Implements IVillage

When your BizTalk Server Doesn't Know Its Name (aka [Error 7202])

Christian Loris — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:40:45 GMT

So we've been being pestered by our DBAs (you know the ones) to move our BizTalk Server 2006's Data Tier from our aging SQL Server 2000 Cluster to our new shiny SQL Server 2005 Cluster. The end of our fiscal year was approaching so we brought in a consultant to help us. I highly recommend Catapult Systems if you need any BizTalk help. They're smart guys and have reasonable rates (in comparison to Oracle, who doesn't?). We met with our consultant Mark and gave him the tour of our environment and he came back a week later with a solid procedure... BAM, MsgBox, WSS, Jobs, DBs... all of it. We executed the procedure along with enough red lines to maintain their human status. All seemed to go well - hosts started, jobs started, Group Hub back up, but wait! Couple of jobs are failing? Hmmm. Update some physical paths in the backup job and all is well. Wait. Tracked Message Copy keeps failing:

Executed as user: HARRIS\MLBSQLVLM1. Could not find server 'mlbxxx\sql3' in sys.servers. Verify that the correct server name was specified. If necessary, execute the stored procedure sp_addlinkedserver to add the server to sys.servers. [SQLSTATE 42000] (Error 7202). The step failed.

Now this is very confusing. We're all on one server. No need for any linked servers. Why does it think mlbxxx\sql3 is a linked server it can't connect with. Is it a permission issue? I checked and double checked the database configuration from the old server and nothing jumped out at me. OK. Time to step into the deep dark reaches of the BizTalk stored procedures... the starting point: bts_CopyTrackedMessagesToDTA at line 70:

exec ('INSERT INTO [' + @dtaDbServer + '].[' + @dtaDbName + '].[dbo].[Tracking_Parts1](uidMessageID, nvcPartName, uidPartID, uidOldPartID, nNumFragments, imgPart, imgPropBag)
SELECT TOP ' + @nTotalNumParts + ' mp.uidMessageID, mp.nvcPartName, mp.uidNewPartID, mp.uidOldPartID, p.nNumFragments, p.imgPart, p.imgPropBag
FROM (SELECT TOP 50 uidMessageID, nID FROM TrackingMessageReferences WITH (ROWLOCK INDEX(IX_TrackingMessageReferences)) ORDER BY nID ASC) as t
INNER LOOP JOIN #TrkMsgNewPartIDs mp WITH (ROWLOCK) ON t.uidMessageID = mp.uidMessageID
INNER LOOP JOIN Parts p WITH (ROWLOCK INDEX(IX_Parts)) ON mp.uidOldPartID = p.uidPartID
OPTION (KEEPFIXED PLAN)')> >
The thing that jumped out at me was the use of the full 4 part reference to the TrackingParts1 table. This should be extra clear. There should be no confusion. Let me look in sys.server... it's wrong... it has MLBYYY\sql3. How could this be... how can I ask the server it's name:

select SERVERPROPERTY('servername'); returns mlbxxx\sql3. correct. strange.>

Is there another way? Yes.

select @@servername; return mlbyyy\sql3 - wrong. It thinks it has two names?>

The detail here is how each command gets the name. The SERVERPROPERTY comes from the Windows OS. @@servername is the name set during installation. I am guessing the SQL Server was built from an image and the @@servername was never adjusted when the machine was renamed. So why didn't my query work? It appears that when you specify the full four part name of a table, it goes to sys.servers to find out about the specified server. If you don't specify a server (less than full 4 part naming), it bypasses sys.servers and assumes local or gets the name from the SERVERPROPERTY.

The fix:

sp_dropserver <mlbyyywhatever was returned by @@servername>;
go;
sp_addserver 'mlbxxx\sql3', local;
go

then restart the server or instance. See the KB article for the gory details. Once this was corrected, everything worked like a charm.

>>>

Why I'm passionate about Microsoft Learning & Certification

Christian Loris — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 03:38:24 GMT

Back in early 2002, my company sponsored a bunch of it's developers to get their MCSDs. These were the days of VB6 and COM+. After many evenings at a local college and 4 certification tests - we were MCSDs. PrimMarily a web developer, I didn't get to put much of the COM+ to use, but the SQL Server 2000 Design & Implementation class proved extremely useful. With my newly minted MCP & MCSD next to my name, I set out to upgrade my career. Two of my next three jobs were made possible by interviewers who noted my credentials. Although the credentials didn't get me the job, they got my resume the leg up it needed to get in the door. For this, I am always grateful for having done the certification.

