January 2005 - Posts
SUCCESS !!! BizTalk 2004 is finally installed on my laptop.
Sherlock Holmes would have been ashamed of Dr.Watson and proud of me. I finally tracked this down :-)
Seriously, it appears that the Dr.Watson error message at the HWS config stage is actually a red herring. It doesnt mean anything. It doesnt roll back the installation and when I did a quick sanity test by compiling and running one of the SDK samples, it worked perfectly.
Now, I am not sure if the wretched thing actually played havoc with the internals of the HWS run time and once I get to the stage of HWS API development (which will be in a couple of days - given the short timescales I am looking at) I am sure to find out.
The Quickstart Guide to Installing BTS 2004 is really good. It works for XP SP2 as well. You just need to ensure that you have the extra hotfixes and do the registry changes for Sp2 and the rest is correct. Luke has also got another QuickStart for a developer sample and it even has a video to help build your first orchestration.
Whats actually quite alarming is that there is a specific SQL Server Hotfix for BTS which is a pretty large install and its nowhere in the BTS pre-requisite official list. And for some reason we appear to need MSXML 3.0 and well as 4.0 and, hold your breath, Office Web Components.
I am too tired to debate the infinite wisdom of the MS folk who decided that all these are required but not important enough to be on the official docs or the book.
For now, I am happy to have got the dratted thing installed. Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hope that the red-herring stays that way.
Just a quick update. I applied SP2 and the necessary hotfixes and then the instructions to add some registry keys (which for some reason were already there!!). Anyway, i didnt have any problems with SSO, but it failed when configuring the Human Workflow Services runtime engine. [This is just like the earlier situations where the SSO succeeded only to fail in HWS and the next time SSO would fail and then HWS and so on].
Tried removing the HWS engines from the install and thought i would go with plain developer tools but no luck. The system complained of some problem in the version of the HWS database on the machine. So i just dropped the databases and uninstalled BizTalk. My poor brand new IBM T42 is taking a severe beating with all this installing and uninstalling.
Thats it for today. I gotta go home while its still Friday. My enthusiasm for BizTalk has been curbed drastically. If some of our clients werent keen on using it, i'd probably just throw it and walk away. But I've got to get this thing working even if it means taking my laptop to MS HQ in Reading and getting someone there to do the job.
ONE MORE THING
I forgot to add. I tried joining an existing BTS group (when configuring) and saying NO to the SSO master secret creation. Guess what ? Since you HAVE to install this as a local admin, i could not connect to the machine on the domain which had BTS and the SSO DB already installed!! Ah!! This Wizard (ConfigFramework) can even rival Saruman. It out-thinks you at every turn.!!
So here I was feeling all chuffed about doing a training session for BTS 2004 and fired up the Setup to prepare a demo and what happens ? A complete nightmare!!
I swear I have never had so much trouble installing any piece of software in my life, and it still hasnt been done successfully. Make no mistake, its a piece of $#%^&*. Never thought I'd get to a stage where I'd have to abuse software. I even missed a Velvet Revolver show and its been one of my dreams to see Slash play having been a big Guns N Roses fan. I will never forgive MS for this.
So what are the problems ?
Well, firstly, I will admit to one mistake. Last night I forgot that I didnt have Analysis Services SP3a installed (although I had previously updated SQL with SP3a). That started off all the problems. I had to apply the pack, delete all the BTS databases and cubes and run the config again.
Then the SSO failed. The bloody thing installs a service in a Disabled mode and then has the cheek to complain that the service cannot be started because it is disabled. Hows that for irony ? So i force a start of the service, but the config wizard wont play ball. It rolls back the entire thing.
I had to delete all the databases and start again. This time I had to put the BizTalkUser that I created into the Admin group and then it went past the SSO stage.
Just when I was starting to heave a sigh of relief, it crashed and proudly asked me if I wanted to send the message to MS. Of course I did. Not that it will help, but never mind.
The next day (this morning) my colleage told me that I had to log in as Local Admin. Previously I had logged in as my domain user which has ALL admin privileges on the box.
But still no luck. This time it threw some weird rules engine config problem. Guess what the solution is to that ? (I found it on the net). You have to go and delete some registry settings which the config wizard doesnt remove when it rolls back. Why in heavens name do i have to do this kind of rubbish in a GA release of a major product? Dunno. Someone in their infinite wisdom put this feature in. It gets worse. Someone in a forum suggested we change something in the HOSTS file. You have got to be kidding me. I expect to tweak system files in a Unix environment. NOT when I'm given a fancy pants GUI setup wizard.Not that it solves the problem anyway.
But I'm being brave. I removed the entries and this time SSO failed YET AGAIN.
Went through the whole rigmarole several times,. Uninstalled and reinstalled BTS 3 or 4 times, BUT IT STILL CRASHES WITHOUT EXPLAINING ANYTHING.
Now I've finally given up. Im installing XP SP2 (and I know thats going to worsen the problem because I then have to install some hotfixes and rollups for BTS to work- as though I didnt have enough to worry about).
