After the success of last year, Tuga IT 2017 is one week away from returning to Lisbon! From May 18th until the 20th, a variety of world class speakers (local and international) that will present a huge variety of “fresh” and “hot” topics about Microsoft Data Platform, SharePoint, Office 365, Enterprise Integration, Agile Methodologies, Open Source Technologies, Azure and much more. And this is only possible thank to the collaboration of all of the 9 communities taking part in Tuga IT 2017 event organizers or track owners.

Once again, I was invited to lead the Integration track and yes, we will once again have again a dedicated Enterprise Integration track! The integration track on Saturday the 20th will be packed with amazing sessions by Azure MVP’s Nino Crudele, Steef-Jan Wiggers, Eldert Grootenboer, Tomasso Groenendijk, myself and Ricardo Torre.

Enterprise Integration Track Agenda

8:30 Registration

9:00 How to face the integration challenges using the open source by Nino Crudele [Azure MVP]

“The open source space offers a lot of different options and opportunities in order to face the endless challenges that we normally need to face in the integration of technologies.

During this session, we will explore all the best open source options to cover the most advanced and complex requirements.

We will explore new options to extend the actual technologies and how to use the open source in conjunction with technology stacks like, pure .Net Framework, BizTalk Server and Microsoft Azure to solve complex integration scenarios.

During the session, we will also examine the best options available in the market and in the open source space.”

10:10 Coffe break

10:30 The speaker nightmare: Eval Forms & OCR & Logic Apps & Power BI by Sandro Pereira [Azure MVP]

“An evaluation form is something that a speaker love and hates, especially, if the results are processed in real-time and public available. If the result was excellent, then it is extremely rewarding, other times, it may “”hurt”” the speaker who has made himself available to share his knowledge and has been evaluated negatively. Sometimes the attendees are unfair in their evaluations, like, to basic in a 100-level session (these types of sessions are supposed to be basic or introductory) or sometimes the speaker had a bad day (it happens with everyone).

I speak from personal experience, is these last 6 years that I have been doing speaking at community events, in Portugal and abroad, I already been evaluated in all ways: badly, reasonable, good and excellent, sometimes I saw in, the same sessions, attendees with different profiles evaluate me badly and excellent. The key point for the speaker is:

• All feedback is good, either negative or positive, he can learn to improve itself, if that’s the case, or that I specific topic is not good for a certain audience
• He only needs to give his best! We cannot please everyone, and the goal is to fill happy with yourself and your performance.

I love evaluation forms and I love for them to be public available, even better if they are public available during the event. Because, at least, it will give during the event a good topic of conversation for people that do not know each other and it will keep the conversation flowing (naturally), people normally are affray or shy to start a conversation between unfamiliar persons, this is a good ice break.

In this session, I will show and explain a real live demo on how we can easily build a robust solution for process evaluation forms, using an OCR software and easily integrate them with Power BI to present the results in an interactive and beautiful way. But most important: How you can educate your enterprise Developers and IT pros users to easily extend capabilities for power users, who understand their business challenges the best and allowing them to use their familiar tools like OCR software to process Evaluation forms and quickly build and deliver Power BI solutions to build Interactive Data dashboards. And at the same time integrate these tools, platforms or systems and a very quick and robust way using integrate feature on Azure, like, Logic Apps, API Apps and Azure Functions. How to start from a simple solution and evolve them enabling new functionalities.”

11:50 Cloud Integration: so many options! by Steef-Jan Wiggers [Azure MVP]

Traditional integration has changed with the rise and evolution of cloud computing. And connectivity between systems on premise will evolve to connections with services and solutions in the cloud. Data is everywhere, applications are everywhere and people are everywhere with their devices always connected. In this world integration is key. Azure offers us various ways to implement integration solutions to provide connectivity to the business to their data. This talk will be a journey of options you have when building these types of solutions!

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Using DocumentDB to make your API App high performant and secure it with API Management by Tomasso Groenendijk [Azure MVP]

APIs are becoming more important for organizations and people even talk about the API economy but how can you create your own API, expose it globally and make a profit with it? In this session, Tomasso is going to show how you can use API Apps and DocumentDB to create a high performant API and how to use API Management in combination with Web Apps to expose the API.

15:10 Sponsor Session

15:30 Cofee Break

15:50 BizTalk 2016 in a hybrid world by Ricardo Torre

The integration landscape has definitely evolved to be a hybrid, significant on-premise investment has been accumulated over the years while at the same time cloud computing brought new challenges and new ways of implementing integration. Let’s navigate through the innovations in both worlds and how BizTalk and the cloud currently live together.

17:10 Azure IoT Hub Deep Dive by Eldert Grootenboer [Azure MVP]

Azure IoT Hub gives us the possibility to manage and secure and do bi-directional communication with billions of IoT devices. In this session, we will dive into all these possibilities, to show how you can easily set up a robust and hyper-scalable solution for your IoT needs.

18:20 Closing

More information on the official website: http://tugait.pt/2017.

Invitation for a social game.

A social SPEAKER game… there might be other games (and awards) but that is still under NDA!

Speaker game has 1 objective: getting you the MAXIMUM social experience, getting you to LEARN about your fellow speakers, about the event and about THE ATTENDEES.

The winner/s will be determined by the collection of the maximum number of points and we shall determine the winner on Saturday evening … (the prize, again, is still under NDA) and here is how you can start collecting points on the game card will receive at the airport/event:

• Get to know 5 people at the event and write down their name, company, it area & specialty: 5 points
• Vote your favorite Tuga IT 2017 speaker (you will need to attend that session): 1 point
• Write down the number of countries that Tuga IT 2017 speakers represent: 1 point
• Write down the number of countries that Tuga IT 2017 attendees represent: 1 point
• Name all Tuga IT 2016 sponsors: 1 point
• Name the person who was the most influential in your career: 1 point
• Name 3 IT Celebrities (MVPs/Speakers/PMs) who started outside of IT: 1 point
• Name the creation dates of the involved User Groups: 1 point per correct answer (there are 9 groups in total)
• Name the youngest speaker of Tuga IT 2017: 1 point
• Discover how many MVPs/Microsoft MVPs/Oracle Aces do we have at the Tuga IT 2017? 1 point

And even more for the social part:

• Post a blog about your session/precon at Tuga IT 2017: 5 points
• Make 3 tweets on Twitter with #tugait hashtag: 1 point
• Post 1 Facebook post with #tugait hashtag: 1 point
• Join the event on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/events/1735611090101127/?notif_t=plan_user_joined&notif_id=1493822944532388): 1 point

It might be worth playing… you know… you never lose in trying.

Registration For TUGA IT 2017

TUGA IT 2017 will take place in Microsoft Portugal’s offices, in Lisbon, on May 18-20, 2017. It will feature 3 days of breakout sessions and full-day workshops by world-class speakers where IT Professionals can spend 3 amazing days checking the future of IT and also take the time to network with top-level speakers and other IT Professionals.

Registration for TUGA IT 2017 is a few euro’s or even free if you do require lunch (the fee is there to reduce waste and prevent having an abundance of food).

You can register here and I will see you there in Lisbon!

The post TUGA IT 2017 is almost here, don’t miss it! appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

After some request by the community and after I publish in my blog as a season of blog posts, Step by step configuration to publish BizTalk operational data on Power BI is available as a whitepaper!

Recently, the Microsoft Product team released a first feature pack for BizTalk Server 2016 (only available for Enterprise and Developer edition). This whitepaper will help you understand how to install and configure one of the new features of BizTalk Server 2016:

• Leverage operational data – View operational data from anywhere and with any device using Power BI, works and how we can configure it.

What to expect about Step by step configuration to publish BizTalk operational data on Power BI

This whitepaper will give a step-by-step explanation of what component or tools you need to install and configure to enable BizTalk operational data to be published in a Power BI report.