Over the following years, I passed the .Net solutions architechture certification but didn't do much after this. Come 2007, I began wokring with BizTalk Server 2006. Now anyone who has worked with this product knows it is huge. There are numerous parts to this technology stack and each more complex than the next. After some training and a book, we were off developing solutions. I got the opportunity to attend Teched 2008 Developer in Orlando last year and used some of my down time to pass the Biztalk certification test. I spent many hours in the lab doing test prep and reviewing the online test guide with some books. I managed to pass on the first try despite the ridiculous number of social events I felt compelled to attend. Returning to work I not only had a deeper knowledge for the core BizTalk development I was doing, but I also had a stronger understanding of the entire stack from BAM to BAS but also BRE and a few key points about orchestrations that always eluded me.

I am now sadly looking at my VB6 era MCSD and hoping to upgrade it. I've used the online planner and have a good feel for what I need to do to reach MCPD - lots more tests. The study room and being locked away from work at a conference center helps get things moving faster. So regardless of wether I get to join the Bus, more certifications and visits to MS learning are in my future. They have proven their worth to me both in job seeking and comprehensive study of the technology.

PS - Anybody reading this who doesn't know about the Get On The Bus Contest - Go here: http://blogs.technet.com/mslcommunity/archive/2009/04/09/another-chance-to-get-on-the-bus-or-fly-directly-to-teched.aspx

Space Coast .Net User Group 4/15 Meeting - Steve Smith Microsoft MVP speaks about Asp.Net MVC and Solid Coding Principles

Christian Loris — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:02:22 GMT

Event Description: Steve Smith Microsoft MVP in Asp.Net and Regional Director will be speaking about Asp.Net MVC and Solid Coding principles

Event Time: 4/15/2009 6:30 PM to 4/15/2009 8:00 PM (GMT-5: Eastern Time US & Canada)

Event Location: Space Coast Credit Union Headquarters 8045 N. Wickham Road, Melbourne, Florida, 32940, UNITED STATES>

Speaking at Space Coat SQL User Group on 4/9 - Data Warehousing and Dimensional Modeling

Christian Loris — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:00:26 GMT

Event Description: Speaker: Chris Loris Topic: Data Warehousing 101- What is a Data Warehouse and why do you need it? This session will cover the basics the who's why's and what's of Data Warehousing with a dive into Dimensional Modeling. Christian Loris is a Software Engineer currently working in Data Warehousing, BI and BizTalk middleware at Harris Corporation. In the past Chris has worked as an ASP.Net developer, Engineering Manager, Professional Services Engineer, Test Engineer and a Technical Writer. --SOCIAL HOUR AFTER at Holiday Inn--

Event Time: 4/9/2009 6:30 PM to 4/9/2009 8:00 PM (GMT -5)

Event Location: Space Coast Credit Union Headquarters 8045 N Wickham Rd, Melbourne, Florida, 32908, UNITED STATES>

Space Coast .Net User Group - Oleg Sych on Code Generation with T4 Text Templates

Christian Loris — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:11:54 GMT

When: 9/17/2008 6:30 PM
Location: Space Coast Credit Union HQ - 8045 N. Wickham Road. Melbourne. Usa.
Description: Why write repetitive code when you can generate it? Learn about Text Template Transformation Toolkit (T4) - one of the best-hidden new features of Visual Studio 2008. T4 allows you to use simple ASP.NET-like template syntax to generate application source code, configuration files, stored procedures and more. This presentation gives you all the information you need to start using T4 effectively in your project. We will go from basics (such as T4 template syntax) to advanced topics (such as template design and use of T4 in large projects) stopping along the way to create several templates from scratch. Oleg Sych will be speaki ng. Bio: Oleg Sych is a Senior Lead Consultant at Catapult Systems. He has been working as a professional software engineer since 1993, building distributed enterprise applications since 2000 and working with .NET technologies since 2002. Oleg holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science, MCSD and MCPD Enterprise certifications. His professional interests include framework design and enterprise application architecture.

