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.  This in addition to the ones listed by Microsoft on Known Issues in Installation, Configuration, and Deployment

* 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.

.Net 4.6 now supported for BizTalk 2013 R2, BHM 4.1 released

Over a year ago we hit a situation where we got a warning from BHM about .Net 4.6 not being supported, which was a bit of effort to sort out.

Today I looked at the release notes for the latest BizTalk Health Monitor, v4.1 and noticed that in the release notes it said “Removed BizTalk 2013 R2 .NET 4.6.x warning since it is now supported”.   I then checked Hardware and Software Requirements for BizTalk Server 2013 and 2013 R2 and sure enough, they have now listed .Net 4.6 as supported for BizTalk 2013 R2.

Here are the other changes for BizTalk Health Monitor

• Fixed issue with losing monitoring configuration
• Upgraded update mechanism to handle all components of BHM
• Added support for displaying each view of a BHM report in HTML format
• Improved update to happen on secondary thread
• Improved the ChkBHMRep.exe tool
• Added support for BizTalk 2013 R2 CU6, BizTalk 2016 CU1, and BizTalk 2016 FP1 (Feature Pack 1)
• Improved report to provide DTA purge job parameters with improved formatting
• Added warning for infinite max SQL memory config
• Fixed some issues with detecting Host Integration Server CUs
• Removed BizTalk 2013 R2 .NET 4.6.x warning since it is now supported
• Updated query and rules repository

 

BizTalk Documenter – Moved to Github

Do the the impending closure of CodePlex, the BizTalk Documenter project has been moved to Github

It needs a bit of work to ensure that all the prerequisites are automatically included as per the issue #1 Unable to build.   Just a matter of finding the time or a volunteer to get this done.

If you have any other issues or suggestions for improvement, please do raise it as an issue.

Give Microsoft Feedback on BizTalk

Is there an issue or a feature lacking in BizTalk that you would like to see addressed?  Then vote on the ideas for BizTalk Server or add your own on uservoice.com

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