Yossi Dahan [BizTalk]: Fun with Message Creation in BizTalk

Creating messages is a mess in BizTalk, I really can’t understand why Microsoft doesn’t have a better story on this subject. But at least now we all know which is the most efficient (fast) way to create a message. Well done Yossi.

Yossi Dahan [BizTalk]: Fun with Message Creation in BizTalk

Using BizUnit with the Business Process Management Scenario

Using BizUnit with the Business Process Management Scenario

This topic will utilize one of the end-to-end scenarios provided with BizTalk Server 2006 and show how you can use the techniques described so far to perform automated functional and performance testing of the solution. This provides a realistic scenario to help determine how the tools and techniques presented in this guide can be used to incorporate testing into BizTalk Server solutions.

A thorough walk through on how to use BizUbit with a large BizTalk solution. I feel that the biggest problem with automated BizTalk testing is the endpoints. I mean, I don’t have an MSMQ, ehm, queue running on my machine… Neither does the guy next to me, but the guy behind me does. What I’m getting at here is this: For unit testing to work you have to isolate the test and for integration tests you have to run in a “as real world as possible” environment. Faking a SAP or Meridio server isn’t easy when doing integration testing… But perhaps you could just use the test environment? I need to think more on this I guess.

BizTalk Software Factory

BizTalk Software Factory – Home

The BizTalk Software Factory guides you through the process of creating a project structure and assists with adding artifacts to the project solution.
When creating the solution you can choose between a multi project solution or a single project solution where the artifacts are grouped into folders instead of projects.

BizTalk Orchestration Throttling Pattern

BizTalk Orchestration Throttling Pattern � Richard Seroter?s Architecture Musings:

I?m currently architecting a project where one of the requirements is to limit the number of concurrent calls to a web service.

Pretty cool pattern, fairly easy to implement and should yield descent performance. I need to limit the number of messages delivered pr. minute however, so that’s a different sort of problem…

Storing/sharing/using config info in BizTalk

During class today we briefly talked about how you could/should store config info; such as connection strings. Basically there are 4 options;

1. Use a UDC file to store your connections [bad]
2. Manipulate the hosts file on your/dev computer [hack]
3. Use the .config file of the service (BTSNTSvc.exe.config) [ok]
4. Use the SSO database that comes with BizTalk [best practice]

Now; if your BizTalk installation is just using one server the .config file option might be the best option for you, but for most larger installations you’re better of using the SSO database. I did a little digging around and found a blog post by Jon Flanders describing in detail how to do this; Great! I haven’t tested it yet, but it looks solid so far.

In Oslo – BizTalk Bootcamp course

So I’m in Oslo attending a BizTalk Bootcamp course. So far it’s not to hard, basically lots of Xml stuff that I knew before I came.

But BizTalk still looks interesting, but I can hardly wait to get started. Kinda bored of dull samples and stupid examples… 😉