3).Creating BizTalk Solution and project structure in Visual Studio

After successful installation of MS SQL Server 2014, Visual Studio 2013 and BizTalk Server 2013R2

Open Visual Studio 2013à Click on New Project à BizTalk Projects templateàEmpty BizTalk Server Project and name is BizTalk_Tutorials as shown below.

Once the Project got created the Solution looks as shown below.

Right Click on BizTalk_Tutorials Project and remove the project as shown below.

Go to the folder where we have created the solution and delete the BizTalk_Tutorials project as shown below.

We want to maintain the clean and real world project structure that is the reason why we have deleted the default project that got created.

Below steps adds the new project to the solution.

Right click on Solution à Addà New Project

BizTalk Projects templateàEmpty BizTalk Server Project and name is BizTalk_Tutorials.Schemas as shown below.

Add the Schemas, Maps, Orchestrations, Pipelines projects to the solution by following the instructions that we followed in creating BizTalk_Tutorials.Schemas project above. Once you have created all the projects the solution looks as shown below.

In Order for us to deploy the BizTalk Applications; we need to sign the assemblies. Signing the assemblies is done using Strong-Name key file. We don’t need to know much details about what and SNK file does internally.

A strong name guarantees the uniqueness of the assembly by assigning a digital signature and a unique key pair.

We can use the same SNK file for all the projects. In my BizTalk experience I've worked for multiple Clients and most of them use a single SNK File across all the BizTalk solutions(In in all the QA, Performance, Pre-Prod and Production environments).

Creating Strong Name Key:-

Right click on ProjectàPropertiesà Signing Tab

Check the CheckBox as shown below, create the new SNK file if you don’t have one already(This is most likely the case when you are creating the BizTalk project for the first time in your life).

If you already have the SNK file that is been created then click on Browse from below drop down and select the file from respective file location.

 

I have named the SNK file BizTalk_Tutorials but you can name as you wish.

Each project that we deploy to BizTalk Admin Console we need to have an application name. Here in this example it makes more sense to have the application name as BizTalk_Tutorials as shown below again the name is up to you.

Give the same Application Name to all the projects as we will be deploying all the projects into 1 application in BizTalk. Bear with me it will all make sense when we deploy the application to the BizTalk Admin console.

There are 3 important properties under deployment tab to be taken note of as highlighted above.

Restart Host Instances: - As a safety measure I personally enable Restart Host Instances to true. This restarts all the host instances associated with the application after the successful deployment from Visual Studio.

Enable Unit Testing: - In BizTalk we can unit test the schemas, maps and pipelines out of the Box. By enabling this option its lets us unit test the components. We will discuss more about this when we get to Unit Testing BizTalk in near future.

Just to make sure everything is good, let’s rebuild the solution as shown below.

If everything that we have done is good then we shall get the following output screen after rebuilding the solution.