Tuesday, August 30, 2005

 

Biztalk orchestration compiling bug

For some rare reason, I have this bug happened when compiling biztalk project.
The port type,port and messages are there but the compiler complained that they are missing. The compilation of the project will fail. Looking at the orchestration GUI, there is not RED flag. It is very frustrating because the project was compiled in the last work day and not the current day when you just open it up.

I fixed this by breaking the link between the port and the receive/send shape, then compile.
This will fail and the failure is intentional. Next, re-link the port and the receive/send shape, then compile. Compilation is now successful.

Friday, August 05, 2005

 

Why smart people defend bad ideas

http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay40.htm

Thursday, August 04, 2005

 

One simple large message config


By default, the chunk size and threshold size are too small for large xml files.
This makes biztalk too "chatty".
Here is the config that help me a lot:

 

Convoys and discarded messages

http://www.canonical-ltd.com/publicdoc/Convoys_problems.pdf

 

BizTalk Server 2004 Adapter for Printing

http://geekswithblogs.net/abhijeet/archive/2005/05/29/40886.aspx
Cool!

 

Microsoft Adds Eight Application Adapters for BizTalk Server

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.asp?Symbol=US:MSFT&Feed=PR&Date=20050802&ID=5011506
Technology Purchase From iWay Software Enhances BizTalk Server Application Connectivity.

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. MSFT today announced the acquisition of eight .NET-based application adapters from iWay Software to be made available by Microsoft in early 2006. This acquisition reflects Microsoft's commitment to BizTalk(R) Server by providing customers with a single architecture, customer support and licensing process. In addition to the adapters in Microsoft's newly expanded portfolio, iWay and other industry partners will continue to deliver additional adapters that address the needs of enterprise customers.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20050802/SFTU050 )

"We're committed to making Microsoft(R) BizTalk Server the most complete offering for our customers. Part of that commitment is providing adapters for the most commonly used line-of-business applications and technologies," said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Business Process and Integration Division at Microsoft. "Our existing adapter partners will continue to be a critical part of our strategy to provide total connectivity in complex IT environments."

The adapters Microsoft purchased will help BizTalk Server customers connect more easily to third-party applications from Amdocs, JD Edwards, Oracle Corp., PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems Inc. and TIBCO Software Inc. iWay customers that have purchased licenses for the .NET-based adapters will receive a license for the corresponding Microsoft adapter with the purchase of Software Assurance.

 

Covast EDI 997 how to

Not as simple as the base EDI 997, which is as easy as turning on a configuration on the GUI.
1. Covast EDI 997 requires the 997 schema to be imported to CovastDB database through the use of Covast Studio.

2. There are "map" text file schemas that go together with the 997 schema. I speculate these are for internal temp text files that bundle many 997 information in an interchange. Think of it like a batch 997 because 997 can be batched at document-level and interchange-level(a batch of documents). I have seen these map file in there run-time dump form. Map files must also be imported using Covast Studio.
-->1. and 2. form a 997 deployment package that can be download off Covast website.

3. There are many version of the deployment package.
For example: 997 4010; 997 4050.
4010, 4050, 4060 versions of the 997s correspond to the versions of the envelope of the inbound edi documents. This point is important because an inbound edi of version 4050 can be enclosed inside an envelope of version 4010. In fact, for example, 850-4050 and 820-4060 can be both enclosed in an envelope of version 4010! There will be a blog about how to configure Covast EDI receive port to allow this.

 

Biztalk Base EDI 997 functional acknowlegement

From MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/operations/htm/ebiz_prog_adapt_edi_izkk.asp

 

Sun makes SOA play with SeeBeyond

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/28/sun_seebeyond/
Sun Microsystems is buying its way into the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) club dominated by IBM, with the $387m purchase of SeeBeyond Technologies.

As part of the deal, announced early Tuesday, SeeBeyond's 60 sales staff will be used to lead Sun's own sales efforts pitching a range of Sun-branded SOA tools and adaptors to customers. SeeBeyond has a total of 814 employees - most of which are expected to join Sun.

