BizTalk Messages

The text below is based on the beta release of BizTalk 2009. It might not (completely) apply to the RTM release.

In BizTalk Server 2009 it looks like Microsoft has continued to move functionality from the Health and Activity (HAT) tool to the BizTalk Administration Console (MMC).

When we went from BTS2K4 to BTS2k6 we saw that some of the tasks we did with HAT (and other tools) on 2k4 now could be done with MMC on 2k6.

The biggest improvement for me personally was the inclusion of the subscription viewer function in the MMC. I still have nightmares about the user interface of the 2k4 subscription viewer tool .

In BizTalk Server 2009 Microsoft took it a step further and removed the HAT tool. This means the remaining functionality is now also included in MMC.

To be more precise the HAT is not completely removed you only don’t need to start it as a separate tool anymore. If you for example use things like ‘Message flow’ or the ‘Orchestration debugger’ you’ll still get a HAT style window. Also the task manager shows a process called ‘BTSHatApp.exe’ which I think I saw somewhere before . Of course I also couldn’t resist typing ‘BTSHatApp.exe’ from the start prompt, but that results in the following error message:

Anyway I think it is a good thing because we now really have one tool (or at least one entrance point) to do everything. I also never liked the HAT user interface very much.

There are (or were) basically three functions/queries that I use in HAT:

• Most recent 100 service instances
• Messages sent in the past day
• Messages received in the past day

The query expression pane in the 2k9 MMC now has values for ‘Tracked Message Events’ and ‘Tracked Service Instances’. This will allow me to do the same thing in MMC that I previously had to do in HAT.

Screen shot 1 shows the ‘Most recent 100 service instances’ in the 2k9 way. Screen shot 2 shows the ‘Messages received in the past day’.

Screen shot 1: Most recent 100 service instances.

Screen shot 2: Most recent 100 send messages.