Orchestration Profiler for BizTalk Server 2006 and BizTalk Documenter

Hi,

I've recently taken ownership of the source for the BizTalk Orchestration Profiler and BizTalk Documenter tools that Jason Birth originally developed, the documenter has worked fine with BizTalk Server 2006 but the Profiler was broken in a number of places.   I have just finished a new build of the Profiler which now works with 2006 and fixed a few other niggles, both tools are now available and I'm open to feature suggestions for both tools moving forward.

If you haven't seen or used the tools before then do take a look - they are invaluable in many circumstances and I for one use them one way or another on every BizTalk engagement, the Profiler is here: https://www.codeplex.com/BizTalkOrcProfiler and the Documenter is here: https://www.codeplex.com/BizTalkDocumenter

Information on both tools is copy/pasted below from the respective CodePlex sites, enjoy!

BizTalk Orchestration Profiler

 Creates CHM report files illustrating the level of coverage for specified BizTalk orchestrations. This tool can be run to gain a consolidated view of orchestration tracking data for a specified period of time to help developers get an idea of how their orchestrations are being processed and how much coverage they are getting in their testing. In addition to simple coverage information the data presented helps to identify latency and code path exceptions by highlighting long running and error prone orchestration shapes which is key to effective performance testing.

The image below shows a sample of the coverage summary, at a glance you can see the percentage of overall coverage acheived upon an individual orchestration, if all of the shapes are touched as part of your orchestration then you will acheive 100% coverage, common reasons for not covering all shapes with an orchestration are not running tests that stress the error paths of your solution. This coverage summary also provides you metrics around execution duration of your orchestration easily identifying orchestrations that take a long time to execute.

The image below shows the orchestration coverage in detail, shapes highlighted in green have been executed as part of your last test pass and any shapes not executed will be highlighted in red. This enables you to easily understand what parts of your solution have been tested and which parts have not and adjust your testing as necessary.

As part of the profiler report you can see the "Top 10 Least Successsfull" shapes and the "Top 10 Longest Running" shapes, understanding where time is being spent inside your orchestration is key to effective performance testing and has been proven on a number of instances to pinpoint poor orchestration design and coding which when resolved has dramatically increased overall performance. The key is to understanding exactly where time is being spent and this tool offers a no-code view into your running system.

BizTalk Documenter

Creates compiled help files for a given BTS 2006 installation. This tool can be run on an ad-hoc basis using the UI or from the command line as a post build/deploy task to create a compiled help file describing a BTS 2006 installation. It will compile: BTS Host configuration, Send/Receive port configuration, Orchestration diagrams, Schema and Map content, Pipeline process flow, Adapter configuration, Rule engine vocabularies and policies, More… and publish them as compiled help files. Optionally you can embed custom HTML content and custom descriptions for all BTS artifacts to produce a more customized look and feel to the CHM output

This tool can be run on an ad-hoc basis using the UI or from the command line as a post build/deploy task to create a compiled help file describing a BTS 2K4 installation. It will compile:

• BTS Host configuration
• Send/Receive port configuration
• Orchestration diagrams complete with any custom code
• Schema and Map content
• Pipeline process flow
• Adapter configuration
• Rule engine vocabularies and policies
• More…

and publish them as compiled help files or Word 2003 XML. Optionally you can embed custom HTML content and custom descriptions for all BTS artifacts to produce a more customized look and feel to the CHM output.

The screenshow below shows some of the information collected about an Orchestration, you can see what variables, maps, messages, ports, correlation sets, etc. that are used by a given Orchestration.

The screenshot below shows further orchestration information which is collected, in this case we can see all of the inline code written by the developer for the orchestration, useful for code reviews and understanding a solution.

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 01, 2007
  Darren ha effettuato nuovi aggiornamenti sui due tools, Orchestration Profiler e BizTalk Documenter.