Table of Contents

1. About the Author
2. Introduction
3. What is Operational Data?
4. System Requirements to Enable BizTalk Server 2016 Operational Data
5. Step-by-step Configuration to Enable BizTalk Server 2016 Operational Data Feed
   1. First step: Install Microsoft Power BI Desktop
   2. Second step: Enable operational data feed
   3. Third step: Use the BizTalk Server Operational Data Power BI template to publish the report to Power BI
   4. Fourth step: Connect Power BI BizTalkOperationalData dataset with your on-premise BizTalk environment

Where I can download it

You can download the whitepaper here:

• https://www.biztalk360.com/step-by-step-configuration-publish-biztalk-operational-data-power-bi/

I would like to take this opportunity also to say thanks to my amazing team of BizTalk360 for the proofreading and for once again join forces with me to publish for free another white paper.

I hope you enjoy reading this paper and any comments or suggestions are welcome.

The post Step by step configuration to publish BizTalk operational data on Power BI whitepaper appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

Last Monday I presented, once again, a session in the Integration Monday series. This time the topic was BizTalk Server: Teach me something new about Flat Files (or not). This was my fifth session that I deliver:

• The first time I presented a session on BizTalk Server Tips & Tricks for Developers and Admins (Deep Dive) (June 22, 2015)
• The second time was Real Case Scenarios Where BizTalk NoS Ultimate Can Improve Our Efficiency (August 31, 2015)
• Followed by Creating reusable pieces in Logic Apps (April 18, 2016)
• And BizTalk Mapping Patterns, Best Practices (April 25, 2016)

And I think will not be the last! However, this time was different for many aspects and in a certain way it was a crazy session… Despite having some post about BizTalk Server: Teach me something new about Flat Files on my blog, I didn’t have time to prepare this session (sent to a crazy mission for a client and also because I had to organize the integration track on TUGA IT event), I had a small problem in my BizTalk Server 2016 machine in which I had to switch to my BizTalk Server 2013 R2 VM, interrupted by the kids in the middle of the session because the girls wanted me to have dinner with them (worthy of being in this series)… but it all ended well and I think it was a very nice session with two great real case samples:

• Removing headers from a flat file (CSV) using only the schema (without any custom pipeline component)
• And removing empty lines from a delimited flat file, again, using only the schema (without any custom pipeline component)

For those who were online, I hope you have enjoyed it and sorry for all the confusion. And for those who did not have the chance to be there, you can now view it because the session is recorded and available on the Integration Monday website. I hope you like it!

Session Name: BizTalk Server: Teach me something new about Flat Files (or not)

Session Overview: Despite over the year’s new protocols, formats or patterns emerged like Web Services, WCF RESTful services, XML, JSON, among others. The use of text files (Flat Files ) as CSV (Comma Separated Values) or TXT, one of the oldest common patterns for exchanging messages, still remains today one of the most used standards in systems integration and/or communication with business partners.

While tools like Excel can help us interpret such files, this type of process is always iterative and requires few user tips so that software can determine where there is a need to separate the fields/columns as well the data type of each field. But for a system integration (Enterprise Application Integration) like BizTalk Server, you must reduce any ambiguity, so that these kinds of operations can be performed thousands of times with confidence and without having recourse to a manual operator.

In this session we will first address: How we can easily implement a robust File Transfer integration in BizTalk Server (using Content-Based Routing in BizTalk with retries, backup channel and so on).
And second: How to process Flat Files documents (TXT, CSV …) in BizTalk Server. Addressing what types of flat files are supported? How is the process of transforming text files (also called Flat Files) into XML documents (Syntax Transformations) – where does it happen and which components are needed. How can I perform a flat file validation?

Integration Monday is full of great sessions that you can watch and I will also take this opportunity to invite you all to join us next Monday.

The post BizTalk Server: Teach me something new about Flat Files (or not) video and slides are available at Integration Monday appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

Once again, my Microsoft Integration Stencils Pack was updated with new stencils. This time I added near 193 new shapes and additional reorganization in the shapes by adding two new files/categories: MIS Power BI and MIS Developer. With these new additions, this package now contains an astounding total of ~1287 shapes (symbols/icons) that will help you visually represent Integration architectures (On-premise, Cloud or Hybrid scenarios) and Cloud solutions diagrams in Visio 2016/2013. It will provide symbols/icons to visually represent features, systems, processes and architectures that use BizTalk Server, API Management, Logic Apps, Microsoft Azure and related technologies.

• BizTalk Server
• Microsoft Azure
  • BizTalk Services
  • Azure App Service (API Apps, Web Apps, Mobile Apps and Logic Apps)
  • API Management
  • Event Hubs
  • Service Bus
  • Azure IoT and Docker
  • Virtual Machines and Network
  • SQL Server, DocumentDB, CosmosDB, MySQL, …
  • Machine Learning, Stream Analytics, Data Factory, Data Pipelines
  • and so on
• Microsoft Flow
• PowerApps
• Power BI
• Office365, SharePoint
• DevOpps: PowerShell, Containers
• And much more…

Microsoft Integration Stencils Pack v2.5

The Microsoft Integration Stencils Pack v2.5 is composed by 13 files:

• Microsoft Integration Stencils v2.5
• MIS Apps and Systems Logo Stencils v2.5
• MIS Azure Portal, Services and VSTS Stencils v2.5
• MIS Azure SDK and Tools Stencils v2.5
• MIS Azure Services Stencils v2.5
• MIS Deprecated Stencils v2.5
• MIS Developer v2.5 (new)
• MIS Devices Stencils v2.5
• MIS IoT Devices Stencils v2.5
• MIS Power BI v2.5 (new)
• MIS Servers and Hardware Stencils v2.5
• MIS Support Stencils v2.5
• MIS Users and Roles Stencils v2.5

These are some of the new shapes you can find in this new version:

You can download Microsoft Integration Stencils Pack for Visio 2016/2013 from:

Microsoft Integration Stencils Pack for Visio 2016/2013 (10,1 MB)
Microsoft | TechNet Gallery

The post Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack v2.5 for Visio 2016/2013 is now available appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

Recently, I was writing a new article “BizTalk Server Tips and Tricks: How to Backup (other) BizTalk Custom Databases” (that will be release soon as a guest post in BizTalk360 Blog) that explain you how you can configure the Backup BizTalk Server (BizTalkMgmtDb) job to back up additional BizTalk custom databases (RosettaNet, ESB Toolkit, …), when I got an error message on the job saying: BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 4214). The full error was this:

Date 6/5/2017 2:30:00 PM
Log Job History (Backup BizTalk Server (BizTalkMgmtDb))

Step ID 3
Server BTS02

Job Name Backup BizTalk Server (BizTalkMgmtDb)
Step Name MarkAndBackupLog
Duration 00:00:01
Sql Severity 16
Sql Message ID 3014
Operator Emailed
Operator Net sent
Operator Paged
Retries Attempted 0

Message

Executed as user: domain/username. Processed 1 pages for database ‘BAMPrimaryImport’, file ‘BAMPrimaryImport_log’ on file 1. [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 4035) BACKUP LOG successfully processed 1 pages in 0.037 seconds (0.118 MB/sec). [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 3014) Processed 12 pages for database ‘BizTalkDTADb’, file ‘BizTalkDTADb_log’ on file 1. [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 4035) BACKUP LOG successfully processed 12 pages in 0.051 seconds (1.790 MB/sec). [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 3014) Processed 9 pages for database ‘BizTalkMgmtDb’, file ‘BizTalkMgmtDb_log’ on file 1. [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 4035) BACKUP LOG successfully processed 9 pages in 0.054 seconds (1.283 MB/sec). [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 3014) Processed 67 pages for database ‘BizTalkMsgBoxDb’, file ‘BizTalkMsgBoxDb_log’ on file 1. [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 4035) BACKUP LOG successfully processed 67 pages in 0.101 seconds (5.129 MB/sec). [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 3014) Processed 1 pages for database ‘BizTalkRuleEngineDb’, file ‘BizTalkRuleEngineDb_log’ on file 1. [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 4035) BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 4214) BACKUP LOG is terminating abnormally. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 3013) BACKUP LOG successfully processed 1 pages in 0.051 seconds (0.086 MB/sec). [SQLSTATE 01000] (Error 3014). The step failed.

