Please follow us on the new MSDN blog where a combined workforce of the ASG ISV Team and BizTalk Customer Advisory Team (CAT) will continue providing the community with latest best practices and technical guidance covering the entire family of Microsoft...

The following post is intended to drill down into most common administrative tasks involved in the ETW event trace session management, specifically, as it relates to getting the true value of the BizTalk CAT Instrumentation Framework by being able to...

In one of our recent publications, we explained the key usage patterns for the ETW-based instrumentation framework which was made available to the community on the BizTalk CAT Best Practices Code Gallery . We have received a number of insightful follow...

Windows PowerShell cmdlets are an administration-focused scripting language that helps you achieve control and productivity when managing your Windows Server AppFabric installation.  There are cmdlets particular to AppFabric and those that are generic...

Background : ISVs typically host the Workflow Designer to enable the ITPros use the tool set outside the Visual Studio UI experience. Problem : While loading a new Designer view in the rehosted Workflow Designer, the method workflowDesigner.Load (new...

During a recent technical engagement with a BizTalk ISV, we helped the ISV partner implement a tracing framework which combined the high performance and flexibility provided by the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) infrastructure. This work has enabled...

Synopsis: Persistence Store extensibility to store and query metadata relating to workflow instances - useful to generate IT and Business Reports from Workflow Services hosted within Windows Server AppFabric - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver...

It is widely known that custom pipeline components are highly popular extensibility points in the BizTalk architecture. The topic has been extensively discussed for many years and many useful content is available on the Web. Through observations in recent...

A common problem ISV support teams (and multi location enterprises, e.g., Microsoft) have to grapple with is providing debugging assistance to IT Admin and Junior Developers at remote locations. Compounding the problem is restricted access to the machine...

One of our BizTalk ISV partners recently bumped into an interesting behavioral aspect of the Business Rules Engine (BRE). Their experience deserved sharing it with the community. It is likely that other BizTalk developers might be facing with similar...

Background It is known that the world of ISV applications is different. A typical ISV application tends not to come bundled with a support team responsible for making sure that the application is healthy and operational. Ultimately, the burden is on...

There are quite a few configuration steps to be completed on the Workflow Activity after it is dragged onto the workflow design surface. The complexity and the number of data entry points for configuring these Activities could lead to errors and poor...

Rehosting the .NET4 Workflow Designer enables all the Built-In or ‘Standard’ Activities are available within the ISV partner’s custom application.  However one issue our ISV partners are running into is that the Activity icons do not show up. The...

One of the most appreciated features of .NET Framework 4/Windows Workflow Foundation namespaces  is the ability to (re)host the Workflow Designer within a line-of-business design ‘surface’ (application) with relative ease. This is especially important...

Calling a .NET4 WCF/Workflow Service hosted in AppFabric from a .NET3.5 Workflow hosted in SharePoint Introduction To better serve the breadth ISV and customer community, we have launched this Application Server Group ISV Partner Team Blog. This...

Earlier in December 2009, we have announced the launch of the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for a new release of BizTalk Server which is expected to be shipped later this year. The upcoming release will bring some great improvements such as support...

Welcome to the Application Server Group’s (ASG) ISV Partner Advisory Team blog. We are a dedicated team in the Customer Experience organization of the Microsoft’s Business Platform Division who assists the ISV partners in adopting Application Server...