BizTalk Server 2010: Tools

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Introduction

There are a number of tools that can aid you as BizTalk developer and/or administrator. These tools are not the out of the box tools offered by BizTalk Server like BizTalk Administration Console, WCF Publishing Wizard or BTSTask. Through the internet you can find numerous tools that can help you for instance in automating deployment, analyze your BizTalk environment or identify performance issues. You will find these tools on Operating System, Codeplex or Microsoft Download Center.

BizTalk Benchmark Wizard

The BizTalk Benchmark Wizard (BBW) is a tool built by Mikael Håkansson and Ewan Fairweather. This tool is intended to validate a BizTalk installation. The benchmark wizard performs load to BizTalk Server in relation to specific scenarios. During the execution of the test, counter information is collected and benchmarked against collected statistics relevant to your BizTalk Server environment. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

If you are not getting the most throughput performance out of your BizTalk Server installation after analysis of BBW read Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 Performance Optimization Guide.

BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer

The BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer (current version V1.2) performs configuration-level verification by reading and reporting only. The Best Practice Analyzer is not under development now, the similar functionality is developed in the Message Box Viewer. Many "best practices" are not up-to-date. The Best Practices Analyzer gathers data from different information sources, such as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes, SQL Server databases, and registry entries. The Best Practices Analyzer uses the data to evaluate the deployment configuration. The Best Practices Analyzer does not modify any system settings, and is not a self-tuning tool. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL)

The PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) tool is a tool that reads in a performance monitor counter log and analyzes it using known thresholds. PAL tool reads a performance monitor counter log (any known format) and analyzes it. Basically it automates the analysis of performance counter logs, for instance one that is generated by the Bench mark wizard. In end you can generate an HTML or XML based report that graphically charts important performance counters and throws alerts (in red), when thresholds are exceeded. The thresholds are originally based on thresholds defined by the Microsoft product teams, including BizTalk Server, and members of Microsoft support. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Message Box Viewer (MBV)

The BizTalk Message Box Viewer also known as Message Box Viewer (MBV) was created by Jean-Pierre Auconie. This tool retrieves information from a BizTalk System and identifies all possible issues, which could be critical or need attention, and present them in a user friendly format. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Use the terminator tool to resolve any issues identified by the BizTalk MsgBoxViewer tool:

BizTalk Health Monitor

BHM is an MMC snap-in that allows the user to monitor the health of BizTalk Server environments and execute maintenance tasks.

DTCPing

DTCPing tool can be used to assist with troubleshooting Microsoft DTC Firewall Issues, which you'll often see in a multi-server BizTalk deployment. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

DTCTester

DTCTester utility is to verify transaction support between two computers, if SQL Server is installed on one of the computers (multi-server BizTalk environment). The DTCTester utility uses ODBC to verify transaction support against a SQL Server database. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

LoadGen

Load generation tool used to run performance and stress tests against BizTalk Server. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizTalk Server Pipeline Component Wizard

The Pipeline Component Wizard is intended to ease to development of pipeline components used within a BizTalk Server environment. Supports both C# and VB.NET. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizTalk Server Functoids Project Wizard

BizTalk MapperExtensions Functoid Wizard is a Custom Functoid Project Wizard for Visual Studio 2010. It allows you to create new Functoids project for BizTalk Server 2010 without having to create manually the project. Supports both C# and VB.NET.
The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizUnit

BizUnit enables automated tests to be rapidly developed. BizUnit is a flexible and extensible declarative test framework targeted that rapidly enables the automated testing of distributed systems, for example it is widely used to test BizTalk solutions. BizUnit is fully extensible. Its approach is to enable test cases to be constructed from generic reusable test steps, test cases are defined in XML which allows them to be auto-generated and also enables the ‘fixing up’ of Url’s for different environments, e.g. test, staging and production environments. Defining test cases in XML enables test cases to be auto-generated. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

DebugView for Windows

DebugView enables you to trace what is happening inside your application by letting you monitor debug output on your local system, or any computer on the network that you can reach via TCP/IP. It is capable of displaying both kernel-mode and Win32 debug output, so you don't need a debugger to catch the debug output your applications or device drivers generate, nor do you need to modify your applications or drivers to use non-standard debug output APIs. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Orchestration Profiler

BizTalk Orchestration Profiler is a really useful tool and recommend to BizTalk developers building orchestration based solutions. It illustrates the degree of shape coverage for a given orchestration. It also facilitates the identification of latency issues and error prone shapes. Thanks to Colin Meade the 2006 version can be used with some minor changes:

