Biztalk Orchestration Interview Questions And Answers

The information about the promoted properties is extracted and stored in the bts_DocumentSpec table in the Management database.

Two types of message
☛ Typed message : A message created in Orchestration is bound to the schema
☛ Untyped message : A message is bound to System.Xml.XmlDocument instead of the schema.

XLANG/s can be viewed as a messaging language with some of the expression capabilities of C#. However, code is not portable between XLANG/s and C#. The language is used for orchestrations. XLANG/s statements generally fall into one of two categories: simple statements that act on their own, such as receive or send, and complex statements that contain or group either simple statements or other complex statements, such as scope, parallel, and listen. The semantics embodied in XLANG/s are a reflection of those defined in the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS) specification published by Microsoft, IBM, and BEA for the definition of business process semantics.

Yes. It is possible to use components like pipeline, business rule policy, .net component etc.

Promoting a node to a property field means to make a node value available in the context of the message. Adapters and pipeline components write in the context.

A scope configured with the transaction type of None or Long running can have exception handling added but not Atomic scope.

Yes, but only if the Orchestration Engine determines that the instance needs to be dehydrated.

A link specifies the basic function of copying data from an element or attribute in an input instance message to an element or attribute in an output instance. You create links between records and fields in the source and destination schemas at design time. This drives the creation, at run time, of an output instance message conforming to the destination schema from an input instance message conforming to the source schema.

Using System.Messaging on the Biztalk machine will not work; this is because System.Messaging needs MSMQ. I.e., you need to install the MSMQ client part to have System.Messaging work.

In Orchestration, the first Receive shape is responsible for creating a subscription. Following two properties are involved in it,
☛ Message : This tells what message this Orchestration is subscribing to
☛ Activate : This tells to consume the message when found in a MessageBox

Yes it is necessary (good practice) for all .Net components being called to be serializable. If not then Atomic scope is to be used which has its own limits.

Yes it is possible with the help of correlation.

The Receive shape, Listen Branch and Delay shape are conditional persistence points.

No, it is not possible, Transform and Message assignment shape must run under construct shape.

A disassembling pipeline component receives one message on input and produces zero or more messages on output. Disassembling components are used to split interchanges of messages into individual documents. Disassembler components must implement the following interfaces:
☛ IBaseComponent.
☛ IDisassemblerComponent.
☛ IComponentUI.
☛ IPersistPropertyBag.

Yes we can use message metadata in Orchestration

No recursion can not be achieved in Orchestration

At various points within a running orchestration the state can persist.

The convoy is used to receive multiple messages in sequence or parallel to achieve a goal/result.

Parallel Action shape is used for a AND situation whereas Listen shape is used for OR situation.

Yes it is possible. You can do so by setting "Build Action" property of that orchestration to "None". By default value of this property is "BtsCompile".

A message is received through a receive location defined in a given receive port. This message is processed by the pipeline associated with the receive location, and if there are any inbound maps associated with the receive port they are executed. The resulting message is then published to the MessageBox database. The MessageBox evaluates active subscriptions and routes the message to those orchestrations, and send ports with matching subscriptions. Orchestrations may process the message and publish messages through the MessageBox to a send port where it is pushed out to its final destination.

The message metadata is called Context Properties and on receiving the message, both the adapter and the pipeline will add information to the context.

No it is not, since it forms cyclic dependency.

There are no limitations on the number of branches which can be used in a parallel shape.