Some handy items to have in your BTS toolkit...
BizTalk CAT Instrumentation Framework Controller
An easy-to-use GUI for the high-performance BizTalk CAT Instrumentation Framework. The Controller lets you start and stop a trace, adjust filter options, log to a file and/or enable real-time tracing to DebugView!
http://btscatifcontroller.codeplex.com/
Understanding Design-Time Properties for Custom Pipeline Components in BizTalk Server
This article explores the details of designing and building Microsoft® BizTalk® Server custom pipeline components that use design-time properties; source code included.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=8C2572A2-FB61-4016-A7A7-1C37518B39FF&displaylang=en
Message Context Properties
A handy list of properties promoted by the BizTalk Messaging Engine:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee277239(BTS.10).aspx
Understanding the BizTalk Mapper
A great article by Daniel Probert explaining the ins & outs of this useful item in the BizTalk toolkit! Download the PDF version of the full article here:
http://www.bizbert.com/bizbert/content/binary/Understanding%20the%20BizTalk%20Mapper.pdf
BizTalk Interview Questions
BizTalk 2004/2006 Interview questions that every developer must know...
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/biztalk/BizTalkInterviewQuestions.aspx
Microsoft BizTalk Server Operations Guide Available!!
BizTalk Rangers and BizTalk UE are pleased to announce the availability of the Microsoft BizTalk Server Operations Guide.
The 660 page guide is available on MSDN, and as a separate PDF, DOCX or CHM download. The guide is based on real-world experience from BizTalk Rangers, PFE and other customer engagements. This guide is intended to provide guidance around maintaining and operating BizTalk Solutions in demanding production environments. This has been a long standing request from our customers and partners.
The target audience is Microsoft field, partner organizations, and customers who plan, deploy, and maintain BizTalk Server installations. The guide was created from collections of checklists, best practices, and presentations to guide future BizTalk Server operations IT professionals.
Key portions of this guide are new; while other portions consists of documentation taken from BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Help, white papers, Knowledge Base articles, and other sources. It has been carefully reviewed and vetted by experts from the community of BizTalk Server IT professionals and members of the product development team, whom we gratefully acknowledge. We believe that the information presented here will help BizTalk Server users solve, and above all, avoid many of the common problems.
Full URL: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc296643.aspx
Publish BizTalk WCF Web Services from the Command Line
Dean Robertson has located the command line tool used to publish BizTalk WCF web services to IIS, in lieu of using the publishing wizard. It’s a separate download, which explains why it’s not already in the BizTalk installation folder.
Now you only have to keep a copy of our WebServiceDefinition.xml file in your source control system, and dynamically generate the WCF receive locations using deployment scripts!
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb245933.aspx
8 Tips & Tricks for Better BizTalk Programming
Thanks to Bill Chesnut for finding this gem! Some are not so obvious, but make a whole lot of sense when you think about it:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/05/BizTalk/
BizTalk Naming Conventions
Here's a pretty neat reference on naming conventions for BizTalk artefacts, objects and orchestration shapes, posted on Scott Colestock's blog:
http://www.traceofthought.net/misc/BizTalk%20Naming%20Conventions.htm
Free Online Courses
A bunch of free elearning courses.. SQL, Biztalk and SharePoint... You can even cache them offline, to view when ever you like.
https://www.microsoftelearning.com/catalog/itproDev.aspx#officeSystem2007
Stitching Tool
The stitching tool appends tracking database backups, taken by the Archiving and Purging QFE job, to a specified aggregate tracking database. It can be setup very easily by initially specifying the first archive that will be restored as the aggregate database. Any subsequent backup will be appended to this aggregate database.
http://www.gotdotnet.com/codegallery/codegallery.aspx?id=67bbd6ea-850e-4d93-be87-df6788976cab
BizTalk Documenter
The UK SDC BizTalk 2006 Documenter can generate automatic documentation of your BizTalk 2006 solution. Very sleek!
http://www.gotdotnet.com//codegallery/releases/checkForDownload.aspx?id=0690616f-838c-4583-a4c5-cecc5ac04dac&releaseid=67c9ba64-277a-49e1-897e-2297afad8915
BizTalk Best Practices Analyser
The Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 Best Practices Analyzer helps BizTalk Server administrators check their BizTalk Server 2006 deployment against a variety of best practices, including high availability, security, management, and performance.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/biztalk/downloads/bpa.mspx
Jason Birth's Orchestration Profiler
Creates CHM report files illustrating the level of coverage for specified BTS 2004 orchestrations. This tool can be run to gain a consolidated view of orchestration tracking data for a specified period of time to help developers get an idea of how their orchestrations are being processed and how much coverage they are getting in their testing. In addition to simple coverage information the data presented helps to identify latency and code path exceptions by highlighting long running and error prone orchestration shapes.
http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/orchprof
BizTalk Power Toys
Get your BizTalk PowerToys now! Erik Leaseburg, a consultant with Microsoft Premier Services for the past five years and an expert in BizTalk Server, has collected the best PowerToys on the Web! Here they are!
http://blogs.msdn.com/luke/articles/365678.aspx