Hi

Updated at the bottom with a solution.

I have this very weird problem. I have created a functoid, but silly, as I am, I created an icon for it that was way to big. So I wanted to remove the functoid from the toolbox and deploy another functoid instead.

This turned out to be quite a difficult task. I have removed the functoid from GAC and I have removed it from the "Mapper Extensions" folder of the BizTalk installation folder. I have then reset the toolbox. The functoid is STILL there. Actually, I can do whatever I want, even boot the server, but the functoid stays in the toolbox. If I move my mouse over it in the toolbox, VS.NET 2005 will crash very hard, so this isn't desirable If I am very quick, I can go to the functoid, right click on it and delete it from the toolbox. Yiepee, it is gone. BUT, resetting the toolbox makes the functoid reappear :-(

Another guy has the same problem, and at this moment, a support incident with Microsoft is being evaluated. Microsoft have reproduced the behaviour, they claim, so I am awaiting the answer to this peculiar problem any time now.

I will post the solution here, off course.

Update with a solution posted on 9'th December 2006:

Solution 1:

Log on to Windows, using a username other than that, under which this error occurs. The ser must have administrative priviledges.

Right click on "My Computer", Select Properties, Advanced Tab, User Profiles -> Settings and delete the profile that is experiencing the problem.

Logout, and login as the user that had the problem. The problem should now be gone.

This solution has a great drawback, though - the profile is deleted (duh!) This means that alll your settings for all kinds of programs are removed and you need to recreate them. For instance, VS.NET 2005 thinks it is the first time it is started the next time you start it.

Solution 2:

Microsoft stated another solution that should work, but this one I haven't tested:

1. Ungac the Assembly
2. Remove the Assembly from Mapper Extension Folder.
3. Choose Items on the Toolbox and Unselect the offending items
4. Then do a Reset Toolbox

--
eliasen

Hi

A guy on the microsoft.public.biztalk.something newsgroup is having problems splitting an incoming flat file into several files. The dataformat he has is this:

HH06SGLN00084CR
31102006~06~Miss~ABD~DEF GHI ~ZZZZZ~F~31111111~~BD46A~233435~NUTRITION & FOOD SCIENCE~1~88888888~ AN ADDRESS SOMEWHERE~AB18ZZ~AAAA33333333T~04444.00~01200.00~00000.00~00000.00~F~Y~P~Y~N~N~N~
01112006~06~Miss~ASODIFN~DSFJ ~BSODIFJSDF~F~55555555~~Q190E~444444~ENGLISH & POPULAR CULTURE~1~66666666~ ANOTHER ADDRESS ~CF51NT~EEEE94857463H~01200.00~01200.00~00000.00~00000.00~F~Y~F~Y~Y~N~N~
TT000024

The first line is a header, with identifier "HH". The last line is the trailer with identifier "TT". In between are many body lines, one per line.

He would like to create schemas for the header, the body and the trailer and use them in a custom receive pipeline, using the flat file disassembler to split it up, so he gets one XML document per body line.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be doable. What seems to happen is that when parsing the document, first the header schema is used. It describes a single line, and this line in the incoming file is then parsed. Then, the body schema is used for parsing the rest of the incoming document. Since the body lines don't have tag identifiers, though, it seems that BizTalk will continue to parse the document, and this includes parsing the last line, which is the trailer. BizTalk doesn't know when to stop parsing for body lines. Therefore, this error appears in the eventlog:

-- BEGIN ERROR
Source: "Flat file disassembler" Receive Port: "ReceiveFlatFile" URI: "C:\Projects\BTS 2006\NewsgroupHelp\BodyWithoutTagIdentifierFlatFile\Instances\In\*.txt" Reason: Unexpected data found while looking for:
'~'
The current definition being parsed is BodyRoot. The stream offset where the error occured is 404. The line number where the error occured is 4. The column where the error occured is 0.
-- END ERROR

Baiscally, the flat file disassembler can't find the ~ character on the last line, which isn't supposed to be there, since this line is the trailer. So BizTalk gives up and fails.

