This document discusses BizTalk messaging fundamentals including commonly used terms, receive and send ports, pipelines, message processing, promoted vs distinguished properties, message publishing and routing. It provides definitions for key concepts like messages, adapters, pipelines, ports, subscriptions. It also describes the end-to-end process of a message being received through a receive port, processed through pipelines and routing, and sent through a send port. Sample demos are outlined to demonstrate message routing with subscriptions and handling routing failures.

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Microsoft BizTalk Server
Messaging Fundamentals
Manoj Kumar
manoj.kumar@neudesic.com 18 April 2013

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BizTalk – Messaging Architecture

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BizTalk – Messaging: Commonly used terms
Message: Data file in any format like Flat file or XML. Immutable.
Multi-part message: Message is made up of zero or more parts. One of these parts
identified as the body part. Each part consists of a binary chunk of data.
Messaging: Flow of message from receive port to send port thru pipelines and adapters.
Translation: Changing format of the instance message (via pipelines).
Transformation: Creating a correspondence between source and target schema (via Maps)

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BizTalk – Messaging: Commonly used terms
Message Correlation: Ability to relate a message being received to an already running orchestration instance.
Routing: Moving messages to subscribers thru subscription/filtering.
Content based routing: Route message based on envelop or receive port configuration properties.
Routing Failure: No subscription exists for a published message.
Message Box: Message persistence and routing engine. There can be multiple MB, but one MB acts as master.
Message context: Set of promoted properties available for routing or distinguished fields in Orchestration.

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BizTalk – Messaging : Receive and Send port
Receive/Send port: It is collection of receive locations.
Receive/Send location: These consist of pipelines and adapters.
Send Port Group: Collection of send ports just like email list.
Endpoint Manager: The service responsible for managing send and receive ports
and acts as the intermediary between the ports and the Message Box.
Adapter: For transport and communication between two systems. Example
adapter for HTTP, WCF, SQL, Oracle etc.

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BizTalk – Messaging : Port components

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BizTalk – Messaging : Pipelines
0 or more pipelines for receive or send
Numerous pipeline components ship out of the box and Can write custom
pipeline component
Pipeline is a series of components which executes in sequence. Steps like
Decoding/encoding, disassembling/assembling, decryption/encryption,
parsing, or validation. These prepare message so that it can be published to
Message Box or sent out from BTS.
In Pass Thru: Message directly passes to Message box

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BizTalk – Messaging : Default pipelines

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BizTalk – Messaging : DEMO - 1
Receive Port
Receive Location
Adapter
Pipelines
Sent Port Group
Sent Port

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BizTalk – Message Processing
An adapter create a message as Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage and IBasePart
Adapter writes or promote properties into message context
Adapter passes message to Transport proxy (managed by endpoint manager)
Processing thru receive pipeline: Deals with message content (handled in decoding, disassembling
and validating stages) and context (all stage)
Message Transformation: inbound mapping or mapping in Orchestration
Endpoint manager passes the message to Message Agent for publishing to Message Box
Message routes to Send port or to Orchestration
When message ready to be sent from BTS all steps are applied in reverse order of receive port
Messages go to out after mapping and processing thru send pipelines

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BizTalk Messaging – Promoted properties
Promotion of message properties creates decision points
These become part of message context
Whole message must be loaded to be interrogated for promoted ones
Limited to 255 characters
Used for routing, correlation and/or tracking

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BizTalk Messaging – Distinguished properties
A lighter way to access message property in orchestration
Message elements that are written into the message context
A reference is added as
MessageName.RecordName.ChieldRecordName.DistinguishedFieldName
Distinguished fields should be used when a particular message element is
commonly manipulated in one or more orchestration

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BizTalk Messaging – Promoted Vs Distinguished properties
PROMOTED FIELDS/ PROPERTIES DISTINGUISHED FIELDS
Used for routing (subscription mechanism)
IsPromoted = true
Do not participate in routing
IsPromoted = false
Used for tracking Not used for tracking
Restricted to 255 characters No size limitation
Available for use in orchestrations Available for use in orchestrations
Require property schema Do not require property schema
Used by standard pipeline components
Accessible only by custom pipeline component
which would explicitly access them

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BizTalk – Message Publishing and Routing
Steps:
Message ready to publish to MB (Message Box)
 MA (Message Agent) inserts promoted properties and
predicate values from message context into MB
 MA asks MB to find subscription for current batch of
message being published
 MA inserts after validating subs
 The message ID, subscription ID, service ID, and other
subscription information are inserted into the
application specific queue table for each subscription
 Message and its body parts inserted into SPOOL table
 Each subscriber thru dequeueing threads keep polling
MB
 Host instance gets lock to handle
 Send port or Orchestration invoked
 Host releases reference to message
 If no other service has reference then message can be
deleted.

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BizTalk – Message Publishing and Routing
Publishers: Receive ports and Orchestration
Subscribers: Orchestration and Send Port
Subscription ways:
– Activation subscription: A new instance of the subscriber is created
when a message is received.
– Instance subscription: Routed to an already-running instance of
the subscriber. Unique instance ID is stored in the subscription
table in the master Message Box.

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BizTalk – Messaging : DEMO - 2
Message Routing thru subscription (Applying Filters)
End to end: Copying an XML message from pick up to
drop directory thru BTS
Routing failure: Finding and debugging the issue
Use of Inbound and Outbound maps

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Thank You
Manoj Kumar
manoj.kumar@neudesic.com