Integrating to the max...BizTalk Style

Update (12-09-2013): slides can be found here http://www.slideshare.net/SanderNefs/biz-talk-deployment-framework-stripped As a consultant, my role is to give advice, work on projects and help out customers. As I don’t want to be the Single Point of Truth, my approach is to  transfer my knowledge in workshops/sessions with the internal developers or people who I think should know about certain technologies. In the past i’ve used the BizTalk Deployment Framework (BTDF) quite often. I have experienced that getting to know the concepts and working with it, is a developers choice , however this choice  impacts the way administrators need to work. This post summarizes my experiences and contains some of the slides i used when having workshops on the BTDF, with some caveats, and thinks to think about. First of all, why? Why would i need a new framework, what is wrong with the way i do my deployments right now? Nothing , however, in certain cases, you might run into some limita...

This post hopefully helps when facing the aforementioned error while depkiying, buildingwith the btdf. Problem warning : Assembly “……" depends on the following assemblies that must be installed in the Global Assembly Cache What is the dll we get the error on????? Follow the next step to get more info. Cause One or more of your projects have a reference to an Assembly, which has Copy ‘Local = false’. This causes the GacUtil called by MSBuild / BTDF to do it’s best to keep you busy.   Solution Open ALL your projects, look in every refence for the ‘Copy Local’ and change it to True Result EXEC : warning : Assembly "<>.Orchestrations, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=<>" depends on the following assemblies that must be installed in the Global Assembly Cache for runtime to succeed:   Assembly "Microsoft.Practices.ESB.ExceptionHandling.Schemas.Faults, Version=2.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"...

The BizTalk deployment framework is being so greatly maintained by Thomas F. Abraham and Scott Colestock that i can proudly say there is another update. After raising a request for an update to include additional shortcuts to be able to update SSO / Bindings information without doing a full deploy (which was possible with some custom command line tools), i am really happy that 2 days after my request, it has been implemented, and a day later a new release is out there; Release 5.1 beta 2 (supports BizTalk 2013); Change history (and new features). How to migrate from an earlier version   Keep up the great job!   - download the new version - uninstall – install - create a new build - install and then…watch the new features (only what i requested is shown, there plenty more where that came from!) So importing the bindings, updating the SSO settings is now a matter of updating the SettingsFileGenerator (overwriting the file) and click on the particular shortcut...

Recently i tried to get a BizTalk 2013 up and running. As i normally do, i use the BTDF to deploy the whole bunch of projects, so i downloaded the betaversion 5.1 from codeplex, and started the deployment. Unfortenately i ran into a problem when trying to deploy to the SSO store. I thought, let’s go crazy and enable SSO, unfortenately, this wasn’t a cakewalk, it wasn’t my birthday, but was certainly treated on some stuff i didn’t request, the pop-up; And of course, the error that helps you out in tough times; C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\DeploymentFrameworkForBizTalk\5.0\BizTalkDeploymentFramework.targets(1684,5): error MSB3073: The command ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Deployment Framework for BizTalk\5.1\Framework\DeployTools\SSOSettingsFileImport.exe" "<…>" /settingsFile:"<…> " /userGroupName:"BizTalk Application Users" /adminGroupName:"BizTalk Server Administrators"" exited with code -532459699. Build FAILE...

  Please mind the difference with uninstall / install in the wizard. This assumes for a multi server deployment that you uninstall it in the reverse order as you installed to software. If you always install in the order Node A, Node B, uninstall Node A, Node B, you might want to consider changing the install/uninstall wizard text to minimize the confusion   Sander

  Hereby a list of practices I now tend to follow after some experience with it, I have additional features that I will share in the future, but at the beginning of the project, please think about all (and more) settings such as; Choice: Disable starting of ports etc <StartApplicationOnDeploy>False</StartApplicationOnDeploy> <StartReferencedApplicationsOnDeploy>False</StartReferencedApplicationsOnDeploy> <EnableAllReceiveLocationsOnDeploy>False</EnableAllReceiveLocationsOnDeploy> Rationale : Starting applications is useful on dev/test not on accp/prod) Note: These settings are part of the ‘standard’ settings, which to my knowledge cannot be overwritten, therefore you should choose the safest option.   Choice: Always use masterbindings Rationale : Standardisation, in all application you will use, there will be some ports that use masterbindings. If this is used from the start all projects will have the same structure. In mos...

  The BizTalk Deployment Framework utilizes MSBuild and is therefore highly flexible. In case you wan’t to use FILE ports in DEV and an entirely different protocol in TEST you have 2 options: 1) Use Macros and leverage the XmlPreprocess and Masterbindings functionality 2) Override the Portbindings/PortbindingsMaster MSBuild property. I will show you how to realize option #2 Configure the binding file in the BTDF Settings file Configure the BTDF Project        </PropertyGroup>        <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">               <PortBindings> $(Portbindings) </PortBindings>               <OutputPath>bin\debug\</OutputPath>               <DeployPDBsToGac...

  As I mentioned…I have a blog backlog…so much to do, so little time…so you can help me out. I have several pending blog items. Hereby the current list and I invite you to help me out in determining the priority, otherwise…it will be me who chooses what’s next . Sorry for the delay in posting….   Kind regards, Sander

In my last post I described how to set up a build server for Biztalk well….a build server isn’t completed with a build monitor tool! Installing VS.Net + TFS Client installs a tool out of the box; It provides a clean interface and even allows you to view the details of the build!   If you have the ability to setup a machine with TFS access and a dedicated monitor you can use the BuildMonitor …   Happy building!   Sander

This chapter describes the steps to a TFS Build Server to set up BizTalk deployment with the following functionality: • Build solution • Perform unit testing Using BizUnit • Create Deployment Packages Using BDTF • Deploy to Server Using R packages created in previous step • Create documentation BizTalkDocumenter For this the following steps are required: • Installation Components (30 min) • Configuring a build account (30 min) • Setting up the build service (30 min) • Scrum template installation (30 min) • Share for the build output directory (10 min) • Adjustments Build Template for use BTDF (30 min) • Design of build definitions (60 min) • Setting BTDF (60 min) • Use BTDF • Build execution / scheduling UPDATE (21-06-2013) - When using sharedassemblies, the following URL is a big help http://mohamedradwan.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/set-custom-assemblies-path-for-host-build-service-on-the-cloud/ - For viewing the basic instructions a video is available on the following blog http:...