What I have come up with isn't actually pretty, but it does seem to work

I have created a schema for the entire flat file. And I have created a schema for the entire flat file without the trailer. Then, I created a schema for the header, and a schema for the body. I have made heavily use of the flat file schema wizard, because there are many elements in the body lines

Then, I created a map between the two main schemas, effectively removing the trailer from the input.

I also created three custom pipelines:

1. A pipeline for receiving the complete flat file
2. A pipeline for sending out the flat file without its trailer
3. A pipeline for splitting the flat file without trailer into several body documents, using the header- and body schemas.

So the solution is:

Let BizTalk read in the complete flat file, and use a map on the receive (or send) port to convert it into the same structure without the trailer. Then output it to a file. Let another receive location pick the new file up, and use the pipeline with body- and header schemas to split it up into several documents.

Pitfalls are: Remember to use different combinations of rootnode and target namespaces for each schema. After copying a schema it is easy to forget to change it. Also, change the .NET typename of the schema after copying it. The compiler will remind you of that if you forget it, though 

I really wanted to not use a flat file for the intermediate step and use XML instead, but I couldn't get it to work. I would have to have a schema for the output and another schema for the input, which was an envelope with an "Any"-element inside it, and these two schemas would need to have the same rootnode and target namespace. So I dropped it, and stayed with the flat file, allthough I hated it

My .NET project can be found here: BodyWithoutTagIdentifierFlatFile.zip (99,28 KB)

I hope this has been of some help. The conclusion basically is that it can't be done, splitting an incoming flat file up using header, body and trailer schemas, if the body doesn't have a tag identifier.

UPDATE on 5'th December 2006: Greg Forsythe has another solution to the problem, which he has written in the newsgroup. I quote:

-- BEGIN QUOTE

There is another way of doing this:
Create a document schema with an optional trailer record.
This will debatch each record, with the last document having a trailer
record. This can be removed/ignored in the first map

--  END QUOTE

I haven't tried it, but it makes sense, and why didn't I think of that?

--
eliasen

Hi

A guy on the microsoft.public.biztalk.orchestration newsgroup has asked about looping around elements inside an orchestration, and I thought I'd just write some lines about the issue here, for everybody to see in the future.

The problem is, that he has the following document structure:

<Employees>
<Employee title="mgr">
</Employee>
<Employee title="vp">
</Employee>
<Employee title="ceo">
</Employee>
</Employees>

And he wants to do something with each employee, based on what the title is. As I see it, there are two options:

1. Loop through the Employee-elements inside the orchestration
2. Use an envelope to split the incoming Employees-message into several Employee-messages

Suggestion 1

I have proposed the following two schemas:

 for the big message that arrives and  for the individual Employee. Note, that I have promoted "title" as a distinguished field.

I then create an orchestration, that takes an instance of the Employees schema as input, and loop around the employees. The orchestration looks like this:

It receives the incoming message, and then initializes a couple of variables. The first expression shape, named "Initialize Loop variables" contains the following three lines:

empCount = xpath(InputMessage, "count(/*[local-name()='Employees' and namespace-uri()='']/*[local-name()='Employee' and namespace-uri()=''])");
counter = 1;
counterStr = "1";

Basically, I get the number of employee-elements, and initialize the counter. The stringcounter is used to build xpath expression later, as you will see.

Then, I loop. The loop condition is "counter <= empCount" - so I want to loop as long as there are employees.

Inside the scope, I have declared a message employeeMessage, which is of the type of a single employee.

In the message assignment shape, I do this:

EmployeeMessage = xpath(InputMessage, "/*[local-name()='Employees' and namespace-uri()='']/*[local-name()='Employee' and namespace-uri()=''][" + counterStr + "]");

It takes the employee from the big incoming message that corresponds to the counter and assigns it to the message that is to be constructed.

In the next expression shape, I just write the content of the distinguished field "title" of the employee to the eventlog.

And in the final expression shape, I increment the counter variables:

counter = counter + 1;
counterStr = System.Convert.ToString(counter);

So by doing this, I am looping over the employees inside the employees-message, and I have access to all the values inside the single employee. I didn't have to have schema number 2, describing a single employee, I could have just used xpath all the way down, or maybe declare an XmlNode variable to hold the employee-element instead. But I like this solution better.

