Thoughts of a Software Developer

Message creation in orchestrations “from scratch”

2011-04-20T14:46:00.001-07:00

In some cases it is useful to create a BizTalk message without mapping it from another message.

If you have a Message Assign shape and you access a distinguished field on the message like

msgSample.ErrorCode = “4711”;

without a Transform shape in advance you get the following error during compiling

Message part has not been initialized in construct statement

This is because the xml message has not been initialized. For some reason it is necessary that the “empty” message needs to already contain a tag for the field ErrorCode.

To avoid this issue, you would add a Transform shape with a map, where the root node of the source schema is linked with the field ErrorCode on the target schema. Without mapping you need to construct this manually. For me, the following worked well:

I added a variable with name tempXml of type System.Xml.XmlDocument to the orchestration. In an expression shape I loaded an XML template and constructed the message.

tempXml = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
tempXml.LoadXml(“…”);

construct msgSample
{
msgSample = tempXml;
msgSample.ErrorCode = “4711”;
}

The XML template for LoadXml can be generated on the schema file in Solution Explorer.

Another way could be to call custom code like

construct msgSample
{
msgSample = CustomClass.CustomMethod(...);
msgSample.ErrorCode = “4711”;
}

The method should be declared in a separate c# project as follows

public class CustomClass
{
public static XmlDocument CustomMethod(...)
{
...
}
}

BizTalk Server 2010 Feature Pack

2011-04-20T12:47:00.001-07:00

Slightly after the release of BizTalk Server 2010 a Feature Pack has been released. This feature pack contains only one feature which is named BizTalk Server 2010 AppFabric Connect for Services. It provides for bridging the capabilities of BizTalk Server and Windows Azure AppFabric thereby enabling enterprises to extend the reach of their on-premise Line of Business (LOB) systems and BizTalk applications to cloud.

Download

CU3 for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 SP1

2011-01-22T07:28:00.001-08:00

In the end of 2010 Microsoft released the third cumulative update package for BizTalk Server 2006 Service Pack 1.

KB2286501 Download

You do not need prior update packages to apply this. If you are not affected by any problems Microsoft recommends to wait for the next Service Pack release.

CU1 for BizTalk Server 2009

2011-01-22T07:18:00.001-08:00

A few days ago, Microsoft released the first cumulative update package for BizTalk Server 2009

KB2429050 Download

If you are not affected by any problems Microsoft recommends to wait for the next Service Pack release.

Replace Text in Streams

2010-10-22T14:50:00.001-07:00

Today, I thought about replacing text in streams. I noticed that .NET 4 provides methods for type

String

to replace some text, but no methods for type

Stream

I found a way by converting the stream to a string in a first step and by replacing text in a second step.

new StreamReader(i).ReadToEnd().Replace("old text", "new text")

For a lot of cases this is alright and there is nothing to worry about. But if the source is a huge amount of data and I do not want to hold it in memory all the time, things get tricky. For these cases I wrote a simple method called

ReplaceTextInStream

The method gets four arguments: an input stream, an output stream, a string with a pattern to search for and a string with the replacement value. If one argument is null, a ArgumentNullException is thrown. Here is the code: Enjoy!

public static void ReplaceTextInStream(Stream input, Stream output, string pattern, string replacement) 
{
    if (input == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("input");
    }
    if (output == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("output");
    }
    if (pattern == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("pattern");
    }
    if (replacement == null)
    {
        throw new ArgumentNullException("replacement");
    }
    StreamReader r = new StreamReader(input);
    StreamWriter w = new StreamWriter(output);
    // Input and Pattern are empty => Output = Replacement
    if(input.Length == 0 && pattern.Length == 0) 
    {
        w.Write(replacement);
    }
    // Pattern is empty => Output = Input
    if (input.Length != 0 && pattern.Length == 0)
    {
        while (!r.EndOfStream)
        {
            w.Write((char)r.Read());
        }
    }
    // Init empty Stack
    List<char> stack = new List<char>();
    // Loop over input characters
    while (!r.EndOfStream)
    {
        // Read next input character
        char c = (char)r.Read();
        // Compare characters
        if (pattern[stack.Count] == c)
        {
            // Match => Put it on Stack
            stack.Add(c);
            // Match complete?
            if (stack.Count == pattern.Length)
            {
                // Write Replacement and clear Stack
                w.Write(replacement);
                stack.Clear();
            }
        }
        else
        {
            // No Macth => Stack filled?
            if (stack.Count != 0)
            {
                // Write and Clear Stack
                foreach (var tc in stack)
                {
                    w.Write(tc);
                }
                stack.Clear();
            }
            // Copy current character
            w.Write(c);
        }
    }
    // After Loop: Stack filled?
    if (stack.Count != 0)
    {
        // Write and Clear Stack
        foreach (var tc in stack)
        {
            w.Write(tc);
        }
        stack.Clear();
    }
    w.Flush();
}