Sun will integrate SeeBeyond's Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) suite into the Java Enterprise System (JES) while, Sun said, also continuing to make ICAN available as a separate product. ICAN, which already supports a number of Sun products, will stretch to cover all of Sun's enterprise software products during the next six months.

ICAN is SeeBeyond's integration platform, providing drag-and-drop tools for application, data and business integration, and is capable of working in Java, XML and SQL. ICAN allows customers to build composite applications, an architecture that uses features and data found in other applications and assembled as a service.

SeeBeyond has 2,000 enterprise customers spanning manufacturing and health, with possibly its highest profile deal being the $28m e-record system, integrating data in legacy systems for the UK's National Health Service (NHS).

Jim Demetriades, SeeBeyond founder and chief executive, told The Register: "We are going to lead [Sun's] sales team in the sale of SOAs, and train and teach Sun's sales people."

Scott McNealy, Sun chairman and CEO said the idea mirrored Sun's $4.1bn StorageTek acquisition. "That increased our data management expertise by an order of magnitude. They [SeeBeyond] are the lead dog in this space, without a doubt."

Purchase of an integration company by Sun is long overdue and comes at the point when the industry is turning integration into a SOA story - where applications and data are delivered as services. Until now, Sun filled the integration gap in its portfolio through a technology and marketing partnership with SeeBeyond, to port components of ICAN to JES.

IBM is the largest vendor in this space, according to analysts, having been locked in competition, primarily, with BEA Systems for the top slot. SeeBeyond has been competing against IBM, BEA and smaller vendors like webMethods.

Lacking its own integration product, Sun has led the Java Business Integration (JBI) specification through the Java Community Process (JCP). JBI provides a way for different integration architectures to talk to each other through Java.

Sun announced backing from 19 companies for JBI on Monday, in addition to releasing its Java Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), a reference implementation of JBI, to the community. SeeBeyond will become Sun's JBI implementation, Sun said.

Acquisition of SeeBeyond signals a growing presence by Sun in vertical markets and small and medium businesses (SMBs). Sun will work with Systems Integrators and consultants like Accenture and EDS to build reference architectures to integrate applications and systems in specific markets.

IBM has been successful in taking knowledge from its services organization in specific sectors and wrapping that with WebSphere middleware integration tools to help customers integrate legacy systems and build SOAs.

Demetriades said 34 per cent of SeeBeyond's revenue comes from the health sector, of which a large proportion of customers can be considered SMBs with between $5m and $25m in annual revenue. Around 60 per cent of SeeBeyond's revenue comes from manufacturing, finance and government. ®

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

 

Covast Engine Input File Locking (EIF)

Covast Engine Input File Locking (EIF)
Schema validation failed: Repository was locked on host [hostname] by process [xsd2edi], processid [nnn]

Sympton: Build output:
XSD2EDI failed to convert XSD: Can't lock repository because it is already locked
You can google this but let me just quote it from one existing blog:
http://weblogs.ilg.com/brumfieldb/category/54.aspx
The above blogger has some good HIPPA blog too.
---Quote
We've been using the Covast EDI Accelerator for BizTalk 2004 recently as part of a solution for a client. One issue we've run into and have just discovered the solution for is that the Engine Input File (EIF) file may get locked if your process is killed while compiling the EIF file.

There may be legitimate reasons for these to be locked (such as another user actually changing the EIF file), but if you are sure that no one else should be editing the file, you can remove the locking flag manually.

To do so, go to the Covast database. Find the parame table and set the value in repolock column to NULL (Ctrl-0 in Enterprise Manager). I believe there should only be one row in this table, so that will be the row you edit.
--End Quote--

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

 

Splitting XML and retain parent and grand parent info

Splitting XML and retain parent and grand parent info.

Based on some splitting XML using Xpath blog on the Net, I have a new variation of it done.
This blog only split a parent, child structure.

I adapted it to have lower bound and upperbound for the xpath loop.
This way, I can split this xml.
GrandParent1
Parent1
Child1
Child2

Into 2 xml files:
GrandParent1
Parent1
Child1

GrandParent1
Parent1
Child2

This just recently helped me to batch some Covast EDI (will be explained in another post) with a very strict requirement.

I will put the source code on soon.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?