BizTalk maps – problem solving scenarios

If we consider the BizTalk architecture;

from the 'BizTalk Server: Presentations Gallery' We can see that there are 3 possible places where your maps are executed (in classic BizTalk);

• Inbound (on the receive port)
• Outbound (on the send port)
• Business Process (within an orchestration)

So if there any problems, which approach should we follow, which options do we have…I hope to answer this in the following section, and these are things to think about, it’s not enforced, or defined in a book, it just a good thing, to be aware of your options and have a strategy. Solving an BizTalk map issue in a live environment;

• We have an issue, we know it is in the map (analysis of the exception, output)
• We let the team from ‘fixoursystem-land’ solve the issue in their dev, they test it before usage
• We deploy it to the test environment, they test it before usage (deployed by a dev/admin)
• We deploy it to the critical/live environment….(deployed by an admin)
• We need to ensure that the correct version is deployed….how?

At this point, we don’t know if the referenced schemas, maps, are still aligned. The developer might have build against a different version of the schema, that change has gone through test etc. Although this should not happen because of version control, change management procedures, but if it comes to ‘critical issues’ these steps are often ignored!
Let’s consider the options that we have in this scenario, can we do a test without visual studio?

	DEV	ACC	PROD
Visual Studio allowed	Yes	No	No
Risk of corrupting a system when running tests	Low	High	Unacceptable
Testing maps possible without live environment	Yes	No	No

So basically no way, without possibly changing the connected systems! Considering each environment, we typically have the following options are available…  

DEV

·         Testing maps using inbound/outbound/within an orchestration

o   Visual Studio

o   Live on the BizTalk environment by submitting messages

o   Single part, supported by ‘Test map’

·         Requirements

o   Visual Studio

o   Live environment (low risk of corrupting a system)

·         Drawbacks

o   Multi part are only supported by manually creating a message using ‘Test map’, ‘Generate instance’ per schema, copy paste required structures

TEST

·         Testing maps using inbound/outbound/within an orchestration

o   Visual Studio (not recommended having this on this environment, but possible)

o   Live on the BizTalk environment by submitting messages (low risk of corrupting a system)

·         Requirements

o   Visual Studio

o   Live environment (medium risk of mutating external systems, backup is probably available, data can be removed)

o   Alternative: Retrieve dll from the GAC and run it on the DEV environment (risk of version conflicts)

·         Drawbacks

o   Timeconsuming

o   Risk of errors

ACC/PROD:

·         Single part message

o   Visual Studio (not recommended having this on this environment, but possible)

o   Live on the BizTalk environment by submitting messages (low risk of corrupting a system)

·         Multi part message

o   Manually, by creating messages on a DEV environment (low risk of corrupting a system as TEST is)

·         Requirements

o   Visual Studio

o   Live environment (high risk of mutating external systems, backup is probably not available, data cannot be removed)

o   Alternative: Retrieve dll from the GAC and run it on the DEV environment (risk of version conflicts)

·         Drawbacks

o   Timeconsuming

o   Risk of manual errors

 

Just for these situations, where you need more than the standard offering provides, go where no man has gone before, there is a tool (without any warranty), which enables you to do a lot more. This tool is called the ‘Map Test tool’ developed by Tomasso Groenendijk. This enables the following scenarios:

·         Test maps which are not yet deployed (so basically, only test the dll)

·         Test maps which are deployed

·         Test Multipart maps (using a wizard)

So not saying you should, but now you could ensure that a fix has been applied correctly, even on an environment without Visual Studio installed.

Using the tool

Follow the next steps to test a map with real data from multiple input messages:

Click in the File menu on the menu item “Create envelope with multiple input messages”.

In the Wizard pop-up click on the “Add File” button to select a XML file to add to the envelope. You can select multiple input messages. Click on “Finish” to create the envelope.

Enter the filename of the envelope in the “Save As” pop-up and click on the “Save” button.

Enter the fully qualified name of the map and click on the “Test Map” button to test the map.

In the Result tab is the transformed message shown. In the Info screen is the execution time shown and the name of the transformed file.

 

Even though this tool was already very sophisticated, I couldn’t stand having to manually go ahead and look up the Fully qualified name, so I made a minor contribution ‘AssemblyPicker’ which lets you select the map from the GAC.

 

You can select all the maps residing inside an assembly and pick the map you need;

 

You can find the latest version here

 

Note: As I also use the ESB Rule tester quite often, I also added a ‘Policy Picker’, which should be included in the new version as well :)

HTH,

Sander

Tags van Technorati: BizTalk,Mapping