Another option I have now is that I can add a decision shape, and based on the title value, I can call different orchestrations, that will handle a specific employee-type. Or perhaps I could just send the employee message to a direct-bound send port and have other orchestrations subscribe to the employee message type. This would require the title to be a promoted property instead of a distinguished field, though, in order to route on it.

Suggestion 2

I propose using an XML Envelope to split the incoming file into several employee-messages and let the orchestration handle them individually.

To do this, I have created two schemas:

 for the envelope and  for the employee. Note: I have changed the names of the root nodes in both schemas. Naturally, in real life you wouldn't do this. The only reason I did this is to be able to have both my examples deployed at the same time. If I hadn't done it, I would have had multiple schemas deployed with the same combination of target namespace and root node, which we all know is BAD. On the schema for the envelope, I have clicked on the "<Schema>"-node and in the properties windows, I have set "Envelope" to "Yes". Then, I clicked on the "EmployeesEnvelope"-node and in the properties window, I set the "Body XPath" property to point at the "EmployeesEnvelope"-element.

Then, I created an orchestration, that takes an employee as the input - not the employees-type, but the single employee. It looks like this:

So here I have a much smaller, simpler, and faster orchestration than the one from suggestion 1.

After the solution is deployed, I create a receive location, and remember to use the default XMLReceive pipeline. The disassembler stage will look at the incoming message, determine the message type, see it is an envelope, split the message into smaller messages, and publish them individually with their own message type.

If I need different orchestrations depending on the value of the title attribute, I can promote it to a promoted property instead of a distinguished field, and add it to a filter on the receive shape in each orchestration.

Examples:

I have my two samples here: LoopAroundEmployee.zip (68,66 KB) and here: LoopAroundEmployeeEnvelope.zip (48,64 KB)

I hope this has been useful for someone. If you have any questions, just ask.

--

eliasen

Hi!

Recently a couple of different question askers at the microsoft.public.biztalk.something newsgroups have been asking questions about how to expose a BizTalk orchestration that takes an System.Xml.XmlDocument as input and also returnes a System.Xml.XmlDocument.

Basically, it is straight forward:

1. You define two messages in your orchestration as being of the type "System.Xml.XmlDocument"
2. You add a receive shape that accepts one of the messages
3. You add a construct shape that constructs the return message
4. You add a send shape that sends the output message
5. You add a public request-response port and connect the receive- and send shapes to this port.
6. You publish the orchestration using the Web Services Publishing Wizard.

A couple of issues:

1. If you are deploying the web service to the same web site as your Windows SharePoint Services is running on, you have to exclude the path to the new web service, so that WSS wont try to take over the calls to the web service. This is done like this:
• Administrative Tools
• SharePoint Central Administration
• Configure Virtual Server Settings
• Choose the web site you have extended with WSS and to which you now want to deploy a web service
• Define Managed Paths
• Under "Add new Path", add your path and click "excluded path" and "OK"
2. The virtual directory that is created by the wizard must run under an application pool that is running under a user that is a member of the "BizTalk Isolated Host Users". Otherwise you will get a SOAP exception when trying to call the web service.

And another thing that someone had dificulty with: When writing a small application to test the published web service, he got an error that said:
Compilation error:

            Error    1    The best overloaded method match for
'UNTTest.ws.UntypedWebService_Orchestration_That_Receives_and_Sends_XML_InputOutputPort.SendXMLAndGetAnswer(ref
System.Xml.XmlNode)' has some invalid arguments    C:\Documents and
Settings\simon.brooks\My Documents\UNTTest\Form1.cs    25    13    UNTTest

            Error    2    Argument '1': cannot convert from 'ref
System.Xml.XmlDocument' to 'ref System.Xml.XmlNode'    C:\Documents and
Settings\simon.brooks\My Documents\UNTTest\Form1.cs    25    41    UNTTest

Basically, the web service doesn't take an XmlDocument as a parameter, as one would have expected, but an XmlNode instead.

