Biztalk Study Roadmap

My Biztalk study is finished, i spend totally 3 weeks... start learning from i know nothing about biztalk, and result a workable transparent intermediate component between a J2EE application and host server, with customized web service handling in between!

First i will birefly summarize my study roadmap, then i will put some testing orchestration for reference, and finally, i will comment some tricky parts during the study progress.

Part A: To briefly summarize my biztalk study roadmap:

1. [ XML Schema ] - first of all, i claify how does the xml schema work and what happen if i modify the xml schema to the biztalk solution implementation


2. [ Message Routing ] - once i believe i can master the xml schema, i try message routing (which do not require any orchestration to be deployed). input port, output port, message filtering and message mapping...


3. [ Biztalk Admin Console ] - trouble happens when i test the message routing, i found that the mapping still keep an old image even i redeploy... so, i have to deal with the biztalk admin console...


4. [ Orchestration ] - when there is no problem to route message via biztalk admin console, it is time for me to play with orchestration - the heart of business logic implementation in biztalk


5. [ Simple Adpater ] - orchestration is pretty easy, when i have tried next are different kind of simple adapters... file, http, ftp, smtp... and i finish my testing with no big disappointment


6. [ Advanced Adapter ] - when i feel comfortable with simple adapters, i jump to an advanced adapter, it is soap adapter. this is a biztalk built-in adapter, so sample is available from microsoft website: BizTalk Server Code Samples


7. [ Web Service Publishing Wizard ] - one of the important part of soap adapter is the web service publishing wizard, which help to deploy an orchestration to a ready-to-use web service.


8. [ WSDL ] - since i know nothing about wsdl before, i study W3School WSDL Tutorial as well


9. [ Message Assignment ] - !! this part is an important step in the whole study roadmap. i found there is no way to map input message to the web service request message... it strucks me out... and finally, i tried to assign the message field content by using mssage assignment shape, and it magically work! thx god. this idea comes from ths soap header sample from microsoft biztalk sample site.


10. [ TCP/IP Adapter ] - after i have tested all simple and advanced biztalk built-in adapter, i found that the adapter i actually need which is not likely a biztalk built-in adapter... so i google it, and google always work great, i found that great BizTalk Server 2006 TCPIP Adapter which work perfectly. follow the documentation and the included testing programs, it works in an instant.


11. [ Flat File Schema ] - in order to work more than just a pass thru string, i have to study flat file schema... again, which is pretty easy to use...


12. [ Disassembler Pipeline ] - to transform an passthru string to be a flat file schema message, one very important component have to be added in between, that is flat file disassembler pipeline. follow instruction on how to use a pipeline, FlatFileReceive (BizTalk Server Sample), and a flat file message will be resulted!!


13. [ Flat File Wizard Details ] - when u need more than just a simple flat file schema, can come to Walkthrough: Creating a Flat File Schema From a Document Instance

Part B: Biztalk Demo Construction Roadmap (Orchestration):

1. Message construction and simple adapters tryout:
   



2. Web service tryout:
   



3. Customized web service request message tryout:
   



4. Web service request tryout:
   



5. TCP/IP adapter and web service tryout:
   



6. FINAL all-in-one. TCP/IP + message extraction, web service:
   

Part C: Tricky items:

1. strong key name file is needed for deployment


2. adding soap adapter in orchestration as web reference instead of ports


3. one of the way to construct web service request message without using mapping is to use message field assignment


4. tcp/ip adapter is not built-in biztalk adapter, have to use 3rd party component


5. tcp/ip adapter is not able to add into orchestration as port directly, use later port binding via biztalk admin console


6. use flat file wizard to construct flat file schema save a lot of time


7. field with trailing space in flat file schema have to be padded with a char!

Mov to Mpg

I convert mov file to mpg file by using Video Studio 9.0, but it suddenly doesnt work recently... I spend nearly whole day to figure the problem out, and luckily, I found that the problem is that the version of Quick Time Player does not match the requirement of Video Studio 9.0...

To solve the problem, I remove both Quick Time Player and Video Studio 9.0, and then reinstall Video Studio 9.0... since Quick Time Player is bundled in VS9, so, it is all done after the VS9 installation!

Great that I found it out before the end of holiday

WGA updated again

Today I got a Windows Update Notification, and suprisingly found that one of the item in the update was WGA!???

Yes, it is yet another updated dll.

Anyone of u got the crack?

M$... >_<

Disable the file - Thumbs.db

After googled from the web and found that the annoying file "thumbs.db" is able to be disabled, good!

Top 10 Most Common Passwords

Although it says it is the top 10 most common password, but some of them i dont think they are common in HK...

Top 10 Most Common Passwords

new code demo - js unicode converter

"To encrypt text that will be used in a JavaScript document.write() function. To make those text not human readable."

JS Unicode Converter

Remote Desktop @ VPN

Q.

Sometimes when I connect to my terminal server, I see a black screen. Why does this occur?

A.

This typically occurs if there is a device between the client and the server that is receiving packets but not passing them on. One way around this problem is to change the MTU size for the network adapter that is being used as a terminal server connection to clients.

Ethernet uses a maximum MTU size of 1500. You can start with 500 and then slowly move up until you notice the problem to find the correct value to set

Reference: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/community/centers/terminal/terminal_faq.mspx

Windows Update Failed - 8024001d

Recently I got an error while performing Windows Update, the error code shown is "8024001d".

I resolve the problem by the following steps:

1.) Start -> Run and type "services.msc"
2.) Stop the service "Automatic Updates"
3.) Delete all files/subfolder under "C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\"
4.) Startup the service "Automatic Updates"

Try to Windows Update and it should be OK.
That's all.

*** [06 Jan 2007] i found that there are over hundred people read about this post, leave me message if u want to futher discuss with me, a chinese interface guestbook: http://www.smartpetermak.com/guestbook/