Cause

If you take attention to the error message, you will notice that the job failed in the third task: MarkAndBackupLog, that is responsible for performing the backup’s the BizTalk Server databases logs.

You need to remember that by default Backup BizTalk Server (BizTalkMgmtDb) job only makes a full backup of the databases once a day and each 15 minutes a backup of the databases logs. However, to be able to perform a back up of the log from a particular database, it needs that a previous full backup has been performed and register in the “adm_BackupHistory” table in the BizTalkMgmtDb database. You can validate by executing the following script:

USE [BizTalkMgmtDb]

SELECT DISTINCT [DatabaseName]
FROM [BizTalkMgmtDb].[dbo].[adm_BackupHistory]

In my case, I was configuring an additional database to be backed up via the Backup BizTalk Server (BizTalkMgmtDb) job, and at that time, the full backup of the BizTalk Databases had already occurred.

Solution

To fix the problem of BACKUP LOG cannot be performed by the Backup BizTalk Server job, you need to:

• Execute the “sp_ForceFullBackup” stored procedure present in the BizTalkMgmtDb database.

USE [BizTalkMgmtDb]

EXEC sp_ForceFullBackup

The next time you run the Backup BizTalk Server job, it will back up all BizTalk databases including all your BizTalk custom databases and it will be able them to execute the third task: MarkAndBackupLog, and therefore execute successfully the job once again.

The post Backup BizTalk Server (BizTalkMgmtDb) job failed with BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

Let me tell you the story behind BizMan, The BizTalk Server SuperHero Sticker. On 12th May, during my session in the Integrate 2016 event in London about “A new set of BizTalk Server Tips and Tricks”, I announce that I had two BizTalk Server 2016 stickers versions to offer – probably one of the firsts BizTalk stickers ever – with the mythic phrase “The T-Rex is loose“ to celebrate the release of BizTalk Server 2016 version and one of them, of course, with a badass T-Rex and the other with a “dear”/”sweet” T-Rex version.

You need to remember that to commemorate the first release ever: BizTalk Server 2000 (on 12/12/2000) the BizTalk Server marketing folks designed a “killer” mouse pad for the product team with the phrase “The T-Rex is loose”.

(Original photo from Gijs in ‘t Veld)

You can read more about it on Gijs in ‘t Veld blog: Happy 12th birthday BizTalk Server, The T-Rex!.

Of course, BizTalk people love them… Who doesn’t like T-Rex? Who doesn’t like BizTalk?

• Well to respond to the first question, I think all of us like T-Rex… because they don’t exist anymore, they appear in so many movies, they are so cool, they are so huge, Rex meaning “king” in Latin by the way… so the tyrant king it is badass!
• To respond the second question: Many people, for many reasons, they simply don’t understand the product (but wish to all of their features for free) or they simply do not realize what enterprise integration is. (but that is a different topic that I will not enter into detail here)

And some of the feedback, if we can call it that way, that I received from these group of people (the ones that don’t like BizTalk Server – probably the same that are always saying BizTalk is dead) was more or like this:

• “It is an old product, obsolete like the dinosaur”

BizTalk has never been so alive that is today, we are actually seeing the PRO INTEGRATION team at Microsoft investing heavily in the product, not only supporting new platform updates but actually bringing new capabilities at a faster pace to the product. So, my response to these group of people and to this type of comment is in the creation of a new sticker: The BizTalk Server SuperHero: THE BIZMAN!

If you want to add this sticker to your laptop or another area, you just need to download the zip file below and send it to a graphic shop. It as in the perfect size/resolution for printing.

I decide to call it BizMan but there were plenty of other amazing suggestions:

Hope you enjoy!

Special thanks to my two coworkers at DevScope: Frederico Junqueira, the artist and creator of the BizMan, The BizTalk Server SuperHero design and António Lopes for giving the final touches and help with everything related with the graphic.

You can download BizMan, The BizTalk Server SuperHero sticker from:

BizTalk Server SuperHero Sticker: BizMan (10,1 MB)
Microsoft | TechNet Gallery

The post BizMan, The BizTalk Server SuperHero Sticker appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

Nice way to start the day: “SQL Server detected a logical consistency-based I/O error’s“… For some reason, maybe due to sudden computer shutdown/crash or a forced shutdown, one of my client BizTalk DEV virtual machines presented strange behaviors this morning. The Host Instances were always restarting for no apparent reason. When I started to diagnose the problem, and inspect the machine Event Viewer I found the following error:

SQL Server detected a logical consistency-based I/O error: incorrect pageid (expected 1:1848; actual 0:0). It occurred during a read of page (1:1848) in database ID 10 at offset 0x00000000e70000 in file ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL13.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA\BizTalkMsgBoxDb.mdf’.  Additional messages in the SQL Server error log or system event log may provide more detail. This is a severe error condition that threatens database integrity and must be corrected immediately. Complete a full database consistency check (DBCC CHECKDB). This error can be caused by many factors; for more information, see SQL Server Books Online.

These type of error is usually related to the IO/Hardware issues and as the error mention you should check and run the DBCC CHECKDB in SQL Server:

DBCC CHECKDB (BizTalkMsgBoxDb) WITH NO_INFOMSGS, ALL_ERRORMSGS

When I execute the above command, I got more detail of the problems that were happening:

Msg 8909, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Table error: Object ID 0, index ID -1, partition ID 0, alloc unit ID 0 (type Unknown), page ID (1:1856) contains an incorrect page ID in its page header. The PageId in the page header = (0:0).

Msg 8909, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Table error: Object ID 0, index ID -1, partition ID 0, alloc unit ID 0 (type Unknown), page ID (1:1848) contains an incorrect page ID in its page header. The PageId in the page header = (0:0).

CHECKDB found 0 allocation errors and 2 consistency errors not associated with any single object.

Msg 8928, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Object ID 544720993, index ID 1, partition ID 72057594059227136, alloc unit ID 72057594069385216 (type In-row data): Page (1:1856) could not be processed.  See other errors for details.

Msg 8980, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Table error: Object ID 544720993, index ID 1, partition ID 72057594059227136, alloc unit ID 72057594069385216 (type In-row data). Index node page (0:0), slot 0 refers to child page (1:1856) and previous child (0:0), but they were not encountered.

CHECKDB found 0 allocation errors and 2 consistency errors in table ‘BizTalkServerSendHost_DequeueBatches’ (object ID 544720993).

Msg 8928, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Object ID 1437248175, index ID 1, partition ID 72057594061717504, alloc unit ID 72057594072137728 (type In-row data): Page (1:1848) could not be processed.  See other errors for details.

Msg 8980, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

Table error: Object ID 1437248175, index ID 1, partition ID 72057594061717504, alloc unit ID 72057594072137728 (type In-row data). Index node page (0:0), slot 0 refers to child page (1:1848) and previous child (0:0), but they were not encountered.

CHECKDB found 0 allocation errors and 2 consistency errors in table ‘BizTalkServerTrackingHost_DequeueBatches’ (object ID 1437248175).

CHECKDB found 0 allocation errors and 6 consistency errors in database ‘BizTalkMsgBoxDb’.

repair_allow_data_loss is the minimum repair level for the errors found by DBCC CHECKDB (BizTalkMsgBoxDb).

