This one came from Paolo Salvatori (a senior PM within the MS Connected Systems Division Team... I know a bit of a mouthful) whom has gotten in touch with his creative side and drawn a picture for all us common folk :) - well done Paolo.

The scenario is - a Request/Response Port is published at the 'front end', goes through BizTalk and the work is done by a backend system that operates via a One-Way Send and BTS gets the response via another One-Way Receive.

The thing I like about Paolo's piece of work is that he shows all the Message Context Properties required to be set by BizTalk for message correlation.
Which makes this a Messaging Only Solution and NO Orchestrations required!!!! (how cool)

Click on the image to enlarge......one day I'll get Silverlight Zoom Composer control running for these.... :)

While building up some BizTalk R2 developer images I can across the answer to my question "Is R2 supported on 2008 Hyper-V?"

Look no further than here.....

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5c5d86ad-5e17-4ff2-abc9-5a81177f4b30&DisplayLang=en

After the more than normal pain in getting this done for my previous post, I decided to post the fruits of my labour (not labor that my wife tells me about watermellons and men wouldn't know the first thing about birth....I'm not about to do the pepsi challenge on that :))

- this is a stock standard Web.Config for a MOSS install NOT a plain WSS install (there's about 3 lines different from a plain WSS install to a MOSS install - mainly anything that references SharePoint.Publishing....)

Grab this and these are the changes that WORK!

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Mick.

"Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Silverlight, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies."

You're starting to Roll your sleeves up and get dirty with Silverlight 2 Beta 2, load up some of the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint Samples, run the installer (it's great that most of these examples have an installer) and Boom! you get the above error!!!

Here's a list I've compiled to get Silverlight working - I'm currently running this on Win2008 IIS7

(1) Install WSS SP1/MOSS SP1 on your SharePoint box if you haven't already. You need the SP1 to support .NET 3.5 calls through SharePoint - my guess is that these tell SharePoint not to intercept the calls and let them go to their rightful owners.

(2) Create a 'dummy' site collection on a test Web Application - e.g. http://localhost:81 - This is so you can see all the changes to the web.config that are made through the installation process, in isolation. By keeping this separate to your usual web.config, you'll be able to merge changes at a later date.

(3) Install the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 runtime and other developer bits - From http://Silverlight.net - VS2008 Developer Bits and just the runtime if you want from here

(4) Do one installation of a Silverlight for BluePrint Sample - the installer creates a 'virtual directory' under your Web Site called ClientBin where the various Silverlight 2 files go (*.js, *.XAP). This is a handy install so you can see what the directory execution settings are required to make this work through SharePoint. i.e. Execute permissions only. Take note of this directory.

(5) Add a IIS MIME type - With Silverlight 2 beta 2 - there is a new file type added which is a *.XAP file type. IIS by default doesn't know how to encode/translate or send these files down over the wire.
Add a mime type of: Extention: xap Mime Type: application/x-silverlight-app to your IIS Test Web Site

(6) Make Web.Config changes - there's a whole series of Web.Config changes to be made to your SharePoint Web Application to support AJAX/.NET 3.5 and now Silverlight.... fortunately other hard working folks have done this for you!!!! :) Bless their cotton socks! - grab the Feature that makes the modifications from here (** NB: you want the 3.5 config feature)

You're almost done........ :)

(7) EXCEPT for the error above!!! After much inspection of your system, you'll realise that you *don't* have that DLL (on a clean install). The Silverlight Ninja will know that this is from Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and not found in the Beta 2 kits!! Yay team!

The System.Web.Silverlight.dll is found in the Silverlight 2 beta 1 SDK - so download that puppy, extract out the DLL and either GAC it, or add it to your BIN directory on your SharePoint site. (I added it to my BIN directory - as I reckon when SL2 is released, this problem would have been resolved)
(**UPDATED: Due to how painful that was, I decided to package up the DLL for you - HERE**)

Here are the Compiled Files - FOR SL2 BETA 2 - they WORK!!

