PrimaryXMLIndex FOR PATH
GO

Now that the indexes are created, let’s insert the data into this table:

INSERT INTO [XMLTutorial].[dbo].[OptimizedXMLDataStore]
           ([link]
           ,[data])
     VALUES
           ('ABCDEFGHIJ'
           ,'<ns0:ORU_R01_231_GLO_DEF xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" xmlns:ns0="http://labratory/DB/2X">
               ...
            </ns0:ORU_R01_231_GLO_DEF>')
GO

Now let’s run the same query (except pointing to the indexed table):

WITH XMLNAMESPACES ('http://labratory/DB/2X' AS "ns0")
select  Patient.node.value('(PID_5_PatientName/XPN_1_GivenName/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as FirstName,
    Patient.node.value('(PID_5_PatientName/XPN_0_FamilyLastName/XPN_0_0_FamilyName/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as LastName,
    Patient.node.value('(PID_7_DateTimeOfBirth/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as BirthDate,
    Patient.node.value('(PID_2_PatientId/CX_0_Id/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as InsuranceNumber,
    Request.node.value('(OBR_1_SetIdObr/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)')as [OBRID],
    Request.node.value('(OBR_7_ObservationDateTime/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1]','nvarchar(10)') as ObservationDate,    
    Request.node.value('(OBR_4_UniversalServiceId/CE_1_Text/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as LabTestName,
    null as LabTestCode,
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_1_SetIdObx/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [OBXID],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_3_ObservationIdentifier/CE_4_AlternateText/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as LabResultName,
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_3_ObservationIdentifier/CE_0_Identifier/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as LabResultCode,
    Observation.node.value('(OBR_5_PriorityObr/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [Priority],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_14_DateTimeOfTheObservation/TS_0_TimeOfAnEvent/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [ResultDate],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_5_ObservationValue/CE_4_AlternateText/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [ResultValue],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_6_Units/CE_0_Identifier/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [UnitOfMeasure],
    Observation.node.value('(OBX_7_ReferencesRange/text())[1]','nvarchar(100)') as [ReferenceRange]
from OptimizedXMLDataStore x 
cross apply x.data.nodes('ns0:ORU_R01_231_GLO_DEF/CompleteOrder/Order/Observation/OBX_ObservationResultSegment') Observation(node)
cross apply Observation.node.nodes('../../../Patient/PID_PatientIdentificationSegment') Patient(node)
cross apply Observation.node.nodes('../../OBR_ObservationRequestSegment') Request(node)
where x.link='ABCDEFGHIJ'

The results came back in 0 seconds

Things I did not do:

1. Actually see Clark Kent (I think he was born before June of 1938, but it was the first time he was writtent about)
2. Question why the “The Last Son of Krypton” was actually getting lab work done
3. Imported schemas into the database