BTS 2006 TAP: December FAQs
It's a long time in the making, but here are some more frequently asked questions from the TAP customers over the past few months. Please join us in discussion and feedback on the private beta newsgroup. Hope your New Year has been off to a good start!
Regards,
Doug Girard
Note: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
| Question |
Response |
Area |
| Can I use LoadGen against BizTalk Server 2006? |
Yes, you can. Install LoadGen remotely and you can use it as a load generation client against your BizTalk receive servers. |
LoadGen |
| What are the TTL settings used by LoadGen for MSMQ message creation? |
TTL settings are not explicitly set by LoadGen, thus the default settings are used. |
LoadGen |
| Why do I receive "No Disassemble stage components can recognize the data" errors when executing a pipeline instance? |
This is a parsing error generated by the Xml pipeline. This may be a problem with the way your files are constructed. For example, if the encoding on the files is UTF-16 but an XML declaration states the file is UTF-8, the parser does not know how to process this document correctly. Inconsistent BOMs can also confuse the disassembler. Be sure your files are correctly formatted between encoding, BOMs, and declarations. A hex editor is a handy tool when troubleshooting these issues. This may also be related to accidentally processing the wrong body part if you are using multi-part messages, e.g. email processing. You should double-check this as well. |
Pipelines |
| I see 4 rows in my Spool table. Is this normal or do I have some suspended messages? |
A rowcount of 4 in the Spool table is normal and to be expected. This means there are no unprocessed messages in your system. |
Platform |
| How do I turn off DTA tracking for the entire group, if my scenario requires this? |
There is a WMI property called MSBTS_GroupSetting.GlobalTrackingOption which allows you to turn off tracking globally. |
Platform |
| I am troubleshooting DTC issues. What tools can help me resolve these problems? |
DTC Ping and DTC Test are great and are available for free download on MSDN. |
Platform |
| Are there any special requirements for running applications in native x64? |
Using an x64 Operating System, the installer will be intelligent enough to configure the system appropriately and pull down the correct pre-requisites for this platform. However, when you create hosts, you'll have to mark them as meant to run in 64-bit mode, otherwise they will run in WOW. Some adapters must run in 32-bit mode or else you'll experience runtime errors indicating this. See previous blog posts for information on these adapters. Consult the Installation Guide and core documentation for the complete x64 checklist. |
Platform |
| What steps are required to buildout a multi-machine topology? |
Installation Guide to the rescue. This guide gets better everyday and is already full of great step by step instructions to help you setup your complex environments. |
Setup |
| How do I clean up my databases in between runs within my testing environment? |
Lee describes this well here. This is only to be used in non-production environments. |
SQL |
| I had pre-allocated my MessageBox Data file to 10GB, but have since grown past this setting. Now that I have cleaned my MB in between runs in my test environment, how do I reduce the file size back to its initial 10GB size for testing? |
In SQL Server 2005 you can use:
DBCC SHRINKDATABASE (MessageBoxDbName) |
SQL |
| How do I monitor my system's throttling behavior during a run? |
There are new throttling perf counters that have been added in this release which you can monitor during test runs. Message delivery throttling state and message publishing throttling state display enums for each of the types of throttling when the throttling kicks in. Consult the throttling documentation for more information. |
Throttling |
Note: These answers are accurate as of the day of this post and subject to change.
