Biztalk

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Biztalk interview questions part 1

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What is BizTalk?

The BizTalk Framework is a set of guidelines for driving the consistent adoption of XML to enable e-Commerce and application integration.

It is initiated by Microsoft and supported by a wide range of organizations.

The BizTalk Framework is an open framework for B2B exchange, It is implemented across all major platforms and most major B2B products.

BizTalk provides costs savings when used in internal IT projects and can be used in externally focused solutions too.

BizTalk Server 2000 is based on the BizTalk Framework. It provides the infrastructure and tools to enable B2B eCommerce and process integration.

BizTalk enables companies to integrate and manage business processes by exchanging business documents between business applications within or across organizational boundaries.

BizTalk has a website called www.biztalk.org which is a "repository" and "gateway" for BizTalk to enable dissimilar business applications to exchange structured documents with each other.

Explain Message Type (i.e. BTS.MessageType) and how is it used in BizTalk?

Messages in BizTalk are data, and each message must be of a selected message type. 
E-mail, Documents, InfoPath forms, large binary files, SQL records, flat files, and anything XML can be processed as messages.

BizTalk is all about messages and message-oriented programming.

The most common message type in BizTalk is a schema.

If you try to change the message type after having selected the message for send/receive and having it connected to a port, you may get an error.

So to do away with this, you may need to perform the following checks:

• Before jumping in to do as the error message suggests, let’s think for a moment about what that entails.  
• Inspect every Receive and Send shape to determine if it uses a Message variable that’s associated with the schema you want to change.
• Its not a good practice to create a single orchestration with so many Receive/Send shapes.
• Delete Port connections, once you find all the Receive/Send shapes.
• Change the Message variable so that the Message Type property is set to the new schema and then reassociate the Message variable with each Receive/Send shape.
• Find all the Port Types that are associated with the Ports you disconnected from Receive/Send shapes and reset their Operation’s Message Type properties.
• Use a Multi-Part Message Type to wrap the underlying schema. It’s flexible and saves time in the long run.

Following steps explain how to use the message types:

• Right-click Messages in the Orchestration View tab to create a new message, you have four choices for the Message Type property.
• Expand Multi-part Message Types and then choose Create New Multi-part Message Type.
• Name your multi-part message type then expand it so you can see its MessagePart_1 member (BizTalk suggested name)
• Set the Message Body Part property to True so that it acts just like a regular message.

Explain the difference between a Distinguished field and a Promoted Property.

The two ways to programmatically access an attribute or element in BizTalk are
Distinguished Field
Promoted Property

Following is the explanation when to use which one:

If you need to route the information in the element/attribute OR track the it OR you need to use information that can only be dynamically created (not directly accessible), then use promoted property.

If you dont need to do any of this, then you should use a distinguished field.

Messaging solutions typically use promoted properties to route incoming messages to the correct destination.

To build a solution containing orchestrations that model business processes you should use distinguished fields.

In orchestrations you can use distinguished fields in a number of ways;

conditions for looping and decisions shapes,
expression shape and
message assignment shape.

What is direct binding?

Direct binding in Biztalk Server 2004 can be used to send messages from one Orchestration to another and can also be used to send messages directly into the message box.

In Direct Binding, properties like BTS.SPID, BTS.ReceivePortID, etc are not exploited automaticaly by orchestration ports.

So, BizTalk does not manage the binding of orchestration ports to messaging Receive and Send ports. 

Developers can control subscriptions and message context to route messages.

External binding configuration cannot be used with directly bound orchestration ports. 

Direct binding is the most flexible model but You cannot configure your orchestration ports using binding files. More programming needs to be done to fully exploit the flexibility on offer.

What is BAM? What is the purpose of BAM?

Microsoft documentation describes BAM as “Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) It is a collection of tools that allow us to manage aggregations, alerts, and profiles to monitor relevant business metrics. 

It provides full visibility of your business processes with accurate information about the status and results of various transactions to enable you to determine the problem areas and resolve issues regarding the business.

What is the Rules Engine?

BizTalk Rules Engine provides a framework to enable the implementation, deployment, and versioning of your business logic in a quick and extensible manner. BRE can integrate with and complement orchestration.

With BizTalk Rules Engine:

You can define and change business rules without recompiling or restarting your application.

Beginning with an examination of the Rules Engine architecture and we will show how you can create vocabulary definitions against XML, DB and .NET objects and test and publish effective policies using the policy testing tools.

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