Useful .NET Tools

2010-10-22T11:41:00.001-07:00

Here is a list of tools I use for .NET development. Each of them saves me a lot of time.

JetBrains ReSharper
Resharper is an extension by Jetbrain for Visual Studio, which improves the development experience. ReSharper executes solution-wide static code analysis, error detection on-the-fly, without the need to compile, provides additional features for error correction, code completion, navigation, search, refactorings, syntax highlighting, formatting, code generation and optimization among other features.
Download

redgate .NET Reflector
.NET Reflector is a class browser and analysis tool for .NET. It allows you to navigate, search, disassemble and analyze .NET components.
Download

WinMerge
WinMerge is a powerful differencing and merging tool. It’s Open Source. WinMerge can compare folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.
Download

Instant SQL Formatter
Online tool for formatting SQL statements. Supported database types are MSSQL, Oracle, DB2, MySQL and others
Link

C# Regular Expression Helper
Litte tool for testing regular expressions
Download

XPath Tester
Little tool for testing XPath statements
Download

Resumed Orchestration Instances are not processed

2010-10-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

Today, in BizTalk 2009 I runned into the following problem: I resumed orchestration instances. They get a processing server, but they are not processed. The orchestration debugger showed, that nothing has happened. Restarting host instance does not change anyhting. Running the MsgBoxViewer showed a MsgBox database integrity problem. The text said

Missing Restart Msg in Spool table (can prevent some svc instances to be resumed, terminated or suspended) !!

Missing Suspend Msg in Spool table (can prevent some svc instances to be resumed, terminated or suspended) !!

Missing Terminate Msg in Spool table (can prevent some svc instances to be resumed, terminated or suspended) !!

Missing ResumeInDebugMode Msg in Spool table (can prevent some svc instances to be resumed, terminated or suspended) !!

Following the hint to run the Terminator tool is not necessary. Just do THIS. Afterwards, restart the host instances. All running, but not processed orchestration instances are processed.

BizTalk Server 2010 released

2010-10-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has just released a new version of BizTalk Server. Since 1st of October BizTalk Server 2010 is available. For a brief overview of the new features have a look at the MSDN BizTalk Server Team Blog.

Links:
Download BizTalk Server 2010 - Developer Edition
Download BizTalk Server 2010 - Evaluation Edition
MSDN Library on BizTalk Server 2010

BizTalk 2009 Light and Easy Webcast Series

2010-05-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

I just found a series of webcasts on MSDN focussing on BizTalk Server 2009 features created by worldwide MVPs and industry experts. They are great stuff.
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/bts09

Microsoft Knowledge Base Monitoring

2010-05-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

Problems with BizTalk are more or less time consuming. Usually, it is important to quickly find a solution. For a particular problem you have a good chance to find a useful article or hotfix in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. For that these two links can help (not only BizTalk):

http://kbupdate.info/ is a monitoring system that scans the entire Microsoft Knowledge Base every night
http://kbalertz.com/ is an e-mail notification system that scans the entire Microsoft Knowledge Base every night, and e-mails you when updates or additions are made to the technologies you subscribe to

Pipeline Component Wizard

2009-06-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

BizTalk 2006 has only poor support for developing custom pipeline components. Luckily, there is some kind of tool on Codeplex, which makes it easy to create custom pipeline components. The tool is a project creation wizard within Visual Studio. It comes together with its own project type and is able to generate pipeline component projects from scratch depending on several parameters.

So far, version 2.00 is the current one for Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2006. Unfotunately, this version has a bug. Each time you use the wizard to create a new project you get the error.

