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Northglenn, Colorado, United States
I'm primarily a BI Developer on the Microsoft stack. I do sometimes touch upon other Microsoft stacks ( web development, application development, and sql server development).

Monday, December 11, 2006

BizTalk Assessment Question: Allow business users to view BAM alerts and aggregations.

You are a Microsoft(R) BizTalk(R) Server 2006 technology specialist for your company. You want to allow business users to view Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) alerts and
aggregations.

What new feature of BizTalk Server 2006 should you use?
  • BAM Web service
  • Tracking Profile Editor
  • BizTalk Server Administration Console
  • BAM portal

The best answer here would be the BAM portal, where business users can set up queries and alerts on a single interface.

BizTalk Assessment Question: Send notification to business users.

You are a Microsoft(R) BizTalk(R) Server 2006 technology specialist for your company. You need to provide notification in real time to business users about changes to their
business processes.

What feature of BizTalk Server 2006 meets this need?

  • Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) activity
  • Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) alerts
  • Business rules
  • Orchestrations

In my opinion, BAM alerts would be the best answer here, since you can set it up to send notification when a certain parameter has been reached. BAM activity are just like queries which can be used in the alerts. Business rules and orchestration are more internal but still possible to send out notifications with the use of both of these, but not necessary if you have BAM setup.

BizTalk Assessment Question: What are the two BAM web services?

What two categories can you find in Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Web services in Microsoft(R) BizTalk(R) Server 2006? (Each correct answer presents part of the
solution. Choose two.)

  1. Human Workflow Services (HWS) service
  2. BAM portal BizTalk artifacts
  3. BAM query service
  4. BAM management service

Answer: BAM query service and BAM management service

1. BAM Query Service – The service is used
by the BAM Portal to retrieve BAM instance data. The service supports the
infrastructure and is not intended to be used directly from your code. The
service is not supported and is not documented. To retrieve instance, use the
supported techniques described at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/BTS06BizProcessMgmnt/html/ae4a8854-d5c2-4b36-a0ef-3f74e138306e.asp?frame=true.
2. BamManagementService – The following service provides, consumers the ability to manage subscriptions and alerts among other management operations

BizTalk Assessment Question: Best way for deploying

What type of file is used in Microsoft(R) BizTalk(R) Server 2006 to make application deployment and management easier by using the new application concept?

  • Batch files
  • .msi files
  • XML files
  • Microsoft Windows(R) Management Instrumentation (WMI) files
  • Flat files

MSI makes the most sense here. It allows for minipulation to allow for a set of smaller MSI files instead of one large MSI file, and you can manipulate the MSI file with pre and post processing scripts.

BizTalk Assessment Question: What is needed for complete installation?

Which products are required for a complete installation of all features of Microsoft(R) BizTalk(R) Server 2006? (Each correct answer presents part of the solution. Choose
three.)
  1. Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
  2. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7
  3. Microsoft Commerce Server 2006
  4. Microsoft Office Excel(R) 2003 with Service Pack 2
  5. SQLXML 3.0 with Service Pack 3
  6. Microsoft Office OneNote(R) 2003 with Service Pack 1

Answer found: SQLXML 3.0 with Service Pack 3, Microsoft Office Excel(R) 2003 with Service Pack 2, and Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0

BizTalk Assessment Question: BizTalk 2006 supports what SQL Servers

What versions of Microsoft(R) SQL Server(TM) are supported by Microsoft BizTalk(R) Server 2006? (Choose all that apply.)
  • Microsoft SQL Server 6.5
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2000
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with Service Pack 4
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005
  • Microsoft SQL Server 7.0

Answer found: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with Service Pack 4

BizTalk Assessment Question: Bypass pre-reqs

You are performing a silent installation of Microsoft(R) BizTalk(R) Server 2006.
You want to bypass checks for downloadable prerequisites.

What new command line parameter should you use?

  1. /IGNOREDEPENDENCIES
  2. /ADDLOCAL ALL
  3. /PASSIVE
  4. /COMPANYNAME
1) Bypasses the checks for downloadable prerequisites.
2) Installs all features.
3) Performs a passive installation. The setup program only displays the progress bar.
4) Sets the company name.

Monday, November 27, 2006

A useful BizTalk Sql Query

Found this sql statement on another blog that shows you what ports are still referencing a mapping. This is useful if you need to undeploy the maps and you are having trouble finding what port might be still referencing.

select
'RcvPort' PortType,
r.nvcName Port,
item.name MapName,
assem.nvcName Assembly,
nSequence, indoc_docspec_name, outdoc_docspec_name
from bts_receiveport_transform rt
inner join bts_receiveport r
on rt.nReceivePortID = r.nID
inner join bt_mapspec ms
on ms.id = rt.uidTransformGUID
inner join bts_assembly assem
on ms.assemblyid = assem.nID
inner join bts_item item
on ms.itemid = item.id
--order by Port, nSequence

union

select
'SendPort' PortType,
r.nvcName Port,
item.name MapName,
assem.nvcName Assembly,
nSequence, indoc_docspec_name, outdoc_docspec_name
from bts_sendport_transform rt
inner join bts_sendport r
on rt.nSendPortID = r.nID
inner join bt_mapspec ms
on ms.id = rt.uidTransformGUID
inner join bts_assembly assem
on ms.assemblyid = assem.nID
inner join bts_item item
on ms.itemid = item.id

order by PortType, Port, nSequence

Saturday, November 18, 2006

SQL Server Adapters for BizTalk

Ok, so in my recent project I have multiple calls to make to a sql server's database. I ran into a problem calling the same database, but to get around that you simply add a unique ID to the end of the URI. It then would look something like: SQL://localhost/database_name/uniqueID

I got that information from the MSDN website.

Some FYI and Tips:

1) Have SQL Server do most of the work, with stored procedures when it comes to a large amount of updating.
2) Use some kind of status update when grabing data from a table to prevent multiple pickups with BizTalk. Use something like a date field or some type of varchar naming.
3) Use "select top 1" to make the document only have one root element.
4) SQL Adapters are limited to 60 messages a minute, unless you poll while data is found.
5) Try to keep the message size to under 1MB.
6) Save Tran and Rollback Tran will cause an error in the SQL Adapter
7) The generated root element is made in the adapter, not the store procedure.

Some tips on BizTalk 2004 to remember.

So here is a list of things that solved some of my errors that I have been having in developing a
BizTalk 2004 application.

1) I was having some trouble in developing maps for 2 of them. I then decided to use an external XSLT instead. I started getting un inforormative errors like unexpected ":" and missing ";" in the btm mapping on line 8 and 9. These errors of course made no sense, since there were no line 8 or 9. I knew the problem had to be in the XSLT. The probelm ended up being that I had to get rid of the Version = 1.0 attribute and a var declaration that I had in the xml:stylesheet declaration. This is what the line should of been:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:userCSharp="urn:userCSharp"
exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl userCSharp">

<xsl:output method="xml"
omit-xml-declaration="yes" /> <xsl:template match="/">


2) When writing scripts that use that same functions over and over again, then make a external assemblies. I also made the assembly version hard coded, so that when I change the scripts I don't have to worry about resetting the maps.