So after creating an XmlDocument to send to the web service, define an XmlNode object, and set it to point to the DocumentElement property of the XmlDcoument, and send that instead.
Like this:
            XmlDocument xmldoc = new XmlDocument();
            xmldoc.LoadXml("<rootnode><element1>value1</element1></rootnode>");
            XmlNode node = xmldoc.DocumentElement;
            WebserviceReference ws = new WebserviceReference();
            ws.Operation_1(ref node);

I hope this helps.

My sampel BizTalk project can be found here: UntypedWebService.zip (102.58 KB)

Should you have any comments, feel free to post them.

--
eliasen

Hi

Every now and then, I come across the need of adding a node to the output of a BizTalk map.

Now, if I just want to add some node which isn't dependent on the input, I can just use a custom scripting functoid which is an XSLT template that just craeted the node for me, like this:

Use the "Inline XSLT Call Template" instead, if you need parameters to your XSLT.

BUT, sometimes I need to add a node to a list of existing nodes. One example of this I came across was the need to have a log inside the XML structure that was updated every time BizTalk touched the document. So there would be a structure inside the XML like this:

<TheLog>
<LogEntry>This is the first log entry and it was added by Jan</LogEntry>
<LogEntry>This is the second entry and it was added by BizTalk</LogEntry>
</TheLog>

So BizTalk needed to add a line to TheLog when BizTalk mapped the document.

Another example is a guy on the microsoft.public.biztalk.general newsgroup that needs to add an OrderItem to an existing list of OrderItems.

To do this, I have only found one solution, which is a custom xslt script that does the whole thing.

My example input schema:

My example output schema:

In both schemas, the "Order"-element can occur multiple times.

The map looks like this:

Basically, just one scripting functoid. Note that no links go from the source document. The scripting functoid is a "Inline XSLT" type, and the source is this:

<xsl:for-each select="//Orders/Order">
<xsl:element name="Order">
<xsl:element name="Ordernumber"><xsl:value-of select="Ordernumber" /></xsl:element>
<xsl:element name="OrderAmount"><xsl:value-of select="Amount" /></xsl:element>
</xsl:element>
</xsl:for-each>

<xsl:element name="Order">
    <xsl:element name="Ordernumber">400</xsl:element>
    <xsl:element name="OrderAmount">40</xsl:element>
</xsl:element>

Basically, the for-each creates line in the output according to the input XML document. And the xsl:element after the for-each creates the new node.

You can find my BizTalk 2006 project here: AddingANode.zip (16,89 KB) - it should work with BizTalk 2004 as well.

I hope this has helped someone. Comments are welcome.

--

eliasen

Hi

A user in the microsoft.public.biztalk.general newsgroup has a challenge he'd like solved.

Basically, he has this structure:

<Root>
  <Employee>
     <EmployeeID>1</EmployeeID>
     <JobsAssigned>10</JobsAssigned>
  </Employee>
  <Employee>
     <EmployeeID>2</EmployeeID>
     <JobsAssigned>5</JobsAssigned>
  </Employee>
  <Employee>
     <EmployeeID>3</EmployeeID>
     <JobsAssigned>8</JobsAssigned>
  </Employee>
</Root>

And he needs to find the EmployeeID of the employee that has the least jobs assigned to him/her. In this case, he needs the value "2".

This is a case, where the "Cumulative Minimum" functoid can be used.

So, I have this input schema:

and I have this fictitious output schema:

To do the task, I use this map:

Basically, I just map the fields, and then I make sure the "MinValues"-record is only created when the JobsAssigned value is equal to the cumulative minimum of the JobsAssigned.

The "Cumulative Minimum" functoid will return the smallest number of all the numbers it is given as input.

So, given the above mentioned input instance, the output of this map will be:

<ns0:OutputRoot xmlns:ns0="http://CumulativeMinimum.OutputSchema">
<MinValues>
  <Employee>2</Employee>
  <JobsAssigned>5</JobsAssigned> 
</MinValues>
</ns0:OutputRoot>

which, luckily, was what we needed

Given an instance with more than one Employee hacing the same number of JobsAssigned and if this number is the minimum, the map will actually create a node for each.

As I don't know more of what the question-asker wants, I will let this be enough for now. Should it not be ok to return more than one EmployeeID in the output, the map will need to be changed.

I hope this has helped someone.

