Connected Systems in the Great White North : BizTalk 2006 R2

Content from the Canadian Connected Systems Conference

pkelcey — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:39:00 GMT

We've been to Vancouver and Toronto so far and lots of people have been asking about the presentations that we delivered at the Connected Systems Conference. We're uploading them now to a skydrive site and you should be able to access them at

http://cid-ece4536d84e10155.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Connected%20Systems%20Conference%202008/Final%20Slides

The site should be open for anyone to download the presentations and you won't need a password or ID. It may take us a day to get all of the presenters to upload their decks, so if you don't see the one you wanted, give it a day and then check back.

Cheers and keep on BizTalking

Peter

A Web based version of the BizTalk Rules Composer

pkelcey — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:55:00 GMT

As part of a proof-of-concept I was working on last year, we needed to show that the BizTalk Business Rules could be created and managed via a Web Application instead of through the standard Business Rules Composer tool that we provide out of the box. The client had certain requirements that meant that using the standard Composer just wasn't viable. Therefore, I replicated a portion of the Composer as a Web based application. I thought I'd post some images from the app and see if this is something people are interested in. If you are, I'll work to clean up the code and post it to http://www.codeplex.com/. Let me know by posting a comment here.

There were two tools in the. One let you view and edit vocabularies. The other let you view/author/edit/delete/publish/deploy policies and rules.

Image 1: The home page, gives the user the ability to access the 2 tools contained in the app.

Image 2: The Policy and Rule Explorer This screen lets a user select a specific Policy to review. Once they select a Policy, they are shown the entire version history for it. For each version, then can load up a list of all the rules contained within that version. At this point, they have the option to publish, deploy or copy that particular version. They also have the ability to select each rule and view its Conditions and actions.

Image 3: Adding a New Rule

Image 4: The Vocabulary Explorer. Lets a user view the definitions contained within all the Vocabularies and lets them alter the values of existing definitions.

Cheers and keep on BizTalking...

Peter

Announcing free training on the ESB Guidance (Canada only)

pkelcey — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:40:00 GMT

The concept of Service Oriented Architecture and the Enterprise Service Bus is huge topic for many organizations now days. To address this, our patterns and practices team have recently released the Enterprise Service Bus Guidance which organizations can use to implement an practical and effective ESB solution using our .NET technologies.

In order to accelerate your understanding of this guidance, the Canadian BizTalk team is excited to announce that we will be running a one day deep dive training course focused entirely on the ESB Guidance. We have created this training course to radically accelerate your understanding and adoption of it. The course will be held on April 16^th at the Microsoft Canada Head Office in Mississauga (Full details are on the registration page). This is significant event as there will be no cost to attend and attendees will get some real deep hands on experience with the solution. This is the first public offering of a course that we recently delivered internally to our MCS community which received very positive reviews. The course includes architectural discussions on the ESB concept, deep dive views into its internals as well as proctored hands-on labs.

This course will be focused towards the deeper technical components within the ESB, so this is best suited for architects, developers and other technical roles.

The agenda for the course is a follows:

1) The ESB as an architecture concept. What is it? What should it do? Why would I need it?

2) Getting Started – Installing and configuring the ESBG

3) The Core ESBG Engine: What are the core components and how do I use them?

4) ESBG External Services: How are these different from the Core Engine?

5) The ESB Exception Management Framework and Administration Portal

6) Introduction to Microsoft's ESB & SOA Governance Partners

7) Bits and Bites: Miscellaneous Topics

If you are interested in attending, you can access the registration page at:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032373531&Culture=en-CA

Hope to see you there.

Cheers and keep on BizTalking...

Microsoft ESB Guidance: Error - Host restarting every minute

pkelcey — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:33:00 GMT

We'll I just spent about three hours tonight fighting with this issue, so I thought I'd post about it to hopefully save someone else from having to go through this.

I was trying to run a couple of samples from the ESB and I noticed that whenever I used an example that had to use an orchestration, I received the following error in my event log

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: BizTalk Server 2006
Event Category: BizTalk Server 2006
Event ID: 5410
Date: 12/4/2007
Time: 4:08:39 PM
User: N/A
Computer: EDIBTS2006
Description:
An error occurred that requires the BizTalk service to terminate. The most common causes are the following:
1) An unexpected out of memory error.
OR
2) An inability to connect or a loss of connectivity to one of the BizTalk databases.
The service will shutdown and auto-restart in 1 minute. If the problematic database remains unavailable, this cycle will repeat.

Error message: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
Error source: mscorlib

My host instance would then shut down and try to restart itself every minute. Each retry would fail with this same error. I also ended up with a running service instance in the admin console that I couldn’t terminate.

