Very handy to have about keeping IIS6 streamlined, and outgoing socket connections adjustable.
So when BTS is busy crunching away and creating sockets to various endpoints.

On a current project, we use a 'helper' class to talk to an ERP system (pronto) and the helper class creates (& destroys upon cleanup) a socket with each instaniation.

Problem is that Windows will not immediately return the discarded socket back to the socket pool for up to 2 mins (due to slow networks etc. and the TCP setup needs to be fully 'flushed' as I understand)

The issue is - in busy times within the registry there is a value that says - the user (aka BTS) can only create 5000 socket connections at any one time. 1024 are already taken in the well known port space (esp. on a server) so we found we were hovering around the 3900 active connections at once...till things went bad.

These settings below - one for IIS accepting/servicing a higher number of socket connections and the other is for outgoing user connections.

It's always interesting moving these bottlenecks along....to see what the next component that presents itself as the bottleneck.

Enjoy.

MaxConnections (HTTP.SYS)

Controls the number of simultaneous HTTP connections (and hence limits number of simultaneous connections serviceable by IIS6).

• On Windows Server 2003 RTM x86, this comes out to around 8,700
• On Windows Server 2003 SP1, the limit has been removed
• On Windows Server 2003 SP1 x64, since NPP is bound by available memory, you can increase concurrent connections by merely adding more RAM.
  
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP\Parameters
  Type: DWORD
  Value: Range from 0 to 2^32-1

MaxUserPort (TCPIP.SYS)

Controls the max port number that TCP can assign. Every unique client making a request to your web server will use up at least one of these ports on the server. Web applications on the server making outbound SQL or SMB connections also use up these ports on the server... so it highly affects the number of concurrent connections.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
Type: DWORD
Value: Range from 5000 to 65536

If you've got CRM 3.0 here the Microsoft's BizTalk 2006 Adapter for you.
There have been whispers about this for a while.....wait no longer

Grab it here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4628FCA6-388D-45BC-A154-453B920DBCB8&mg_id=10044&displaylang=en

Just got an email from Andrew (great all round good guy) about a cool Adapter example he came across.....very nice.

Enabling Faxing of messages from BTS using the Win2K3 FaxServices API and the Office2003 Document Imaging Library.

Enough said - BizTalk Fax Adapter Project

Nice work!

------------- snippet from the Project Page --------------
What the BTS Fax Adapter Does

When the FaxMessage Arrives to the Incomming Archive. The Fax Adapter Copies the Tiff Image (FaxMessage) to the temporary folder and runs OCR on the Tiff Image and Extracts the Text and submits to BizTalk as a message, or takes messages from BizTalk Server and Sends to the FaxConsole. It provides code to build either a dynamic or a static adapter; however, the following procedure only outlines the static adapter. A static adapter is an adapter with a static set of schemas and no custom user interface. A dynamic adapter has a custom user interface and potentially a dynamic set of schemas. Both static and dynamic adapters use the Add Adapter Wizard to add their schemas to a BizTalk project

Great document I came across
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=fdae55db-184b-4d93-ad79-a113b5268ee2&DisplayLang=en

Talks about perf of each adapter - MSMQ, File, SQL etc etc. HTTP + SOAP have marked improvements in bts2006.

Keep this one handy :)

I'm impressed again with another piece of software!!!

While touching base with a fellow brilliant BizTalk buddy of mine Enrique, he led me to this.

Here's an app - 1 application to run that requires no installation on the target machine(s) that allows you to -share desktops, extend desktops across an IP network!!!

Check out MaxiVista - seeing that NetMeeting in Vista is being phased out and replaced with Windows Meeting Space...more 'locked' down and not as free and easy as netmeeting

More and more often your beloved BizTalk 2004 box gets more and more 'things' (in Vista they call them 'gadgets') to run apart from the Biztalk Service.

