BizTalk Concepts 2

Promoted properties and distinguished fields enable various BizTalk components to access key items of data contained in a message. Property promotion provides a way to access key pieces of information from within a message instance and to make that data more easily accessible to other components of BizTalk Server, such as orchestrations, Health and Activity Monitoring (HAT), and port filters. A promoted property is promoted to make it accessible outside the message (on the envelope) , whereas a distinguished property is simply an alias to easily refer to a schema node from within an orchestration. Messaging processes use promoted properties, while the orchestration engine uses distinguished fields

A promoted node can be used in Message Correlation, Message Tracking and in creating Message Subscriptions.

Correlation is the process of matching an incoming message to the appropriate instance of an orchestration. This is commonly used with long-running transactions in which the orchestration instance may be waiting for additional information to be received before it can continue with the business process.
A Gentle Introduction to Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Correlation
http://www.microsoft.com/belux/msdn/nl/community/columns/himschoot/correlation.mspx

BRE- Policies are logical groupings of rules.

Both BizTalk global properties and promoted properties from a BizTalk schema can be used for content-based routing.
To enable efficient interaction with a business partner, you use role links to group a set of ports through which you will communicate with the partner


Scope Shape with Transaction option set to none. If you want to implement error handling but do not want to use transactions, use a scope shape. You can still add exception handling to your orchestration without using a transaction.

Reference: Clinic 2954: First Look: Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006 for Developers

ASP.NET - A DropDownList cannot have multiple items selected

if you set in HTML, Selected="True" for DropDownlist and later try to set it programmatically, ‘ll get the error

A DropDownList cannot have multiple items selected.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: A DropDownList cannot have multiple items selected.

ASP.NET – controlling PostBack through JavaScript

this.TextBox1.Attributes.Add("onchange", "if (doSomeThing()) ");

Note the if & extra parenthesis around the client function.

When a webcontrol with AutoPostBack=True is rendered, the ASP.NET insert a javascript function as __doPostBack(,) in the page and bind this function to client events corresponds to the server side bound events.

e.g. the HTML on the client side looks like:

<input name="TextBox2" type="text">onchange="__doPostBack('TextBox2','')" />

By adding the if (doSomeThing()) , it becomes

<input name="TextBox2" type="text">onchange="if (doSomeThing()) __doPostBack('TextBox2','')" />

The doSomeThing() function must evaluate to bool.

BizTalk Concepts 1

Profiles, agreements, and addendums are all stored in the TPM database. Using the TPM component (and for addendums, the Business Process Configuration component, described next), all of them can be configured directly by an information worker. This allows business people to establish and modify new partner relationships without relying on developers.

graphically-defined processes called orchestrations

Business Rules Engine that allows evaluating complex sets of rules

Health and Activity Tracking tool that lets developers and administrators monitor and manage the engine and the orchestrations it runs.

Enterprise Single Sign-on facility, providing the ability to map authentication information between Windows and non-Windows systems

• Business Activity Monitoring, allowing information workers to monitor a running business process. The information is displayed in business rather than technical terms, and what gets displayed can be controlled directly by business people.
  
• Business Activity Services, allowing information workers to set up and manage interactions with trading partners.
  

two scenarios are most important for application integration. One is connecting applications within a single organization, commonly referred to as enterprise application integration (EAI). The other, called business-to-business (B2B) integration, connects applications in different organizations.

Integrating existing applications, whether in a single company or across different organizations, into a single automated business process is a fundamental goal of BizTalk Server 2006

Orchestrations can optionally use the Business Rules Engine, which provides a simpler and more easily modified way to express complex sets of rules in a business process.

A BizTalk application wraps all of the pieces required for a solution into a single logical unit, making it the fundamental abstraction for management and deployment.

An adapter is an implementation of a communication mechanism, such as a particular protocol.

• Decode: BizTalk Server 2006 provides one standard component for this stage, the MIME/SMIME Decoder. This component can handle messages and any attachments they contain in either MIME or Secure MIME (S/MIME) format. The component converts both kinds of messages into XML, and it can also decrypt S/MIME messages and verify their digital signatures.
  

When a message is processed by a receive pipeline, a message context is created that contains various properties of the message

it’s also possible to subscribe to specific error conditions

. To define the logic of a business process, the BizTalk Server 2006 engine provides orchestrations. To create and evaluate groups of business rules, it provides the Business Rules Engine.

creating an orchestration relies on three primary tools: the BizTalk Editor for creating XML schemas, the BizTalk Mapper for defining translations between those schemas, and the Orchestration Designer for specifying the logic of business processes.

BizTalk Mapper can be used to define a transformation, called a map, from one document to the other

. A functoid is a chunk of executable code that can define arbitrarily complex mappings between XML schemas

The Scope shape, which allows grouping operations into transactions and defining exception handlers for error handling. Both traditional atomic transactions and long-running transactions are supported. Unlike atomic transactions, long-running transactions rely on compensating logic rather than rollback to handle unexpected events.

Once a developer has defined an orchestration, the group of shapes and relations between them is converted into the Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) used by the .NET Framework’s Common Language Runtime (CLR). Ultimately, the group of shapes defined by a BizTalk Server 2006 developer becomes just a standard .NET assembly.

the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL

for more business-oriented users to create and modify sets of business rules using a tool called the Business Rule Composer

The creator of a set of business rules will typically begin by using the Business Rule Composer to define a vocabulary for use in specifying those rules. Each term in the vocabulary provides a user-friendly name for some information

. The BRE can also be invoked programmatically via a .NET-based object model, which allows it to be called from applications that don’t use the BizTalk Server 2006 engine

to scale up as needed for high-volume processes

Monitor BizTalk applications. Using the BizTalk Administration console’s Group Hub page

Enterprise Single Sign-On stores an encrypted mapping between a user’s Windows user ID and his credentials for one or more affiliate applications in a credential database

This operation, called redemption, causes SSO server B to verify the SSO ticket, and then look up this user’s credentials for that application

Via a BAM portal, a new component in BizTalk Server 2006 that allows examining and configuring BAM information

, the BAM portal can also be hosted as a Web part inside Windows SharePoint Services

• Using the BAM portal’s alert manager, an information worker can define alerts that should be sent when an interesting event occurs. For example, a BAM user might choose to send an email to a particular manager whenever the number of cancelled orders in a day exceeds ten, or perhaps inform a certain sales associate any time an order arrives from her largest customer.
  

each BAM view relies on one or more BAM activities. A BAM activity represents a specific business process, such as handling purchase orders or shipping a product, and each one has a defined set of milestones and business data.

. This add-in’s BAM Activity wizard allows defining activities, while its BAM View wizard allows defining views based on those activities

Using a tool called the Tracking Profile Editor (TPE), a developer must configure an orchestration so that it provides the information required for a particular BAM activity, and thus for the BAM views that depend on this activity.

The BizTalk Server 2006 engine then sends these events and message field values to the Tracking database

where they can be accessed by the BAM component

Any application built using the .NET Framework or WinFX, a set of new development technologies that will appear with Windows Vista, can potentially be monitored using the BAM component of BizTalk Server 2006.

Trading Partner Management (TPM) component. This component relies on a TPM database, as shown above, that stores information about trading relationships. Using the common Business Activity Services interface, information workers can create and modify agreements with trading partners who use BizTalk Server 2006. Each agreement describes the relationship between two parties,

A messaging component that provides the ability to communicate with a range of other software.

Reference:

Understanding BizTalk Server 2006, Microsoft Corp