System.ArgumentException : Value does not fall withing the expected range

There is no official solution yet. An unofficial way to solve it is:

Change the file BizTalkPipelineComponentWizard.cs around line 304

FROM
[...]
// get a handle to the project. using mySolution will not work.
pipelineComponentProject = this._Application.Solution.Projects.Item(Path.Combine(Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(projectFileName), projectFileName));
[...]

TO
[...]
// get a handle to the project. using mySolution will not work.
if (this._Application.Solution.Projects.Count == 1)
pipelineComponentProject = this._Application.Solution.Projects.Item(1);
else
{
// In Doubt: Which project is the target?
pipelineComponentProject = this._Application.Solution.Projects.Item(projectFileName);
}
[...]

See Source

After that, you have to complie the source code and (re)install the wizard.

Dis-/Assembling EDI streams is ending up with an unhelpful error description

2009-06-13T09:10:00.000-07:00

Last week, I came up with a BizTalk hotfix which improves the EDI error descriptions. Normally, when you disassemble an EDIFACT stream in BizTalk 2006 R2 and it does not work, the serivce instance suspends with an error like

An output message of the component "Unknown" in receive pipeline "Microsoft.BizTalk.Edi.DefaultPipelines.EdiReceive, Microsoft.BizTalk.Edi.EdiPipelines, Version=3.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" is suspended due to the following error: Unknown. The sequence number of the suspended message is 1.

In this case, looking into the EventLog is crucial. If you have several biztalk host instances on different servers like us, this is an annoying job. In the past, we wrote us a custom component which looks up the Event Log for the error descriptions. But since we installed the hotfix, we have everything we need in BizTalk and we do not need to look somewhere else anymore. Very useful (See Hotfix 955303)

Nested transactional scopes just because of non serializable code

2009-06-13T08:10:00.000-07:00

It's good to avoid having non serializable code in an orchestration. I give you an example: Let's say you have non serializable code in an expression shape which need not to be executed transactional. The pitty is, that you have to put an atomic transaction scope around it. The reason is that BizTalk only allows non serializable code in this kind of scope. In addition to that, you need another long running transaction scope around the first one, if you want to do some exception handling. BizTalk does not allow you to add an exception handler to an atomic transaction scope. So, there is a lot of overhead just because of the non serializable code in the beginning. If performance is a critical factor, here is potential. The best way would be to make the code serializable or to outsource it to a custom .NET class. For the second option it is important to make the methods static which are called by the orchestration. The benefit would be that you only need one non transactional scope in the given example. (See Biztalk : Atomic Transaction for Exception handling and Atomic scope for Non Serializable code)

Details of Errors caused by ThrowException Shape

2009-03-10T04:41:00.000-07:00

When you design a BizTalk orchestration and you want to suspend the orchestration with a ThrowException shape, it is useful to initialize the exception variable in an Expression shape with a descriptive error message in advance.

Example:

incomingMessageNotFoundException = new System.Exception("No referenced incomingMessage found"); (*)

(*): In this example incomingMessageNotFoundException is the exception variable of type System.Exception.

The result is that the error message "No referenced incomingMessage found" is shown in the Error Information tab of the Service Details window if an orchestration instance gets suspended because of this error. If you do not initialize the variable yourself, BizTalk uses the default constructor and you only get the information that an exception of type System.Exception has occured in your orchestration. This does not help much.

Microsoft Certificate

2008-10-11T02:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I earned my first Microsoft Certifacte. I purchased Exam 70-235 as part of the Microsoft Certified Program.

How to accelerate VPCs in MS Virtual PC 2007

2008-09-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday, I was quite sure that my host OS Windows Vista has a negative effect on the performance of my VPCs. I am talking about lazy mouse movement choppy scrolling and stuff like that.

After reading this post, I thought that VMWare could solve this problem. So, I downloaded VMWare Converter and a 30-days-evaluation version of VMWare Workstation 6. During setup of VMWare Tools on the guest OS a text message popped up saying, that I can get better graphic performance if I'd change something in the display properties. I was not aware of the described switch. Afterwards, there was a noticeable acceleration.

Because it was a windows internal property, I went back to my VPC and changed it there as well. The difference in Virtual PC was much more drastic. It solved all the performance problems I had. Now, I can work with the guest OS in a familiar speed. Finally, I was wrong and Virtual PC has no problems with Windows Vista as host OS. The pic below shows the the settings, which have to be made.

(Location: Display properties, tab Settings, menu Advanced)