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Stray Text in BTARN Messages and BTARN Service Validation Failures

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A recent bug found in BTARN processing can cause stray text to appear in response messages. The issue is a temporary variable not being cleared. Here is a sample from a recent case.

<ActionIdentity>
<GlobalBusinessActionCode>Formally confirms the status of line item(s) in a Purchase Order. A Purchase Order line item may have one of the following states: accepted, rejected, or pending.</GlobalBusinessActionCode>
<InstanceIdentifier>md.o1loqohc.efs41f.</InstanceIdentifier>
<VersionIdentifier>V02.00</VersionIdentifier>
</ActionIdentity>

The Business Document Description is written to a temporary variable. It is only overwritten if "/ServiceHeader/ProcessControl/TransactionControl/ActionControl/ActionIdentity/description/FreeFormText” is populated. Since this is an optional value the temporary variable was not properly cleared leading to the stray text. A hot fix is available to rid the world of this menace.

A replacement S/MIME component is now available to remedy those cases with unexplained service validation errors. The error appears to be random, however in high volume processing the right circumstances happen frequently enough to generate a couple of failures a day. The “exsmime.dll” has to be updated to remedy the problem. The fix was to be included in BizTalk R2 SP1. Early releases of SP1 may not have the latest version, 8.2.254.0. The problem also exists in BizTalk 09.