Professional BizTalk® Server 2006

6.3. Tracking Profile Editor

The Tracking Profile Editor (TPE) enables you to graphically link orchestration shapes and message data to the relevant items in the observation model that you defined using the Excel spreadsheet.

Linking the items in this way enables you to subscribe to the information. Linking an orchestration shape means that when the shape "fires," the DateTime will be stored as a milestone, and when a Message arrives, any elements subscribed to will be stored as activity data items. This linkage creates a tracking profile.

This incredibly powerful technique can be done retrospectively to a live system without requiring any downtime, even if you haven't instrumented your solution previously.

6.3.1. Using the TPE

The TPE tool is located under the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 program group. Upon startup, it displays two panes, as shown in Figure 6-11. The first pane is where we will import our BAM activity definition defined previously; the second pane is where we will show orchestrations and messages that will provide the source to our data.

Figure 6.11. Figure 6-11

Clicking on the hyperlink shown in the BAM Activity Definition pane will allow us to select an activity that has already been deployed using the bm.exe administration tool, which we can then enable for instrumentation, as shown in Figure 6-12.

Figure 6.12. Figure 6-12

Choosing an activity from ...