ESB 2.1 First Look Usage Notes

Here are some notes on my initial try of Microsoft BizTalk ESB 2.1, and BizTalk Server 2010 beta on an x64 image.

To Install the Itinerary Designer, first download VS_VMSDK.exe
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0def949d-2933-49c3-ac50-e884e0ff08a7&displaylang=en

then goto -> Start-> All Programs -> Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 ESB Toolkit -> Install Itinerary Designer extensions. This installs the DSL Package for the Itinereary Designer.

When I first installed it the Itinerary designer did not show up, so I googled and found this:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/biztalkesb/thread/d65d2c8c-5fb0-4ae7-87d0-e5e732a6caae

Basically copy all files and folders inside this:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1\Tools\Itinerary Designer\Lib

to this:
C:\Users\<login name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Extensions\Microsoft\BizTalk ESB Toolkit Itinerary Designer\2.1.0.0\Lib

After this I restarted VS.NET 2010, and the new Itinerary Designer showed up inside VS.NET….. YAY!!!

However I wasn’t out of the woods yet. When I tried creating a new Itinerary by adding on-ramps and off-ramps, and itinerary services, I noticed a few new features:

1. THere’s a Require Encryption Certificate : true | false setting that allows you to control whether the itinerary needs to be encrypted or not. This is kewl because the last version required you to go into the Registry and turn it off, or go into the project the xml of the file along with other files and change the export policies.(You can google the two methods…) As I noticed this, I also noticed that my Model Exporter was empty.

I said this is not good, I can’t choose Database nor Xml as the Export model. So I venturued further and saw that I couldnt’ choose On-ramps extensions, off-ramp extensions, the Messaging Extender or anything.

So I went further and addded a resolver, at least I could do that…. And noticed that I had my custom resolvers but none of the standard resolvers loaded.

WTF!!!

So I decided to look for some more Dll’s to copy into that 2.1.0.0\Lib folder since apparently this is where the new 2010 Extensions are loading the DSL extensions. So I copied the all the DLL’s files from the Itinerary Designer folder: Microsoft.Practices.Modelling.COmmon.dll, Microsoft.Practices.Modelling.ExtensionProvider.dll, Microsoft.Practices.Modelling.Services.dll, Microsoft.Practices.Services.Itinerary.Dsl.dll, Microsoft.Practices.Services.Itinerary.DslPackage.dll into the 2.1.0.0\Lib folder.

Now, before I can absolutely say that this worked, I also re-paired the ESB Toolkit 2.1 twice by running the installer and choosing the repair mode. And I installed the Itinerary Designer extensions again by cling the link from the program files menu. And as a last step, I copied all the \Lib files from the ESB\Tools\Itinerary Designer folder into the 2.1.0.0\Lib folder again. However it wasn’t until after I copied the 5 dll’s mentioned above did the regulart extender services and off-ramps start working…

YAY!!!

Hernan de Lahitte’s has a quick posting on some of the new features:
http://weblogs.asp.net/hernandl/archive/2010/05/27/biztalk-esb-toolkit-2-1-beta.aspx

I was also in the mood to update some of the Custom Resolvers and Messaging (Itinerary Services) I’ve built in the past and below are my notes on this thus far:

For Custom Resolver:
Had to Re-Reference ESB Assemblies for 2.1 version
Had to Download VS_VMSDK.exe for 2010 (Modeling SDK 2010)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0def949d-2933-49c3-ac50-e884e0ff08a7&displaylang=en

Be careful to check all assembly and assembly versions, because if you have VS.NET 2k8 installed with the VS.NET 2k8 SDK 1.1 then you have version 9.0 along with 10.0.

My projects referenced the xx.Modelling.Common dll for 9.0, but I needed to re-reference it to the 10.0 assemblies, along with the xx.Modelling.ExtensionProvider.

Verify the xxx.Itinerary.DSL and xx.xx.DSLPackage is version 10.0 as well.

That’s it for now, it’s a rough read, but my attempts are a brute force right now, considering I’m so busy.