(I grabbed the Blueprint Hello World Web Part and updated to work)

1. Silverlight Web Part DLL

2. Silverlight *.XAP updated for Beta 2, copy straight to the *sub-directory* under your client BIN

3. Sample SharePoint Web.Config with all the changes!

A couple of Key registry settings for the HL7 adapter that I thought I'd jot down onto my online diary.

Some tweaks to apply under heavy load to the HL7 adapter

1. Create the registry key MLLPSendFlushTimeout
1. Create new registry key under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\BizTalk Accelerator for HL7/Version 2.0 with following details:
2. Name : MLLPSendFlushTimeout
3. Value : 0
2. Set MaxReceiveInterval to 50 ms
1. Open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio.
2. Expand Databases node and select BizTalkMgmtDb database.
3. Expand Tables node and open table adm_ServiceClass.
4. Set the value of MaxReceiveInterval to 50ms corresponding to the Name=Messaging InProcess.
   Initially it is 500ms.

One of the handiest tools I've used in the last year - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

If you're presenting, even just showing your code, screen to colleagues then this is superb

Guys - this document has recently hit the shelves and what a great guide it is. Written and reviewed by a huge team within MMS mostly - the two main authors Ewan Fairweather and Rob Steel (both MS and very much project/client oriented guys - out in the field!) did a superb job.

Firstly - grab the Performance Optimisation Guide
(checkout Ewan and Rob's blogs as there's some great bits on there, as well as a section dedicated to the BizTalk Performance Explorer)

What's the meaty stuff I can expect to read? (I hear you ask...)

1. It serves as 2 things - a prescriptive guidance and two - best practices around optimisation
(It's also great to see BizUnit in there for testing and as part of LoadGen)

I've summarised below:

The key sections of the guide are:

· Getting Started: Provides an overview of the BizTalk Server functional components that can affect performance. It also describes the phases of a BizTalk Server performance assessment.

· Finding and Eliminating Bottlenecks: The Finding and Eliminating Bottlenecks section describes various types of performance bottlenecks as they relate to BizTalk Server solutions and information about how to resolve the bottlenecks.

· Automating Testing: Describes how to implement an automated build process and how to automate functional and load testing using Visual Studio Team System, BizUnit and Loadgen.

· Optimizing Performance: The Optimizing Performance section provides guidance for optimizing performance of specific components in a BizTalk Server environment

Other 'related stuff' to download while you're in the mood

1. Microsoft BizTalk Server Operations Guide
2. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Installation and Upgrade Guides
3. BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials
4. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Runtime Architecture Poster
5. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Capabilities Poster

I was recently working on a AS2/EDI project using BizTalk 2006 R2 and came across an interesting question:

How do I create 500+ parties? and with the AS2 Properties included (or even HL7 for that matter)

After a little digging - there is the BizTalk.ExplorerOM that we could drill into and create the parties through code.

However, there's a more hands off approach....using Bindings!!!!

(1) Export Bindings from an existing setup including Parties!!! to an xml file.

(2) Modify the XML file - particularly the Party information.

(3) Import Bindings back into your new environment.

There's a great blog post by the BizTalk Team on this subject a while back - http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalkb2b/archive/2006/10/25/automated-deployment-of-edi-properties-also-useful-for-bulk-import-of-party-properties.aspx

You'll get this error when using WCF/IIS and host headers.....fortunately a fellow colleague Paul Glavich figured it out!!! Well done Paul! (It involves an IIS reshuffle, you may be able to do something within a custom WCF Binding.)

Remember: There is a limit on the number of IIS Websites you can have on a single machine.

There's a great line up this month that are too good to keep secret.

Some fellow CSD experts are lining up for some great topics to give all around Workflow and WCF!!!

Does it get better? Get on and register.

For more, check out the Live Calendar 

Live Webcasts

MSDN Webcast: Transactional Windows Communication Foundation Services with Juval Lowy (Level 200)

Monday, July 7, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:15 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Using Windows Workflow Foundation to Build Services with Jon Flanders (Level 300)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: WCF Extensibility Deep Dive with Jesus Rodriguez (Level 400)

Friday, July 11, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Bringing Enterprise Data to Life with SharePoint Server and Windows Communication Foundation (Level 300)

Friday, July 18, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time