BizTalk / .NET Blog

Interview in Automatiserings Gids

2008-09-19T13:27:00Z

Recently I've been interviewed by Automatiserings Gids about fragmentation in .NET. Read the article here

Testing in integration solutions

2008-03-25T15:05:00Z

I recently told something about testing and BizTalk for the BizTalk User Group and wrote an article about this subject (Dutch). Material will be online soon...

Ghostdoc

2007-10-12T14:17:00Z

I thought NDoc was great, this (http://www.blueonionsoftware.com/Blog.aspx?p=ca36e092-4671-49ca-9af5-5de2e0f6dc72) is even better!!

BizTalk 2006 Best Practices Analyzer

2007-09-13T13:17:00Z

A really helpful tool to see whether Best Practices are applied to your BizTalk solution.

Exposing a BizTalk webservice that accepts generic content

2007-09-07T08:52:00Z

In a BizTalk HTTP messaging scenario, it's fairly common to have one port that receives all message types. Depending on the message type (and perhaps some other properties) messages are routed to different destinations. You can implement the same pattern with the SOAP adapter. Have a look at Richard's blog for a complete description.

The future of BizTalk / WCF / WF

2007-09-07T08:46:00Z

A lot of guessing and many new questions in this good article by Tomas Restrepo on the future of BizTalk / WCF / WF.

Dragon Curve

2007-09-05T13:23:00Z

At highschool I had to write a java application that showed the dragon curve fractal. I liked the assignment at the time because of the power of recursion. I wrote a simple .NET app that does the same. Download here

Property Demotion

2007-08-31T12:51:00Z

Most people working with BizTalk have heard of property promotion, in fact property promotion is very important in CBR messaging scenarios. Property promotion makes it possible to route messages based on their content. In short, property promotion is taking information from the message and putting it in the context of a message.

Have you ever heard of property DEmotion?? This is the opposite of property PROmotion, so taking information from the context and putting it in the message. This might become handy when you for instance need the initial filename of message. This information is stored in the context, to be more specific in the element ReceivedFileName in the schema FILE.bts_file_properties in the referenced assembly Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas. How do you get this value in your output message (demotion is done in the send port - use the XMLTransmit pipeline)?

Right-click the element in your schema you want to contain the ReceivedFileName value and click Promote -> Show Promotions.
Add a new property schema: choose <your schema project> -> References -> Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas -> Schemas -> FILE.bts_file_properties
Choose a proper prefix e.g. btsFileProps or something, I think ns0 is dirty
Add your element and bind it to <your prefix>:ReceivedFileName and click ok

Deploy your schema and test it - your output message should contain the ReceivedFileName property value if your input message has left the element to be filled empty. Questions? Feel free to ask!

BizTalk Hotrod: Where BizTalk Meets the Road...

2007-08-31T07:38:00Z

I really like the magazines (issue 1, issue 2) on the BizTalk Hotrod website. Both the website and the articles so far contain very good and readable information on new BizTalk technologies.

AMQP

2007-08-29T09:15:00Z

Have a look at this. AMQP is a messaging standard that looks very powerful. I wonder when a .NET / BizTalk implemention will be available.

Schemas without namespace

2007-08-21T06:59:00Z

It's not recommended, but sometimes you dont have a choice to use schemas without namespaces. BizTalk deals with the schemas very well, just be aware that the BTS.MessageType used in the filter will be only the rootnode, not #RootNode.

Working on BizTalk Solution Software Factory

2007-08-17T10:01:00Z

I'm working on a new version of the BizTalk Software Factory, enhancing the old version with functionality to create pipeline components. Futher on, the new version will contain a DSL for creating CBR solutions. Future plans are to include functionality for creating application adapters and BizTalk adapters.

AssemblyInfo.cs in template when compiling Guidance Automation Project

2007-07-26T13:30:00Z

When you're working with an Guidance Automation Project and you have template for lets say, a class library project that contains the file properties\assemblyinfo.cs, make sure you set the build action to "Content" instead of "Compile", or else you'll get an error message saying there are duplicate attributes in AssemblyInfo.cs. You get the error because the GA project itself also contains an AssemblyInfo.cs file.

P.S. Don't forget to set the "Copy To Output Directory" to "Copy if newer" for obvious reasons...

Covast & R2

2007-07-24T14:49:00Z

With the coming of native EDI support in BizTalk 2006 R2, many people thought Covast would not be involved in creating EDI solutions with BizTalk. Well, that's not what's going to happen. Covast adds the very specific standards, like EDIG@S, ODETTE and EDINE. Moreover, Covast adds a nice B2B appliance called BBOT...nice! Have a look at the article.

NCover

2007-07-24T13:40:00Z

When testing your software, do you hit every line of code? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but how can you make sure you do? Check out this tool, it'll show you the level of coverage of your code.