RSVP - https://www.codezone.com/UGEventView.CodezoneCom?EventID=5336

Tip on finding the name of a business you can't remember

Christian Loris — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:05:51 GMT

So, the wife's car is making noise and we need to locate the mechanic she usually goes to. The car's been pretty reliable for the last 4 years so no need of repairs... until now. What was the name of that shop we like (in this case, the name also changed). Well, I don't know what its called so the usual yello page searches don't help. But wait! I know where it is! Google Earth time!

So there's the garage where I remember it. What good does this do me? Down to street view!

Problem Solved... P&J Auto in Melbourne, Florida. Off to the yellow pages since it wasn't listed in Google's business listings.

New Microsoft KB article gives guidance on Database maintenance & troubleshooting for BizTalk

Christian Loris — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:45:14 GMT

I got this from Richard Seroter's blog - How to maintain and troubleshoot BizTalk Server databases

It looks to be very helpful from the brief skimming I gave it.

Real Life meets Half Life

Christian Loris — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:06:19 GMT

I couldn't resist sharing this. I spent a mid-size chunk of my life playing Half Life and its related properties. It now appears to be bleeding out into the real world:

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/09/09/terrible-news-gordon-freeman-spotted-near-large-hadron-collider/

What Happens to BizTalk when SQL goes down?

Christian Loris — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:57:48 GMT

A very insightful bit of writing by Richar Seroter on what happens to BizTalk Web Service receive locations when the DB goes bye bye. When the SQL Server goes off line, take down the IIS service on your BizTalk servers. This is really kind of scary. When the SQL Server goes offline, the BizTalk web services return 202's which is just as good as a 200 to most - and the message is lost. I need to think this one through and see how to deal with it. We don't lose our database alot, but it has gone offline on enough occasions to make this a real concern. Anybody have expereince handling this one?

Central Florida BizTalk User Group

Christian Loris — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:46:42 GMT

Thanks to Joe Healy for passing on the announcement from Stan Kennedy. On October 1st, there will be the first meeting of the Central Florida BizTalk User Group in Tampa. A bit of a hall, but I will be attempting the trip. Anyoneinterested in car pooling?

Updates

Christian Loris — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:31:22 GMT

Since getting back from TechEd things have been a bit crazy. The rest of the week there was a blast. I got to meet many more community members and catch some really interesting presentations. I am currently fascinated with the SQL Server 2008 Data Mining tools and am in search of a good problem. I'd like to turn this into a presentation for the local User Group.

One of the other highlights was using the Certification Testing at the conference. After sorting out some issues with the name on my certification, I was able to finally get this logo:

That was not a pleasant test. The tool just has so many facets to it and it's really impossible to have used all of them. But the test prep senter at the conference and some reading got me a pass on the first try.

Space Coast .Net User Group June Meeting - Andy Warren of End To End Training - SQL Server For Developers

Christian Loris — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 04:36:31 GMT

When: Wednesday June 11, 2008 @ 6:30PM
Where: Space Coast Credit Union Corp Headquarters

Want to know what you need to do to keep your DBA happy and make your application run really fast? Wondering if stored procedures are really faster than dynamic sql? Need some good guidelines for adding indexes? We'll spend an hour talking about performance in this very interactive presentation.

Andy Warren of End to End Training will be speaking.

Register if you plan to attend this event

Then will be pizza and magazines available for those who attend. We will be raffleing off a Technet plus subscription at the end of the meeting.

TechEd 2008 - Tuesday in Review

Christian Loris — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:52:29 GMT

The day started out with the key note by Bill Gates. Very nice speech on the focus of their development efforts for the years to come. We were also treated to the director's cut of the Bill Gates' Last Day video.

I've made some new friends.

Drank my MSDN Subscription's worht of Beer at Howl at The Moon for Geekfest 2008. It was a nice time and I got to meet many more of the folks from the Florida .Net Communities.

TechEd 2008 - Monday In Review

Christian Loris — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:35:49 GMT

I arrived on Monday afternoon at the convention center. I always forget how incredibly large the facility is. The first glimpse of the floow was empty but beautiful. The booths were very well put togeather.

The afternoon was spent at the INETA Community Summit with the Florida Delegation led by Joe Healy (Only half of us could vote). It was a great discussion on the challenges, successes, tips and more of building a community. I got some good ideas to bring back to the Space Coast .Net User Group.

After the summit was hotel check-in followed by Party with Palermo at the Glow Lounge. Ran into a former co-worker who was staying at the same hotel and we got to catch-up over copious servings of beer.