CAUSE

Again, these type of error is usually related to the IO/Hardware issues and it may occur due to sudden computer shutdown/crash or a forced shutdown of the machine that for some reason corrupted the files,

Solution

Because I already had almost all the settings/configurations/optimizations of my developer environment done and did not want to re-install them again, like SQL Server optimizations, Jobs, host and host instances and so on, to solve the SQL Server detected a logical consistency-based I/O error I had to:

• Set the ‘BizTalkMsgBoxDb’ database to be in single user mode.

ALTER DATABASE BizTalkMsgBoxDb

SET SINGLE_USER;

GO

• Try to repair the errors that were found in both tables: ‘BizTalkServerSendHost_DequeueBatches’ and ‘BizTalkServerTrackingHost_DequeueBatches’

USE BizTalkMsgBoxDb;

GO

DBCC CHECKTABLE('BizTalkServerSendHost_DequeueBatches', REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS)

GO

DBCC CHECKTABLE('BizTalkServerTrackingHost_DequeueBatches', REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS)

GO

ALTER DATABASE BizTalkMsgBoxDb

SET MULTI_USER;

GO

• Try to repair the errors that were found in both tables: ‘BizTalkServerSendHost_DequeueBatches’ and ‘BizTalkServerTrackingHost_DequeueBatches’

Because you change ‘BizTalkMsgBoxDb’ database to be in single user mode and then back to multi user if we don’t force a full backup the Backup job will start to fail with the message:

• [SQLSTATE 01000] (Message 4035)  BACKUP LOG cannot be performed because there is no current database backup. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 4214)

So, to avoid this we need to force a BizTalk full backup by calling the “BizTalkMgmtDb.dbo.sp_ForceFullBackup” stored procedure

This way may not be the correct or perfect solution because If successful, the REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS option may result in some data loss. In fact, it may result in more data lost than if a user were to restore the database from the last known good backup. The problem was that I didn’t have a last known good backup and in fact, this was a dev environment, so losing data was not really important.

The good news was that after I run all these steps, all the SQL Server detected a logical consistency-based I/O error’s stop appearing in Event Viewer the environment became stable and working properly again.

The post SQL Server detected a logical consistency-based I/O error: incorrect pageid in BizTalkMsgBoxDb database. appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

In the past, I wrote a blog post about Configuring BizTalk Server Host and Host Instances according to some of the Best Practices and I already have available online two PowerShell scripts for you to download: PowerShell to Configure BizTalk Server Host and Host Instances and PowerShell to Configure BizTalk Server 2013/2013 R2 Host and Host Instances.

The problem of these two scripts is that they only do 90% of the work and they are intended to be used on “day zero” of your environment, i.e., after you finish installing your environment. Don’t get me wrong, you can still use it if you have your environment up and running for a long time but in this case, you will get several error messages while the script tries to delete the handlers associated with the adapters and the reason is that you probably have already several receive and send port that is configured to use the existing “default” handler: “BizTalkServerApplication“.

For this reason, I decided to update my previous script, of course, optimize it to BizTalk Server 2016 (but it can be executed in BizTalk Server previous versions), and add to it more functionalities:

• Configure the Default Send Handler as the Send Handler for each existing static and Dynamic Send Ports
• Configure Receive Handlers from all the existing Receive locations

With these missing functionalities added the script is now working 100% and you can use it on “day zero” of your environment or when in an existing environment with existing BizTalk Applications configured and running.

The only catch is, if you already have BizTalk Application running in your environment, in order for the script to do all the steps you may need to stop all your BizTalk Applications, special the ones that have orchestrations deployed. And one of the reasons why is that for example if you cannot change the Receive or Send handler of ports that are bind to an orchestration, if, the orchestration is running.

What is Host and a Host Instances?

The BizTalk Host is a logical process and security boundary within BizTalk Server that represents a logical set of zero or more run-time processes in which you can deploy BizTalk Server services and artifacts (such as adapter handlers, receive locations, and orchestrations). Each host has a security group assigned to it and may contain multiple host instances, each on an individual machine, that perform the work of the host.

In another hand, a host instance is the physical instance of a host on a computer running BizTalk Server. Each host instance belongs to exactly one host, and the service account of the host instance belongs to the security group of the host. The security group may be used to grant permissions to physical resources such as databases for use by any host instances in the host.

What is an Adapter Handler?

An adapter handler is an instance of a BizTalk host in which the adapter code runs. When you specify a send or receive handler for an adapter you are specifying which host instance the adapter code will run in the context of. An adapter handler is responsible for executing the adapter and contains properties for a specific instance of an adapter.

The default BizTalk Server configuration will only create one in-process host, “BizTalkServerApplication”, that will be associated as a receive and send adapter handler for all of the installed adapters, with the exception of HTTP, SOAP, WCF-BasicHttp, WCF-WSHttp and WCF-CustomIsolated adapter receive handlers that can only be running in an isolated host.

How can I automate this task?

Windows PowerShell is a Windows command-line shell designed especially for system administrators and can be used by BizTalk administrators to help them in automating tasks.

This is a simple script that will configure the following components in your environment:

• Create Host and Host Instance according to some of the best practices: two Receive host and host instances (one 32-bits and one 64-bits); two Send host and host instances (one 32-bits and one 64-bits); One Host and Host Instance to process Orchestrations and one Host and Host Instance for tracking;
• Create Receive and Send Handlers for each adapter;
• And finally, associate the correct Receive and Send Handlers to each existing receive and send ports present in your environment

THIS POWERSHELL IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

The script can be found and download on Microsoft TechNet Gallery:

PowerShell to Configure BizTalk Server 2016 Host, Host Instances and Handlers (30 KB)
Microsoft | TechNet Gallery

The post PowerShell to Configure BizTalk Server Host, Host Instances and Adapter handlers according to some of the Best Practices appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

Why checking if Windows Defender is running on BizTalk Server, or another anti-virus, is important? I have been creating several BizTalk Server 2016 Developer environments on Azure using Azure Virtual Machines, normally I tend to be careful in choosing the VM Disk type – SSD can be expensive – and the size of the virtual machine – I would love to use a 4-core machine with 28GB but still using a HHD disk it will cost me near 430€ per month – so, because of the pricing I’m usually choose a modest machine from 1-core and 3.5 GB RAM or up to 4-core and 8GB RAM.

They tend to be a little slow, so tuning it well is important for archive a better performance and by default Windows Defender is configured on that machines. Not only as a negative impact in the general performance of the machine but also can have a huge impact on BizTalk Server performance.

Indeed, anti-virus can have a huge impact on BizTalk Server performance and normally the best approach for BizTalk Server environment and anti-virus software is using a perimeter based approach, where you normally don’t run the anti-virus software on the machine itself but protect the boundaries.

I like to use this approach but if not possible, at least you should configure antivirus software to avoid real-time scanning of BizTalk Server executables and file drops. Antivirus software real-time scanning of BizTalk Server executable files and any folders or file shares monitored by BizTalk Server receive locations can negatively impact BizTalk Server performance. If antivirus software is installed on the BizTalk Server computer(s), disable real-time scanning of non-executable file types referenced by any BizTalk Server receive locations (usually .XML, but can also be .csv, .txt, etc.) and configure antivirus software to exclude scanning of BizTalk Server executable Files.

In this post, I will not address how you can disable Windows Defender, I will live it to another post and I will not address also all the possible existing Anti-virus in the market, instead, here I will focus only in Windows Defender for a simple reason: that this is the anti-virus installed by default in the BizTalk Server 2016 Developer Virtual Machines template on Azure. Neither to configure Anti-virus exclusions that you should do for BizTalk, for that a good blog post from MSFT: BizTalk Server Anti-Virus Exclusions

However, one of the first steps while doing one BizTalk environment performance, or even a basic, assessment is to find out if there is any Anti-virus running on your BizTalk Server.

