I wish I never had to use this adapter again, but what I desire is often not reality, and I found myself needing to install once again the old legacy SQL Adapter that has been deprecated since BizTalk Server 2006 R2 – 17 years ago! Sometimes, I regret asking Microsoft to make the Legacy SQL Adapter available for customers with a huge footprint on that adapter so they can easily migrate to the new WCF-SQL adapter.
Again, the reality is that the BizTalk Legacy SQL Adapter was announced deprecated long ago and was finally removed from the CD image in the BizTalk Server 2020 release. And YOU SHOULD migrate your processes to use the WCF-SQL adapter!
However, a client always appears who wants to migrate the application AS IS and does not want to spend time and money on migrating that adapter—the old saying goes: if it’s working well, don’t touch it! Which sometimes you can’t understand. The client typically wants to migrate to a new version to be supported… but the application is not supported.
While Microsoft continues the deprecated state of this adapter – Legacy SQL Adapter – and offers no support in production scenarios in the 2020 environment, clients may install and use this adapter at their own risk.
This blog post will explain how to accomplish that.
Installing Pre-Requirements
Before installing the Legacy SQL adapter, you must install the pre-requirements on the BizTalk Server machines. To do that, you need to:
- Download the SQLXML 4.0 SP1.
- Once you download it, double-click on the sqlxml_x64.msi file (that may change depending on your machine)
- On the Welcome to the Installation Wizard for SQLXML 4.0 SP1 window, click on Next.
- On the License Agreement window, select the option I accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next.
- Set the Name and Company fields on the Registration Information window and click Next.
- On the Feature Selection window, leave the default options and click Next.
- On the Ready to Install the Program window, click Install.
- Finally, click Finish on the Completing the SQLXML 4.0 SP1 Installation window.
Installing the Legacy SQL Adapter
Now that we have installed the Legacy SQL Adapter’s pre-requirements, we can install it in our environment. To do that, we need to:
- Download the LegacySQLAdapter MSI from here.
- Once you have downloaded it, double-click on the LegacySQLAdapter.msi file
- Download the SQLXML 4.0 SP1.
- Once you download it, double-click on the sqlxml_x64.msi file (that may change depending on your machine)
- On the Welcome to the BizTalk Server SQL Adapter (Deprecated) Setup Wizard window, click on Next.
- On the End-User License Agreement window, select the option I accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next.
- Finally, click Finish on the Completed the BizTalk Server SQL (Deprecated) Setup Wizard window.
Register the Legacy SQL Adapter (Deprecated) in the BizTalk Server Administration Console
After installing LegacySQLAdapter msi, you must add/register the SQL adapter (Deprecated) in your BizTalk Server environment using the BizTalk Server Administration Console. This step must be performed before attempting to use this adapter in receive locations and/or send ports. To do that, you need to:
- Open the BizTalk Server Administration Console.
- On the left tree, expand BizTalk Group > Platform Settings > Adapters.
- Right-click on the Adapters panel or on top of the Adapter option on the tree and select New > Adapter.
- On the Adapter Properties window, set the adapter’s Name to SQL. Then, in the Adapter combo box, select the SQL option. Click OK.
Now restart the Host Instances, and you are good to go. You can now test and use the Legacy SQL adapter (Deprecated).
Once again, it is possible. This is how you can do it… but please don’t do it.
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