Category Archives: General

Updategram with multiple tables with foreign keys

Updategram Overview
Since SQL Server 2000, updategrams along with OPENXML have been available to insert, update, or delete data using XML documents. An updategram works against the XML views that are provided by the annotated XSD schema that contains the information required to map to the tables and columns to be modified. Using an [...]

Also posted in Biztalk Tutorial | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Setting up an HL7 Solution

Setting up an HL7 Solution
HL7 Accelerator Overview
As you might know, the BizTalk Accelerator for HL7 offers a great deal of enhanced messaging capabilities for the healthcare industry. Although it is offered as a separate download, it comes with the license of BizTalk. The nice part about it is that it offers all of [...]

Also posted in Biztalk Tutorial | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Cache as a cross-cutting concern

I have been recently asked to look into the cache feature within Springmodule in Java community.
Since my current project utilizes spring and aop, I thought it would be a great idea to utilize AOP to cache data.
I actually wrote a prototype file and it was a very rudimentary yet working prototype. However, I soon realized [...]

Also posted in .NET Framework | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Team Foundation Server Restore Headaches

I was in the process of trying to restore my TFS Server to a different machine until there was time for it to be rebuilt. This turned out to be quite a headache. Once all the querks were identified it wasn’t all that bad but it took much longer than it should have. Here are [...]

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Process vs Thread

Yesterday, Google launched their first web browser application, named Chrome.
http://www.google.com/chrome
And here’s an interesting cartoon that describes Google’s take on web browser.
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
What’s interesting is the idea of Process vs Thread.
Google’s Chrome uses Process for individual window, tab, and even plug-in.
In contrast, Firefox, the popular open source web browser, utilizes multiple threads for managing its windows, tabs [...]

Posted in General | Leave a comment

BizTalk and Systems Center: Operations Manager w/ BizTalk Management Pack

The BizTalk 2006 R2 Management Pack is a rewrite from the original pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM).  It is designed around all of the new features of BizTalk 2006 R2 including RFID and EDI.  The pack ties into SCOM very nicely and once it has been imported into SCOM, it can automatically scan [...]

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Add to the Global Assembly Cache on MSI Imports

If you want all resources of your BizTalk application to be registered in GAC on MSI import, it is necessary, prior to exporting BizTalk application to MSI file, to check ‘Add to the global assembly cache on MSI imports (gacutil)’ option in Modify Resources dialog box. This option is unchecked by default. To avoid the [...]

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Testing BizTalk Applications

Found a great resource today for how to go about testing BizTalk applications.  It covers best practices on how to unit test various BizTalk artifacts such as schemas, maps, pipelines, orchestrations.  This covers how these should be covered with tests for integration testing as well as functional testing.  Very interesting read.
http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2008/04/27/121687.aspx

Posted in General | Leave a comment

How to Easily Document BizTalk Applications

One of the tasks developers find most tedious is documentation.  It gets to the point that documentation never gets done in many cases.  This is where documentation tools comes in handy.  There is a documentation tool that is available that analyzes the BizTalk application and creates a CHM file containing:

Send & [...]

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Debug BizTalk Orchestration in Production Server

Murphy’s Law: if anything can go wrong, it will. If BizTalk orchestration instance in a production server does not behavior as you expect it, how do you diagnose the problem? Remember, attaching debugger to an orchestration instance is usually impossible in this case.
DebugView is one of my favorite tools for troubleshooting issues in production environment. [...]

Posted in General | 4 Comments