WCF | Mind Over Messaging

New Online API Mapping Tool

August 15, 2016 2 Comments

One of the many challenges with an integration project is typically the mapping of messages from one API to another. The difficulty most often lies not with the technical implementation (although some former projects mapping SAP iDocs to EDI X12 are still giving me nightmares), but rather with forming the specification of the mapping itself, including understanding the semantical meaning behind each element. This is difficult because it requires expert knowledge of both the source and target system, as well as an analysts who can correct “draw the connecting line” between the two. The correct end result is only achieved through significant collaboration amongst the relevant parties.

The BizTalk Mapper goes a long way to facilitating this task with it’s graphical mapping interface. Aside from providing the developer a means of rapidly implementing a transformation, it also servers as a visual representation of the mapping that can be understood by a business analyst (if not too complex):

biztalkmap

(image courtesy of MSDN)

There are two problems with this approach, however:

It requires BizTalk Server, which is not only expensive, but also may be overkill for a solution that can easily be implemented in WCF, REST, or another platform;
The mapping must be implemented by a developer before it can be shown to analysts and business users for discussion and validation. This usually entails a number of iterative cycles until the mapping is correct.

Enter api-map.com – a new free online tool created by my colleague Joseph Cooney specifically to address these particular challenges. api-map provides a medium to formulate, display and share mapping documentation which can eventually be handed over to a developer for implementation on any chosen platform.

Azure Service Bus Relays, SAS tokens and BizTalk Server

March 31, 2016 Leave a comment

Great article by Mark Brimble. SAS support is now available across all WCF adapters in BizTalk Server 2016 CTP1!

Connected Pawns

Many people have written about Azure Service Bus Relays in the past and a summary can be found here. Dan Rosanova recently tweeted “….We’re trying to discourage ACS for security. SAS is our preferred model.”. The ACS security pattern is described here and the SAS pattern is described here. This article attempts to summarise BizTalk adapter support for using SAS tokens.

Most BizTalk Server examples use ACS tokens rather than SAS tokens, probably because the BizTalk Adapters only allowed configuration with ACS tokens when service bus relays were first released with BizTalk 2013. BizTalk 2013 R2 has limited support for configuration of SAS tokens and most adapters only allow use of ACS tokens out of the box (OOTB). If you want to use a SAS token you have to be very inventive. I hope that BizTalk vNext will add SAS token support for all WCF adapters.

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Filed under BizTalk, WCF Tagged with BizTalk, WCF

Using BTDF to Deploy Pure WCF Services

October 19, 2014 9 Comments

The BizTalk Deployment Framework (BTDF) is widely used as a tool for managing the complex deployment requirements for BizTalk Server integration solutions. With each iteration, it gets better & better. The latest version (still in Beta) now supports BizTalk Server 2013 R2.

Of course at Mexia we use this tool quite regularly for our clients, enjoying the simplicity it affords in automated deployment and management of environment-specific configuration. However, the ESB that we often provide our customers includes more than just BizTalk applications; it includes some services implemented in pure WCF. Although these services do utilise BAM for tracking and SSO for configuration management, those features do not require the empty BizTalk application that is generated from using the BTDF.

After consultation with BTDF author Thomas Abraham and some helpful tips on this thread, I spent some time putting together a BTDF project file that would deploy just the bits that are needed for WCF – and nothing more. It has been very successful so far, providing for a consistent build definition and deployment process across the entire ESB platform. I’d like to share it with you here.

But before we go into the details, there are a few things you need to be aware of regarding this solution: Read more of this post

Filed under BizTalk, WCF Tagged with BTDF, configuration, WCF

The exception message is: A base address with the uri scheme ‘net.pipe’ needs to be specified if using service management endpoint ‘ServiceManagementNetPipeEndpoint’

August 8, 2014 Leave a comment

This post was extremely useful today while troubleshooting an AppFabric error with Service Bus Relays (“System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException: The service ‘/MyServices/MyService.svc’ cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: A base address with the uri scheme ‘net.pipe’ needs to be specified if using service management endpoint ‘ServiceManagementNetPipeEndpoint’.”) There have been many other posts about this topic, but this is the first one I found that revealed the critical last step of checking the net.pipe binding on the website level (not just the application level)! Well done, Sajid!!

The Code Authors

AppFabric uses this magically generated service endpoint when we configure the services to start automatically.

Problem
System.ServiceModel.ServiceActivationException: The service ” cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: A base address with the uri scheme ‘net.pipe’ needs to be specified if using service management endpoint ‘ServiceManagementNetPipeEndpoint’. Verify a base address exists on the site and the protocol is enabled on the application.. —> System.Configuration.ConfigurationErrorsException: A base address with the uri scheme ‘net.pipe’ needs to be specified if using service management endpoint ‘ServiceManagementNetPipeEndpoint’. Verify a base address exists on the site and the protocol is enabled on the application.

Solution.
Under the advanced settings of the service make sure net.pipe configured as one of the enabled protocols.

Still see the same error??

Check if the website has this binding enabled.

And verify this binding is enabled as protocol on website level.

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Filed under Azure, WCF Tagged with AppFabic, Service Bus

Using Azure Hybrid Connections to Consume an On-Premises WCF Service from the Cloud

July 14, 2014 13 Comments

Microsoft introduced Hybrid Connections a few weeks ago, a [currently] free version of BizTalk Services that allows you to seamlessly connect Web Sites and Mobile Services hosted in Azure to LOB systems residing within your organisation’s network. Similar to Service Bus Relays, there is no need to open inbound firewall ports as a locally installed agent can establish the connection to Azure from within your network. To help support this feature, Microsoft also introduced a free tier of BizTalk Services specifically to accommodate Hybrid Connections.

The most obvious question asked by most is, “Will this replace Service Bus Relays?”. After all, they do seem very similar in concept. Michael Stephenson wrote an excellent blog post addressing this very question and identifying the key differences as well as the situations you would most likely choose one technology over the other.

What has sparked my post here is that the only examples I found highlighting this new feature were aimed at connecting to on-premises databases. While this is certainly impressive and useful (especially since your Azure Web Site can use the exact same connection string you would use for on-premises access!), it left me wondering how Hybrid Connections could be used to expose WCF Services within an internal network – without the need for configuring relay bindings. My interest in this capability has arisen from some recent experiences building hybrid solutions for our clients:

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Mind Over Messaging

New Online API Mapping Tool

Azure Service Bus Relays, SAS tokens and BizTalk Server

Using BTDF to Deploy Pure WCF Services

The exception message is: A base address with the uri scheme ‘net.pipe’ needs to be specified if using service management endpoint ‘ServiceManagementNetPipeEndpoint’

Using Azure Hybrid Connections to Consume an On-Premises WCF Service from the Cloud

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