Professional BizTalk® Server 2006

11.2. The Administration Toolkit

This section briefly introduces each tool provided with a standard installation of BizTalk Server 2006. The detailed use of them will be covered later in the chapter.

11.2.1. BizTalk Server Administration Console

The BizTalk Server Administration Console was one of the biggest improvements in BizTalk 2006 compared to 2004. It enables users to manage and monitor multiple BizTalk groups from one place. The Console also introduces the concept of applications, allowing BizTalk artifacts (orchestrations, pipelines, and schemas) from the same application to be grouped, configured, and administered together. This means that applications can be started and stopped as a unit; this is a great feature for customers, as in BizTalk 2004 custom scripts would often need to be produced to manage related artifacts. The Console is illustrated in Figure 11-2.

The Console provides the facility to configure applications fully, including creating receive/send ports and binding logical orchestration ports. Right-click the desired application and select Configure to display a wizard prompting you for all the artifacts that need to be configured. This helps ensure that an application is not just partly started (i.e., some receive locations necessary for normal function may be missed out if the artifacts were not grouped this way). Figure 11-3 shows the Configure Application screen in use.

Figure 11.2. Figure 11-2

Figure 11.3. Figure 11-3

11.2.2. Health and Activity ...