Message sending / receiving from Biztalk Server – Basic understanding needs verification

 My requirement is thus – I have Application A which is supopsed to send messages to Application B using Biztalk Server. Application A is in C# Dot Net and Application B is in something else (I don’t really know).

I am working on Application A, so I don’t really care about how Application B picks up the messages etc. Application A’s responsibility is just to ensure that the messages are sent to the Biztalk Server. Also, Biztalk Server is already there in the high level architecture, so this question is not really about whether Biztalk Server is required here or not because we don’t really use the Biztalk Server functionality too much except for the message brokering part.

Since I am not very familiar with Biztalk, I am writing out my assumptions here. I need to know if I am on the right track and if not, then where I am wrong. Also, configuring and setting up Biztalk Server is not the scope of this discussion. I just need to know whether purely from Application A’s point of view, whether I am thinking right or not.

I am assuming that the Biztalk Server will have public queues set up by the Biztalk administrator, and Application A’s job is just to write to these queues. Then Biztalk Server will take care of either re-directing the messages to Application B or Application B will poll and pull the messages from the queues on Biztalk Server.

So, firstly I have to know the name of the server (machine) on which Biztalk Server is hosted. Let us assume the server name is SERVER1 and it is available on the intranet.

Then I have to know the name of the Queue on the Biztalk Server where I am supposed to send the messages. So the Biztalk administrator must set up a public queue and tell me the name of the queue, so I can programmatically use the name to send messages.

Assuming the Biztalk administrator does his job of setting up the Biztalk Server, and creating a queue for me, all that is left to me is to write a program in C# which will send a message to Biztalk Server.

I tried the above yesterday on my local computer, which has the Windows 2000 Professional SP4. By default, the Windows “Message Queueing Service” component was not installed on my computer, so I used the WIndows CD to install this component through the “Add / Remove Programs —> Add / Remove Windows Components”. So on my local machine, I had Windows “Message Queueing Service” up and running. I can see the same through the “Computer Management” window console … it shows me all the private / public etc queues.

I then wrote the following code in C#, to send string messages to a queue on my local machine.

*************************************************
MessageQueue m_queue1 = null;
const string m_queue1Name = “my_machine_name\\private$\\TestQueue1234”;
const string m_stringMessageLabel = “This is a String Message Label”;
const string m_stringMessageBody = “This is a String Message Body”;
if (MessageQueue.Exists(m_queue1Name))
{
  m_queue1 = new MessageQueue(m_queue1Name);
}
else
{
  m_queue1 = MessageQueue.Create(m_queue1Name, false);
}
//sending the message
m_queue1.Send(m_stringMessageBody, m_stringMessageLabel);

//receiving the message
System.Messaging.Message inMessage = m_queue1.Receive();

MessageBox.Show(“sendAndReceiveSimpleString : Message – ” + inMessage.Body.ToString());

*************************************************

So I wrote a string message to a local queue and also read it from the queue. Simple, nothing earth shattering.

Now my question comes up considering the Biztalk Server. If the things I have written above are all correct, then I would assume that just like I have a queue on my local machine which I can write to and read from using the above code, the only difference from a C# programming point of view would be to change “my_machine_name” to “biztalk_server_machine_name” in the above code where I am writing the queue name.

*************************************************
So the line –

const string m_queue1Name = “my_machine_name\\private$\\TestQueue1234”;

would become –

const string m_queue1Name = “biztalkserver_machine_name\\TestQueue1234”; //assuming the queue is public on Biztalk Server, so removing “private$”

*************************************************

Am I right in assuming it is this simple? Please note that my scope here is not really in setting up Biztalk Server or managing any orchestrations or seeing how Application B gets the message. My job is just to ensure that I can send messages to the Biztalk Server and receive messages from it.

I have the following additional questions –

– The above code as stated is an asynch communication between Application A and Biztalk server. Application A just sends a message to the queue and goes on with life without caring what happens to the message. Is that correct? Alternately, in such a scenario, what would be a synchronous communication between Application A and Biztalk Server. What possibly could the C# program wait for …. acknowledgements?

– Suppose my C# programs has to get messages from Biztalk Server. In the above program, it just makes a call to “receive” and gets the message in the queue. However, in the real time program, there might be a message or not. So I am assuming that the C# program would have to be something like a windows service, which would sleep for specified time, and then wake up and make a “receive” or “peek” call to the queue, and if messages are present, then do some processing with it. If messages are not present, then go back to sleep. Would that be the best way to implement this or can the polling (or listening) be done in a better way?

Please give your comments on my post. Thanks in advance!

Sriram