Generally you'll find before long that these things will require V2.0 NET Framework (which is pretty cool)

You'll then find BizTalk 2004 grumbling about all the new routines in the .NET Framework V2.0 that it has no idea about (rightly so)....so...........the way I see it

(1) Upgrade to BTS 2006 - sensational! performance, .NET Framework 2.0, Adapter City......but this isnt always possible........

or

(2) Add the following to your BTSNTSvc.exe.config file inbetween the <Configuration>... tags

<!-- To ensure .NET Framework 2.0 isn't used on machines where it exists. -->
 <startup>
  <supportedRuntime version="v1.1.4322"/>
 </startup>

 

Sorts all your Framework mismatch errors.....
I'd even add it now as a precaution

Enjoy!

If you're like me - working away...you'll soon want to split up your solution into multiple hosts.

Whether it be BTS2004 or 2006, there's still a bit of 'click, start/stop (or restart)' for each host instance.

I'm on a project where we are looking to use 9 or so host instances....I decided to write a script to do it. More like a batch file.
(go easy on my batch file skills....it's been a LONG while since I've had to cut some serious batch stuff)

Enjoy - saves heaps of time.

(copy and paste the following code into a file called 'Restart_BTSHosts.bat' for eg.)

@ECHO OFF
@REM =======================
@REM Mick Badran 2006
@REM
@REM Checks the BizTalk Hosts and restarts them
@REM
@REM possible improvements - to be able to select
@REM BTS Hosts with wildcards.
@REM =======================
@ECHO Restarting ALL BizTalk Hosts 2004/2006 from the command line.
@ECHO.
@ECHO.
@SET TEMPFILE1="%TEMP%\bts1.txt"

@REM this line looks through the installed services and pulls out matching ones to BTSSvc (could be any though)
@SC QUERY | FindSTR "BTSSvc" > %TEMPFILE1%

@ECHO. Stopping BizTalk Host Instances...
@FOR /F "tokens=2" %%s in ('TYPE %TEMPFILE1%') DO SC STOP %%s
@ECHO.
@ECHO. Starting BizTalk Host Instances...
@FOR /F "tokens=2" %%s in ('TYPE %TEMPFILE1%') DO SC START %%s
@ECHO.
@DEL %TEMPFILE1%
@ECHO Done..... :)

The good old infamous registry key will save those grey hairs.
Basically if BTS runs into any grief during an upgrade process and bombs out...this key tells BTS setup to 'feel free and rerun the upgrade again'

In the case of pre or post upgrade configuration failures, add a DWORD registry entry RerunUpgrade=1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Server\3.0_Migrated.

The setup can be executed multiple times even after the BizTalk 2006 installation. This enables us to complete the upgrade successfully in case it fails because of some unprecedented scenario.

More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_upgrade/archive/2006/02/22/537344.aspx

Grab it while it's hot folks!.......check out the goodies below

 Connected Systems Division | User Assistance 

Hi,

This mail lists the documentation updates the BizTalk Server UA team has published in the past three months. The updates are based on customer input that is gathered through our documentation feedback mechanism, blogs, newsgroups, site visits, and TAP participants. 

Thanks to everyone who is providing feedback and improving the customer experience!

Core Documentation | Download

The BizTalk Server 2006 Help is updated every two weeks and posted in downloadable chm. format. Since RTM, we've addressed more than 350 documentation bugs, the majority of which were requests for new content. Check out the following new and updated topics!

· Improvements to the Orchestrations help, including the following new topics:

• How to Use MessageBox Direct Bound Ports
• How to Use Partner Orchestration Direct Bound Ports
• How to Use Self-Correlating Direct Bound Ports
• Working with Direct Bound Ports in Orchestrations
• How to Debug Design Time Errors and Build Errors
• Writing Information to the Event Log
• Interactive Debugging of an Orchestration in HAT
• Tracking Orchestrations with HAT
• Working with the Orchestration Debugger
• How to Use Expressions to Transform Messages
• How to Create Role Links in Orchestrations

· Improvements to the Business Rule Engine help, including the following new or updated topics:

• Invoking Static Members of a Class
• Support for Generic Types and Generic Methods
• Accessing Nested Members of a Class
• Support for Type Casting
• Support for Class Inheritance in the Business Rule Engine
• Support for Nullable Types
• How to deploy policies (programmatically)
• Performance Considerations When Using the Rule Engine

