by Gautam | Apr 2, 2017 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform?
Integration weekly update can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.
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by Kuppurasu Nagaraj | Feb 27, 2017 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
The Integration Account is part of the Logic Apps Enterprise Integration Pack (EIP) and is a secure, manageable and scalable container for the integration artifacts that we create. We can store maps, schemas, partners, agreements and certificates in our Integration Account once and reference them across all our logic apps making the creation of B2B processes with logic apps quick and easy.
Why should we use Enterprise Integration Pack?
- we are able to store all our artifacts in one place, which is our integration account.
- we can leverage the Logic Apps engine and all its connectors to build B2B workflows and integrate with 3rd party SaaS applications, on-premises apps as well as custom applications
- we can also leverage Azure functions
In this blog, we will discuss how we can connect Azure Logic Apps with an Integration Account.
Use Case Scenario
Let’s assume organizations want to exchange messages electronically, even if they use different protocols and formats. the Enterprise Integration Pack enables you to transform different formats into a format that organizations’ systems can interpret and process. Organizations can exchange messages through industry-standard protocols, including AS2, X12, and EDIFACT. You can also secure messages with both encryption and digital signatures.
If you are familiar with BizTalk Server or Microsoft Azure BizTalk Services, the Enterprise Integration features are easy to use because most concepts are similar. One major difference is that Enterprise Integration Pack uses Integration Accounts to simplify the storage and management of artifacts used in B2B communications.
Create an Integration Account
In Azure Portal, and Click “+NEW” and choose “Enterprise Integration”. Select “Integration Account”.
In the Create Integration Account blade, enter the Name for our Integration Account, select the Subscription we want to use; either create a new Resource group or select an existing Resource Group, select a Location where our Integration Account will be hosted, select a Pricing tier, then click the Create button.
The process usually takes within 1 minute. Once the template has been provisioned, we will see a notification and the new instances and related resources will appear in the “Resource groups” section of the Microsoft Azure management console.
Add Maps
Integration Account uses maps to transform XML data between formats. A map is an XML document that defines the data in a document that should be transformed into another format.
Select the Maps tile.
After the Maps blade opens, choose Add. Next, Enter a Name for our map. To upload the map file, choose the folder icon on the right side of the Map text box. After the upload process completes, choose OK.
Add a schema file smaller than 2 MB
In the Schemas blade that opens (from the preceding steps), choose Add.
Enter a Name for our schema. Upload the schema file by selecting the folder icon next to the Schema box. After the upload process completes, select OK.
How to link an integration account to a Logic app
Note: We must ensure our Integration Account and Logic app are in the same Azure location.
Select the Integration Account under Setting from our Logic app, we wish to link to our Logic App from the Select an Integration Account drop down list box and click Save Button.
We will see a notification that indicates that our Integration Account has been linked to our Logic app and that all artifacts in our Integration Account are now available to our Logic App.
Adding XML Validation
- Add a Request – When an HTTP request is received trigger our Logic App
- Add the XML Validation action, choose Add an action
- To filter all the actions to the one that we want, enter “xml” in the search box. Choose XML Validation
- To specify the XML content that we want to validate, select CONTENT.
- Select the body tag as the content that we want to validate.
Adding Transform XML
- Add the Transform XML action by first selecting Add an action
- Enter the word “transform” in the search box to filter all the actions to the one that we want to use
- Select the Transform XML action
- Add the XML CONTENT that you transform. We can use any XML data you receive in the HTTP request as the CONTENT. In this example, select the body of the HTTP request that triggered the Logic app
- Select the name of the Map that you want to use to perform the transformation. The map must already be in our Integration Account. In an earlier step, we already gave our Logic App access to our Integration Account that contains our map
Adding Condition
Conditions are used to perform the action on which we add the condition when the condition matches the requirements.
Choose New Step (+) > Add an Condition.
@equals(xpath(xml(body(‘Transform_XML’)), ‘string(count(/.))’), ‘1’).
Once the Logic App is configured, it should look as shown below.
