BizTalk Server DevelopmentBest Practices

Brian Loesgen Principal SOA ArchitectMicrosoft Corporation

Alan SmithDeveloper, Trainer, Mentor, EvangelistKnowIT

Theme for this presentation….

Chronology of this presentation This is an interactive presentation, not a

multicast Audience participation is encouraged – AND

EXPECTED! You may have had experiences we have not,

we want to hear about them, and they could help others. Please share!

22

Agenda

Infrastructure considerations: Development environments Project structure Naming conventions Deployment Debugging Testing

Architectural Considerations Loose coupling Exception Management BAM Schema visibility Service-enablement

Administration Best Practices

Infrastructure Considerations

Development Environments

BizTalk is a *server* product, there is no “play” button in VS.NET for it

DO NOT use XP as a development environment Shared environments can be problematic

(other people stopping your services, consuming your messages, polluting your event log, etc)

Virtual machines are the way the experts do it Fully self-contained virtual machines are best

Capture messages from external systems like SAP so you can “spoof” them when disconnected

Project Structure: General

Assuming a local database, change the server name to “.”

Use relative paths Share a key between projects in an application Define and adopt a common folder structure,

something along the lines of: C:\projects\<client>\<application>\

Projects Documentation Deployment\Scripts Deployment\Bindings Etc…

Project Structure: Stratification

For simple “one off” projects, it’s OK to put all artifacts into a single project

For more complex projects, stratify projects by artifact type: Schemas Maps Process Pipelines Helpers

Naming Conventions

Naming conventions don’t really matter in your isolated environment, but become absolutely critical when deployed to a share environment

Naming convention should be adhered to Newbies sometimes have issues renaming

artifacts as BizTalk uses the initial name for things like namespaces, be careful renaming and be aware of the points of impact

Deployment

Deployment of a BizTalk solution does not have to be difficult

MSIs are *the* unit of deployment, use them! Creation of MSIs should be scripted using BTSTask,

yielding a highly-repeatable way to add resources to a BizTalk application and generate MSIs (sometimes it’s OK to use the UI)

Be kind to your infrastructure folks, use different binding files for different environments. You should NOT include production passwords of course, but accounts, URIs and machine names are usually OK; providing them could eliminate the risk of confusion/mis-configuration

Deployment NEVER deploy to production from Visual Studio (and

keep it off your production servers)! Remember that other resources can be packaged in

the BizTalk solution MSI, including: Business rules Virtual roots (eg: Web service receive locations) Helper classes that need to be GACed Support DLLs that may be required by an adapter (eg: SAP)

that can either go into the GAC or in the file system Post-processing scripts

Once I have my script to generate an MSI, it takes a couple of minutes to create a complete deployment package for a complex solution, and… it only takes a couple of minutes to install it in a target production environment

Debugging

Get the SysInternals Debug View tool, write breadcrumbs for yourself from an expression shape with System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine

The Best Practices Analyzer can be a great platform reviewer for you Spend time getting to know the BizTalk admin tool

Notice the orchestration debugger Notice the subscription viewer, look at some subscriptions, see what’s

under the covers

Testing

Nunit is a great tool that can be used for BizTalk solutions too

BizUnit build on Nunit by adding additional test steps

From a purist standpoint, this is however not really unit testing, it’s functional testing

Profile your orchestrations to ensure code coverage from the test

Architectural Considerations

Loose-coupling

BizTalk is a pub/sub engine, use it!! Use direct-bound ports where possible

Decouples processes More extensible, new subscribers can be added post-deployment Promotes a services-oriented mindset

Filter options: Context properties (best choice as not bound by message type) Message content that has been promoted as promoted properties

Exception Management

BizTalk solutions often span multiple technologies, you need a unified exception handling mechanism

The ESB Guidance provides such a mechanism

An effective exception management strategy will simplify troubleshooting, and allow delegation of troubleshooting to non-administrators

BAM

In most cases, operational metrics are very important and useful as they can provide insights into solution performance

You have not properly implemented a solution if there is no visibility into the solution

BAM can be used for operational metrics (“show me order service failures over time”), as well as business metrics (“how many orders did we get?”)

You have BAM, use it!

Schema Visibility

Define canonical schemas that are your internal representation of data

Generally, canonical schemas should not be exposed to the outside world as this would complicate change. Instead, map to your canonical schema

Service-enablement

By default, Windows 2003 Server is shipped as a file server

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BTSSvc$BTSHOST\CLR Hosting] “MaxIOThreads”=dword:00000064 “MaxWorkerThreads”=dword:00000064 “MinIOThreads”=dword:00000019 “MinWorkerThreads”=dword:00000019

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/05/BizTalk/default.aspx#S5 for proper usage!

Seek out knowledge

Remember “teh Interweb”! ;) You are not alone, there are many, many BizTalk resources out there that can help you

Did you know an SDK installed when you installed BizTalk? It’s true, take a look, lots of valuable samples

Online samples: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/aa937647.aspx

Summary

BizTalk is a development environment and platform, and as such, encompasses a broad range of technologies

BizTalk development does not need to be difficult BizTalk deployment does not need to be difficult Adherence to standards, and accepted best practices, will

greatly simplify development, troubleshooting and deployment of BizTalk solutions

Resources: Microsoft Home Pages

BizTalk Product Website:

http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/

BizTalk Server Developer Center:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/biztalk/

BizTalk Server TechCenter on TechNet:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/biztalk/

Microsoft SOA:

http://www.microsoft.com/soa

Resources: Learning Links

BizTalk Server 2006 Tutorials:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/enus/library/aa560270.aspx

BizTalk Server Virtual Labs:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/virtuallabs/biztalk/

BizTalk Beginner Training Roadmap (BizTalk Server Team Blog):

http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2006/03/21/556994.aspx

Learning BizTalk Server 2006 - BizTalk Server Developer Center:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/aa937649.aspx

BizTalk Webcasts:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/aa937645.aspx

Resources: Tools

BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=dda047e3-408e-48ba-83f9-f397226cd6d4&displaylang=en

BizTalk Documenter:

http://www.codeplex.com/BizTalkDocumenter

BizUnit:

http://www.codeplex.com/bizunit

BizTalk Pattern Wizard:

http://www.codeplex.com/PatternWizard

BizTalk Orchestration Profiler:

http://www.codeplex.com/BiztalkOrcProfiler

Resources: Blogs

BizTalk, WCF, WF, SOA, ESB aggregator:

http://www.BizTalkBlogs.com

Bloggers Guide to BizTalk (archived posts, “best of”):

http://bloggersguides.net/

Alan Smith’s blog:

http://geekswithblogs.net/asmith/Default.aspx

Brian Loesgen’s blog:

http://blog.BrianLoesgen.com

Resources: Books