TechEd 2008 Evenings - Maps @ Live Maps

Christian Loris — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:46:18 GMT

I put a couple of collections on Live Maps to help everyone find the where & when of the after hours events at TechEd 2008 Dev.

I was comparing the list of evening events from the IT Pro week to the Developer's week and I have come to the conclusion - we're boring. The IT Pro week is booked with evening events all over the place on every night. It really doesn't matter, I'll be in my room in the evenings studying for certs (cough... not...).

SCDNUG Meeting with Jeff Barnes on Silverlight 2 a Success

Christian Loris — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:34:53 GMT

These are odd months for the User Groups with the kids getting out of school. You're never sure what you'll get. We had a crowd of 15+ attendees. Some regulars and some designers who were new to the group. Jeff's presentation was quite extensive but paced to not bore.

Next month is going tobe SQL Guru Andy Warren - more info to follow.

Handling Identical Schemas Across Multiple Applications

Christian Loris — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:36:22 GMT

I ran into a BizTalk problem today that was inevitable. We interface with PeopleSoft a bunch. PeopleSoft has some very specific Schemas it uses to communicate. We have two seperate applications that make use of the same schema in reading responses posted to the PeopleSoft web service. Well the second of two projects what put into production a few days ago. When I came in this morning, one of them had a suspended message on the receive side of a HTTP Send/Receive adapter:

Microsoft.BizTalk.DefaultPipelines.XMLReceive, Microsoft.BizTalk.DefaultPipelines, Version=3.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"
Source: "XML disassembler"
Receive Port: "rcvFile"
URI: "C:\Test\In\*.xml"
Reason: Cannot locate document specification because multiple schemas matched the message type

So, as expected, BizTalk could not figure out which schema to resolve the message to as it exists in this Applicaion and another. The default XML Receive Pipieline is not very helpful in this situation as it is just that - default. The solution turns out to be quite simple. Create a new Receive Pipeline and add an XML Disassembler to the Disassemble stage. In the XML Disassembler's properties, add the desired schema from the application to the disassembler's Document Schemas collection. This tells the disassembler to select from this list only. If the list is empty, it will behave the same way as the default XML Receive Pipeline.

TechEd Evenings - SharePoint By Day, SharePint By Night

Christian Loris — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:13:38 GMT

Andrew Connel & Bob Fox kick-off TechEd right with SharePoint by Day and SharePint at Night.

SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night @ TechEd North America 2008 Developer
Monday, June 2, 7p ->? @ BB Kings Orlando (9101 International Drive #2230; Orlando, FL)
SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night @ TechEd North America 2008 IT Pro
Monday, June 9, 7p ->? @ BB Kings Orlando (9101 International Drive #2230; Orlando, FL)

Another stop for an evening!

TechEd Evenings - Party with Palermo

Christian Loris — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:52:53 GMT

The onslaught of things to in the evening continues (You don't have to be going to TechEd to come to this one!):

June 2, 2008 @ 7:00PM - 10:00PM

Glo Lounge http://www.gloloungeorlando.com/
8967 International Dr, Orlando, FL
Ph: 407.351.0361

Cover charge is 1 business card. This will get you in the door and register you for the grand prize drawings.

Free to attend
Free fingerfood
Free drink
Free swag

Space Coast .Net User Group - Silver Light 2.0 with Jeff Barnes

Christian Loris — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:14:02 GMT

Microsoft Architecht Evangelist Jeff barnes will be presenting Siverlight 2.0 on Wednesday May 21st for the SCDNUG. We last saw Jeff with Joe Healy on the Tiki Hut Tour. Jeff is a great presenter and I am looking forward to getting up to speed on Silverlight 2! More Info Here.

TechEd Dev Evenings - GeekFest 2008 TechEd Edition

Christian Loris — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:04:20 GMT

I am looking forward to TechEd but am also a little overwhelmed. I am working up my shcedule with the Schedule Builder and am frankly in awe of the number and variety of sessions. I want to attend sessions, meet with folks, do labs and even take a cert or two. How to do all of this and stay sane?

GeekFest 2008 TechEd Edition

Doug Seven & Company (MSFT) are throwing this event at Howl at the Moon. I haven't been to a Howl at The Moon since the one at Church Street closed. I am looking forward to getting reaquainted in Geek style. Hope to see some familiar faces there.

