How to Lookup ServerName from IPAddress

Sometimes, in a large company with undocumented servers, you find an IP Address, and you need to know what server it is. For example, the other day I found a URL of a web service. I pinged the URL, which gives the IP Address. But I needed to know the server name: nbstat -a xx.xx.xx.xx […]

BizTalk Deploy – The server was not found or was not accessible

When you Deploy a BizTalk project, it has to update a BizTalk SQL database, which by default is called BizTalkMgmtDB. Suppose you have been using BizTalk on the same server for days, weeks, or months, and you open someone else’s project, change the server name, and get the error below. That’s the specific case I’m […]

MEX vs WSDL and base address matches scheme http error

When you publish a BizTalk schema or a BizTalk orchestration as a webservice, you may find you have left the warm comfort of BizTalk and now have to become an IIS and WCF expert. MEX, WSDL, Endpoints From what I have gleaned from the sites below, you really don’t need “MEX” endpoints. “MEX” stands for […]

Do you like to GAC in BizTalk?

Are you a GACer? Or do you redeploy every time? Do you like to GAC in BizTalk? I suppose it depends a lot on the place you work, the attitudes, and the procedures in place, and what security you have, and who does the deploys. The last place I worked, I inherited what I affectionately […]

Writing to the Application EventLog from BizTalk Orchestration

Every once in a while, I need to write to the Application EventLog from a BizTalk Orchestration, although I usually have my own SQL trace that I write to. On almost all the overrides for WriteEntry, the first parameter is “Source”. I suggest you try some existing source, such as “XLANG/s” or “BizTalk Server”. You […]

RegEx Mass Rename Files with PowerShell

Sometimes you need to quickly do a mass rename of a large number of files in a directory. Rename a file like this: ABC_20150321124112_1801.xml to a filename like this: XYZ_201503211241.xml Sample Code cls cd "C:\TempRename" Get-ChildItem -Filter *.xml | Foreach-Object{      $NewName = $_.Name -replace "ABC_(.*?)\d{2}_\d{4}.xml", "XYZ_`$1.xml"    Write-Host $NewName    Rename-Item -Path $_.FullName -NewName […]

BizTalk Map – Initialize an Empty Group Element

It is not hard to initialize an empty group element in a BizTalk map. After ten years of BizTalk, I don’t remember having to do it before, and at first, I thought I would have to create an XSLT functoid. That works to, but here is the easy way. I had a customer who had […]

BizTalk – WCF – The request service… could not be activated

Error: A client C# program was call an orchestration published as a web service. I was turning on Basic Authenticiation in BizTalk and IIS. C# client program kept getting: “The requested service [service name] could not be activated. See the server’s dianostic trace logs for more information. My Solution: NOTE: This may not be your […]

Xpath – selecting element by attribute value

Using the sample data below, I wanted to get all the Link node that have LinkID = 13 (not the Junk node). Sample data <whatever>   <Links>       <Link LinkID='13' />       <Junk LinkID='13' />       <Link LinkID='1' />       <Link LinkID='13' />   </Links> </whatever> What fails are these: //*[local-name()=’Link’]/*[@LinkID=’13’] (XPath returned 0 items) //*[local-name()=’Links’]/[local-name()=’Links’ and @LinkID=’13’] ( Unexpected token […]

Take Inventory of Your BizTalk Artifacts

Do you need to “take inventory” of your BizTalk artifacts (assets)? I.e. Get a simple count or high-level summary for your BizTalk Artifacts? For years, we’ve had tools like BizTalk Documenter (free on CodePlex), but that just works for one application. What if you walk into a client site and you want to know in […]