You can find a BizTalk 2006 project here: CumulativeMinimum.zip (4,51 KB)

The same will work for BizTalk 2004 - I just haven't been bothered creating the example. Let me know if you need it.

--

eliasen

Hi

It so really annoys me whenever I have to change my ways of doing things because some people insist that it is okay to bother others.

Spam is a great example - the mere fact that I can't write my email address in a public place without receiving spam the next day. Sigh.

Anyway, I, as many others, have disabled trackbacks on my blog, since it was filling up with porno and other stuff.

Should anyone have a good solution for dasBlog, le tme know

--

eliasen

Hi

In my RSS aggregator I have the sourceforge file releases for dasBlog as a feed.

So the other day I read that a new version of dasBlog had been released.

Well, today I have finally had the opportunity to upgrade to the new version.

Should you notice anything weird, please let me know.

--
eliasen

Hi

I received the diploma for passing the 74-135 exam in BizTalk server 2004 the other day.

And... well... see if you can spot the error:

I have phoned support. They will correct it and send me another diploma. Until then, I am very proud to be the only person in the world (unless anyone else has gotten the same diploma?) that is certified in BizTalk Server 2003 :D

--

eliasen

Hi

A colleague of mine, Morten la Cour Thomsen, who is "MCTS: BizTalk Server 2004" AND "MCTS: BizTalk Server 2006" discovered something strange the other day. In fact, it is so strange, that I thought I'd share it here on my blog.

Morten was on a project, where he had taken over another persons BizTalk solution. Unfortunately for Morten, the other guy had decided to put all artefacts into one single assembly. That's right - all schemas, all maps, pipelines, orchestrations.. the works! Just one big assembly.

This turned out to be quite a problem for the company that had this solution, since versioning any single artefact meant versioning the whole thing. That is also why they until now didn't version anything. Should something need to be changed in the big assembly, four steps were performed:

1. Stop all receive locations
2. Make the change in the artefact that needed changing
3. Wait until all long running transactions have stopped
4. Deploy the new assembly on top of the old one, leaving all versionnumbers the same

Mortens job was to create a better architecture, since it really wasn't ok with the customer to have to stop receiving new messages until all orchestrations had stopped.

One of the steps Morten came across was that he actually at some point needed to call an orchestration that was inside this big assembly. The orchestration that Morten needed to call was being called from other orchestrations inside the assembly, so it was ready to be called (no activate receive shape, etc.). The only problem for Morten was, that the orchestration, off course, was internal to the assembly. Morten could reference the assembly, but he couldn't call the orchestration from within an "Call Orchestration"-shape.

But that's when Morten tried something that I would never have thought of trying: He had the source code for the big assembly. And he had the keyfile that had been used to sign it. So he changed the orchestration to be public, recompiled the big assembly, referenced the newly compiled assembly, added the former internal orchestration to his "Call Orchestration"-shape and compiled his own assembly.

He now deployed his own assembly, but left the old big assembly in place.

Now he had the old big assembly, which still had the internal orchestration inside it. And he had another deployed assembly, which was compiled against the source code with a public orchestration. The big assembly was never redeployed!

But it worked! Mortens orchestration is now calling the internal orchestration of the other assembly, simply because it was compiled against a public orchestration and the signature of the deployed big assembly matches the signature of his newly compiled big assembly.

Very weird, indeed. And it probably isn't meant to do that...

I have a sample solution for BizTalk 2004 you can look at right here: InternalOrchestration.zip (132 KB)

And two sample projects for BizTalk 2006 right here: Calling Internal Orchestration.zip (146,46 KB)

In both cases, the code reflects the internal orchestration AFTER it has been set to public. What you want to do is to

1. Set the type to "internal" on the called internal orchestration.
2. Build and deploy the assembly with the internal orchestration.
3. Test it to see that it works.
4. Try to build the other assembly. It will fail because of the internal orchestration.
5. Set the type to "public" on the called orchestration.
6. Build and deploy the second assembly WITHOUT redeploying the first assembly.
7. Test it to make sure it works.

So, basically, now you have a way of calling an internal orchestration, as long as you have the source code for it and the key to sign it.

Hope this is useful for someone.

--

eliasen