BizTalk Messages

In an earlier post I wrote about the PowerShell provider for BizTalk that I’ve been working on in the past months. I’m very proud to release the very first version now. Please note that this is still a very, very, very early ‘alpha’ release. In other words it is full of bugs and not as feature rich as I wanted it to be at this time .

The PowerShell Provider for BizTalk lets you browse BizTalk as a file system. The primary goal for writing this provider is to aid me in my day to day BizTalk development work. With this in mind the first thing I wanted to be able to do is stop, start and restart host instances in an easy manner. I also wanted to replace my host manager tool with something with more flexibility. You can read more on host instances and PowerShell here.

Download link can be found here

Some features:

- Browseable BizTalk Adminstration Console like hierarchy and structure of artifacts. Read more here

- Tab completion saves you from a lot of typing

- Custom cmdlets aimed at BizTalk.

Installation instructions:

prerequisites: PowerShell 1.0 installed, BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (haven’t tried R1 yet) installed and configured.

steps:

1. run ‘PowerShell.BizTalk.msi’ and follow instructions.

2. Start a new PowerShell shell.

3. Type the command:

Add-PSSnapin PowerShell.BizTalk

4. Optionally verify that the snap-in is loaded by executing the command:

Get-PSSnapin

You should see the snap-in in the list of loaded snap-ins (see example below).

5. Add a connection to the local BizTalk installation by executing the command:

New-PSDrive LocalBTS BizTalk LocalBTS: -scope global -server <ServerName> -database <DatabaseName>

Replace <ServerName> and <DatabaseName> with the name of the server and database with the name of the management database.

For example:  New-PSDrive LocalBTS BizTalk LocalBTS: -scope global -server BizTalk01 -database BizTalkMgmtDb

This will create a new PowerShell drive object pointing to the BizTalk management databases.

Automatically load the snap-in:

Step 3,4 & 5 need to be executed every time you start a new PowerShell and want to use the BizTalk provider. To prevent you from typing the commands every time you can of course create a personal profile script. This will be loaded every time a new PowerShell shell is started. In order to do this:

1. Create a new folder in your ‘My Documents’ folder. Name this folder ‘WindowsPowerShell’.

2. Create a new text file in the folder created in step 1. Name the file ‘Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1′.

3. Set the contents of the text file like below and save it.

When opening a new shell the snap-in should be loaded automatically.

Supported artifacts:

Compared to BizTalk Adminstration Console this release of the provider has a limited set of artifacts that are browseable. Also each artifact has less properties than you’re used to in the console.

Limitations in this version:

- The provider makes heavily use of ExplorerOM model. As far as I know this is only supported on 32 bit platforms. So be aware when using the provider on a 64 bit platform.

- The provider does not (yet) (fully) support connections to remote BizTalk installations. Some things like e.g. browse applications work, while other browse host instances will not work.

- Make sure you have enough rights (BizTalk administrator) before using the provider. It does not check role membership or authorizations before executing code so insufficient rights may lead to nasty errors.

- Many other……

Please send me an e-mail or post a comment if you have questions, remarks, bugs, etc…

During the last months I’ve become a big fan of Powershell. It is a great shell which allows you to do things in a very flexible manner. When it comes to BizTalk administration tasks however most of the time you end up writing scripts that use WMI to do things.

I would be great if BizTalk developers or administrators:

• just could walk through the biztalk artifacts in the same way we do with file folders.
• have a (rich) set of powershell cmdlets aimed at BizTalk.

In other words we need a: Powershell provider for BizTalk. Searching the internet resulted in nothing. I found one initiative but that did not seem to have started and there were also no downloadable bits.

Anyway I decided to code a BizTalk provider myself. I have copied the artifact hierarchy tree used in the BizTalk Administration Console as much as possible (see screenshots below). The provider also supports tab completion which makes it very easy to navigate through the BizTalk artifacts.

The screenshot below contains an example of a BizTalk cmdlet to stop a specific host.

Although I’ve been very, very busy with this in the last couple of weeks there is still a lot of work to be done. So why am I telling you about this when there are no downloadable bits yet. There are two reasons:

• I hope there are BizTalkers out there that use Powershell and want to test my provider eventually. (If so drop a comment or e-mail).
• I want to make a list of first release cmdlets that should be included. (Suggestions? Let me know!)