BizTalk Tracking Cheat Sheet

Introduction

Being able to track messages is convenient for developers and administrators for debugging/analysis purposes. BizTalk enables you to track message content and context on ports, pipelines and orchestrations. Depending on your goal you can turn on/off different tracking options. These tracking options can be exported and imported through binding files. 

This article contains the tracking options for Receive/Send Ports, Pipelines and Orchestrations as they may occur in binding files.

The article can also be downloaded in PDF format from the Gallery:

• https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/BizTalk-Tracking-Cheat-8c10fbd6

Deployment of tracking options

Given the performance penalty of using much tracking, you’ll want less tracking in your Live environment than in your Development/Test environment. If you use BTDF for deployment of BizTalk applications you can easily add variables to the Settings file, so you can automatically apply different tracking options per environment. Below some suggestions on how you could name these variables:

• send_tracking_oneway_ports
• receive_tracking_oneway_ports
• tracking_twoway_ports
• tracking_pipelines
• tracking_orchestrations

Receive Ports (One-Way)

Example

Say you want to track messages and properties before and after port processing. You need:

• Request message before port processing = 1
• Request properties before port processing = 16
• Request message after port processing = 2
• Request properties after port processing = 32
• Tracking setting (1 + 16 + 2 + 32) = 51

In Binding file

< ReceivePort  Name = "ReceivePort1" IsTwoWay =  "false" BindingOption  = "0" > 
    < Description  xsi:nil = "true" /> 
    ... 
     <  Tracking >51</  Tracking > 
    ... 
</ ReceivePort  > 

Send Ports (One-Way)

​

Example

Say you want to track messages and properties before and after port processing. You need:

• Response message before port processing = 4
• Response properties before port processing = 8 
• Response message after port processing = 64 
• Response properties after port processing = 128 
• Tracking setting (4 + 8 + 64 + 128) = 204 

In Binding file

< SendPort  Name = "SendPort1" IsTwoWay =  "false" BindingOption  = "0" > 
    < Description  xsi:nil = "true" /> 
    ... 
     <  Tracking >204</  Tracking > 
    ... 
</ SendPort  > 

Send/Receive Ports (Request/Response)

Example

Say you want to track messages and properties as they enter/leave the port. You need:

• Request message before port processing = 1
• Request properties before port processing = 16
• Response message after port processing = 8
• Response properties after port processing = 128
• Tracking setting (1 + 16 + 8 + 128) = 153

In Binding file

< SendPort  Name = "SendPort1" IsStatic =  "true" IsTwoWay  = "true" BindingOption = "0"  > 
    < Description  xsi:nil = "true" /> 
    ... 
     <  Tracking >153</  Tracking > 
    ... 
</ SendPort  > 

Pipelines

Example

Say you want to track port start and end event and message receive and send events. You need:

• Port start and end events: ServiceStartEnd PipelineEvents
• Message send and receive events: MessageSendReceive
• Tracking setting: ServiceStartEnd PipelineEvents MessageSendReceive

In Binding file

< ReceivePort  Name = "ReceivePort1" IsTwoWay =  "true" BindingOption  = "1" > 
    < Description  xsi:nil = "true" /> 
    < ReceiveLocations  > 
       < ReceiveLocation  Name = "ReceiveLocation1" > 
          < Description  xsi:nil = "true" /> 
          ... 
          < ReceivePipeline Name  = "ReceivePipeline1" FullyQualifiedName  = " ReceivePipeline, Pipelines, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=f4747cde3b0ad4ae" Type  = "1"  TrackingOption = "ServiceStartEnd MessageSendReceive PipelineEvents" Description  = ""  /> 
          ... 
       </ ReceiveLocation  > 
    </ ReceiveLocations  > 
    ... 
</ ReceivePort  > 

Orchestrations

Example

Say you want to track orchestration instances when they start and end, when messages are received and send and you want to see which shapes are started and ended in the Orchestration Debugger. You need:

• Orchestration start and end: ServiceStartEnd
• Message send and receive: MessageSendReceive
• Shape start and end: OrchestrationEvents
• Tracking setting: ServiceStartEnd MessageSendReceive OrchestrationEvents

In Binding file

< Service Name  = "Orchestration1" State  = "Started"  TrackingOption = "ServiceStartEnd MessageSendReceive OrchestrationEvents" Description  = ""  > 
    <  Ports /> 
    <  Roles /> 
    <  Host Name = "ProcessingHost" NTGroupName = "BizTalk Application Users" Type =  "1" Trusted  = "false" /> 
</ Service  > 

See also

Another important place to find a large amount of BizTalk related articles is the TechNet Wiki itself. The best entry point is BizTalk Server Resources on the TechNet Wiki.