Each time I sent another message, I would have to manually clean these left over instances from the DB before I could restart the host instance successfully. I finally noticed that this error was only occurring whenever a component in my “In-proc” host instance tried to run. Base on this I tracked the issue down the btsntsvc.exe.config file that we were suppose to edit during install. I had forgotten to remove the “[path]” place holder that is in the <ConfigurationFile> tag. We were suppose to replace this with the actual path to the Microsoft.Practices.ESB.PipelineComponents.config file. (I’ve did not have this step in my install checklists, so I have since added it). I realized that the AppDomains were not loading correctly and this caused my errors in every orchestration in that tried to run in that AppDomain.

This is what I had left in my config file:

<ConfigurationFile>
[path]\Microsoft.Practices.ESB.PipelineComponents.config
</ConfigurationFile>

As I said, I had forgotten to replace the [path] place holder. Anyways, I put in the proper path and I expected this to correct the situation, but I kept getting the same annoying error. After another hour of frustrated debugging, I realized that I had entered the config data like this:

C:\Projects\Microsoft.Practices.ESB\source\code\core\config\Microsoft.Practices.ESB.PipelineComponents.config

</ConfigurationFile>

You’ll notice that I had put line breaks before and after the path and filename. It was these dam line break that were causing the problem. I took them out and and used this:

<ConfigurationFile>C:\Projects\Microsoft.Practices.ESB\source\code\core\config\Microsoft.Practices.ESB.PipelineComponents.config</ConfigurationFile>

Everything worked fine and the issues are gone.

I’ve seen a number of people asking about this on codeplex and other locations, so double check your settings and avoid the headaches.

Cheers and keep on BizTalking...

Peter

ESB Exception Management fails with Canadian Regional Settings

pkelcey — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:28:00 GMT

I spent an hour or so this morning working with a college to debug a strange error he was getting when he tried to use on of the Exception Management Framework samples that are in the ESB guidance for BizTalk. He was intentionally creating exceptions and he expected to see them routed into the ESB exception database. However, every time the ALL.Exception SQL Send port tried to route the message to the SQL Server, he got the following error.

The adapter failed to transmit message going to send port "ALL.Exceptions" with URL "SQL://VBROKERSERVER7/EsbExceptionDb/". It will be retransmitted after the retry interval specified for this Send Port. Details:"HRESULT="0x80040e07" Description="Error converting data type nvarchar to datetime."

Now we both expected that he had made a mistake during the installation and configuration phase, but after we spent a fair bit of time comparing his installation to my installation (which worked by the way!) we realized that we had identical configurations. We finally realized that the only difference between the environments was that I had configured my Windows server to work with a regional setting of "English (United States)" while he was using "English (Canada)". The problem was occurring because the two countries store the day/month data in reversed order. Once we changed his system so that the user account that BizTalk ran under used "English (United States)" his system was fine.

I've since seen someone with a near similar problem using the Dutch regional settings. He found a code level work around that can be used to fix the problem and allow any country's setting to be used. Details are at http://www.codeplex.com/esb/workitem/view.aspx?workitemid=4430

Cheers and keep on BizTalk

Microsoft's RFID Solution Days

pkelcey — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:42:00 GMT

The Connected Systems Divisions has announced an exciting new event that developers interested in RFID should check out!

Microsoft cordially invites you to participate in a 2 day solution extravaganza

At the first edition of our WW RFID Solution Days

18-19 February 2008

The event will showcase real-world RFID solutions being deployed across various

Industry verticals on the Microsoft platform today and innovations in the field of RFID via a partner expo.

Visit the event website (click here) to learn more. We look forward to seeing you in February!

Venue:

Westin Bellevue
601 Bellevue Way NE
Bellevue, Washington 98004

+1.425.638.1000

Optional Post conference training:

Feb 20-21 @ the Microsoft Campus

Contact:

microsoftevents@dynamicevents.com

__________________________________________________________________________________

Invite courtesy of Connected Systems Team Canada

Canadian Business Process/SOA Conference Documents

pkelcey — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:59:00 GMT

People have been asking, so here they are. I've attached all of the presentations that were presented during the recent Canadian Business Process/SOA Conference. All of the presentations from both technical days and the business day are included in the three attached ZIP files.

http://peterkelcey.com/downloads/businesspresentations.zip

http://peterkelcey.com/downloads/technicaltrack_1.zip

http://peterkelcey.com/downloads/technicaltrack_2.zip

Cheers and keep on BizTalking

Canadian BizTalk 2006-R2/SOA Conference

pkelcey — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:17:00 GMT

Microsoft Canada is host a R2 launch conference in conjunction with a SOA conference. The conference will be held Calgary, Toronto and Montreal. The details and registration links are below.

