MsgBoxViewer 11 - Compatible for BizTalk 2010

Hello

A long time I did not update my blog to announce a new version of my tool !  :-)

One of the reason is that I just changed of business to become an Escalation Engineer in SharePoint Developement Support; a lot of work and topics to learn in perspective so but I wanted to enlarge my skills set.
I change of business but I still continue to have an eye on BizTalk of course :-)

I also spent some time these past months with my former BizTalk colleagues to try to identify  a process and people responsible for futur MBV updates, and help for quick and easy next updates of MBV.
I had so to change the MBV architecture and redesign completly my tool MBVQueryBuilder to make the query or rules update a task much more easy.
Next MBV updates might be done so mainly by the Biztalk Support team with my contribution.

Finaly I spent time to  update MBV to make it compatible for BizTalk 2010 (the Class Settings query reported indeed wrong changes for example) and this is this new version that I put here

This version  brings also two major changes :

 
1) MBV is compiled now to target .NET 2

You can ask yourself why MV was targeting until now only .NET 1.x ?? it is for the simple reason that MBV remained always compatible for BizTalk 2004 and that it should be able to run on BizTalk Server 2004 Servers where only .NET 1.x could be installed

This change means so that it can not run anymore on a BT 2004 box with ONLY .NET 1.X installed, but honestly do we meet frequently such configs now  ? :-)  and anyway you know that you can run MBV on any type of Servers and not only BT ones
 
 
2) MBV is not anymore a single .EXE but it is composed now of the following files:

o   MYHC.DLL : Implement my custom Health Check engine

o   MYHCQUERIES_MBVQUERIES.DLL : Contains the entire MBV repository and custom Query functions to analyze a BizTalk Group      

o   MSGBOXVIEWER.EXE : GUI MBV Client tool

o   MBVCONSOLE.EXE : Console MBV Client tool

 
Reasons for this split are mainly the following ones:

o   Query repository grow too quickly, need so to separate it from the clients .exe
o   Health Check engine should be updated w/o the client tools using it
o   Need to update easily MBV Repository w/o recompiling the client tools
o   As MBV is just a client tool of my generic health Check engine, it can load any type of Query repository (DLL or XML) and not only the BizTalk one
 
You have the right to prefer the single binary version so in this case I can only suggest you to keep using  the old build :-) but you will not benefit of additional rules and queries

you can find this new version  here :

https://blogs.technet.com/b/jpierauc/archive/2007/12/18/msgboxviewer.aspx

 

As usual, feel free to report in this blog your feedbacks on the tool, your suggestions for new features or improvements, and any kind of problems you could meet using MBV

and many thanks to all of you who already sent me good feedbacks  ! ;-)

 

JP

 

New Features :

-          Compatible for incoming BizTalk 2010
-          Add additional query to get retrieve part of Biztalk 2010 Dashboard Settings
-          Detect if CU3 is installed on each BT Server
-          Get Perfmon counters for ALL BT Servers (and not only the local server)
-          Get Perfmon counters for MsgBox Db SQL Servers (SQL General statisitcs, SQL locks, SQL Databases)
-          Add order delivery and other port settings in the "Send ports" query
-          Add query to get custom settings of each Send Port: Not checked by default
-          Add query to get custom settings of each Receive Location: Not checked by default
-          Check for small or default value in WCF ReceiveTimeout  binding property
-          Check for MQS port configured w/o Tx
-          Check for WMI prop “ClearAfter” too large value : Error CLSID_PropertBag
-          Format better BAM config info report output
-          Added Latest new MSDTC /COM+ packages version info
-          Get Last X rows from Spool and Instances  tables : rows number is configurable as a query property
-          Raise a warning in MBV if the CustomSD key is found under HKLM\System\Current Control Set\Services\Eventlog\Application
-          Rule to check for KB  980560
-          Rule to  check for KB  979709
-          Rule to check for KB  979095
-          Add more info in the “BizTalk Group” category of the SUMMARY REPORT section
-          Improved query to get sucessfully all GAC assemblies
-          Updated  Latest BT Mgmt Pack version check
-          Get Pipeline ID in Pipeline Query Report
-          Get the Transport Type used in “WCF Custom” port
-          Redesigned the DialogBox UI to add custom Rules and be able to raise different type of actions
-          Redesigned the main dialogbox of MsgBoxViewer.exe (gui version)