BizTalk 2020 CU1 released

BizTalk 2020 CU1 was released on July 28th 2020 as announced here

As per previous version of BizTalk it has a number of SAP/IDOC fixes.

Fixes

• 4 SAP/IDOX
• 2 fixes related to the WCF-SQL adapter (order of elements and FILESTREAM operations)
• 1 for the Oracle DB adapter to handle Database artifacts with nested types in Oracle 18c and later versions
• Fix for predefined WCF Bindings not taking in account a default Web proxy configuration
• 2 JSON Encoder fixes (1 one which was fixed for BizTalk 2016 in CU7)
• Fix for XLTS errors not being reported in XSLT stylesheet
• Fix for EDI receive location with named SQL instance
• Fix for ESB Toolkit to use gMSA.
• Fix to remove dependency on VS 2019 version 16.3.9
• FIX: Mapper toolbox not working for WCF Workflow Service Application after upgrade to BizTalk 2020

Improvements

• FTP improvement (macros for Before Put and After Put)
• Dynamic send ports able to use Officer 365 Outlook adapter types.

Visual Studio Extension

In addition to installing CU package, also update/install new version of BizTalk Server Visual Studio extension (3.13.2.0). The extension can be installed from https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-biztalk.BizTalk or within Visual Studio – Manage Extensions.

As per other CUs, you can find them on the page Service Pack and cumulative update list for BizTalk Server

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Cumulative Update 7 for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016

CU 7 for BizTalk Server 2016 has been released, and also Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Update 3 with CU7

Important: Do not mix installing CU’s and Feature packs.

This CU contains

• Four fixes/improvements for the SFTP adapter.
• One fix for the IBM MQ.
• One improvement for the the MQSeries adapters.
• One fix for SAP (NCo) adapter.
• One fix for the HL7 BizTalk Server Accelerators.
• Five fixes around applying CU’s, Feature Packs and other setup and configuration changes (not counting the SFTP one which I’ve counted under adapters).
• And a JSON FIX: JSON encoder unable to handle XML schema with the same name for record and one of its elements which is an issue that has caused grief for a few people.

Note: It has been reported on Twitter that “We have some issues with the new #biztalk CU7. The json encoder has started formatting boolean values as string values, like “true” instead of true.” and “As we wanted the FTP fixes in CU7 we installed it anyway and replaced the jsonextension dll with an older version.”

In that same thread “Little warning, rolling back CU7, does not rollback the jsonextension version.”

Also JSON encoder pipeline doesn’t create json array after installing CU7

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 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

I’ve now posted the below article on a TechNet wiki

* 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.

BizTalk JSON Decoder changing date-time timezone

While doing some work with JSON payloads being received in BizTalk we came across the interesting fact the the BizTalk JSON Decoder will in some situations change the time zone that the date-time was expressed in, even if we did not have a schema that specified these fields as being a date-time (either no schema or the field defined as a xsd:string)

BizTalk JSON Decoder – representation of XML attributes

I recently had to expose a web-service as a RESTful JSON one using BizTalk 2013 R2 using the WCF-WebHttp adapter and a JSON decoder in the pipeline.  There are plenty of blogs about how to that and it is fairly straight forward.  However I had a bit of difficulty when a decision was made to use an existing XML schema and to allow the JSON equivalent of that.  This XML schema made extensive use of Attributes.