Can a message select between an 'older' or 'latest' version of the orchestration he'd like to be prosessed by ?
thanks
If you're talking about the version fo the DLL in the GAC, I don't think this is possible. But if you maintain two seperate Orchestrations, you can use a promoted property to route the message to the appropriate orchestration. If it's more complicated than that, you can have a single receiving orchestration for themessage type and it can call the appropriate orchestration based on whatever criteria you can code into it. This is still the send port groups deciding which messages they want to run. Another approach would be Dynamic Send Ports. This really gives you the freedom to move direction of the message into the orchestration/app itself.
The Microsoft ESB 2.0 Guidance has some extensive thoughts on Itineraries which as I understand it, is the concept of the message containing specific processing steps on board. I am still digesting this, but it may be something to look at.
Related
What I'm trying to do is set up a decoupled/flexible framework/strategy for all applications I develop in the future, that includes as much 're-use' as possible. Preferably what I'd love to have in the end is a single orchestration that I can 'plug-in' to any other orchestration which will take a message and send to a send adapter and return the response to the calling orchestration (having converted the received response to XML dynamically based on the constructed message to the adapter). This would require being able to set the receive pipeline on the message in the orchestration.
Am I on the right track here? I can't find much on what the best practice is in regards to artifact re-use in BizTalk.
Such comes up from time to time and I can tell you, it just never works out. You will spend a lot of time building essentially a framework, only to never actually use it beyond a handful of situations.
Meaning, no one tries this anymore because it was never actually useful. You might want to look at the ESB Toolkit, but even that almost always makes things more complicated than needed.
If you describe some of your scenarios, we can give the best advice.
Has anyone got an elegant way to resolve an ordered delivery send port (with stop sending subsequent messages ticked) that has suspended (non-resumeable)?
Please let me know how you handle it. Do you use any tools, or created any custom tools.
Not a good way out of the box. We have developed some utility to save these messages in case required using BizTalk Explorer OM, however BizTalk Explorer OM also has a limitation of saving only 50 messages in one single service instance. So your best bet is to make sure you have a way to replay those messages from outside by keeping a copy of message.
When considering a service in NServiceBus at what point do you start questioning how many messages handled by a service is too much and start to break these into a new service?
Consider the following: I have a sales service which can currently be broken into a few distinct business components, these are sales order validation, sales order processing, purchase order validation and purchase order processing.
There are currently about 20 message handlers and 2 sagas used within this service. My concern is that during high volume traffic from my website this can cause an initial spike in the messages to jump into the hundreds. Considering that the messages need to be processed in the order they are taken off the queue this can cause a delay for the last in the queue ( depending on what processing each message does).
When separating concerns within a service into smaller business components I find this makes things a little easier. Sure, it's a logical separation, but it seems to provide a layer of clarity and understanding. To me it seems it seems an easier option to do this than creating new services where in the end the more services I have the more maintenance I need to do.
Does anyone have any similar concerns to this?
I think you have actually answered you own question :)
As soon as the message volume reaches a point where the lag becomes an issue you could look to instance your endpoint. You do not necessarily need to reduce the number of handlers. You could simply install the service a number of times and have specific message types sent to the relevant endpoint by mapping.
So it becomes a matter of a simple instance installation and some config changes. So you can then either split messages on sending so that messages from a particular source end up on a particular endpoint (maybe priority) or on message type.
I happened to do the same thing on a previous project (not using NServiecBus though) where we needed document conversion messages coming from the UI to be processed ASAP. We simply installed the conversion service again with its own set of queues and changed the UI configuration to send the conversion messages to the new endpoint. The background conversion messages were still going to the previous endpoint. So here the source determined the separation.
I’m a complete newbie at BizTalk and I need to create a BizTalk 2006 application which broadcasts messages in a specific way. I’m not asking for a complete solution, but for advise and guidelines, which capabilities of BizTalk I should use.
There’s a message source, for simplicity, say, a directory where the user adds files to publish them. There are several subscribers, each having a directory to receive published files. The number of subscribers can vary in the course of exploitation of the program. There are also some rules which determine if a particular subscriber needs to receive a particular file, based on the filename. For example, each subscriber has a pattern or mask of filename which files they receives must match. Those rules (for example, patterns) can change in time as well.
I don’t know how to do this. Create a set of send ports at runtime, each for each destination? Is it possible? Use one port changing its binding? Would it work correctly with concurrent sendings? Are there other ways?
EDIT
I realized my question may be to obscure and general to prefer one answer over another to accept. So I just upvoted them.
You could look at using dynamic send ports to achieve this - if your subscribers are truly dynamic. This introduces a bit of complexity since you'll need to use an orchestration to configure the send port's properties based on your rules.
If you can, try and remove the complexity. If you know that you don't need to be truly dynamic when adding subscribers (i.e. a subscriber and it's rules can be configured one time only) and you have a manageable number of subscribers then I would suggest configuring each subscriber using it's own send port and use a filter to create subscriptions based on message context properties. The beauty of this approach is that you don't need to create and deploy an orchestration and this becomes a highly performant and scalable solution.