BizTalk HTTP Send Port Error: The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseHeader Detail=CR must be followed by LF

Christian Loris — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:54:09 GMT

Spent a few days battling an error on an HTTP Send Port. We've been having messages suspend when posting data to Siebel. The funny part is that the messages got accross ok. We were only getting the error on the ACK from the send port. The error message on the suspended message was:

The server committed a protocol violation. Section=ResponseHeader Detail=CR must be followed by LF

We brough this up to the Siebel guys but they were a little slow moving on the informatio that they were sending us bad responses. After a few days I got nervous that the problem may have not been on their end. So I dragged out NetMon. And here's what I saw:

Frame:
+ Ethernet: Etype = Internet IP (IPv4)
+ Ipv4: Next Protocol = TCP, Packet ID = 50895, Total IP Length = 467
+ Tcp: Flags=...PA..., SrcPort=HTTP(80), DstPort=1427, Len=427, Seq=2928398986 - 2928399413, Ack=4246831364, Win=64240 (scale factor not found)
- Http: Response, HTTP/1.1, Status Code = 204
- Response:
     ProtocolVersion: HTTP/1.1
     StatusCode: 204, No content
     Reason: No Content
     Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 20:28:51 GMT
     Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
     XPoweredBy: ASP.NET
     process instance id: 1-1DEHL5
     user-agent: Microsoft (R) BizTalk (R) Server 2006 3.0.1.0
     datahandlingsubsystem: HRFQADProductInbound
     transporttype: HTTP
     expect: 100-continue
     object id: 1-Z02HX
     connection: Keep-Alive
     cache-control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
     Pragma: no-cache
     Host: mlbsbltst1vm
     HeaderEnd: CRLF

So I dragged out RFC 2616 to go over what the HTTP Header should look like. I found that the header field name should be a token and that the definition of a token is:

token = 1*<any CHAR except CTLs or separators>
separators = "(" | ")" | "<" | ">" | "@"
             | "," | ";" | ":" | "\" | <">
             | "/" | "[" | "]" | "?" | "="
             | "{" | "}" | SP | HT

So, in the aforementioned header the following fields are of interest:

process instance id: 1-1DEHL5

object id: 1-Z02HX

They are bad. BizTalk is right. Working on the Siebel guys to take out these custom header fileds (or make them compliant at the least).

The problem troubleshooting something like this is that BizTalk chokes on the message in the pipeline and it doesn't get captured anywhere. I had to reproduce it in an environment where I could use NetMon to grab the actual data from the wire.

Microsoft Commnity Summit 2008

Christian Loris — Mon, 12 May 2008 12:58:48 GMT

So Microsoft comes to the Orange County Convention Center for two weeks in June (aka TechEd). They paid for the thing for two whole weeks. The weekend between the IT Pro Week and the Dev Week is part of that two weeks and the aforementioned facility will be sitting idle. What so you do? Let the community have it...

Microsoft Commmunity Summit 2008

Orlando Convention Center, June 7 and 8

So what is it? Basically, the Florida User Group Communities were asked what would they do with the Orlando Convention Center for a weekend? What they came up with was a FREE weekend with loads of great content. Get all the latest information and registration at >http://www.floridatweener.com.

I hope to be there. I am attending Tech Ed on the first week. It looks like it is going to be an amazing event. Joe Heally put the call out to the community and this is what happened. Take a look at the agenda and you'll be amazed. Hope to see you there.

Fire! Fire!

Christian Loris — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:27:46 GMT

We had a lively evening last night (see our house in the picture above). A brush fire in the preserve behind our home came very very close. But the amazing response from all of the fire departments in Brevard County saved every home that was threatened. An amazing job by these guys with special thanks to the Titusville unit who setup in our yard. The strategy is apparently to let it burn all it wants to burn, but stop it short of the house. The less fuel left means less work later.

It was also an amazing night out to connect with neighbors and show support for each other. I got to talk with atleast 20 of my neighbors at various times throughout the night. An incredible example of community.

Going to TechEd 2008 Developer!

Christian Loris — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:34:22 GMT

I got the word today that my manager would sign off on me attending TechEd this year! Very excited! I've attended VS Live in the past and am anxious to see how Tech Ed compares. Just looking at the conference agenda makes me think I will be burning out by Day 4. If anybody from the Space Coast .Net User Group is going, drop me a line so we can hook up. I am on the Tech Ed community site as well.