So, I create this simple PowerShell script to use in all my environments just to check is Windows Defender that is installed and enabled by default in Windows Server 2016 is running on the Server:

Try
{
    $defenderOptions = Get-MpComputerStatus

    if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($defenderOptions))
    {
        Write-host "Windows Defender was not found running on the Server:" $env:computername -foregroundcolor "Green"
    }
    else
    {
        Write-host "Windows Defender was found on the Server:" $env:computername -foregroundcolor "Cyan"
        Write-host "   Is Windows Defender Enabled?" $defenderOptions.AntivirusEnabled
        Write-host "   Is Windows Defender Service Enabled?" $defenderOptions.AMServiceEnabled
        Write-host "   Is Windows Defender Antispyware Enabled?" $defenderOptions.AntispywareEnabled
        Write-host "   Is Windows Defender OnAccessProtection Enabled?"$defenderOptions.OnAccessProtectionEnabled
        Write-host "   Is Windows Defender RealTimeProtection Enabled?"$defenderOptions.RealTimeProtectionEnabled

        if($defenderOptions.RealTimeProtectionEnabled)
        {
            $windowsShell = new-object -comobject wscript.shell
            $questionResult = $windowsShell.popup("Do you want to disable Real Time Protection?", 0,"Not at this moment.",4)
            If ($questionResult -eq 6) {
	            Set-MpPreference -DisableRealtimeMonitoring $true
                Write-host "Windows Defender Real Time Protection was successfully disabled" -foregroundcolor "Green"
                Write-host "Nevertheless Windows Defender is still running"
            }
        }
    }
}
Catch
{
    Write-host "Windows Defender was not found running on the Server:" $env:computername -foregroundcolor "Green"
}

Output type:

The script, not only allows you to check if Windows Defender is running on BizTalk Server but, if the Windows Defender is running and you have Real Time Protection enabled it will allow you to disable this feature if you want –  nevertheless, by disabling it the Windows Defender will still be running, the only thing is not doing is a real-time protection to scan everything you download or run on Server.

THIS POWERSHELL IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

The script to check if Windows Defender is running on BizTalk Server can be found and download on Microsoft TechNet Gallery:

PowerShell to Check if Windows Defender is running on the Server (2 KB)
Microsoft | TechNet Gallery

The post BizTalk Assessment: How to check if Windows Defender is running on BizTalk Server with PowerShell appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

The Consume Adapter Service option from “Add Generated Items…” inside Visual Studio is metadata generation tool (or add-in), included in WCF LOB Adapter SDK, that can be used with BizTalk Projects to allow BizTalk developers to search or browse metadata from LOB adapters and then generate XML Schemas for selected operations inside Visual Studio.

This is a simple sample of the Consume Adapter Service tool to generate XML Schemas for SQL Server operations:

However, recently while I was working in a client development environment with the LOB adapters installed and configured in the environment I notice that the Consume Adapter Service option was missing from “Add Generated Items…” window in Visual Studio

Cause

In our case, indeed we had the LOB adapters installed and configured in the environment, however, we only had the runtime of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK installed, in other words, we didn’t have the WCF LOB Adapter SDK fully installed.

The Consume Adapter Service tool will only be available in your Visual Studio if you install the Tools options from the WCF LOB Adapter SDK. This option will include the Adapter Code Generation Wizard and Visual Studio Addin Components.

Note: Personally, I recommend that you perform a full installation (all components) of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK on BizTalk Server Development environments.

Solution

The solution it is easy for this particular case, you just need to install the WCF LOB Adapter SDK Tools.

To install the WCF LOB Adapter SDK Tools you need:

• Close any programs you have open. Run the BizTalk Server <version> installer as Administrator.
• On the Start page, click “Install Microsoft BizTalk Adapters”
• In the BizTalk Adapter Pack Start page, select the first step “Step 1. Install Microsoft WCF LOB Adapter SDK”. An installer of SDK is launched.
  • On the “Welcome to the Windows Communication Foundation LOB adapter SDK Setup Wizard” page, click “Next”
  • On the “Change, repair, or remove installation” page, select the “Change” option

• • On the “Custom Setup” page, make sure that you select the option “Tools” to be installed and click “Next”

Note: Again, I personally recommend that you perform a full installation (all components) of the WCF LOB Adapter SDK on BizTalk Server Development environments.

• • On the “Ready to change Windows Communication Foundation LOB Adapter SDK Setup” page, click “Change” to begin the installation

After the installation is finished, if you open your BizTalk project solution once again in Visual Studio, you will see that the Consume Adapter Service option will now be available in the “Add Generate Items” window:

• In Visual Studio, in the Project pane, right-click your BizTalk Server project, and then choose Add | Add Generated Items… | Consume Adapter Service.

This problem can happen and the solution is the same for all BizTalk Versions (that contains LOB Adapters).

The post Consume Adapter Service option is missing from Add Generated Items in Visual Studio appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

Are you careless like me who constantly forgets the credentials (not critical)? If so this post about how you can reset the built-in administrator account password on an Azure BizTalk VM will help you not to waste a few hours in vain.

I think that the life of a consultant is difficult regarding system credentials, you have your personal credentials (AD account, company and personal emails, and so on) and for each client, you may also have different credential accounts… If this were not already complicated, each system may have different criteria that require you to have more complicated or simpler passwords. For these cases, the solution is more or less simple, we annoy the sysadmin and ask him to reset our password. However, for our Azure VM that we create in our Azure Subscription for demos or production, well that can be a more complicated scenario and I have tendency to create and delete several BizTalk Server Developer Edition machines, special for POC, Workshops or courses and sometimes (aka all the time) I forgot the built-in administrator password. So, how can we reset the built-in administrator account password from an Azure BizTalk Server VM?

Note: I am referring Azure BizTalk Server VM, mainly because my blog is about Enterprise Integration but this can apply to any type of Azure VM.

Most of the time the answer is very simple:

• You access the Azure portal (https://portal.azure.com/) and select the Virtual Machine that you want to reset the password
• Then click Support + Troubleshooting > Reset password. The password reset blade is displayed:

• You just need to enter the new password, then click Update. And you will see a message on the right upper corner saying the reset password task is processing.

• The result of the task will be presented in the Notification panel and most of the times you will find a “Successfully reset password” message

But there is always “an exception to the rule”, and that was one of my cases. When I was trying to reset the password through the Azure Portal I was always getting an Unable to reset the password message, don’t know exactly why to be honest. I tried to reset the password by using PowerShell described in the documentation: How to reset the Remote Desktop service or its login password in a Windows VM

Set-AzureRmVMAccessExtension -ResourceGroupName "myResoureGroup" -VMName "myVM" -Name "myVMAccess" -Location WestUS -typeHandlerVersion "2.0" -ForceRerun

But still I was not able to perform this operation and I was getting this annoying error:

…Multiple VMExtensions per handler not supported for OS type ‘Windows’. VMExtension. VMExtension ‘…’ with handler ‘Microsoft.Compute.VMAccessAgent’ already added or specified in input.”

Solution

To solve this problem, I was forced to remove the existing VMExtention by:

• First by getting the list of extensions on VM to find the name of the existing extension (presented in red on the below picture)

Get-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName [RES_GRP_NAME] -VMName [VM_NAME] -Status

• And then by removing the VMAccess extension from the virtual machine

Remove-AzureRmVMAccessExtension -ResourceGroupName [RES_GRP_NAME] -VMName [VM_NAME] -Name [EXT_NAME]

• You will get a validation question. “This cmdlet will remove the specified virtual machine extension. Do you want to continue?”, Type “y” and then ENTER to accept and continue.

After that you can access to the Azure portal (https://portal.azure.com/), select the Virtual Machine that you want to reset the password, click Support + Troubleshooting > Reset password and update the built-in administrator account password without the previous problem.

The post How to reset the built-in administrator account password from an Azure BizTalk VM. appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

This week I received a call of one of my customers reporting me a strange issue. Strange because everything was running fine and suddenly, for no apparent reason, each time someone tried to invoke or browse WCF Services exposed by BizTalk Server the IIS Application pool configured for that services automatically stopped.

