MMC Snap-in for MBV now available !
Hello.
As I announced in a previous post, I just released a MMC Snap-in for MBV.
To be honest, I did not have ideas about really new useful features I could add in MBV itself or around MBV but reading some posts on other blogs talking about BizTalk Admin and suggestions of a better integration with MBV, I thouht : eh maybe I could integrate MBV in an MMC !
Doing that will allow so any BizTalk administrator to have for example his own custom MMC console (.MSC) by adding the BizTalk Snap-in and the MBV one !
If yoo look at the file behind the BizTalk Administration console, you can see that it is an .msc file containing both the Microsoft BizTalk Server MMC Snap-in and the EventViewer one; so you could create easily for example your own .msc adding BizTalk Snap-in, the Eventlog one, and MBV Snap-in
So I created a MMC snap-in for MBV in C# using the MMC 3.0 SDK: what is easier to develop an MMC Snap-in using .NET ! :-)
Setup:
just run the setup.exe on your machine to register the snap-in automatically
This snap-in use .NET 2 so on a BizTalk 2K4 machine, the setup can propose you to download the .NET 2. framework.
This snap-in use Microsoft Mgmt Console 3.00 framework on a W2K3 machine,you may have also to install KB 907265 :
One the setup finished, open MMC console and choose to add a Snap-in.
You should see in the list "MBV Snapin".
The first version of this MBV snap-in I release allow to run a collect statement in the MMC by starting in an hidden mode the console version of MBV tool : "BTSDBCOLLECT.EXE".
When you add first time the Snap-in, a dialogbox will be displayed inviting you to specify local path of MBV Console tool BTSDBCOLLECT.EXE.
Once it is one, you can also select the profile to use among the profiles present (created by GUI version of MBV) and then the MBV Snap-in will be added in the MMC console.
'MsgBoxViewer' Node
The 'MsgBoxViewer' MMC node will then allow you to start a Collect statement, change settings, open status file or History File or delete all HTML reports appearing as childre nodes.
This node display also as children nodes the existing HTML reports found in the HTML folder (either the one configured in selected profile file 'MBVSettings....XML' or by default the folder of MBV tool).
Starting a Collect statement
When you put the focus on 'MsgBoxViewer' node, right-click on it and start a collect statement, the MMC display in the right pane the resulting cmd line executed, and the status bar will show all the steps of the Collect statement.
At the end of the collect statement, the MMC will add in the left pane a children node representing the MBV HTML file produced and will show this file in the right pane.
Complete status of the collect is displayed in the right pane when selecting back the node 'MsgBoxViewer'.
Open an existing HTML MBV Report
Once you clicked a section (sub-node) of an HTML report node in the treeview of the left pane, you have immedialtely on the right pane of the MMC the selected sectioj of HTML MBV report displayed like in the Internet Browser.
You can so display quickly a Warning Report sectrion of an existing HTML Report.
Change Settings
Right-cliking on 'MsgBoxViewer' node and selecting the 'Settings" action, you can change the global settings and for example selectb the MBV profile to use for the collect, that you have prepared before with gui version of MBV.
Selecting a profile in the snap-in allow so to run only the queries you selected with also the global options you configured in the gui version of MBV.
Download here latest version :
https://blogs.technet.com/jpierauc/archive/2009/08/16/mbvmmc-latest-version.aspx
Let me know please your comments and questions on this Snap-in and any bugs you could find
Thanks !
JP