BizTalk Core Databases
| BizTalkMgmtDB | Most entities from BizTalk Admin Console are stored in this database (applications, orchestrations, assemblies, sendports, receive ports and locations, etc…)Most updates in BizTalk Admin Console are stored in this database (applications, orchestrations, assemblies, sendports, receive ports and locations, etc…). Thus BizTalk Admin Console is basically an update program to this database. You can also use WMI to update it. |
| BizTalkMsgboxDB | This is the MessageBox containing information about the messages, instances and subscriptions which are processed by BizTalk. Can be large and has a lot of heavy processing. A large site can have more than one msgbox (see “Scaling Out”) |
| BizTalkDTADB | Contains information about all the processed messages and instances Archive/Purging |
| BizTalkRuleEngineDB | database for the Business Rules Engine, updated by the GUI “Business Rule Composer” program. Use the “Business Rules Engine Deployment Wizard” to migrate business rules from one environment to another. |
| SSODB | Single Sign-On Database – BizTalk stores data related to SendPorts and Receive Ports here. For sure, any password that needs encrypted goes here (for example an FTP password). BizTalk will not function at all if this database is not available and the corresponding service (“Enterprise Single Sign-On Services”) is not running. This service must come up before BizTalk. |
BizTalk installs creates a SQL Agent Backup job, but it will be disabled, and you have to configure it. See this article on Backing Up and Restoring Biztalk Server Databases.
BizTalk BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) Databases
Obviously, these are used only if you have implemented BAM. I’d love to know what percentage of BizTalk shops use BAM. Most places I’ve worked don’t use it. See BAM Quick Start
| BAMStarSchema | Contains the staging table, and the measure and dimension tables which are set in originally in an Excel spreadsheet, then later deployed to this database. |
| BAMPrimaryImport | Contains raw tracking data. For example, when you capture data from an orchestration, it is originally stored here, before being processed further. If you need to right custom queries against this database, be sure and use the views, not the underlying tables. |
| BAMArchive | Archive of old business activity data. This keeps the BAM Primary Import database smaller by migrating older data here. |
| BAMAnalysis | Contains the OLAP (three dimensional) data cubes. Learn more about OLAP here. |
| BAMAlertsApplication | Contains alert information for BAM notifications. The web application, called the “BAM portal”, allows users to specify conditions and events on which they want notifications and alerts to occur. |
| BAMAlertsNSMain | Contains instance information specifying how the notification services connect to the system that BAM is monitoring. |