To create custom Pipeline Components one has to get into details of various interfaces which he has to implement while creating it. This can get very tedious some times.

There is a very handy tool for developing Pipeline Components. It hides the complexity from the developer by a simple wizard.

You can get the installer at

http://www.gotdotnet.com/Workspaces/Workspace.aspx?id=1d4f7d6b-7d27-4f05-a8ee-48cfcd5abf4a

Download it and install.

This will add a new option in the New BizTalk Projects option "BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Project"

The wizard collects information like

• ClassName
• Namespace
• Type of Component  Send/Receive
• Place in the Pipeline Encoder/AssemblingSerialezer/Decoder/Validate etc depending on the type of the component(Send/Receive)
• Component Name
• Version
• Description
• Public property exposed by the component

After this wizard, a class file is created with a skeleton code ready with all the necessary implementation of needed interfaces.

Also read this article if your project has Custom Pipeline Components.

http://geekswithblogs.net/sthomas/archive/2006/09/27/92513.aspx

I am presently experimenting on BDF, a great thing to have for deployment of BizTalk artifacts both for BTS 2004 and 2006.

But Must to have for deployments of BTS 2004 artifacts.

BTS 2006 comes with a great MSI feature, still we can use BDF from Scott Colestock. See this

http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalk_server_team_blog/archive/2006/07/11/661812.aspx

Advantages:

1. Uses NAnt script (XMLJ getting popular day by day)
2. One has to maintain only one binding file for different environment.
3. Ease of deployment while moving BizTalk artifacts from one environment to another to another, and so on, because for each environment you have to maintain just one excel sheet with one column each for one environment.
4. Uses WiX for making MSI
5. We can add those custom Post/ Pre Deployment/Un Deployment scripts easily in NAnt.
6. If we haven't changed any of the ports in our orchestration, we can simply replace the orchestration assembly in the GAC and bounce the service.
7. Provides various other features like:
1. Scripts to start/stop various hosts
2. Create various Virtual dirs
3. Creating App pools
4. App pools settings
5. IIS Reset
6. Deploying BizTalk rule engine vocabularies and rules
7. We can specify send port groups, send ports, and receive locations that should NOT be started when ports are started
8. We can also specify Orchestrations that should not be started or stopped
9. We can also specify the dependencies for deploying and undeploying, which in turn decides the over all order of deployment.
10.   Import Port Bindings File etc

To see details see the following links, Scott has some good documentation for BDF.

http://www.traceofthought.net/PermaLink,guid,687edf39-57aa-4776-9aea-8c0f769320c1.aspx

http://nodtonothing.blogspot.com/2005/11/i-geek-therefore-i-am-biztalk.html

BDF can be divided into two parts:

1. Creation of MSI
2. Deployment

Creation of MSI

For this BDF comes with WiX, Candle, light and some other handy tools, which helps creation of MSI files.

BDF provides “GenericBizTalkMSI.wxs”, generic wxs file for creation of MSI.

This .wxs file is used by two NAnt files

·         [ProjectName].WiXSetup.build

·         [ProjectName].WiXSetup.nant [Core MSI Script file]

We can also modify these custom NAnt scripts.

The process of creating a MSI is:

1. The scripts first create a redist folder, which actually contains all the artifacts which will be dumped to deployment server.
2. The script then calls candle. Candle is responsible for preprocessing the input .wxs files into valid well-formed XML documents against the WiX schema, wix.xsd. Then, each post-processed source file is compiled into a .wixobj file.
3. Then light is responsible for processing one or more .wixobj files, retrieving metadata from various external files and creating a Windows Installer database (MSI or MSM).      

http://wix.sourceforge.net/manual-wix2/wix_index.htm

Deployment

The process of deployment can be divided in two parts:

• Deployment on Developer Machine
• Deployment on Server Machine

Developer Machine

BDF comes with a script which adds the following options in VS environment.

·         Deploy BizTalk Solution

·         UnDeploy BizTalk Solution

·         Update Orchestrations

·         Bounce BizTalk

·         Gac It

·         HAT

So over all above processes reduces a number of steps which a developer has to do manually. Over all the efficiency of a developer is increased.

Server Machine

    The deployment of the MSI to the production server is a two phase deployment. In the first phase, all the BizTalk artifacts are copied on to the server, but not deployed. In the second phase the user can deploy using the option in the start->Programs Files-> Project Name-> Deploy Project, which actually deploys the solution to BizTalk.

Deployments on a server can often require additional information beyond what is provided in the NAnt script.  This information can be divided into three broad categories:

1)     Information that has to be gathered from the person doing the installation (i.e. account names, passwords, etc.)  We call this “Install-time configuration.” This is gathered through “InstallWizard.xml”

2)     Information that is specific to the environment you are installing in (i.e. development, QA, integration/staging, or production.)  We call this “Environment-relative configuration.” Information Stored in “EnvironmentSettings.xls” and then exported to xml files, one for each environment. User can select one of which while deploying the solution.

3)     The port setting which we can gather through the Binding files. For this we need a Port Binding File

All these features are available in BDF.

Any way all these above feature makes it a very good framework to use. So go ahead and just try it.

Because of hands on NAnt script (used in BDF), presently working on build scripts L. But Struggling with CC tasks in NAnt. Any help will be appreciated

Still wondering in the greenery of Matheran, quite a good trip after a long time J. Every one needed a break, got at last. (After lots of planning and pleasing everyone). Enjoyed a lot.

Even the day before our trip to Matheran, we went to some party, did some bowling, Chinese food (not enjoyed L) etc. so was late to bed, still was confident of waking up early in the morning.

The day started early 4 in the morning, then we met at Dadar (still missed the first trainL).

We hired a taxi from Neral to Matheran. The journey from Neral to Matheran was a good one took only about 30 or so minutes, but was really exciting, those u turns.

Then we went to the first point “Panorama Point”, was a good one, took some snaps there. We also had a screaming competition, guess who won J.

Some one from us was missing N??????.

After getting down we had some snacks off course with Monkeys.

After a good refreshment we headed to our second destination “Garbet Point “.

In our way we met some school going children, we did spent some time with them, took some snaps. One of us even raced against them. He won but he has to give his 150% to overcome those 10-15 year childrenJ.

We also had a stone throwing competition. Guess who wonJ.

One of us went in her childhood with those children. She really enjoyed with them. She really needed a good break after those long hours working for Projects.

One of us A???  was really excited, using flowers to impress somebody. Guess? J 

At last we reached Garbet point, no words for that, simply superb, Nature at its best.

We spent some time there, took some snaps. But our photographers really lacked experience.

Then we decided to have a heavy lunch, as every one was getting really hungry (after about 15 km of walk). But to have our lunch we have to walk again about 10 km to Matheran station. We walked along the toy train’s rail. Some one from us ( A??? not  me) was supposed to take us to some very good hotel, at last he realized that there does not exists any hotel of that kind there. Really must have dreamt about that a day before.

We all had a good lunch, except our beloved S?????. She was in real trouble after that play with children. She took some medicines, did not took any food. Because of our Madam, we all decided to drop our future plans to see other points and decided to take some rest there at the garden.

But the real moment of our whole trip was just about to come. “THE MONKEY BUSINESS”. Just joking J.

After our rest at garden, both the females then took a horse each up to Matheran taxi stand. 

Then started the boring moments, “discussion on marriage” really bored me. Bored me so much that at last I told them to stop that discussion, But all in vain. L  

Over all a good trip.

Some missed some good opportunities to express there heart out. J

Planning for our next trip with V???? and A???, others are also invitedJ.