Fijsjan Heijkoop

Debugging maps in BizTalk 2009

Fijsjan Heijkoop — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:03:00 GMT

A couple of days ago I finally had some time to install the beta of BizTalk 2009.

One of the new features in BizTalk 2009 is the ability to debug maps. You will get the possibility to debug the actual XSLT that BizTalk generates.

This is how the menu in BizTalk 2009 looks like when you right click the transformation:

When you click on the Debug Map option Visual Studio will open a debug session where you can debug the generated XSLT.

It is also possible to debug scripts, functoids and other custom code:

So in the 2009 version BizTalk gives us some really nice tools to debug maps.

What BizTalk 2009 still lacks is the possibility to easily debug orchestrations inside Visual Studio. Hopefully BizTalk 2010 (or 2006 R4 if you wish ;) ) will bring us this feature.

ASP.NET ObjectDataSource and localization bug?

Fijsjan Heijkoop — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 01:03:00 GMT

As a proud owner of Windows XP NL (Dutch version) I tried out a few tricks yesterday with the new fancy ObjectDataSource in ASP.NET.
I bound a class to a gridview that contained several properties with one of them having a DateTime type.

Showing the values of my object (using nHibernate) in the gridview worked like a charm, but updating the values was problematic.
I got stuck with an error that my DateTime field could not be converted from System.String to System.DateTime.

Then I added some localization settings in my web.config that set the currentCulture and currentUiCulture on nl-NL.
But still the same error. Then I tried to set the culture settings on en-US and guess what.......it worked!
Okay, my DateTime field was now shown in US format and not in NL format but at least updating works now.

So it seems that the ObjectDataSource has a nasty localization bug!

Visual Studio Essential Tools

Fijsjan Heijkoop — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 00:27:00 GMT

I just read an article on MSDN about the ten most essential tools for VS.

Just in case you haven't installed these tools yet here is the link!

Enjoy!

First bugs reported

Fijsjan Heijkoop — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 03:56:00 GMT

The first bugs in the RTM of Visual Studio 2005 are already reported. It seems that there are some
problems when using generics. The IDE will completely freeze in certain situations.

I cannot wait for the first service pack to be released.

http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2005/11/03/429371.aspx

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/ProductFeedback/viewFeedback.aspx?feedbackid=b813ccd7-b714-4dc4-9e24-3f8ecc4527e4

Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 delayed

Fijsjan Heijkoop — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 09:14:00 GMT

Microsoft has announced that its next-generation software development suite, Visual Studio 2005, and its long-awaited new database system, SQL Server 2005, will now appear in 'the second half' of 2005.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/70800/microsoft-delays-major-developer-tools-and-database-releases.html

http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/36682

Failed to load configuration data for feature: HwsRuntime

Fijsjan Heijkoop — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 10:33:00 GMT

I came across this installation issue of BizTalk Server 2004 on Windows Server 2003.
Since I could not find a solution with old but good friend Google I tried some things myself and I finally managed to fix it.

These are the steps I performed:

- Go to Add or Remove Programs and click on Change/Remove on the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 installation
- Select Modify
- Uncheck Human Workflow Services Runtime Components under Runtime Components -> Engine
- Click Next

In my case I could run ConfigFrameWork again.

If you get stuck with ConfigFrameWork telling you that there is no valid 'BizTalkHwsDb' then just create an empty dummy database for it.

That's all!

BizTalk/.NET HTTP form post

Fijsjan Heijkoop — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:17:00 GMT

For a project I had to post XML via a HTTP form post. Very standard stuff you would think.
We decided to do this in BizTalk since BizTalk can do this very easily. (and we were using BizTalk for most other things as well)
However somehow the HTTP post didn't work. (we got a standard HTTP error back from the third party machine)
So I tried to do the post 'manually' in C# in several ways but still without luck.

My only option left was to write custom HTTP post code and that worked!

First you must build a string according to the HTTP format.
The boundary can be everything you like as long as the receiving party uses the same boundary.
The Content-Length must be the total bytes starting from --abc and ending with --abc
Name is the reference of the XML you post used by the receiver to read the request.

Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=--abc
Content-Length: 143

--abc
Content-Disposition: multipart/form-data; name="tree"; filename="yourXML.xml"
Content-Type: text/xml;

--abc

Then use this code to post it:

try {

CookieContainer CookieJar = new CookieContainer();
HttpWebRequest Req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(stringURL); //stringURL is the URL to post to

Req.ContentType = "multipart/form-data; boundary=abc"; //boundary must be in line with receiving party
Req.Method = "POST";

Req.Timeout = 60000;

Req.KeepAlive = true;
Req.CookieContainer = CookieJar;

byte []Postdata = System.Text.Encoding.Default.GetBytes(stringXML); //stringXML is the XML to post
Req.ContentLength = Postdata.Length;

Stream tempStream = Req.GetRequestStream();

   // write the data to be posted to the Request Stream
   tempStream.Write(Postdata,0,Postdata.Length);
   tempStream.Close();

HttpWebResponse Resp = (HttpWebResponse)Req.GetResponse();

//Read the raw HTML from the request
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(Resp.GetResponseStream(), Encoding.Default);

//Convert the response stream to a string
string stringResponse = sr.ReadToEnd();

sr.Close();
Resp.Close();

return stringResponse;

}
catch (Exception e) {
throw new ApplicationException("Error posting category tree. Posted document: " + stringXML, e);
}

That's it! I still don't know why the standard .NET functions didn't work but the above code is exactly according official HTTP standards.

Paint.NET

Fijsjan Heijkoop — Wed, 22 Dec 2004 10:05:00 GMT

I found something nice on the internet today and I thought I should share it with you.

It's the new version of Paint but now written in C#! You can find the sourcecode here:

http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/downloads.html