BizTalk Server Interview Questions and Answers (10)

Biztalk is a messaging based integration tool. It consists of several tools like Business Processes (Orchestrations), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), HAT (Health and Activity Tracking), Rules Engines, BizTalk Server Administrative Console etc.

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 builds upon the Business Process Management and SOA/ESB capabilities and address core challenges found in key vertical industries such as manufacturing and retail. Native capabilities of BTS R2 include support for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and AS2 ,Windows Workflow Foundation, WCF as well as RFID.

BizTalk server 2006 R2 application can be created using Visual Studio 2005 provided BizTalk Server SDK is installed into the system. A standard BizTalk Server application consists of Schema, Mapping, and Orchestrations. The heart of the BizTalk Server application is schema that is used to define the message format of source and destination data.

BizTalk Server has capability to talk with any kind of legacy system as it only understand the plain text data (in the form of xml), in order to talk with different systems it has several inbuilt adapter like SQL Adapter, MSMQ Adapter, SMTP Adapter, File Adapter, SOAP Adapter etc.

BizTalk sets a message context property called BTS.MessageType. This is a concatenation of the document namespace and Root Node Name in other words Message Type is a BizTalk System property that is promoted inside a Pipeline. It is made up of Document Name Space and Root Node Name.

The default mapping for Auto Mapping is is mapping by structure. This can be changed to by node name in the map properties.

Dehydration:
When an orchestration has been idle for a while, the orchestration engine will save the state information of the instance and free up memory resources.

Rehydration:
When a message is received, or else when a timeout has expired, the orchestration engine can be automatically triggered to rehydrate the instance – it is at this point that the orchestration engine loads the saved instance of the orchestration into memory, restores the state, and runs its from the point it left off.

#. HAT
#. BAM
#. Adapter
#. Pipeline
#. Orchestrations
#. Role Links
#. Send Ports and Send Port Groups
#. Receive Ports
#. Receive Locations
#. Policies
#. Schemas
#. Maps
#. Resources
#. BAS Artifacts (Business Activity Services)

For more details read http://geekswithblogs.net/LeonidGaneline/archive/2008/07/10/biztalk-interview-skill-measurment.aspx

A document schema is used to define a message. It is a definition on an Xml message with optional extensions for flat files, EDI file, etc that enable the parsers to convert the native format into Xml.

A property schema is used to define message context properties. These can be of type MessageDataPropertyBase (the property value is promoted or demoted from/to the message itself) or MessageContextPropertyBase(property value only exists within the message context and can be set by adapters, pipelines or within orchestrations).

If you wish to promote a field from a message into the message context then you need to define a document schema and property schema. In the document schema you promote the required field using the property schema to define the property type that will be used in the message context.

An Orchestration can have more than one instance running simultaneously. Even though each of those multiple instances perform the same action, it does it on different data contained within a message.

Correlation is a process of associating an incoming message with the appropriate instance of an orchestration.

For Example: If your orchestration issues a purchase order, receives an invoice, and sends a payment, the developer must make certain that the invoice message is received by the orchestration instance which corresponds to the orchestration that sent the Purchase Order. Without correlation, it would be possible to send out an invoice for thousands of items even though the purchase order is for one. And each correlation is based on a set of properties known as correlation types.

Promoted properties can be accessed in Orchestrations, ports, pipelines, schemas.They Use server resources.

Distingished fields are light weight and can be accessed only in Orchestrations.

For more details, please go through http://geekswithblogs.net/LeonidGaneline/archive/2008/07/09/biztalk-distinguished-fields-and-promoted-properties---additional-information.aspx

The latest version of BizTalk is BizTalk Server 2009 and IDE to develop application is Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

Top New Features
BizTalk Server 2009 introduces enhancements and new featured in four main areas:

Updated Platform Support
Support for Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Support for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
Support for Windows Server 2008
Virtualization support with Hyper-V
Support for SQL Server 2008

Developer & Team Productivity
New Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) experience - with Support for TFS - integrated source control, bug tracking, unit testing, MSBuild automation

Enhanced Developer Productivity with Visual Studio project system updates & Map Debugging

SOA and Web Services
ESB Guidance 2.0
New UDDI v3 Web Services Registry
New and enhanced LOB adapters (Oracle eBusiness Suite, SQL Server)
Enhanced host systems integration (WebSphere MQ, CICS, IMS)
Enhanced BAM support

Business to Business Integration
New Mobile RFID Platform
New RFID device management and industry standards support
Enhanced Support for EDI and AS2 Protocols and Drummond certification
Updated SWIFT Support and SWIFTReady Financial EAI Gold certification

Please refer to http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/whats-new.aspx

A "Message Assignment" shape is used to create a new message and assign values to it.

A Expression shape is used to assign values to variables and also write 'if' conditions.