BizTalk 2010 – RTM has arrived!

 

As you are probably aware by now, BizTalk 2010 has RTM’d.  You can catch the announcement here.  I am not going to recap all of the new features as you can read about them here.  However, here are a few points worth noting about the new release.

• The  BizTalk 2010 Developer’s edition is now free.  So if you are curious about BizTalk and getting a licensed copy has been a barrier for you in the past, now is your chance to test drive BizTalk at no cost.  Full details and download may be found here.
• For those AppFabric/WCF/WF developers, there is a new compelling feature called BizTalk AppFabric Connect which allows you to leverage BizTalk components such as the BizTalk LOB Adapter Pack and BizTalk Mapper within your .Net projects. This is a true enabler for connecting your WF applications to Line of Business Systems (LOB)
• If you have written applications in the past that have used the traditional line of business adapters, you will now be forced to use the BizTalk Adapter pack when communicating with SQL Server, SAP, Oracle and Siebel.  Microsoft had deprecated these adapters in BizTalk 2009 and they have been officially removed in 2010.  For the past year or so, I have been using the BizTalk Adapter pack when communicating with LOB systems and there are some subtle differences between the legacy and new LOB adapters. Overall, I am satisfied with the experience and there are no “show stoppers” that we have run into  when making the switch.  So if you are planning a BizTalk 2010 upgrade and currently use the legacy adapters, ensure migrating these applications to use the BizTalk adapter pack is in your project plan as you will need to regenerate schemas using these new adapters.

BizTalk 2009 + SharePoint 2010

 

Note:  The following steps do not represent a supportable configuration by Microsoft and extreme caution should be used when following these steps.  To my knowledge, these steps are complete, but it is possible that I missed something.  These steps have been tested in a Send Port Subscription scenario.   Use these instructions at your own risk.

At the organization that I work for, we are rolling out SharePoint 2010.  We currently run BizTalk 2009 and  at this point in time, the  BizTalk 2009 SharePoint Adapter Web Service isn’t supported with SharePoint 2010.  BizTalk 2010 has been updated to support SharePoint 2010.  We really have no choice but to head in this direction since upgrading to BizTalk 2010 just isn’t an option at this point in time.

When you launch the BizTalk 2009 installation on a SharePoint 2010 Server you will not be able to install the Windows SharePoint Services Adapter Web Service as it is not able to detect the pre-requisite Windows SharePoint Services v 3.0 files.

Mick Badran has a post that helped me out tremendously. However, I found that I had to take a few additional steps so I will recap exactly what we did in order for us to get this to function in our environment.

We had an existing MOSS 2007 server that had the BizTalk Adapter Web Service installed and functioning correctly.  Since you cannot use the BizTalk installation wizard to install this Web Service, we decided to reverse engineer what was deployed on MOSS 2007 and manually deploy on SharePoint 2010.

• Copy the c:\program files\Microsoft BizTalk 2009 folder from your MOSS 2007 Server to your SharePoint 2010 Server
• Create the BTSharePointAdapterWS Web Application in IIS Manager and set the physical path to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\Business Activity Services\BTSharePointV3AdapterWS 

Note: This path represents a 64 bit installation.

• We leveraged the existing App Pool that the SharePoint Site was using
• Modify the web.config to set the appropriate SharePoint Enabled Hosts, if required.  For us, we use AD Groups and had to change to reflect our “DEV” AD group
• Rebind the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll to point to version 14.

• We removed the Document Tag so that we could browse the WSDL properly.  See this post for more info.

 

• We then exported two keys from the Registry on our MOSS 2007 Server and import them on your SharePoint 2010 Server:
  • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server]
  • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\BizTalk Server]
• At this point we thought we were done and attempted to push a message from BizTalk 2009 to SharePoint 2010 but discovered the following message in event viewer:

 

Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    BizTalk Server 2009
Event Category:    (1)
Event ID:    5743
Date:        9/10/2010
Time:        1:37:51 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    SERVER

Description:
The adapter failed to transmit message going to send port "SendPort1" with URL "wss://SERVER:80/DropOffLibrary". It will be retransmitted after the retry interval specified for this Send Port. Details:"System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException: Server was unable to process request. ---> System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.OfficeImporters2, Version=3.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
File name: 'Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.OfficeImporters2, Version=3.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'
   at Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.WssAdapter.BTSharePointAdapterWS..ctor()

WRN: Assembly binding logging is turned OFF.
To enable assembly bind failure logging, set the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog] (DWORD) to 1.
Note: There is some performance penalty associated with assembly bind failure logging.
To turn this feature off, remove the registry value [HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Fusion!EnableLog].

   --- End of inner exception stack trace ---

This error was triggered by the Windows SharePoint Services receive location or send port with URI wss://SERVER:80/DropOffLibrary.

Windows SharePoint Services adapter event ID: 12462".

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

 

Once again it was back to the MOSS 2007 server and more specifically, a trip to the GAC where we discovered the following BizTalk Dlls.  This list included the Microsoft.BizTalk.KwTpm.OfficeImporters2.dll that was mentioned in the event viewer.  We then pulled these dlls off of the installation CD and gac’d them on the SharePoint 2010 server using gacutil.

After Gac’ing these assemblies we had success pushing messages from BizTalk 2009 to SharePoint 2010.

 

Note: There is another option which I have not tried that Kirk Hofer discusses here.  It involves installing WSS v3.0 SP2, but not configuring it, so that the BizTalk install Wizard thinks it is installed.  Our SharePoint team was not crazy about having these other dlls on their fresh SharePoint 2010 server so we were unable to proceed with this approach.