Blog Comes Full Circle

Christian Loris — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:25:27 GMT

I experienced the power of the Blog for the first time last week. An entry I wrote concerning HTTP Send Port timeouts and message re-transmits came home. I got an email from somebody in my employer's government division regarding my post. The 3rd party vendor they use for a procurement system has BizTalk as part of the solution. they were seeing multiple message posts to a web service. The tech support guy at the 3rd party vendor sent them a link to my blog. The government division folks recognized my name and emailed me. A short teleconference later and the problem was understood and solved. Small wide world.

Speaking Tonight at Space Coast .Net User Group

Christian Loris — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:20:48 GMT

I am speaking tonight with a colleague at the Space Coast .Net User Group. The meeting is at 6:30 PM at the Space Coast Credit Union's Headquarters Building. George Tomek will be presenting on WF and I will be doing Practical Adapter Pattern. Hope to see some familiar faces.

SCDNUG February Meeting - John Papa and .Net Entity Framework

Christian Loris — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:39:01 GMT

When:
2/20/2008
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Where:
Space Coast Credit Union Corp Headquaters
8045 N. Wickham Road
Melbourne, FL 32940

What:
The ADO.NET Entity Framework, part of ADO.NET components of the .NET Framework, is an Object-Relational mapping technology from Microsoft. It is geared to solving the mismatch between the formats data is stored in a database and in which it is consumed in an object-oriented programming language or other front ends.

ADO.NET Entity Framework will be released in the first half of 2008, separate from .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.

John Papa, Senior Consultant for ASPSoft, Inc., a Microsoft MVP [C#], MCSD.NET, and an author of several XML, ADO and SQL books will be speaking. John has over 10 years experience in architecting and developing Microsoft technologies as a consultant and a trainer. He is the author of the Data Points column in MSDN Magazine and can often be found speaking at user groups, MSDN Web Casts, and industry conferences such as VSLive.

SCDNUG February Meeting - John Pap and .Net Entity Framework

Christian Loris — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:38:57 GMT

When:
2/20/2008
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Where:
Space Coast Credit Union Corp Headquaters
8045 N. Wickham Road
Melbourne, FL 32940

ADO.NET Entity Framework will be released in the first half of 2008, separate from .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008.

BizTalk Blocking Issues - You Having Them?

Christian Loris — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:18:20 GMT

Are you experiencing similar BizTalk issues like the ones I described in previous posts? I've seen some search term hits that indicate you might be. If so, please comment or emailme directly, I'd like to hear about it and compare notes.

Space Coast .Net User Group January Meeting

Christian Loris — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:15:56 GMT

If you came to the Visual Studio 2008 Install fest, then come to the Intro class. Joe will be giving the guided tour. If you already know the product, wait until the end of the presentation and hit Joe with the hard questions... he can take it.

Introduction to Visual Studio 2008

Presenter: Joe Healy, Microsoft Developer Evanglist

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality, rich user experiences. With Visual Studio 2008, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information to help them make effective business decisions. Visual Studio 2008 enables organizations of every size to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista™ and the 2007 Office system.

Where:
Charlie and Jakes Brewery Grill
6300 N Wickham Rd
Melbourne, FL 32940
USA
driving directions

When:
1/22/2008
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Welcome Time:
1/22/2008 6:15 PM Eastern Time

Microsoft vs. [Insert Other Vendor Here] - An Intangible to Consider

Christian Loris — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:57:39 GMT

I am in the middle of a medium size BI project where we chose Microsoft for ETL with the SSIS component of SQL Server 2005. For various factors, we decided on Cognos 8 for the Cube and Presentation layers. As part of the analysis we took in to account things like cost, Gartner, In-House skill sets and so on. It was a pretty even race for Cognos & MS Performance Point Server (PPS) and we ended up going with Cognos.

Some background information on our Cognos implementation. It came in-house with a product called Agile. So since we were licensed, we went with it for basic reporting needs. Now we're at the point we're we are really looking at BI - time analysis of data, ad hoc analysis, KPIs, and so on. We made an assumption that we could leverage our existing Cognos skill sets into the world of Cognos 8 BI. It wasn't a great bet. We sent some people to training and they took away what most take away from a week long course based on a vendor curriculum (This is not just a Cognos issue, we have a real challenge finding solid training for the Microsoft stuff too).