· Improvements to the SAP adapter help, which was integrated into the BTS06 collection:

• Added the "Architecture and Planning" section.
• Reinforced .NET Connector version requirements in the installation topic.
• Added "Enabling and Disabling SAP RFC and CPIC Trace" with additional details about CPIC trace (CPIC trace supports 4 different trace levels including none). Includes script per doc.
• Added " How the Adapter Communicates Using RFCs and IDoc: SAP Connector for Microsoft .NET" section.
• In the "How to Troubleshoot the Adapter" topic, added section for transaction lock error.
• Modified the troubleshooting topic to mention SAP Monitoring area and SAP RFC testing.
• Added troubleshooting information for "BizTalk service is not receiving IDOC's from the SAP system."

· More troubleshooting information!

• How to troubleshoot BTS administration, permissions, performance, adapters, dependencies, and configuration.
• How to capture a memory dump of a BTS processes.
• Which tools and utilities you should use for troubleshooting.

Updated Installation, Configuration, and Upgrade Guides |  Download

The installation instructions explain how to install BizTalk Server 2006 on Windows XP, Windows 2000 Server, or Windows Server 2003 in a single server or multiserver environment.

Whitepapers

The following is a list of whitepapers that have been published since RTM.

• Developer’s Troubleshooting Guide
• Managing a Successful Performance Lab
• BizTalk Server 2006 Comparative Adapter Study
• SAP Adapter Labs
• Understanding the BizTalk Server WS-Addressing Helper
• Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) FAQ
• Getting Started Developing with BAM: EventStreams
• Improving Fault Tolerance in BizTalk Server 2006 by Using a Windows Server Cluster
• Sequential FIFO Message Processing and Delivery in BizTalk Server 2004
• Using the BizTalk Server WS-Addressing Helper
• Understanding Application Deployment and Upgrade using BizTalk Server 2006
• BizTalk Server Orchestrations FAQ
• Learn More about the BizTalk Message Queuing Adapter (MSMQT)
• Developing a Transactional BizTalk Adapter Using the Microsoft Base Adapter Classes
• Using Microsoft BizTalk Adapter v2.0 for mySAP Business Suite to Integrate BizTalk Server 2006 with SAP ERP

Upcoming Themes for the Developer Center and TechCenter

Month

Dev Center

Tech Center

Nov

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

Dec

Workflow Foundation

Business Activity Monitoring

Jan

Security

Security

Feb

Pipelines

Operations

March

Application Dev

Install/Config/Upgrade

Other Content

In addition to the fixes introduced, we have also been busy over the past few months producing, updating, and publishing other valuable content. This includes:

· BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials

· BizTalk Server 2006 PDF Help Files

· Documentation for the rules and messages of the BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer

Vishal has written a great tool (very easy to use) that will incrementally add your current Tracking Archives to a 'master' tracking database that has all the goodies in it for analysis.
BTS Stitching tool

So in essence you keep your production Tracking database down in size!!!! no 30GB databases please!! (on several occasions it's been days to reduce these DBs)
Schedule regular archiving and pruning---> use this tool --> you then have a regular complete Tracking DB for super analysis.

----- Snippet from the Readme file -----
Once the aggregate database has been setup there are multiple ways you can add another backup to it.

1. You explicitly specify the backup file to the sql stored procedure.
2. You can specify a folder containing a list of backups to the sql stored procedure. The stored procedure automatically appends the backups taking care of the order in which they need to be uploaded. All backups that have already been uploaded or are older than the last one added, will be automatically skipped.
3. <fully automated> After a setup a SQL server agent job is added. You can enable the job and specify the folder location. The job automatically runs and appends and new backups.

Enjoy,
Mick.

Folks an easier way to express thoughts and snippets.....
Always love tools that make it easier.

Windows Live Writer

Loving it!

I'm getting around to it!

A while back I did a MSDN Webcast on this topic, and I also presented upon this at the Australian Teched 2006.

During my sessions I used a whole bunch of demo code etc.

It is my mission to make this available to you (took me around 15 months to design + implement this for a client). I want to make available a demo version for you folks to enable to you get in a get your hands dirty.