Log4Net

Log4net is a port of the log4j framework to the .NET runtime and part of the Apache Logging Services project. This project is intended to provide cross-language logging services for purposes of application debugging and auditing. It is a tool that helps the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. It can enable to track orchestration events, without using the orchestration debugger and can be viewed as a substitute for it. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizTalk CAT Instrumentation Framework Controller

The Microsoft's BizTalk Customer Advisory Team (CAT) build a framework on top of the ETW infrastructure and Thomas F. Abraham build the BizTalk CAT Instrumentation Framework Controller, which is an easy-to-use GUI for the BizTalk CAT Instrumentation Framework. This controller enables you to start and stop a trace and adjust filter options, and can easily enable real-time tracing to Microsoft Sysinternal DebugView (or other debuggers), to a log file or to both at the same time. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

soapUI

soapUI is the leading desktop application for inspecting, invoking, monitoring, simulating/mocking as well as functional testing, security testing, load testing, compliance testing and surveillance testing of REST/WADL and SOAP/WSDL-based Web Service. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Fiddler

Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

WireShark

WireShark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Network Monitor

Network Monitor 3.4 is a protocol analyzer. It allows you to capture network traffic, view and analyze it. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Windows Performance Monitor

You can use Windows Performance Monitor to examine how programs you run affect your computer's performance, both in real time and by collecting log data for later analysis. See BizTalk Performance Counters and Identify Performance Bottlenecks.

Processor Explorer and Process Monitor

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work. Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of enhancements including rich and non-destructive filtering, comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names, reliable process information, full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizTalk Deployment Framework (BTDF)

The BizTalk Deployment Framework (BTDF) supports deployments for BizTalk applications that goes far beyond BizTalk’s out-of-the-box deployment functionality. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Nolio Zero Touch Deployment

The Nolio Zero Touch Deployment (ZTD):

  • Achieve full control of BizTalk applications, host instances, orchestrations and bindings 
  • Fully automate all aspects of BizTalk applications deployment and configuration
  • Create reusable deployment processes across multiple BizTalk versions
  • Reduce dependency on command line and complex manual deployments of BizTalk applications

SSO Configuration Application MMC Snap-In

The SSO Configuration Microsoft Manager Console Snap- In provides the ability to add and manage applications, add and manage key value pairs, as well as import and export configuration applications so that they can be deployed to different environments. You can download the tool from Microsoft Download Center:

SSO Configuration Commandline Tool

This tool is based on code of the SSO Configuration Application MMC Snap-In and it supplies capabilities to perform SSO actions via the commandline. With the tool you can Import, Export, Delete, List and view Details of SSO applications.

BizTalk SSO Configuration

SSO can be very use full for a way to securely store configuration data. Richard Seroter has built a BizTalk SSO Configuration Data Storage Tool, which can store key/value pairs. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizTalk Environment Config Loader

This tool build by Rudolf Henning automates the configuration of hosts, hosts instances, adapters and adapter handlers. This helps to configure the BizTalk environment quickly without all the manual steps usually needed. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizTalk Documenter

BizTalk documenter can automatically generate a document (compiled chm, and even HTML for 2010 version). The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

BizTalk Software Factory

BizTalk Software Factory was created by Jean-Paul Smit and is a community tool that helps BizTalk developers build consistent solutions. The following resources can be used to download the tool, find guidance in usage and background information:

Log Parser 2.2

Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows® operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory. You can find more information and download the tool:

BizTalk ESB Toolkit EntLib machine.config Toggler

This tool provides an instant on/off switch for the enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource changes that the BizTalk ESB Toolkit makes to machine.config. It instantly comments out or uncomments the enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource element in all machine.config files (.NET 2.0/4.0 and x86/x64).

BizTalk Nos Addin Visual Studio Extension

The BizTalk Nos Addin is a visual studio addin which adds a lot of productivity tools for the day to day BizTalk Development activities and improves the overall developer experience and can even reduce development time.

The following functionality is currently provided:

  • Quick search inside artifacts
  • Fast register/unregister in GAC
  • Find critical, internal or external dependencies
  • JackHammering, which will compare your VS artifact with the artifact deployed in a BizTalk environment
  • Extract artifacts (Orchestrations, maps, schemas and so on)
  • and many more

CodePlex Projects

Other Projects

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See Also

The out-of-box tools of BizTalk see MSDN:

Another important place to find an extensive amount of BizTalk related articles is the TechNet Wiki itself. The best entry point is BizTalk Server Resources on the TechNet Wiki.