2007 Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference

Microsoft Canada is pleased to announce the 2007 Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference to be held in Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal. Be the first to hear about the new wave of innovation included in BizTalk Server 2006 R2, with enhanced capabilities such as native support for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and AS2 as well as RFID. During these 2 days you will learn about both Microsoft’s current portfolio and long-term strategy for SOA & Business Process initiatives. Whether you are a developer, architect, or business decision maker we will have something for you with tracks spanning the full spectrum of technology, architecture, and business value topics.

What You Can Expect

• Keynote Sessions

Business Value Track
The Business Value track will have multiple sessions that will focus on issues such as establishing a SOA roadmap. We will provide case studies and guidance to help your SOA and business process initiatives demonstrate value quickly and stay focused on business goals. Whether you are a partner practice manager evaluating the business opportunity of SOA and business process or an enterprise decision maker evaluating the potential return on investment of your SOA and BPM initiatives, the Business Value track is for you.

Technical Track
The Technical track will have multiple sessions that will focus on the design and implementation of service oriented and business process solutions. We will provide best practices and proven patterns for handling challenges with many aspects of solution architecture such as; data, identity, messaging, workflow, and rules.

• “Ask the Expert” Sessions *
• Technical Partner Business Planning Sessions *
• Evening Reception

The Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference is the event for customers and technology partners to get detailed guidance for planning and delivering solutions for Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management. Guidance will be provided across 2 tracks focused on Technical and Business Value topics.

**Session agendas will be provided shortly.

***Please join us on Day 1 of this 2 Day event for a social reception***

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Microsoft Canada a le plaisir d’annoncer le Congrès de Microsoft sur l'architecture orientée sur les services et sur les processus d'affaires 2007 qui se tiendra à Calgary, à Toronto et à Montréal. Soyez les premiers à découvrir les toutes dernières innovations de BizTalk Server 2006 R2 , incluant des fonctionnalités plus performantes telles que (native support) pour EDI et AS2, ainsi que pour le RFID. D’une durée de deux jours, le congrès vous offrira l’occasion de vous informer sur le portefeuille de produits actuel de Microsoft et sur sa stratégie à long terme en matière d’architecture orientée sur les services et de processus d’affaires. Que vous soyez un développeur, un spécialiste en architecture ou un décideur gestionnaire, nos ateliers qui couvrent le champ complet de la technologie, de l’architecture et de la valeur commerciale sauront vous intéresser.

Programme

• Discours d’ouverture

Atelier sur la valeur commerciale

L’atelier sur la valeur commerciale portera notamment sur l’établissement d’un guide relatif à l’architecture orientée sur les services. Nous présenterons des études de cas et donnerons des conseils pour que vos projets d’architecture orientée sur les services et de processus d’affaires génèrent rapidement de la valeur tout en respectant les objectifs de l’entreprise. Que vous soyez un directeur des services-conseils aux partenaires évaluant le potentiel commercial de l’architecture orientée sur les services ou un décideur-gestionnaire évaluant le rendement du capital investi potentiel de ses projets d’architecture orientée sur les services et de processus d’affaires, cet atelier s’adresse à vous.

Atelier technique

L’atelier technique portera sur la création et la mise en œuvre de solutions axées sur les services et les processus d’affaires. Nous parlerons des meilleures pratiques et des modèles éprouvés permettant d’affronter les difficultés en faisant appel à de nombreux aspects de l’architecture de solutions, tels que les données, la messagerie, le flux de travaux et les règles.

• Ateliers « Demandez à l’expert »*
• Ateliers sur la planification des affaires à l’intention des partenaires techniques*
• Réception

Le Congrès de Microsoft sur l'architecture orientée sur les services et sur les processus d'affaires est l’événement par excellence destiné aux clients et aux partenaires technologiques qui désirent obtenir de l’information détaillée en vue de planifier et d’offrir des solutions orientées sur les services et la gestion des processus administratifs. Cette information sera transmise dans le cadre d’un atelier technique et d’un atelier sur la valeur commerciale.

