BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Install Visual Studio 2012 (Part 6)

The BizTalk Server development tools are based on Visual Studio. And like previous versions, at a minimum, you must have the Microsoft Visual C#® .NET component of Visual Studio installed on your computer if you wish to install the BizTalk Server Developer Tools and SDK component.

Note: Visual Studio 2012 is not required if you are installing BizTalk Server on a production computer (runtime only), on which no application development or debugging is required to be done.

The BizTalk Server runtime components require .NET Framework 4.5. In addition, the .NET Framework 3.0 is required if the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) adapter or WCF Interceptor is installed.

However, unlike previous versions of Visual Studio and the official documentation, with Visual Studio 2012 you cannot customize the features to install to the point of only install Visual C#, at least that I know of.

To install Visual Studio 2012:

• Insert the Visual Studio 2012 installation disk into the DVD-ROM drive.
• On the Start page, accept the license agreement by selecting “I agree to the License terms and conditions” and then click “Next”.

• On the Optional features to install page, you can clear all features, however, I think that is important at least to install “Microsoft Web Developer Tools“. Add the following features to your installation:
  • Microsoft Web Developer Tools
  • Microsoft Office Developer Tools (not required)

• And then click “Install”
• On the Finish page, close the window or click “Launch”.

Important Note: Your version of Visual Studio will include Microsoft SQL Server Express or compact as an optional feature. This feature it may cause BizTalk Server setup to fail and should not be installed but as we cannot customize the Visual Studio 2012 installation, we should remove this features afterward.

Remove Microsoft SQL Server Express

As I say previous your version of Visual Studio will include Microsoft SQL Server Express or compact as an optional feature. This feature may cause BizTalk Server setup to fail and should not be installed but as we cannot customize the Visual Studio 2012 installation, it’s very important that we remove these features.

To avoid futures complications I choose to uninstall these two features:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express LocalBd
• Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 SP1 x4 ENU: Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 is a free, embedded database that software developers can use for building ASP.NET websites and Windows desktop applications. SQL Server Compact 4.0 has a small footprint and supports the private deployment of its binaries within the application folder, easy application development in Visual Studio and WebMatrix, and seamless migration of schema and data to SQL Server

To uninstall these features:

• Press the “Windows key” to switch to Metro UI.
• Type “Programs and Features” and click on “Programs and Features” option on the Settings menu.

• Select “Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express LocalBd” and click “Uninstall”.

• Repeat the process, select “Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 SP1 x4 ENU” and click “Uninstall”.

Use Command-Line Parameters to Install Visual Studio

Visual Studio as an unattended (that is, customized silent) installation.
To do this we need:

• In the root of the DVD (image), you will find a file ‘AdminDeployment.xml’. We need to copy this file to a local folder;
• Next, we edit the AdminDeployment.xml file, as per in the Microsoft instructions, and change the Selected attributes to our likings.
• Then call the installer: vs_ultimate /AdminFile [yourpath]\admindeployment.xml

Thank you Peter Vervoorn for your comment (unfortunately during the migration process to this new blog, his comment was not migrated) and for providing this solution.

Related links

• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Important considerations before set up the server (Part 1)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Enable Internet Information Services (Part 2)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Install Windows Identity Foundation (Part 3)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Install and configure SMTP Server Feature (Part 4)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Install Microsoft Office Excel 2013 (Part 5)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Install SQL Server 2012 (Part 7)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Configure SQL Server Database Mail feature (Part 8)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Install and Configure BizTalk Server 2013 (Part 9)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Configure SQL Server Network Configuration protocols (Part 10)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Validate Mail account used by BizTalk to send BAM Alerts (Part 11)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Installing BizTalk Adapter Pack (Part 12)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Install and Configure Microsoft UDDI Services (Part 13)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Install and Configure the Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit (Part 14)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Configure BizTalk Server SQL Jobs (Part 15)
• BizTalk 2013 Installation and Configuration – Configure BizTalk Server Windows Services (Part 16)