In my last posts, I’m being describing some of the features of BTSG NoS Addin. This is the final post about the overview of all features available with this Visual Studio Addin and how can you use them.
Test Pipeline
There are many ways to test BizTalk pipelines: by using Biztalk Pipeline Framework to create unit testing, using the Pipeline.exe tool or by creating and use them by implementing “for real” in BizTalk messaging scenarios. But there isn’t for real an easy build support feature in Visual Studio to test our custom pipelines.
Once again BizTalk NoS Addin will provide that for you. This operation will test our custom pipeline pipelines directly from Visual Studio by simply right click and “Test Pipeline”:
- Visual Studio will prompt a window for you to select an instance of the message that you want to try against the pipeline.
- and will show the result for the pipeline directly in VS IE
Test Pipeline Component
As the previous one testing or debugging a custom pipeline component can be a challenge and most of the times you will need to create and testing them by implementing and configuring a BizTalk messaging scenarios and then attach the BizTalk process in Visual Studio to debug the components.
You now will be able to debug your pipeline component attaching an external process from VS without caring about BizTalk environment by:
- Right-click on the pipeline that contains the custom pipeline component that you want to try and select the option “Test Pipeline Component”:
- A window will show that will describe all the steps necessary for you to configure your testing scenario and debug the custom pipeline component
- The first thing you need to do is select an instance of a message that you want to try against the custom pipeline component, by clicking on the added wheel on the left:
- A window will prompt to select an instance of the message
- The second step is to set a breakpoint in your custom pipeline component and attach the BTSG TestPipeline process with the Visual Studio Debugger by:
- On the Visual Studio “Debug” menu, select “Attach to Process”
- Select the BTSG.TestPipeline.exe process (the title will also contain the name of our pipeline) and click “Attach”
- For the third and final step, you will need to go to the BTSG window to configure your testing scenario and debug the custom pipeline component, to submit the select message instance to debug it against the custom pipeline component, by clicking on the submit wheel on the right side:
And you be able to start to debug your custom pipeline component code.
Heuristics
Heuristics are basically the same as the above dependencies features (internal and external) but more useful during refactoring or before to do an update in an artifact. For example, you need to modify an artifact and you want to know what will be the artifact update impact in the entire solution.
Other extreme situation could be, I want to know where this property schema or schema could be used, and this is not so simple to know because a property schema or schema could be used in a lot of different ways using his root nodes.
Heuristic Internal Propagation
This feature is basically the same as the “Internal Dependencies” but with the difference that we will also go ahead and will also the sub-levels of dependencies, i.e., the sub-artifacts.
You can access these features by:
- Right-click in your resource (file) name and select the “Heuristic Internal Propagation” option
Heuristic External Propagation
This feature is basically the same as the “External Dependencies” but with the difference that we will also go ahead and will also the sub-levels of dependencies, i.e., the sub-artifacts.
You can access these features by:
- Right-click in your resource (file) name and select the “Heuristic External Propagation” option
Heuristic Circular Propagation
This feature is basically the combination of both above heuristic operation (internal and external propagation) in a single operation.
You can access these features by:
- Right-click in your resource (file) name and select the “Heuristic Circular Propagation” option
Heuristic Anchoring Dependencies
Looking for all files in the solution for all artifact that could be associated with the artifact selected.
You can access these features by:
- Right-click in your resource (file) name and select the “Heuristic Anchoring Dependencies” option
Heuristic Similarity Dependencies
Looking for all files in the solution for all artifact that could be associated (same solution domain, for example, are using the same namespace) in any possible option, with the artifact selected.
You can access these features by:
- Right-click in your resource (file) name and select the “Heuristic Similarity Dependencies” option
Heuristic Contagion Dependencies
Looking for all files in the solution for all artifact that could be associated with the artifact selected, in all of the possible combinations, type name, fields used, root name and more…
You can access these features by:
- Right-click in your resource (file) name and select the “Heuristic Contagion Dependencies” option
Finally, all the features are documented… And we only need to wait for the release announcement!!!!
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