Fresh Biztalk Pipeline Interview Preparation Guide

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A property schema is used with one of the two mechanisms that exist within BizTalk Server for what is known as property promotion. Property promotion is the process of copying specific values from deep within an instance message to the message context. From the message context, these values are more easily accessed by various BizTalk Server components. These components use the values to perform actions such as message routing. Promoted property values can also be copied in the other direction, from the more easily accessible message context back into the depths of the instance message, just before the instance message is sent to its destination. A property schema is a simple version of a BizTalk schema that plays a role in the process of copying promoted properties back and forth between the instance message and the message context.

Orchestrations can subscribe to (receive) and publish (send) messages through the MessageBox. In addition, orchestrations can construct new messages. Messages are received using the subscription and routing mechanism already discussed. When subscriptions are filled for orchestrations, a new instance is activated and the message is delivered, or in the case of instance subscriptions, the instance is rehydrated if necessary and the message is then delivered. When messages are sent from an orchestration, they are published to the MessageBox in the same manner as a message arriving at a receive location with the appropriate properties is inserted into the database for use in routing.

☛ IBaseComponent,
☛ IComponentUI,
☛ IDisassemblerComponent,
☛ IPersistPropertyBag

Yes. Error-handling functionality called error reporting which enables handling pipeline errors. Error reporting is specified on receive and send ports within the BizTalk Administration console.

Message Type is a BizTalk System property that is promoted inside a Pipeline. It is made up of Document Name Space # Root Node Name.

Yes there is. The Pipeline Component Wizard is intended to ease development of pipeline components used within a BizTalk Server environment. Supports both C# and VB.NET.

☛ General
☛ Assembling
☛ Disassembling
☛ Probing

All stages in the pipeline can take maximum of 255 components, except the assemble stage that has a maximum of one.

Yes, it is possible, both are the ways to utilize already existing schema. The only condition is the schema which is included should have same Target Namespace or no namespace.

Minimum is zero components, example PassThru pipeline.

IBaseComponent,IComponentUI,IComponent,IPersistPropertyBag

.btp file is a BizTalk Server pipeline file.

Setting the Document Schema property is required, all other properties are optional.

IProbeMessage interfaces are used in developing a custom Probing components

Yes. XML envelopes serve two purposes within XML instance messages sent and received by Microsoft BizTalk Server:

XML envelopes can contain data that supplements the data within the XMLdocuments. This data can be promoted into the message context by the XML disassembler to provide easier access from a variety of BizTalk Server components. For outbound XML instance messages, the XML assembler can demote values from the message context into an envelope for inclusion in the instance message transmission.
XML envelopes can be used to combine multiple XML documents into a single, valid XML instance message. Without an envelope to wrap multiple documents within a single root tag, an XML instance message containing multiple documents would not qualify as well-formed XML.

Just adding assembly is not sufficient, it needs to be added to component dll at location : C:Program FilesMicrosoft BizTalk Server
2010PipelineComponents and then reset the toolbox, it will be visible and ready to use.

To implement pipeline we have to use the API in the Microsoft. BizTalk. Component. Interop namespace.

No Flat file assembler pipeline component do not validates the incoming XML message

This depends on infrastructure specifications (CPU, Memory, Disk) and on specific (possible) bottlenecks in your Microsoft BizTalk Server system. While BizTalk Server imposes no restriction on message size, practical limits and dependencies might require you to minimize the size of your messages because large messages require more processing resources

A receive port is a collection of one or more receive locations that define specific entry points into BizTalk Server. A receive location is the configuration of a single endpoint (URL) to receive messages. The location contains configuration information for both a receive adapter and a receive pipeline. The adapter is responsible for the transport and communications part of receiving a message. Examples include the File adapter and SOAP adapter, each of which receives messages from different types of sources. The receive pipeline is responsible for preparing the message for publishing into the MessageBox. A pipeline is a series of components that are executed in sequence, each providing specific processing to a message such as decryption/encryption, parsing, or validation.

When you create a new application, the default pipelines are created and deployed by default and appear in the Microsoft.BizTalk.DefaultPipelines assembly in the References folder for every BizTalk project. The default pipelines cannot be modified in Pipeline Designer. These pipelines can be selected when configuring a send port or receive location in BizTalk Explorer.

Pipelines and pipeline components present out of the box can do most of the tasks for you. But sometime specific message processing or messaging requirements encourage developers to develop custom pipeline components. You can create three types of pipeline components: general, assembling, and disassembling. Each of the three types can additionally implement probing functionality. Each type of pipeline component has an associated interface that must be implemented for the component to be plugged into the BizTalk Messaging Engine; the pipeline interfaces that distinguish the types of components are IComponent, IAssemblerComponent, and IDisassemblerComponent. A custom pipeline component is just a plain .NET class that implements several BizTalk interfaces.

Filters are used to create subscription when orchestrations are not part of the scenario.

To indicate that the component is a custom pipeline component and in which stage it can be used, couple of attributes are added to the class.

[ComponentCategory(CategoryTypes.CATID_PipelineComponent)] -- This attribute tells that the component is cutom pipeline component

[ComponentCategory(CategoryTypes.CATID_Any)] -- This attribute tells that the component can be used at any stage
OR

[ComponentCategory(CategoryTypes.CATID_DisassemblingParser)] -- This attribute tells that the component can be used only on Disassemble stage

A BizTalk application is a logical grouping of the items, called "artifacts", used in a BizTalk Server business solution. Artifacts include the following:

☛ a) Schemas
☛ b) Maps
☛ c) Pipeline
☛ d) Adapters
☛ e) Orchestrations
☛ f) Policies
☛ g) Receive Locations
☛ h) Send Ports
☛ i) Certificate
☛ j) Com Component and scripting

A host is a logical representation of a Microsoft Windows process that executes BizTalk Server artifacts such as send ports and orchestrations. A host instance is the physical representation of a host on a specific server. A host can be either an in-process host, which means it is owned and managed by BizTalk Server, or an isolated host, which means that the BizTalk Server code is running in a process that is not controlled by BizTalk Server. A good example of an isolated host is Internet Information Services (IIS), which hosts the receive functionality of the HTTP and SOAP adapters. Hosts are defined for an entire BizTalk Server group; a collection of BizTalk Servers that share configuration, MessageBoxes, ports, and so on.