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This week I ran into a rather unusual problem. One of my customers was using the evaluation version of BizTalk for quite a while and recently it expired. Nothing strange here, since this is what evaluation copies are supposed to do. However, this customer was close to going into production with the evaluation machines. They had used evaluation copies of all software (not just BizTalk) to install all of their machines in their DTAP process.
After purchasing the BizTalk licenses, they wanted to enable their BizTalk machines again. However, unlike Windows, BizTalk server is not activated/upgraded or whatever by entering a key. You need to re-install BizTalk.
Luckily we got confirmation from the product team that we could do an in-place upgrade. Just start the BizTalk installation, and your evaluation version will be upgraded to the normal version and everything else remains in place.
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I recently had to do a proof of concept, where I had to connect BizTalk Server to some internal web services. Normally this isn’t a big deal, but now I ran into a problem: the web services expected a SOAP Header. I will spare you the steps that I took and didn’t work. Below is a working solution, although I have some ideas to make it much more flexible.
Step 1. Import the web service definitions in Visual Studio
Add generated items -> Consume WCF Service -> Metadata Exchange (MEX) endpoint -> path to service
This generates the following files
- An orchestration
- Several xds’s
- 2 binding files: the normal binding file and a custom binding file
Step 2. Use the generated items in the project
Basically this means importing the binding file (the ‘normal’ one) and using the xsd’s and generated port (in the generated orchestration) to do what the orchestration should do.
Step 3. Add SOAP headers
This was the most difficult step, but now I know how to do it, it is actually quite easy and logical.
In the Construct Message shape add a Message Assignment shape to fill the SOAP header.
The SOAP header is called ‘WCF.OutboundCustomHeaders’.
| msgRelatieLeesReq(WCF.OutboundCustomHeaders) = "<headers><h:header xmlns:h=\"http://schemas.customername.nl/soap\" xmlns=\"http://schemas.customername.nl/soap\" xmlns:xsi=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xmlns:xsd=\"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema\"><account>POC</account><naam>POCESB</naam><wachtwoord>pocesb</wachtwoord><bedrijfsnummer>1</bedrijfsnummer><tussenpersoonnummer>0</tussenpersoonnummer></h:header></headers>"; |
I also had a namespace problem, so I added all the namespaces from the previous project.
I am sure this can be much ‘nicer’ and more flexible. But this works!
P.S. Thanks to Patrick Wellink for pointing me in the right direction.
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After failing to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 two times, I decided to take a good look at it and write down the crucial steps for future generations. The problem I had was that during the setup of WSS I could press the OK button until all eternity, but noting would happen. No action and no warnings.
So, what should you do to install WSS 3.0 ?
1. Download the installation files
2. Add the local machine name to the 'local sites' in IE and give 'local sites' the lowest security settings.
This allows scripts and such to run. If you forget this step you can never ever configure SharePoint. You will be presented with a form to fill in and press the OK button. But without this step pressing OK will do absolutely nothing.
3. Run setup and select 'server farm'
4. Now you are ready to create a sharepoint site and document spaces.
That's all.