I havent the foggiest idea what to do anymore. I am supposed to be the BTS evangelist in my company but I cannot evangelise a product that i cannot even install.
My last try will be when SP2 gets installed. I'm going to try and uncheck the SSO options and see if I can install it that way. Beyond that I might have to install Windows Server 2003 on my laptop, but that might mess with my domain connectivity.
Make no mistake. BTS installs are not for the faint of heart. I've seen at least 2 dozen messages on various forums where people have suffered the same fate. I'm going to have a serious discussion with our MS Account Manager and the support team here in London. This is getting a bit too much to handle.
Does anyone know where the nice compiled list of BizTalk powerToys has gone ? The link on the BPI Home on MSDN doesnt work?
Please let me know if you do.
My tagline is back. I've finally got to do some BizTalk work.Looking at implementing a pilot for a client. Have to refresh my memory with the TechEd notes and slides and the book. Its been such a long time I'm getting rather rusty. I've also been researching Agile Development and EAI and found some good articles by the ThoughtWorks folks (Fowler, Hope et al) on these issues.
Will keep posting as this progresses
I just found this great document on the Microsoft site. I've been looking for material to help plan BTS projects and from the first glance it would appear that this is a good source. It was written in Oct 2003 and intended for use with BTS 2002, but im sure the concepts would remain the same.
According to the blurb
"In this book, we'll take a look at what you will need to start a B2B integration project with BizTalk Server, as well as how to proceed to the other stages of the project. In particular, we will take a close look at the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF), which provides proven practices for planning, building, and deploying successful EAI and B2B integration projects with BizTalk Server."
Hope you find it useful to. By the way, I also recieved the "BTS 2004 Unleashed " book from Amazon and am highly excited about it. Going to start reading it right away.
Cheers
Benjy
I attended the Microsoft Architects Forum in London last month. (Since I was officially on hols I didnt get round to writing up my notes and blogging about it, but I will do so shortly). It was on Software Tools and Methods and was quite brilliant. I found the presentations by folks from Conchango and Tesco very informative, especially being a newbie to the Agile Methodology world. I think Im beginning to see the light. It was even more interesting to realize that Agile and XP are not the same and that XP is only one of the variants under the Agile umbrella. I like the longer iterations of Scrum, in theory, more. [When I actually start using it, I'll be able to post more raves and rants on the same].
James Simmonds of Conchango has some good stuff on his blog. I really like the one on Scrum Sprint Best Practices. Howard Van Rooijen has also put up his slide deck replete with notes and its very nicely done. Havent had time to read more of the other blogs but Im sure they would be good.
I also had good conversations with Aravindra Sehmi about the Enterprise Library and with Michael Platt about the Architect Certification that he had blogged on some time ago. Need to ping Aravindra and Clemens to find out whether Proseware will be released publicly like ShadowFax.
My previous post sang the praises of DNN. Here's a bit of background.
I went back to DNN again because i nearly tore my hair out with Rainbow. I had built the site with the menu structures I wanted and decided to start working on the skin. So i copied an existing skin, renamed the folder and started working on the CSS. All I intended to do initially was change the banner color and the color scheme for the tab highlighting (active tabs, inactive tabs, hovering etc). But no matter what I did, the active tab name always remained blue which made it invisible when the background happened to be the same color. There was also no entry for the Blue color in the corresponding CSS class. I just couldnt find the blue setting anywhere. I dont know if there is some kind of inheritance in CSS and if this class had an unholy alliance with another class which caused it to be rendered in this color. But i looked for the hex representation in the code and couldnt find that either. A total mystery. And since Im not the patient sort, i just dropped it and turned back to DNN in desperation which, as I explained, has turned out to be a really cool app.
This reminds me of another time where I wanted to change the orange skin in Rainbow to something else and found the orange color hardcoded in the menu building module.
However I wont blame the Rainbow team . As one of the documents (in DNN) pointed out, skinning can be awfully hard especially in a generic portal software. All it takes is one module developer or skin developer to harcode color schemes or absolute positioning and everything gets screwed. In DNN they appear to have taken a different approach to skins which allows a complete separation of modules and presentation. Perhaps in the next version of Rainbow we will see something better.
I'm already very impressed. I downloaded and installed DNN 3.0.8 and then installed one of the competition winning skins, the BLUE theme and was immediately presented with a graphical set of layout options dealing with menu alignments (horizontal and vertical) for the skins and another set of options for the containers. The Preview and Apply options worked flawlessly too and the site I built on my laptop looks really amazing. Its very close to the kind of thing I was looking to build earlier and I've got some ideas on how I can extend and customise it to get exactly what I want. The ASP.NET forums have a good post on "dogfooding" the DNN main site and the lessons learned, issues and workarounds.
I also found an interesting DNN developer site with some nice skins to download and information on module development. Coupled with the other site which has training videos, Im more excited than I have been in a very long time.