The two worlds live together quite nicely! BTS 2006 and WinWF.
You dont have to decide whether I'll write lines of code with WinWF or for those 'enterprise' solutions...time to use BizTalk. Not a chance.

I'll show you how to drive Workflow Solutions from within a BizTalk framework enabling things like BAM, HAT etc etc for the whole story.

Stay tuned and watch this space!.....within the week! I promise!

You know the tags....Minority Report...intelligent fridges and washing machines knowing how to wash your clothes for you (guys...this could be our moment of fame! rather than everything coming out 'pink' and then you get banned from the washing machine for life!)

David McGhee ran an RFID session at the Sydney BizTalk User Group and a big thanks!! (Slide deck linked below)

And a big thanks to Matt Eschbach from Intermec.com in coming to the Party with some hardware goodies, gadgets (mobile readers and fixed readers to come) AS WELL AS A SAMPLE RFID Application that runs within the framework. How good is that!!!!

I'll be developing some apps going forward so that initially the User Group members each get their own tag and can use that as an attendance indicator for each meeting. These results will eventually be sent back to the User Group Site. Who know we may even get some sort of live voting going during sessions......(if you enjoyed the session go down this line to a beer.....if you didnt....go down this beer line :)

Here's some technical specifications from Matt about the devices - once again thanks Matt.

7X1a_spec_web.pdf (356.49 KB)

IP4_spec_web.pdf (114.22 KB)

David's Slide Deck (PDF format) :
rfid_overview_sydney.zip (2.9 MB)

Hey folks - I couldnt pass this one up to let you all know about the great things that are in store for Sharepoint 2007.

Angus Logan has once again done a great job of highlighting them.....I reckon he's got one of the best jobs!!! :)

click HERE to check it out.

I'm sharing a trade secret in enabling you to get efficent and optimised WebCast type presentations from your machine.

You need:
(1) Windows Media Encoder
(2) Custom Optimised WebCast Settings - Blogcast.zip (2.02 KB) (these arent mine, they just get handed down through the generations)

When I first used media encoder to record a presentation, I found that there was a fair few settings that were thrown in my face, from source/destination Video/Audio feeds, to interlacing and dithering with dropped frame rates and whether you wanted YYUV or something else (then my mind drifted back to biology with some XX, YY + blue or brown eyes..)

I fumbled through the options and said 'Record' as I was doing my presentation on stage.......started well......then within about 10 secs my machine was dying a slow death and not responding what so ever.....I later found out, that default-ish settings when recording locally to a file are recording at DVD quality etc etc.
(you do that ONCE)

So I came across these settings (2) and they work a treat.

As per usual, when recording for viewing over the web,

(1) stick your resolution to max of 1024x768
(2) on some machines, you may need to adjust the video driver 'Hardware acceleration' setting to be either on none, or 1 bar. Otherwise you mighten be able to see your mouse during the recording (the MSDN folk gave me that tip during a webcast I did)

You're on your way - AVI, WMV etc etc recordings.

Seems like it's the night for a braindump over the last couple of weeks.....

Hotfix 923632 will do the job.

Also be sure to follow these steps after applying hotfix 923632:

 
1.  Open regedit and go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BTSSvc$<HostName>

 
Make sure host name is the name of the BizTalk host which is publishing messages which are routed to multiple req/resp subscribers.

 
2.  At that key, add the DWORD value AllowMultipleResponses and set it to a value of 1.

3.  Restart the host service after making this change.

Installation and config guides, including multi-server are here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B273269C-97E0-411D-8849-5A8070698E4A&displaylang=en

Planning for High Availability here -
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/BTS06CoreDocs/html/16feada0-b0b1-4e58-9477-fbd1aae2f51e.asp?frame=true

 I keep needing these so I thought I'd store them some place handy :)

Onsite the other day I noticed the Admin Console running poorly.

Fiddling around with SQL Native Client settings, if we put TCP first on both SQL Server + BizTalk machine - all's fine (as opposed to Named Pipes)

Not sure what's going on there...but one to watch out on.

Mick.