If we tried to browse the services we got the following error message:

Login failed for user ‘Domain/user’
Exception Details: System.SqlClient.SqlException: Login failed for user ‘domain/user’

Of course, with that type of error description, the first step we did was to reenter the credentials for that user in the application pool but… the same problem persisted.

When we investigated the event viewer for additional error details we found in the Security log the following message:

Log Name:      Security
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing
Date: {date}
Event ID: 4625
Task Category: Logon
Level: Information
Keywords: Audit Failure
User: N/A
Computer: {machine name}
Description:
An account failed to log on.
Subject:
Security ID: SYSTEM
Account Name: {account name}
Account Domain: {domain name}
Logon ID: 0x3E7
Logon Type: 4
Account For Which Logon Failed:
Security ID: NULL SID
Account Name: {account name}
Account Domain: {domain name}
Failure Information:
Failure Reason: The user has not been granted the requested logon type at this machine.
Status: 0xC000015B
Sub Status: 0x0

Cause

So, at this point, we knew that this was a security policies problem and we suspect that some automatic process created by sysadmins where changings something in the Local Security Settings on the BizTalk Server machine.

After some research, we found out that the user account that is running the Application Pool – in which the BizTalk WCF Services are exposed – requires having “Log on as batch job” rights

Note: By definition, this security setting (Log on as a batch job), allows a user to be logged on by means of a batch-queue facility and is provided only for compatibility with older versions of Windows. For example, when a user submits a job by means of the task scheduler, the task scheduler logs that user on as a batch user rather than as an interactive user.

Solution

To add user rights in the “Log on as batch job” policy, you need to:

• Press the “Windows key” to open the Start menu.
• Type “secpol.msc” and click on “Local Security Policy” option from the Search window.
• On the left pane, select “Local Policies” and the “User Rights Assignment”

• Right click on “Log on as batch job” and click Properties
• Click “Add User or Group…” and add the desired user

• Click “OK” and then “Apply”

Note: Of course, for you to do the above steps, you need to have administrator rights on the computer or be part of specific domain groups in case of Security Settings policies are governed by some AD domain groups.

Note: this problem can also occur and the same solution can be applied to SharePoint.

The post Why IIS Application Pool automatically stopped when trying to browse or invoke BizTalk WCF Services? appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

I been delivering a lot of BizTalk Server Training Courses for Developers and for Administrator in the past years that I normally like to call them “Developing BizTalk Server version Course” or “BizTalk Server Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) course” – yes I know, I am very creative in terms of names – and one of the good things about using Azure Virtual Machines for that is that we can easily create several developer machines in a short period of time and manage them for not consuming resources. And normally on of the task that is present in both courses is to configure BizTalk Server environment, because I believe that all BizTalk Developers should know the basics of BizTalk Server in terms of installation, configuration and optimizations – tasks that are normally done by BizTalk Administrations – I can go further and say that, in my personal opinion, if you don’t know these basic concepts you are not truly a BizTalk Developer because many things can be done by configurations and not code.

One of these tasks is to install and configure BizTalk Server LOB adapters, in especially SQL Server adapter, since in a Developer standalone machine we will need to have SQL Server, so it is easy to test this LOB Adapter. However, if we create the Azure BizTalk Server 2016 Developer machine, configure BizTalk Server and then install and configure LOB adapters without doing anything more and you try to create a BizTalk Server solution using Visual Studio and generate SQL Server schemas:

• In the Solution Explorer, right-click your project, click “Add”, and then click “Add Generated Items…”
• In the “Add Generated Items – <Project Name>” dialog box, select “Consume Add Service”, and then click “Add”.
• Select the sqlBinding and properly configuring the URI

We will get the following error message:

Connecting to the LOB system has failed.

A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 – The remote computer refused the network connection.).

when we try to connect to the SQL Server configured.

Cause

This error may occur for several reasons like BizTalk Server cannot communicate with SQL Server machine because some firewall restrictions or SQL Server does not accept Remote Connections and so on.

However, in our case, we are talking about a standalone BizTalk machine that is trying to access a database in the local SQL Server.

Our problem was that by default what Microsoft could possibly configure wrong in terms of SQL Server protocols on the BizTalk Server developer image on Azure… is actually set up wrongly!

And as I described in my BizTalk Server Installation and configuration tutorial (see here), one of the important steps is to configure SQL Server Network Protocols, in special ensuring that TCP/IP is enabled and Shared Memory is disabled. You can see how to accomplish this using SQL Server Configuration Manager tool here.

The actual problem that was causing the connecting to fail while trying to connect to the LOB system, in this particular case the SQL Server is because the TCP/IP protocol is disabled.

Solution

To properly configure the protocols for SQL Server, especially the TCP/IP protocol, you should:

• Press the “Windows key” to switch to Metro UI and type “SQL Server 20016 Configuration Manager” and click on “SQL Server 2016 Configuration Manager” option on Apps menu.
• In SQL Server Configuration Manager windows, from the left-hand pane expand “SQL Server Network Configuration” option and then click “Protocols for MSSQLSERVER”
• Verify that both “TCP/IP” and “Named Pipes” are enabled;
• If not, right-click in the protocol, and then click “Enable”
• Repeat to enable the other protocol if necessary.
• Verify that “Shared Memory” is Disable.
• If not, right-click Shared Memory, and then click “Disable”
• In the left-hand pane, click “SQL Server Services”, right-click “SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)”, and then click “Restart”.

• Close SQL Server Configuration Manager.
• Click “OK” and then “Apply”

After correctly configure the SQL Server protocols, again, especially the TCP/IP, you will be able to successfully connect and generate the SQL Server Schemas that you need for your BizTalk Server Solution.

The post WCF-SQL Adapter: Connecting to the LOB system has failed. A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

It is very important to optimize everything possible for BizTalk archive the best performance it can, especially if you are dealing with BizTalk Server DEV environments on Azure using Azure Virtual Machines. Again, as I explain in a previous post (here), we normally tend to be careful in choosing the VM Disk type and VM sizes mostly because of the price, so tuning the machine is very important, otherwise sometimes they tend to be a little slow and even the most insignificant things (that we think they are) can have a huge impact on BizTalk Server performance. One of the cases that I found these days was the .NET Runtime Optimization Service causing high CPU usage…

… Indeed, and we don’t need to give explanations to explain that everything that may affects the CPU to cause a High Load (or usage) inherently affects and cause huge impact on BizTalk Server performance.

The .NET framework is regularly optimized by Microsoft using the .NET Runtime Optimization Service to make sure you get the best out of the system libraries and this is also done for your installed managed application. It is also more or less responsible for precompiling .NET assemblies in the background. Once it’s done, it will go away. And while you may see CPU usage almost near the 100%, the compilation happens in a process with low priority, so it tries not to steal the CPU for other processes you are doing. Once everything is compiled, assemblies will now be able to share pages across different processes and warm startup will be typically much faster.

Again, once the .NET Runtime Optimization Service once the service finishes his process it will go away, but in my case this process was already running several hours, so instead of waiting until for the computer to idle, we can force it to compile everything now! Solving this “issue” in a fast way (couple of minutes). For that you should:

• Open a command prompt as administrator and run the adsutil command. To do this, Press the “Windows key” to open the Start menu and type “cmd” on the Start Search box, right-click in “Command Prompt” and select from the context menu the “Run as administrator” option.
• And change to the following folder: “C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319” or “c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\” (on a 64-bit operating system)
• Type “ngen.exe executequeueditems”, and press ENTER
• Wait until the operation is finished, I think you may receive the following message at the command prompt: “All compilation targets are up to date.”

This will process all pending work. Once this is done, the service will shutdown, as it has nothing else to do and you will see that the CPU will be back to the normality.