Run the Logic App
To test the Logic App, we will use Postman to send a request (POST) with a payload.
- Set content-type header to application/xml.
- Set request body to the content of sample-order.xml.
On successful execution, the Logic App will respond with the transformed message (a SAP order) in response body.
Conclusion
Integration Account stores all our artifacts in one place and references them across all our Logic Apps, making the creation of B2B processes with Logic Apps quick and easy. This is great for ROI because previously created BizTalk artifacts like schemas and maps can be re-used.
Author: Kuppurasu Nagaraj
Kuppurasu Nagaraj is working as a Technical Trainer at BizTalk360. Microsoft Azure MVP. Having 7+ years of experience and his area of interest is Microsoft Azure, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server etc. View all posts by Kuppurasu Nagaraj
by Nick Hauenstein | Jul 27, 2016 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication
Today the Logic Apps team has officially announced the general availability of Logic Apps! We’ve been following developments in the space since it was first unveiled back in December of 2014. The technology has certainly come a long way since then, and is certainly becoming capable of being a part of enterprise integration solutions in the cloud. A big congratulations is in order for the team that has carried it over the finish line (and that is already hard at work on the next batch of functionality that will be delivered)!
Along with hitting that ever important GA milestone, Logic Apps has recently added some new features that really improve the overall experience in using the product. The rest of this post will run through a few of those things.
Starter Templates
When you go and create a new Logic App today, rather than being given an empty slate and a dream, you are provided with some starter templates with which you can build some simple mash-ups that integrate different SaaS solutions with one another and automate common tasks. If you’d still rather roll up your sleeves and dig right into the code of a custom Logic App, there is nothing preventing you from starting from scratch.
Designer Support for Parallel Actions
Ever since the designer went vertical, it has been very difficult to visualize the flow of actions whenever there were actions that could execute in parallel. No longer! You can now visualize the flow exactly as it will execute – even if there are actions that will be executing in parallel!
Logic Apps Run Monitoring
Another handy improvement to the visualization of your Logic Apps is the new runtime monitoring visualization provided in the portal. Instead of seeing a listing of each action in your flow alongside their statuses – with tens of clicks involved in taking in the full state of the flow at any given time – a brand new visualizer can be used to see everything in one shot.
The visualization captures essentially the same thing that you see in the Logic App designer, but shows both the inputs and the outputs on each card along with a green check mark (Success), red X (Failure), or gray X (skipped) in the top-right corner of the cards.
Additionally if you have a for each loop within your flow, you can actually drill into each iteration of the loop and see the associated inputs/outputs for that row of data.
Visual Studio Designer
There is one feature that you won’t see in the Azure portal. In fact, it’s designed for offline use – the Visual Studio designer for Logic Apps. The designer can be used to edit those Logic App definitions that you’d rather manage in source control as part of an Azure Resource Group project – so that you can take advantage of things like TFS for automated build and deploy of your Logic Apps to multiple environments
Unfortunately, at the moment you will not experience feature parity with the Azure Portal (i.e., it doesn’t do scopes or loops), but it can handle most needs and sure is snappy!
That being said, do note that at the moment, the Visual Studio designer is still in preview and the functionality is subject to change, and might have a few bugsies still lingering.
Much More
These are just a few of the features that stick out immediately while using the GA version of the product. However, depending on when you last used the product, you will find that there are lots of runtime improvements and expanded capabilities as well (e.g., being able to control the parallelism of the for each loops so that they can be forced to execute sequentially).
Be Prepared
So how can you be prepared to take your integrations to the next level? Well, I’m actually in the middle of teaching all of these things right now in QuickLearn Training’s Cloud-based Integration using Logic Apps class, and in my humble and biased opinion, it is the best source for getting up to speed in the world of build cloud integrations. I highly recommend it. There’s still a few slots left in the September run of the class if you’re interested in keeping up with the cutting edge, but don’t delay too long as we expect to see these classes fill up through the end of the year.
As always, have fun and do great things!
