BizTalk 2010 Recipes : Administration and Operations - Managing BizTalk Applications

5/18/2011 6:21:05 PM

1. Problem

You have BizTalk solution artifacts that should be grouped together for ease of management and maintenance. Specifically, you would like to group BizTalk Solution components so that you can easily deploy those components to another environment as well as start and stop the components together as a whole.

2. Solution

You can use a BizTalk application to group and manage BizTalk solution artifacts. As outlined in the following steps, the process involves creating the new application, configuring it, and then adding components. After creating the BizTalk application, you can import BizTalk MSI files and bindings and add previously created BizTalk assembly DLLs, scripts, and resources. The instructions in this solution describe the process for adding a BizTalk assembly DLL that contains multiple schemas.

Open the BizTalk Administration Console.
In the left pane, right-click the Applications folder, and choose New => Application. This launches the Application Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Application Properties dialog box
In the Application Properties dialog box, make the following settings, and then click the OK button to create the new BizTalk application.
- Enter the name of the application that you are creating.
- Specify if this application is the default application. Identifying your application as the default application is significant when deploying new BizTalk artifacts from Visual Studio. Unless you specify an application in Visual Studio, your BizTalk artifact deploys to the default BizTalk application. A BizTalk artifact that does not specify a deployment application name will be grouped in your newly created default application.
- Identify any application references. Identifying application references allows you to share resources across applications. For example, if you have a common set of shared schemas, maps, or pipelines, you can specify them as part of an application reference and not need to make multiple copies of those components for each BizTalk application.
After the application is created, verify that the artifacts have been bound appropriately. Right-click the application and choose Start.
NOTE

When you start a BizTalk application, you have the choice of enlisting and starting all orchestrations, send ports, send port groups, receive locations, host instances, and resuming suspended instances.
To configure your application, from the BizTalk Administration Console, right-click it, and choose Configure. You will be presented with a Configure Application dialog box, shown in Figure 2 . Here, you can configure binding, host, role links, and messaging/port settings for your application. Click OK after completing your configuration.

Figure 2. Configure Application dialog box
From the newly created application, right-click and choose Add => BizTalk Assemblies. This launches the Add Resources dialog box, shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Add Resources dialog box
Click the Add button to identify the assemblies to add to the BizTalk application. You can add assemblies (BizTalk or custom), scripts, bindings, COM objects, and other objects to your BizTalk application. This dialog box includes the following settings:
- Overwrite all: This flag indicates whether to overwrite an existing resource in the Management database with the resource specified in the application. If you do not specify this flag and you have a resource that contains the same name, the process will fail when trying to add the object.
- Options: Depending on the type of resource being added, you have different options. For example, if you are adding an assembly to your project, you also have the option to add the assembly to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), make the resource visible to COM, and register the component as a serviced component. Remember any assembly you wish to add to the GAC must be signed with a strong name key (this can most easily be done through the project properties in Visual Studio).
- Dependencies: You will receive a list of dependencies if you choose to add an assembly (BizTalk or custom) to your BizTalk application.
- Destination location: This is the location or path where the resource file will be copied when the application is installed. You may specify an absolute, relative, or UNC path. The default path copies the resource file to the application installation folder.
When you have selected the resources to add to you BizTalk application, click the OK button. Figure 4 shows an example of a BizTalk application with a schema resource added. Notice that BizTalk automatically manages the placement of the resource into the correct folder location within the BizTalk application.

Figure 4. Schema resource added to an application

3. How It Works

BizTalk applications represent a powerful concept in organizing BizTalk artifacts into logical groupings. You can group like or related artifacts together in a BizTalk application. Once BizTalk artifacts are grouped logically, it is possible to export the application to another BizTalk environment. The concept of applications simplifies management, troubleshooting, and deployment of BizTalk artifacts.

The monitoring tools that are included in the BizTalk Administration Console take advantage of the BizTalk application concept. Multiple BizTalk solutions can be managed through logical application groupings.

BizTalk is set up with a default application container under which all BizTalk artifacts are deployed to by default. When you upgrade a previously created BizTalk solution, the artifacts will initially be placed in the default application. Additionally, in the following situations, BizTalk artifacts will be placed in the default application:

When you deploy BizTalk artifacts from Visual Studio without specifying an application
When you use BTSDeploy to deploy BizTalk artifacts (because this tool was created for a previous version of BizTalk)
When you use BTSTask without specifying an application name

NOTE

If you perform automated deployment, make sure to use the BTSTask tool instead of the deprecated BTSDeploy tool. With BTSTask, you can specify the application under which your BizTalk artifacts are deployed. If you continue to use the BTSDeploy tool, your BizTalk artifacts will be deployed to the default BizTalk application.

Consider using a separate BizTalk application in the following situations:

When sharing BizTalk assemblies across multiple applications: In this situation, group BizTalk assemblies in a separate application.
When sharing a deployed web site: The best approach here is to implement the shared web site in a separate application. When uninstalling a BizTalk application that contains a web site, the virtual directory of that web site will be removed even if it is currently being used. Any other application sharing that web site will encounter exceptions if that web site is removed.
When sharing a policy across multiple applications: In this situation, create a separate application for that policy. When you stop a BizTalk application that includes a policy, the policy is undeployed. If another application is referring to the undeployed policy, you will encounter exceptions.

You can move artifacts between BizTalk applications in the same BizTalk group by selecting an application resource, right-clicking, and choosing Move To Application from the context menu. This will launch the Move to Application dialog box (see Figure 5 ), where you can choose a new BizTalk application. If you need to move artifacts to another BizTalk application in a different BizTalk group, you must export the artifact and then import it into the other BizTalk group's application.