This can be important to be aware for the Administration team (or DevOps team) while planning your .NET framework update to make sure that everything run smoothly especially in the production environment, otherwise this can be one of the reasons (at least for a few minutes or hours) for you notice that our production applications are running a little slowly.

There is also a PowerShell provide by the Microsoft .NET team to speed up the optimization service: DrainNGenQueue.ps (see more here)

The post BizTalk Assessment: .NET Runtime Optimization Service causing high CPU usage appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

Typical basic error for beginners that also occur sometimes even with experienced BizTalk developers… While trying to deploy a BizTalk Server solution directly from Visual Studio 2017 I got the following errors messages:

Cause

This error may occur for several reasons, like BizTalk Server cannot communicate with SQL Server machine because some firewall restrictions or SQL Server does not accept Remote Connections or that SQL Server Network Protocols are not properly configured – I wrote a few days ago a blog post about that: WCF-SQL Adapter: Connecting to the LOB system has failed. A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server– and so on.

However, in the cause of this problem is quite different, the first error doesn’t tell us to much about the main cause of the problem but the second one:

Deployment cannot initialize the connection to the database “BizTalkMgmtDb” on server “BIZTALKDEMO”…

Gives you a good clue about the problem.

In fact, I was migrating an existing BizTalk Server solution to a new server and I forgot to update the Visual Studio deployment properties and the Server was pointing an incorrect to an incorrect an inaccessible SQL Server.

Solution

Again, this is a typical a beginner error and quite easy to fix, so to solve the problem you just need to properly configure the BizTalk Server deployment properties in all your Visual Studio projects inside your solution by:

• In Visual Studio Solution Explorer, right-click a project for which you want to configure properties, and then click “Properties”.
• Click the “Deployment” tab in Project Properties Designer.
• And make sure you properly configure the following properties:
  • Application Name: Name of the BizTalk application to which to deploy the assemblies in this project. If the application already exists, the assemblies will be added to it when you deploy the project. If the application does not exist, the application will be created. If this field is blank, the assemblies will be deployed to the default BizTalk application in the current group. Names that include spaces must be enclosed by double quotation marks (“).
  • Configuration Database: Name of the BizTalk Management database for the group, “BizTalkMgmtDb” by default.
  • Server: Name of the SQL Server instance that hosts the BizTalk Management database on the local computer. In a single-computer installation, this is usually the name of the local computer. Note: If you move this BizTalk project to a different computer, you probably will need to modify the Server property to reflect the new computer name before you will be able to deploy the assembly.

Note: there are other properties but these three (3) are the most important ones (see the full list of properties here: How to Set Deployment Properties in Visual Studio)

• Save the file and then redeploy the BizTalk Server solution (or project).

The post BizTalk Server Visual Studio Deployment: A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

While trying to document, or better update my RosettaNet installation and configuration guide, I got a very strange (but by now I should know that nothing is strange with BizTalk and RosettaNet) while executing Microsoft BizTalk 2016 Accelerator for RosettaNet Configuration Wizard:

A BizTalk Isolated Host instance configured with the user account ‘DOMAIN\administrator’ was either not running or does not exist on this computer. Use the BizTalk Administration Console to create a new Isolated host or to reconfigure an existing host to run as ‘DOMAIN\administrator.

This error occurred just after I try to open the BTARN configuration wizard! (first thing that appears)

I well aware that when you are planning to install and configure Microsoft BizTalk 2016 Accelerator for RosettaNet (BTARN), you need to be very careful with a certain configuration like this one:

• The BizTalk Host Instance Account and the BizTalk Isolated Host Instance Account should be the same account. Otherwise, BTARN does not function correctly.

Or that:

• BTARN requires the IIS_WPG group (group provided by IIS 6.0 that provides the minimum set of user rights and permissions required to run an application).
• BTARN requires both in-process and isolated host to be marked as “Authentication Trusted” (this setting is off by default when you create a new host)

Notice that this last one is just for everything to work well but it doesn’t impact the configuration itself.

And in fact, all my host instances have the same account and all of them was running.

Cause

BTARN installation process it’s quite old fashioned and weird is some points, the true it that Microsoft just invest a little to modernize it, and change some behaviors and requirements which are no longer justified, a good example is the IIS_WPG group requirement, this group doesn’t exist anymore, so you need to create it manually. Otherwise, BTARN installation fails.

In this case, the problem, as you can see in the figure above, is that I have two types of logon formats:

• The 2 default host instances, created by the BizTalk installation wizard, are defined as “\username” – without the domain or in this case the machine name (this is a standalone environment)
• And others are set up in the format “DOMAIN\Username”.

Well, regarding BTARN, if you want to avoid problems during the installation/configuration process or future problems in the runtime you should:

• Never use Full Qualify domain name in the Logon credentials. Otherwise, BTARN does not work correctly.
• To avoid BTARN problems use the down-level logon name format (DOMAIN\Username).

Solution

To solve this issue the solution was quite simples, I just need to configure the logon to all my host instance in the down-level logon name format (DOMAIN\Username).

After that, I was able to execute the BTARN configuration wizard without any further issues and especially no more user account was either not running or does not exist on this computer.

The post Microsoft BizTalk 2016 Accelerator for RosettaNet (BTARN) Configuration Wizard: A BizTalk Isolated Host instance configured with the user account was either not running or does not exist on this computer appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

This strange error does not occur often, perhaps from time to time, or in different environments, but in reality, I already had the “privilege” of encountering it more than once while I was trying to open the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS):

The Visual Studio component cache is out of date. Please restart Visual Studio.

Not really a BizTalk Server problem but you now that behind the curtains, BizTalk Server relies on SQL Server

Cause

The cause of this problem is unclear, and I wish I could have a better explanation to provide and in fact, there is an issue active opened in MSFT about this (see here).

I just assume that something may have happened, maybe an update or something similar, that left something in a corrupt or incorrect state… but despite that, the resolution to this problem is quite simple.

Solution

As I said above, the resolution to this problem is quite simple and you may have several approaches to accomplish that. One of them is to manually remove all the temporary files from the Windows operating system by:

• Exit all programs and then hold down the WINDOWS key and then type R to open the “Run” windows.
• In the “Run” window, type “%TMP%” and then click “OK”
• This will open the TEMP directory that normally is: C:\Users\<your_user_name>\AppData\Local\Temp
• Select and delete all the content of the TEMP folder

This approach always solved my problem.

But you can also try a different approach to do the same operations like:

• Open the Disk Cleanup utility.
• Make sure that you select the “Temporary files” option and then click on “OK”.

• When prompted up, select “Delete Files”

Again, if you now try to open Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio this The Visual Studio component cache is out of date. Please restart Visual Studio solution error message will have disappeared.

The post SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS): The Visual Studio component cache is out of date. Please restart Visual Studio. appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

BizTalk Server Administration Console cannot connect to WMI provider? The things I found from playing around with all kind of different environments from different clients and my personal ones (Hehe)… and I thought that I had already found all type of real or imaginary BizTalk errors, but once again I BizTalk Server prove me that I was wrong, this issue was new for me – who says that my BizTalk Consultant life is boring? (hehe).