Now, I was in the same position our Cognos talent was in when I went to work on BizTalk. I had a strong background in the fundamentals of .Net languages and Web development. I went off to take the one week training course (much love to Mark Berry at Dunn Training) and came away with a strong set of basic tools. When I went up against the kind of problems we're hitting in Cognos right now, there was a difference.

Searching for help on Cognos technical issues is really difficult. There is very little out there in the way of web based community. And a lot of what you do find refers to Cognos' KB which is protected by password. I am not sure what the hurdle is to getting the password setup... a call to our account representative and some paperwork. When you're slugging out a technical issue this is not the best customer experience to have.

On the other hand, Microsoft's community is unbelievably rich and returns many hits when searching for answers. BizTalk is a pricy tool and is seldom afforded by those outside of serious enterprise grade businesses – which makes is developer base quite small compared to C#, SQL, ASP.Net, etc. Never the less, there is a rich and vibrant community of users who post and share tremendous amounts of technical insight and know how. I have become truly active in my local developer community in the pas couple of years and I see now why Microsoft pours so much effort into these folks. As a direct result, I typically can solve most of my technical glitches or unknowns with a minimal amount of time on Google or Live Search.

I am not saying Microsoft is perfect. I have my issues when I call in for Technical Support and deal with some of the first line folks. I here the same frustrations form my Cognos counterparts. The nice thing is that there is such a wealth of Microsoft product knowledge living both outside and inside Microsoft, that it’s one of those intangibles that is rarely given due weight in a product study. It certainly keeps the number of calls I’ve made to Microsoft to a minimum. As for which is the best product… another time and another blog post.

Comment: If anyone ever wants to experience the Microsoft community in full force – go to a local Code Camp. I’ve never gotten so many professional contacts in one place. And if there aren’t any near you, call you Microsoft Developer Evangelist and ask nicely for some help. You’d really be amazed.

Wes Dumey's Day of Data

Christian Loris — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:35:38 GMT

Wes is putting on a mini-conference that is focusing on SQL Server technologies. $99 and on a Friday - A Training day from work and doesn't cost $1200. Serioously thinking about attending. http://dayofdata.com/default.aspx

BizTalk / SQL Blocking Issue Deconstructed & Fixed?

Christian Loris — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:42:29 GMT

I've previously blogged about a big BizTalk issue we've been having a work. After many months of traversing the Microsoft Support organization, the proper resources have been brought to bear on the problem. We have hope of a solutionon the horizon. Here's a recap with the answers.

Evolution of the Problem

Over a year ago, we stood up a new BizTalk 2006 server infrastructure to be used as the central intergation / orchestration point for all enterprise applications. The new environment is very nice with lots of memory, 64-bit processors, load balanced servers, etc. A nice change from the operational BizTalk 2004 environment which was single server and backed by a questionable SQL Server cluster. So with our new BT 2006 environment, we started migrating application off of BT2004. We also started creating new applications and expanding operaitonal ones. Life was good.

We use a single file share server for the majority of our file drop locations. This file share server is a Windows 2000 server and is not shceduled to be replaced soon enough by a Windows 2003 R2 server. About half way through our migration, we noticed receive locations on the BizTalk 2006 Server were shutting down every couple of days. This then became every day and then every hour and then every couple of minutes. The problem went from the simple matter of gettong the occasional MOM alert and manually restarting the port to being unmanagable. Life was not good.

Our quick fix was too implement a relatively simple C# console application to scan the receive locations every x minutes and restart stopped receive locations. This was accomplished using the BizTalk WMI interface and the Windows task scheduler. Things were'n't perfect, but we were operational. Then the fun started. Everything would grind to a halt every couple of weeks, then every couple of days. The symptoms were:

BizTalk Management Interface was unresponsive
SQL Server showed a blocking SPID to the SSO DB that would never clear (the system was blocked for 24 hours once before we implemented better alerting)
Messages stop processing through BizTalk

The clearing procedure became cycling the Enterprise SSO service on the primary SSO server - which required all BT Hosts to be stopped. When the database is blocked, this becomes an hour task. Once the ESSO service was recycled, everything was well again.

First Try at a Fix

We were never happy with the ports shutting down and spent alot of time blaming the less than desirable Windows 2000 server hosting the file shares. We did alot of Googling and came up with a potential to fix the port shutdown problem: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810886. I had previosuly discussed this here. We increased the registry entries from 50 to 200. The problem didn't resolve. So we walked away from this KB article and resolved to wait for the file share server to be upgraded. We still had to deal with the blocking.

