Deploying BizTalk Assemblies from Visual Studio into a BizTalk Application

Deploy and redeploy BizTalk assemblies from Visual Studio into a BizTalk application. You may want to do this to test the functionality of the assemblies that you have been developing and package them for handoff.

Overview

BizTalk applications provide a way to view and manage the items, called "artifacts," that comprise a BizTalk business solution. Artifacts include BizTalk assemblies (containing orchestrations, schemas, maps, and pipelines), which you can deploy into BizTalk Server from Visual Studio. Artifacts also include items such as .NET assemblies, certificates, scripts, Readme files, and policies, which you add to your BizTalk application by using the BizTalk Server Administration console or the BTSTask command-line tool. The solution developer or IT administrator can then view, package, deploy, and manage the application and its artifacts as a single entity. For more information about creating, deploying, and managing BizTalk applications, see Deploying and Managing BizTalk Applications.

Before you can build and deploy a BizTalk assembly, you must create a project in Visual Studio and either create or add the items that you want to include in the assembly. You can create a solution in Visual Studio to contain multiple projects and then build and deploy their assemblies all at once into the same application or different applications. For instructions on performing these tasks, see How to Create BizTalk Projects.

After completing these tasks, you can build, deploy, and undeploy the BizTalk assemblies by taking the following steps, as described in the topics in this section:

  • Configure a strong name assembly key file for each Visual Studio project.

  • Set deployment properties for the project, including configuring the Redeploy option to easily redeploy the assembly.

  • Use the Deploy command in Visual Studio to build the BizTalk assemblies contained in a solution and deploy them into a BizTalk application. Alternatively, you can use the Deploy command to build and deploy an assembly in a single project, although we do not recommend doing this.

  • After testing the application and making necessary changes, use the Deploy command in Visual Studio to rebuild and redeploy the assembly.

  • Install the assembly in the global assembly cache (GAC), if necessary, or remove the assembly from the GAC.

  • Undeploy the assembly.

    After deploying one or more assemblies into a BizTalk application, you can complete the configuration of the application and deploy it into a test and then production environment. For more information, see Development Tasks for BizTalk Application Deployment.

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