BizTalk: Identifying an application within an orchestration

Stephen Horsfield — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:52:31 GMT

Overview

Sometimes you need to run the same orchestration within two BizTalk applications on the same server. How can you distinguish which application you are in from within an orchestration?

In brief

There isn't an easy way to do this. The rules engine doesn't help, because you can only have one version of a particular set of rules active at any time. You can't easily access a custom application configuration file, because you still need some way of distinguishing the two applications.

Worse, BizTalk doesn't seem to make this available (have looked at both documented and undocumented APIs!).

However, if you can allow two separate Windows users to execute the applications in different BizTalk Host Instances (not physical machines) then you can use the Windows Identity from within a .NET module, returning the username or some other detail back to the orchestration.

Versions

Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
Microsoft BizTalk 2006

Metadata

Technorati Tags: software development, .NET, BizTalk, orchestration, configuration

BizTalk: Broken Functoid toolbox items in BizTalk 2006

Stephen Horsfield — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:43:17 GMT

Overview

While developing custom functoids in Visual Studio for BizTalk 2006 it is sometimes necessary to remove the functoid from the toolbox, particularly when it is not correctly implemented and causes Visual Studio to crash.

This post describes how to reset the toolbox in Visual Studio 2005.

How to

Close Visual Studio.

Delete the toolbox files from the folder:

%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Visual Studio\8.0

Then restart Visual Studio and if necessary rebuild the toolbox using the right-click menu item, but this should happen automatically.

If the replacement functoid is correctly registered, or the offending functoid has been removed, the toolbox will be fixed.

Versions

Visual Studio 2005
BizTalk 2006

Metadata

Technorati Tags: BizTalk, functoid, problem Visual Studio