Enter Microsoft Tech Support

Microsoft Technical Support was contacted. We did a health check on the systems and identified many BizTalk housekeeping issues we had. These items were rectified but the problems persisted. In the process of exploring the SQL Tables, we noticed the BizTalk work queues filling up with orphaned instances. We had no idea where they were coming from and they were not showing up in the Group Hub. There were actually thousands of them spread accros the various host instances in our implementation. We worked with MS support to do some cleanup of our produciton environment. This seemed to help but then the queues kept filling up again. After some focuse digging, we managed to stear ourselves and MS support to the solution. A new hotfix just off the presses - KB936536 (still internal as of this post). We tried and it did not work. Back to the drawing board.

After some more in-depth digging, it turned out that there was a bug in BizTalk that involved receive locations stopping unexpectedly not being cleaned up properly. This bug left the orphaned instance in the work queues. A patch was created after several weeks and fixed the queue problem. It did not fix the blocking problem.

After some escalation and shuffling around, we were given a new set of support professionals and had the attention of Escalation Engineering, Product Team, SQL Sengineers and finally - DTC Engineers. Many weeks of logging and capturing increasingly deeper levels of data led to get the DTC folks involved. It was one of those joyous moments where you send away your tons of log files and you get one of those moments in an email where you here - 'oh yeah, we've seen this before... there's a hotfix'. There is such joy that there is a solution and a sense of frustration that nobody said this sooner.

The Root of it All

File Share Server not tweaked to handle the load.
BizTalk shutting down receive locations.
Custom BizTalk WMI program keeps restarting ports.
High WMI/DTC activity brings about KB 934849: A COM+ application that is running on a Windows Server 2003-based computer stops responding and some work items that are queued in the MTA thread pool are not completed.

First Step

Stop the ports from shutting down. Apparently KB 810886 was the solution to stopping the port shutdowns. We needed to increase the registry entries on both the client and server to 2048 to see a difference. Once thoe port shutdowns stopped, the WMI based port watcher has starting ports less frequently which reduced the load on WMI/DTC. When thoe ports stopped dropping, we set the port watcher to run every 30 minutes. We've not had a problem since. We are now testing KB 934849 on our staging servers. It will be deployed next week to production if all goes well.

SQL Adapter Issue Also?

When we upgraded some SQL Server Adapte rintensive projects form BT 2004 to BT2006, we experienced a similar level of blocking on the SQL transaction associated with these projects. It only affected the transactional system databse and not the BizTalk database. We were never able to fix it despite all of the hints and other tweaks we pulled out of our bag of tricks. Apparently the SQL Adapter in BT 2006 has an increased default isolation level. We followed all of the new guidelines and still had no success. We are hoping that this SQL Adapter blocking was the result of KB 93489 as well. We will be testing this shortly and I will blog it as well.

Official Minion

Christian Loris — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 18:32:48 GMT

http://www.sourcegear.com/TEM/TEMminions.html?id=74

Promises Made, Promises Kept (to the Evil Mastermind)

Christian Loris — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:20:34 GMT

I got my Evil Mastermind T-Shirt from SourceGear a few months ago and was looking for just the right occasion to fulfill my obligations to them. So last night at the Space Coast .Net User Group's VS 2008 Install Fest I snapped the picture. Also, chek out Eric Sink's Blog for all things Source Control, Software, and Marketing.

Space Coats .Net User Group VS2008 Install Fest a Huge Success

Christian Loris — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:15:48 GMT

The Space Coast .Net User Group's VS 2008 Install Fest was a huge success. We installed all allocated copies of VS2008 and then some. We had about 40 people in attendance and a good time was had by all. Special thanks to Joe Healy of Microsoft (vitis him at DevFish.net) for playing Geek Santa Clause and delivering the software along with copious amounts of BBQ and apetizers. Also, thank you to the usual folks at Space Coast .Net User Group for the time and effort comitted to the event.

Joe has tentatively promised to come back in January and for the User Group meeting and show everybody even more cool VS 2008 tips, tricks and features.

I have included some photos snapped by attendees below. I'll post a link to Joe Healy's site when he uploads his photos.

Random Install Fun

More Random Install Fun!

Yours Truly.