**Les agendas des différentes sessions seront disponibles sous peu

*** Joignez-vous à nous le premier jour de cet événement de deux jours pour une réception ***

	Date	Time	Location	Address	EventID
A	September 25 - 26, 2007	7:30 am - 6:30pm	The Westin Calgary	320 4th Avenue SW Calgary, AB, T2P 2S6	1032350673	A
	A	A	A	A	A

	Date	Time	Location	Address	EventID
A	October 3 - 4 , 2007	7:30 am - 6:30pm	Microsoft Canada Head Office	1950 Meadowvale Blvd Mississauga, Ontario, L5N 8L9	1032351073	A
	A	A	A	A	A

	Date	Time	Location	Address	EventID
A	October 24 - 25, 2007	7:30 am - 6:30pm	Hotel Place D'Armes	55 Saint-Jacques West Montreal, Quebec, H2Y 3X2	1032351086	A
	A	A	A	A	A

Awesome new BizTalk Database Optimization Whitepaper

pkelcey — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:48:00 GMT

One of the most tricky aspects of developing BizTalk applications can be the performance tuning and optimization phase. A great new whitepaper has just been released to MSDN that has extremely deep and thorough coverage on how to configure, install and tune the a BizTalk database tier. This is a must have paper for anyone dealing with high load, high performance BizTalk applications

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb743398.aspx

Great work done by John B. Brockmeyer and team.

Cheers and keep on BizTalking

BizTalk 2006 R2 - RFID: Weird Error in sample

pkelcey — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:15:00 GMT

I've spent the last couple of days digging into the new RFID technology that is included with BizTalk 2006 R2. I removed BizTalk 2006 from my standard VPC image and I dropped the new RFID components on the server. This VPC image was build on Windows 2003, SQL Server 2005 - SP2, VS 2005, ASP.NET 3.0 and WSE 2.0. It would turn out that the WSE 2.0 would turn out to be the problem for me.

I successfully completed the core install and configuration and eagerly tried to setup the Contoso sample that is included. This sample includes a sample Device Provider, a Reader Simulator and a Sample process to handle the simulated tag reads. However, when I ran the ContosoSetup.cmd file that is suppose to install, configure and startup the demo, I received the following error.

This request operation sent to net.tcp://<server_name>:7891/rfid/service/ProviderManager did not receive a reply within the configured timeout (00:01:00).  The time allotted to this operation may have been a portion of a longer timeout.  This may be because the service is still processing the operation or because the service was unable to send a reply message.  Please consider increasing the operation timeout (by casting the channel/proxy to IContextChannel and setting the OperationTimeout property) and ensure that the service is able to connect to the client.

Being fairly new this, I had no idea what this meant, so I decided to skip the sample and just try to manually add in the Contoso provider by using the RFID management tool. However, I didn't have any luck with this either. So I dug deeper into the Help files and fortunetly there is some pretty good advice for debugging and resolving this issue. Basically, when you register a new provider, a new virtual directory is created in IIS. A number of issue were preventing this VD from running correctly. The biggest issue was the Windows SharePoint Services was including the new directory in its list of managed paths. Therefore I had to go into the SharePoint Administration sites, select "Manage Virtual Server", select "Default Website", select "Manage Defined Paths" and then manually add in the virtual directories to the "Excluded Paths" list. Once I had done this, then I was at least able to get the website to load in the browser. I had placed a basic test.html file in the directory and I was able to view the HTML contained within it.

However at this point, I still couldn't register my new provider. I dug deeper into the docs and they recommended browsing directly to the hosting.svc file that is contained within the virtual directory. When I did this, I got the ever helpfull "Server Error" message in my browser and nothing more. Thankfully, I have run into this issue enough that I had a couple of ideas of what to do. I started by opening the web.config file in the root c:\inetpub\wwwroot folder. Inside this file, there is a <Trust> tag that by default had a setting of "level=WSS_Minimal", I needed to change this to "Full". Also, the RFID engine requires Anonymous Access to be setup on the virtual directory, so I loaded up the directories settings and checked for this. While I was in there, I noticed that the Contoso Installation Script had tried to set the default user account to "Administrator" (this was the account I was logged in under). However, the account name was misspelled as "Administartor" and this had caused the Application Pool to fail and shut down. I changed the spelling error and restarted the new App Pool that was setup during the sample installation

After making these changes, I tried to browser the hosting.svc file again and I received another error. An error occurred loading a configuration file: Access to the path 'c:\inetpub\wwwroot\web.config' is denied. Fortunetly, the fix for this issue is included in the help docs. To resolve this issue, grant the IIS_WPG group Read permissions to the web.config file.

After I made this last change, I was able to view the hosting.svc file in my browser. I once again tried to manually register the Contoso provider using the RFID administration tool and everything worked. I re-ran the Constosetup.cmd file and then went in and re-did all of my manually fixes to correct all the issues with all of the virtual directories it created. I used the RFID management console to manually startup the provider, device and process. Once I did this, I was able to successfully receive tag events from the Contoso Device Simulator.

A bit of a bumpy ride based on the WSE 2.0, but it was nice to see almost all of my issues outlined and documented in the core Help Docs.

Cheers and keep on BizTalking