Authoring BizTalk Pipeline Components on 2013 R2

As many of you may know, the BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard project on Codeplex only works on BizTalk 2010 and prior. More specifically – the wizard does not work with Visual Studio 2012 or 2013. This has left me copy-and-pasting from prior classes whenever I needed to author a new custom pipeline component.

Well, I was perusing the Nuget gallery in Visual Studio 2013, searching for BizTalk to see what was out there. And lo and behold, I find the Breeze BizTalk Pipeline Component Project.

When you add the Nuget package to a class library, it creates the necessary references to the BizTalk assemblies…

It also creates a template class that you then modify to suit your needs (MyPipelineComponent.cs). Just rename the class, change the namespace as needed, and follow the handy instructional comments at the top of the code module. (And don’t forget to sign your assembly so you can put it in the GAC!)

There is a single property implemented (MyProperty) so you will want to make the necessary code changes to implement your properties.

All in all, a really nice helper since the wizard project has not been carried forward. Great idea and thanks to the guys at Breeze.net for putting it out there!

WCF SQL Server Exception FIXED

When executing a stored procedure from a WCF send port (generated by the BizTalk Consume Adapter Service function in Visual Studio) I would receive the following exception:

The adapter failed to transmit message going to send port “WcfSendPort_SqlAdapterBinding_TypedProcedures_dbo_Custom” with URL “mssql://server/database?”. It will be retransmitted after the retry interval specified for this Send Port. Details:”System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): The current transaction cannot be committed and cannot support operations that write to the log file. Roll back the transaction.

The stored procedure was already in place; written by a client and contains a good bit of logic. So, I had only a little leeway to make changes. I discovered the issue had to do with transactions between BizTalk and SQL Server, and a TRY/CATCH block within the stored procedure. Apparently, they don’t work well together unless you also use an explicit BEGIN/COMMIT/ROLLBACK transaction within the stored procedure.

Sure enough, when I added a BEGIN TRANSACTION before the TRY, a ROLLBACK within the CATCH, and a COMMIT at the end of the procedure, things worked correctly. I used the syntax given at this link (scroll down to Error 16).

USE Adventure Works;
GO
-- This was added to fix the error
BEGIN TRANSACTION;

BEGIN TRY
    -- The logic is here
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
    -- The error handling is here
    SELECT 1
    
    -- This was added to fix the error
    IF @@TRANCOUNT > 0
        ROLLBACK TRANSACTION;

END CATCH;

-- This was added to fix the error
IF @@TRANCOUNT > 0
    COMMIT TRANSACTION;
GO

ESB Exception Management Notification Service Error FIXED

I was receiving this error after installing the much-loved (haha) BizTalk ESB Exception Notification Service.

(I jest about it being much loved because these “sample” applications shipping with BizTalk 2013 R2 haven’t been maintained and tend to be a royal pain to install. But, they provide functionality that fills in gaps in the BizTalk feature set. But I digress!)

I was receiving this error message in the Event Viewer when trying to start the service:

Service cannot be started. Microsoft.Practices.ServiceLocation.ActivationException: Activation error occured while trying to get instance of type Database, key “” —> Microsoft.Practices.Unity.ResolutionFailedException: Resolution of the dependency failed, type = “Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.Database”, name = “(none)”.
Exception occurred while: while resolving.
Exception is: InvalidOperationException – The type Database cannot be constructed. You must configure the container to supply this value.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find the solution on the MSDN forum (via Bing…shameless plug/admission).

Quoting the post on the forum thread (here’s the link)…

There are two issues with this service to be fixed after the installation to make it work. Assuming the service has been installed in the default folder “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit\Exception Notification Service”, make the following changes:

1. Rename “BizTalkESBExceptionNotification.exe.config” to “BizTalk ESB Exception Notification.exe.config”

2. Open “BizTalk ESB Exception Notification.exe.config” file and replace the following line

<add name="AlertService" type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.Configuration.FileConfigurationSource, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common, Version=5.0.414.0,Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" filePath="BizTalk ESB Exception Notification.exe.config"/>

With

<add name="AlertService" type="Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common.Configuration.FileConfigurationSource, Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Common, Version=5.0.414.0,Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" filePath="C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit\Exception Notification Service\BizTalk ESB Exception Notification.exe.config"/>