Joking apart, I got the following error while trying to navigate in the BizTalk Server Administration Console in one of my personal environments:

TITLE: BizTalk Server Administration
——————————
Failed to load Group [BTS2016LAB01:BizTalkMgmtDb] data providers. (Microsoft.BizTalk.Administration.SnapIn)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=47400&ProdName=Microsoft+BizTalk+Server+2016&ProdVer=3.12.774.0&EvtSrc=Microsoft.BizTalk.Administration.SnapIn.Properties.Errors&EvtID=FailedLoadingGroupProviders&EvtChain=Microsoft.BizTalk.Administration.SnapIn.Properties.Errors+%2cFailedLoadingGroupProviders%3bMicrosoft.BizTalk.SnapIn.Framework.Properties.ErrorMessages+%2cConnectToWMIProviderFailed
——————————
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Failed to load Group [BTS2016LAB01:BizTalkMgmtDb] data providers. (Microsoft.BizTalk.Administration.SnapIn)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=47400&ProdName=Microsoft+BizTalk+Server+2016&ProdVer=3.12.774.0&EvtSrc=Microsoft.BizTalk.Administration.SnapIn.Properties.Errors&EvtID=FailedLoadingGroupProviders&EvtChain=Microsoft.BizTalk.SnapIn.Framework.Properties.ErrorMessages+%2cConnectToWMIProviderFailed
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Cannot connect to WMI provider. Ensure that the WMI service is running. (Microsoft.BizTalk.SnapIn.Framework)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=47400&ProdName=Microsoft+BizTalk+Server+2016&ProdVer=3.12.774.0&EvtSrc=Microsoft.BizTalk.SnapIn.Framework.Properties.ErrorMessages&EvtID=ConnectToWMIProviderFailed
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The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070422) (System.Management)
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BUTTONS:
OK
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Cause

The reason for the BizTalk Server Administration Console cannot connect to WMI provider is because the BTS Administration Console relies on Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service, more specifically, the BizTalk WMI Provider (BTSWMIProvider.dll) to perform all type of different queries into BizTalk Environment (or BizTalk databases)

And for that reason, Windows Management Instrumentation (Winmgmt) service need to be enabled and running on the server in which you are running the BizTalk Server Administration Console.

In my case, the problem was that while I was investigating the unnecessary services that I could disable to optimize BizTalk Server performance, I disable this important service.

Solution

As I mentioned above, the solution to this problem is to Enable and Start the Winmgmt service, you can accomplish that by:

• If the service is Disabled:
  • Press the “Windows key” to open the Start menu, type “Services” and click on “View local services” option from the Search window.
  • In the Services window, on the Services (Local) panel select the Windows Management Instrumentation service, right click and select “Properties” option.
    • On the Windows Management Instrumentation Properties (Local Computer) window:
    • On the General tab apply the following configuration.
    • Startup type: “Automatic”
    • And then click “Start” and “Apply”.

• If the service is Enable, you can simply:
  • Open a command prompt as administrator by pressing the “Windows key” to open the Start menu and type “cmd” in the Start Search box, right-click in “Command Prompt” and select from the context menu the “Run as administrator” option
  • And type the following command: net stat winmgmt

Once the Winmgmt service is running you will be able to use the BizTalk Server Administration Console without this error/problem happening.

The post BizTalk Server Administration Console cannot connect to WMI provider. Ensure that the WMI service is running. (Microsoft.BizTalk.SnapIn.Framework) appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

The funniest part of having an intern working and learning from you, especially for a person like me that really love to write about “Errors and Warnings, Causes and Solutions”, is that they are able to make the funniest and unexpected questions, they will find things that because we are so accustomed to doing the job and to avoiding them, that we do not even realize anymore that they exist and they are there.

So yesterday, after a solution deployment, my intern was complaining that he was always receiving the following error while creating a receive port:

TITLE: BizTalk Server Administration
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Concurrency Violation encountered while Updating the ReceivePort ‘rprtReceive’. The local, cached version of the BizTalk Server group configuration is out of date. You must refresh the BizTalk Server group configuration before making further changes. (Microsoft.BizTalk.ExplorerOM)

For help, click: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=47400&ProdName=Microsoft+BizTalk+Server+2016&ProdVer=3.12.774.0&EvtSrc=Microsoft.BizTalk.ExplorerOM.Resources&EvtID=IDS_ERR_OBJECT_CONCURRENCY
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BUTTONS:
OK
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Cause

While open and navigating in the BizTalk Administration Console you will notice that the first request on expanding the navigation tree or open a BizTalk Server Application or Host Instance will take longer time that further interactions, this because in the first request the Administration Console will query your BizTalk databases for information and after that in cache the result.

So, unless you force a refresh it will use that cache information, nevertheless it will have some kind of mechanism (like a hash) to verify if the cache is updated will the current BizTalk Server Configuration on the database when you try to perform an operation like create or change a Receive Location.

Assuming that you deploy a new version or new artifact to a BizTalk Application, you need to refresh that Application before you perform any kind of operations, otherwise, you will receive this or similar errors.

The reason for this error to happen was that my intern already had the BizTalk Administration Console running and he was already focused (selected) the Application in concern before he went and deploy a new version of the solution from Visual Studio. After he deploy

SOLUTION

This is, in fact, a simple problem to solve:

• Concurrency Violation encountered while Updating the ReceivePort – Option 1:
  • Close the BizTalk Administration Console and open again (stupid and simple)
• Concurrency Violation encountered while Updating the ReceivePort – Option 2:
  • Right-click on the BizTalk Application you want to refresh, and then select the “Refresh” option

• Concurrency Violation encountered while Updating the ReceivePort – Option 3:
  • Select the resource inside your BizTalk Application you want to refresh, for example, “Receive Locations” and press F5

There are several alternatives. The important is to refresh the BizTalk Administration Console if something had changed in your BizTalk Server environment.

The post BizTalk Server Administration Console: Concurrency Violation encountered while Updating the ReceivePort. The local, cached version of the BizTalk Server group configuration is out of date. appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.

I decided to update my Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack with a set of 24 new shapes (maybe the smallest update I ever did to this package) mainly to add the Azure Event Grid shapes.

One of the main reasons for me to initially create the package was to have a nice set of Integration (Messaging) shapes that I could use in my diagrams, and during the time it scaled to a lot of other things.

With these new additions, this package now contains an astounding total of ~1311 shapes (symbols/icons) that will help you visually represent Integration architectures (On-premise, Cloud or Hybrid scenarios) and Cloud solutions diagrams in Visio 2016/2013. It will provide symbols/icons to visually represent features, systems, processes, and architectures that use BizTalk Server, API Management, Logic Apps, Microsoft Azure and related technologies.

• BizTalk Server
• Microsoft Azure
  • Azure App Service (API Apps, Web Apps, Mobile Apps and Logic Apps)
  • API Management
  • Event Hubs & Event Grid
  • Service Bus
  • Azure IoT and Docker
  • SQL Server, DocumentDB, CosmosDB, MySQL, …
  • Machine Learning, Stream Analytics, Data Factory, Data Pipelines
  • and so on
• Microsoft Flow
• PowerApps
• Power BI
• Office365, SharePoint
• DevOpps: PowerShell, Containers
• And much more…

The Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack v2.6 is composed by 13 files:

• Microsoft Integration Stencils v2.6
• MIS Apps and Systems Logo Stencils v2.6
• MIS Azure Portal, Services and VSTS Stencils v2.6
• MIS Azure SDK and Tools Stencils v2.6
• MIS Azure Services Stencils v2.6
• MIS Deprecated Stencils v2.6
• MIS Developer v2.6
• MIS Devices Stencils v2.6
• MIS IoT Devices Stencils v2.6
• MIS Power BI v2.6
• MIS Servers and Hardware Stencils v2.6
• MIS Support Stencils v2.6
• MIS Users and Roles Stencils v2.6

These are some of the new shapes you can find in this new version:

• Azure Event Grid
• Azure Event Subscriptions
• Azure Event Topics
• BizMan
• Integration Developer
• OpenAPI
• APIMATIC
• Load Testing
• API Testing
• Performance Testing
• Bot Services
• Azure Advisor
• Azure Monitoring
• Azure IoT Hub Device Provisioning Service
• Azure Time Series Insights
• And much more

You can download Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack from:
Microsoft Integration Stencils Pack for Visio 2016/2013 (11,4 MB)
Microsoft | TechNet Gallery

The post Microsoft Integration (Azure and much more) Stencils Pack v2.6 for Visio 2016/2013: Azure Event Grid, BizMan, IoT and much more appeared first on SANDRO PEREIRA BIZTALK BLOG.