If the changes to the destination are going to be frequent, you are right in seeking a more dynamic solution. One nice solution is using dynamic send ports and the Business Rules Engine. You create rule set for the messages you are receving. This could be based on a destination property or customer ID in the message. Using these facts, the rules engine can return a bunch of information like file mask, server name, ip address of deleiver server, etc. You can thenuse this information to configure the dynamic send in the orchestration. The real nice thing here is that you can update the rule set in the rules engine without redeploying the whole solution. As a newb, these are some advanced concepts, but not as diificult as you may think.
For a simpler solution, you might want to look at setting the FILE Send adapters properties via it's Propery Schema (ie. File name, Directory, etc.). You could pull these values from a database with a helper class inside an expresison shape. On each message ogig out, use the property shcema to set where the message will be sent and named. This way, you just update the database as things change.
Good Luck!
I am not sure if I ask the right question, but this is the scenario I am trying to run:
Multiple files (XML and a few related files, "attachments") have to get into BizTalk as a single message. I have looked into existing adapters, and don't see that done with existing once. To be more accurate, files are taken from file system. Files are not found at the same time, but arrive one at a time, when order is not ensured. XML (content) file is the one that knows what attachments it has to have (what other files).
We are looking into BizTalk 2009 and I was wondering would be that responsibility of a custom Adaptor, or something else. And were I could look for samples.
Thanks.
It is probably possible to do what you want using a custom adapter, though I'd recommend against it. You can achieve what you require using orchestration.
What you are looking for is likey a convoy, or at the least some use of correlation.
In BizTalk a convoy is a messaging pattern (as opposed a BizTalk feature) that allows groups of messages to be processed by a single orchestration.
You essentially use correlation on a receive port to group messages together in either a parallel (what you probably want) or sequential fashion.
There is an article [here](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms942189(BTS.10\).aspx) by Stephen W. Thomas about convoys (it is for BT 2004 but the concepts still hold) and there is a lot of additional information on the web and in books (Professional BizTalk server 2006 has a subsection on them)
Without more details on your scenario it is hard to know exactly how the convoy would be built but below are two approaches to look at (also, I've not had a chance to properly use BT2009 so there may be extended support for correlation scenarios that help you out).
Flexible Correlation
If you don't know anything about the files listed in the context XML you will probably need a pattern like the one described by Charles Young in this post.
Non-uniform sequential convoy
If you do have a little bit of info before hand one way might be as follows (basically a Non-uniform sequential convoy):
This makes the assumption that there is some way of linking all the files together so you can correlate them.
Create a single orchestration that subscribes to you inbound receive port (which contains the file receive location).
This orchestration will have a single activation receive shape that is set up for your content file.
Once the orchestration is started by a content file a second correlated receive shape starts picking up the messages that match that content file. (this second receive could possible be in a loop to allow for variable numbers of files)
You then pack them all together into a single outbound file of your design and send them out once the full number of files has been received.
Seems to me a better approach would be to implement the above requirements with a combination of a custom pipeline component and/or a custom adapter. I assume you do not really need to manipulate the incoming files - except for the content XML file - or that you couldn't since they are in binary format. This calls for a custom pipeline component.
What you can do is develop a custom BizTalk adapter to interact with the file system and to implement the listening and looping logic. Next you can develop a custom pipeline component to create a single BizTalk message perhaps with base64 data type in it for binary data. Additionally you could also promote messages right in this component to enable orchestration subscriptions.
Orchestrations are more suited for implementing business work-flow scenarios where the messages are already in XML format. This do not appear to be the case. In any case I think at the very least a custom pipeline component would be needed.
David's answer is the correct answer.
Even in cases where you don't know absolutely nothing about the contents of the expected attachments, surely you know their names and locations. Therefore you can use the Flexible Correlation linked to in david's answer like this:
The key to the solution is to correlate on the builtin BTS.ReceivedFileName property.
First, create a custom receive pipeline, with a custom pipeline component that promotes the BTS.ReceivedFileName context property of the received messages. This simple custom component is fairly easy to write but you can make it straightforward by using third-party frameworks such as, (shameless plug, here) my PipelineComponentBase class or the excellent BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard.
Now for the easy part:
Attachments are received in a specific location, designated by its path on the filesystem.
Create a receive location that listens to an alternate location, used only to control when files are actually swallowed by BizTalk.
In your orchestration, create a correlation type with the BTS.ReceivedFileName property and a correlation set base on this correlation type.
When you want to receive binary attachments, send a dummy message with the BTS.ReceivedFileName context property set to the filename of the binary attachment but with the path matching the alternate location ; the one used by the receive location. Initialize the correlation on the send shape.
Use an expression shape to copy the binary file from its original location to the one used by the receive location.
Finally, use a receive shape bound to the receive port that contains the receive location whose custom receive pipeline will promote the BTS.ReceivedFileName property.
Notice that you actually need to send a message in order to initialize the correlation. It does not matter what message you send actually. What I'd do is send the message through a send pipeline that contains an empty pipeline component. That is a pipeline component that reads the message but return null (so that the message vanishes into thin air before it reaches the adapter). A more elaborate solution would be to use a null adapter. That is an adapter that reads the message but does not do anything about it.
These two solutions avoid having many files accumulate in a temporary location somewhere, just for the sake of initializing a correlation!