Configuring the BizTalk Administrator

To configure our application, we are going to use BizTalk Server Administrator. I won’t go into too much detail on this, as it would take an entire book just to explain how to use all the administration tasks, and how can they affect your application’s performance. Instead I will cover only the configurations needed to get our small application running.

To open the BizTalk Server Administration Console, take the following steps:

1. Click Start.
2. Select Programs.
3. Select Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010.
4. Select BizTalk Server Administration.

On the left side of the Administrator, you have a tree view that allows you to navigate between these console options and components. Once you open the tree, you will find the Applications node containing our deployed applications. As you can see, our MyFirstBizTalkApp is available as a child of the Applications node. If you expand it, you will find all elements of this application organized into folders, which contain all artifacts created in the BizTalk developer environment (schemas, maps, orchestrations, ports, and any other resources).

First view of the BizTalk Administrator

In our example from Chapter 8, we developed a simple application with one receive port, one send port, and a transformation. In order to test it, we need to manually bind a physical location for the receive messages and a physical location for the send messages, specify which process (host instance) they will running, and then bind these ports to those existing in our orchestration.

In order to make our application work, we need to complete the following steps:

5. Configure the receive port and location.
6. Configure the send port and location.
7. Configure the orchestration.
8. Start the application.
9. Test the application.

Configure the receive port

Our first step is configuring the receive port. Select the Receive Ports option in the Application Node in the tree view window on the left. The Receive Ports folder will open. To create a new receive port, right-click in the center of the screen, select New, and then select One-Way Receive Port, as you can see in Figure 79.

Create a new receive port

BizTalk Administrator will start a wizard that will assist you with the configuration. As you can see in the following figure, you need to set up a receive port name and the authentication level. For our example, select No authentication, as we won’t need any to handle our receive messages.

Configure receive port

Next, click Receive Locations in the left pane of the wizard screen. This where we are going to tell BizTalk to use a specific physical location as our message receiving location. Click New... in the Receive Locations window.

Create a new receive location

This will open a new Receive Locations window, in which you select the adapter you need to use from one of the following out-of-the-box options:

• FILE
• FTP
• HTTP
• MQSeries
• MSMQ
• POP3
• SOAP
• SQL
• WCF
• Windows SharePoint Services

As you can see, BizTalk allows for many adapters. An adapter is a software component that enables you to easily send messages out of or receive messages into BizTalk Server with a delivery mechanism that conforms to a commonly recognized standard, such as SMTP, POP3, FTP, or Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ). As Microsoft BizTalk Server has evolved, the need for adapters that quickly enable connectivity with commonly used applications and technologies has increased. For our example, we will use the FILE transport type.

Select FILE in the Type combo box, and select the Receive handler for this port, which by default will be BizTalk Server Application. Don’t forget to select XMLReceive in the Receive pipeline field; this way the message will be disassembled and the subscribers can be identified. Otherwise, if you choose the PassThruReceive pipeline, BizTalk will raise an error saying that no subscribers were identified.

Now click Configure so that you can define the URI for your location.

Receive Location Properties

Next, you will be prompted with a FILE Transport Properties window in which you can set the Receive folder path. This will be our simulating Receive Server. Since we will be dealing with XML files as input, select the file mask *.xml so that only xml files will be processed.

Configure receive folder

Click OK in the FILE Transport Properties window, and continue to click OK for all open windows for this Receive Port configuration. When you are done, you will see a new object inside the Receive Ports folder, which is your recently created port.

Created receive port

Now you’ll do the same for the send port—the only difference is the pipeline you will use. Since we are expecting our result message format and the BizTalk internal message format to be XML, you don’t need any special processing, so you can use the PassThruSend pipeline. Once you create the send port, you should see it appear in the Send Port folder. The only difference will be a red symbol in the Status field port, which indicates that this port is stopped.

Unlisted ports

Right-click the port and select Start. Now you should see a green symbol indicating that the status has changed to Started.

Started port

Configure the Orchestration

This is our last configuration step, and we are simply going to bind our physical ports to the logical ports developed in our orchestration. Double-click your orchestration in the Orchestration folder; you will see the Orchestration Properties window in the tree view on the left of the Administrator. Select the host, choosing the default BizTalk Server Application, and for each receive and send port, use the combo box to bind them to the physical ports created previously in this Administrator Console. Once you complete this step, our application configuration is complete, and we are ready to start and test it.

Bind the orchestration to the physical ports

Start the application

The next step is to start the application, which is a very simple step: just right-click MyFirstBizTalkApp and select Start.... Next, BizTalk will ask if you want to start, and you should select Start to confirm.

Start the application

Test the application

This is our final step—testing that the application works. To do so, we need to build our XML XML message; for this example I will use the following.

Input xml

Now let’s use it in our receive location. Just go to your Receive Server folder and drop the input’s XML file. If everything goes well with the configurations, BizTalk will automatically make it disappear.

Drop the input file to the receive location

Once the file disappears, go to your Send Server location, which should contain a new message.

Send Server with new message

If you open this file, you will see that the input message was transformed using our developed map, and the expected result is the following:

Result message

One Last Note

BizTalk Server is a powerful platform that can be applied to multiple project types. It not only allows you to integrate data, use business rules engines, and monitor your business using its Business Activity Monitoring, but above all it allows you to connect people, systems, and businesses using business processes and workflows. Another nice feature that I haven’t talked about in this book is the ability to create EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) projects, which is more than a standard for exchanging documents between business partners.

This book was meant to show you how to start developing with this platform; however, BizTalk has inspired a whole world of professions around it, including developers, database administrators, managers, integration consultants, and much more. There are many resources available to you if you wish to continue your learning.

Although it might seem like a new technology, it has existed since the year 2000, and many people share their knowledge every day on topics related to this platform. Time spent studying it is a valuable investment, and I am pretty sure it will open many work opportunities for you.

My final note goes to BizTalk Server 2013 R2, which brings even more powerful features to this product. One of the biggest features is the ability to connect your applications to Azure services, eliminating the need to have a physical infrastructure to develop some integration solutions, as well as significant improvements in its adapters and execution efficiency.