Managing your BizTalk Environment using SCOM

I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Swedish BizTalk user group in Stockholm. It was an excellent opportunity to present to one of the top BizTalk user groups worldwide. My presentation consisted of slide ware, a tour of the SCOM 2007 R2 console and several BizTalk/SCOM demos using BizTalk 2010 beta and the BizTalk 2010 Management Pack beta. You may find the presentation below.

BizTalk integration with SharePoint and the Cloud Presentation

I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Calgary .Net User Group. My presentation included slideware and demonstrations involving integrating BizTalk with SharePoint 2010 and the AppFabric Service bus. You can view the presentation below:

BizTalk 2010 Beta – Where are the AppFabric Service Bus bindings?

After installing the Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK V1.0 - April Update I was expecting all of the AppFabric Service Bus relay bindings to be available inside of the BizTalk Admin Console but they were not.  I could run the AppFabric Echo .Net Sample without any issues.  After re-installing both the AppFabric SDK and BizTalk 2010 Beta I was still unable to find these bindings in the Admin console.  I checked the machine.config files (both 32 bit and 64bit) and both files were updated.  The problem with this is that I checked the .Net 2.0 config files.

After stumbling across Wade Wegner’s blog, the picture became much clearer.  Wade explains “I soon realized that the issue was the machine.config file.  When you install the Azure AppFabric SDK the relevant WCF extensions are added to the .NET Framework 2.0 machine.config file, which is shared by .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5.  However, .NET Framework 4.0 has its own machine.config file, and the SDK will not update the WCF extensions.”

To resolve the issue you need to run a utility called: RelayConfigurationInstaller.exe which can be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK\V1.0\Assemblies (64 bit machine) or C:\Program Files\Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK\V1.0\Assemblies (32 bit machine) and provide an input file that includes

<?xml version ="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<startup>
<requiredRuntime safemode="true"
imageVersion="v4.0.30319"
version="v4.0.30319"/>
</startup>
</configuration>

The name of this file should be called RelayConfigurationInstaller.exe.config.

example:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Azure platform AppFabric SDK\V1.0\Assemblies>RelayConfigurationInstaller.exe /i

After this command was run successfully, I could now see the “Cloud Bindings” including the NetTcpRelayBinding

Presenting at Calgary .Net User Group - June 22, 2010

Topic: BizTalk integration with SharePoint and the Cloud
Speaker: Kent Weare
Date: 22-June-2010
Location: Nexen Conference Center
801-7th Ave. S.W., Calgary, AB. (Plus 15 level)
Map
Registration: 5:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Presentation: 5:30 pm

http://dotnetcalgary.com/


Abstract
Part 1 - Discover how you can leverage BizTalk to integrate with SharePoint and InfoPath

In this session, Kent will demonstrate some of the ways that you can integrate with SharePoint using the BizTalk WSS Adapter and Web Services. Kent will also discuss some real world scenarios where this technology has been used to provide value to the business.

Part 2 - Discover how you can leverage BizTalk to integrate with the AppFabric Service Bus

Learn about Microsoft's cloud based Service Bus and how you can leverage BizTalk to communicate with external applications and services. Kent will demonstrate BizTalk's ability to expose on premise services to the cloud and consume AppFabric Service Bus end points. Kent will also discuss some scenarios where it may be appropriate to leverage these integration patterns in the real world.

TechEd 2010 – Day 4

TechEd 2010 North America is done for another year.  I thought the conference went really well and people were full of enthusiasm.  A lot of Product Groups have shipped, or are shipping products this year.  There were over 11 300 in attendance for this event eager to hear about the latest bits in the pipeline .  I was at TechEd in LA last year and can tell you there wasn’t near that many people in attendance.

 

BizTalk and the Cloud

I saw a really interesting session where BizTalk was brokering a connection through the Service Bus into a SAP and a Mainframe system.  A Web app was hosted in Azure and BizTalk was listening for requests via the AppFabric Service Bus.  It was probably the riskiest demo I saw, but Chris and Elizabeth pulled it off without a hitch.  I have been thinking about these types of scenarios quite a bit since I have done a fair about of integration with SAP in the past.  SAP certainly cannot connect into the Azure Service Bus at this time nor do I expect them to be able to do that any time soon.  Mainframe systems are no different since they most likely will not have a transport mechanism capable of communicating with the Microsoft cloud.  Many businesses leverage SAP to run their core business, having BizTalk capable of connecting into the cloud provides an additional layer of abstraction and security when accessing SAP data.

 

More Cloud

There was certainly no shortage of Cloud talk at this conference.  The next session I saw was called Appfabric: Extend .Net technologies to the Cloud.  It was presented by Aaron Skonnard and Keith Brown.  You can tell these guys are very comfortable on the presenter’s stage.  It was probably best presentation that I have seen in a long time.

Some of the topics discussed include:

• You can think of Azure AppFabric as an extension of the .Net framework
• No Azure Workflow as a Service in this release
• Relay bindings allow your application access into the Service Bus
• Direct connections allow you to communicate peer to peer with other clients in order to improve performance and reduce charges
• Eventing pub/sub can be used in multi-cast situations
• To increase interoperability use Http Relay Bindings

View from the BizTalk Booth

• A had a few conversations with attendees who were using other middleware products such as Oracle or IBM and wanted to know how BizTalk stacked up in terms of feature set.  None of the features that they were requesting were absent from the BizTalk stack.  They also wanted to see how easy the Microsoft tools are to use and the impression that I got is that they felt they were on par with what they were use to seeing.
• Another attendee wanted to know whether they should be using  WF or BizTalk.  Quite frankly this scenario can still get a little blurry for me.  We talked about things like low latency, durable messaging, flat file requirements, Adapters and management of the solutions.

 

Next Year

Next year TechEd will be held in Atlanta from May 16th-19th.  There is currently an early bird special where you can save $500 for registering early.  http://northamerica.msteched.com/?fbid=qjus7wvTc2O