BizTalk 2013 R2 known bugs, issues & quirks

Below a list of know bugs, issues, & other quirks* of BizTalk 2013 R2 (mainly CU3) and Visual Studio 2013 (update 4) , but I will update with fixes as the CUs come out or when I know about a new issue, so if you have another one I will add it (and link to it if you have a blog about it) if you let me know.

* My definitions for classifying these are
Bug: Causes negative impact and no known work around or requires a lot of effort to work around.
Issue: Causes negative impact but has an easy or quick work around.
Missing: A feature that BizTalk doesn’t have that would make our life easier.
Quirk:  Something strange or unusual but does not cause a negative impact so far as known.

Packt $10 eBooks

Packt has a special on at the moment, every eBooks and videos on their website available at $10 for only a few days.

SOA Patterns with BizTalk Server 2013 and Microsoft Azure – Second Edition

Robust Cloud Integration with Azure

 

Cumulative Update package 6 for BizTalk Server 2013 R2

CU 6 for BizTalk Server 2013 R2 is out, details are here.

Summary.

There are 16 issues fixed in this CU.

There are 6 fixes to do with the SAP adapter to do with the NCo connection type.  So if you use that and are having issues you will probably want to release this to your test environments ASAP and re-test.

There are 2 fixes to do with File receive locations using alternate credentials.

2 fixes for the MIME/sMime pipeline component.

1 Fix each for the JSON decoder, MQ Series adapter, FTP adapter, message tracking and BizTalk DTA.

For some reason they have not yet updated the page Service Pack and cumulative update list for BizTalk Server to include this CU as yet.

BizTalk Server 2016 Cumulative Update Pack 1

CU 1 for BizTalk Server 2016 is out, was announced and available here.

It includes

• 10 fixes to Adapters (including one rather nasty sounding one The host instance stops when the HTTP send port times out in BizTalk Server which was also fixed in CU 5 for BizTalk 2013 R2). Other Adapters include MQSeries, SAP, POP3 & SharePoint
• 4 for BizTalk Server Message Runtime, Pipelines, and Tracking
• 4 for BizTalk Server Administration Tools and Management APIs

A list of all CU’s for all versions of BizTalk back to 2006 R2 can be found at kb 2555986 Service Pack and cumulative update list for BizTalk Server

Also see How to check the CU level of BizTalk Server quickly

Cumulative Update package 5 for BizTalk Server 2013 R2

CU5 for BizTalk 2013 is available as per this announcement  and can be found here at kb 3201943

Find BizTalk Pipeline Component References — Blogging BizTalk

What if your BizTalk implementation has lot of pipeline components and custom pipeline used and at times the question might pop up: find where all a certain pipeline components has been referenced. This might become more relevant if you are doing a deployment planning . One way is to go check the individual BizTalk solutions […]

via Find BizTalk Pipeline Component References — Blogging BizTalk

PowerShell script to download BizTalk Prerequisite CAB file — Kjetil Tonstad Integration Blog

When installing BizTalk Server it is possible to provide a prerequisite CAB file. This file varies based on BizTalk version, Windows version and 64/32-bit edition of the latter. It is possible to locate and download this file manually. This script will download the correct CAB file automatically based on user input. Supported BizTalk Server versions range […]

via PowerShell script to download BizTalk Prerequisite CAB file — Kjetil Tonstad Integration Blog

BizTalk Server 2016 Azure VM image now available!

The Enterprise Edition gallery image is available in the old azure portal, but it has not appeared in the new portal as per the announcement

BizTalk 2016 is RTM

The official announcement An important milestone in enterprise integration – launch of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016 by Frank Weigel Principal Director, Program Management

Update: The BizTalk 2016 Azure VM is now available in the old Azure portal but not yet in the new portal  the download files are avaiable on MSDN & My Visualstudio for Standard, Enterprise & Branch, and now also Developer Edition.

Also the What’s New in BizTalk Server 2016 has been updated, what is new has not changed substantially from previously, however what is interesting there is what they have removed or marked as deprecated.

Read This Before Implementing AlwaysOn for BizTalk Server 2016

Kjetil Tonstad Integration Blog

One of the major news in BizTalk Server 2016 is the full support for SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AGs). When Microsoft announced this, the crowd cheered, and they moved on to the next slide. There are, however, some bits you should be aware of before deciding on your High Availability (HA) architecture for BizTalk.

The Background
SQL Server 2016 is the first (and only) edition to support AlwaysOn for BizTalk Server 2016. The reason is lack of support for MSDTC between BizTalk’s SQL Server databases and other transactional resources. For this reason, High Availability for the database layer in BizTalk scenarios has traditionally been solved by using Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC), typically with an active-passive configuration.

The Requirements
First of all, you need to run BizTalk Server 2016 Enterprise, SQL Server 2016 Enterprise, and Windows Server 2016 (or 2012 R2 with KB3090973).

As you may be aware of…

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BizTalk Map Comparisons with TFS — Nic Trajkovic’s Blog

One of the most frustrating aspects of working with BizTalk maps does not involve complex maps or functoid usage, or how to call external assemblies, but rather how to run a code compare against previously checked-in .btm files. Often times I want to merely check what changes were made in in the map against a […]

via BizTalk Map Comparisons with TFS — Nic Trajkovic’s Blog