Some neat tools for Biztalk / .NET developers

I bundled some handy free tools to help you develop and / or debug your (BizTalk) applications.

soapUI

soapUI is a free and open source cross-platform Functional Testing solution, a tool for SOA testing.
soapUI allows you to easily and rapidly create and execute automated functional, regression, compliance, and load tests. In a single test environment, soapUI provides complete test coverage and supports all the standard protocols and technologies.

http://www.eviware.com/soapUI/soapui-products-overview.html

linqpad

LINQPad lets you interactively query databases in a modern query language: LINQ.

LINQPad supports everything in C# 4.0 and Framework 4.0:

• LINQ to Objects
• LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework
• LINQ to XML
• Parallel LINQ

http://www.linqpad.net/

testdriven.net

TestDriven.Net makes it easy to run unit tests with a single click, anywhere in your Visual Studio solutions. It supports all versions of Microsoft Visual Studio and it integrates with the best .NET development tools.

http://www.testdriven.net/

ssmstoolspack

SSMS Tools Pack is an add-in for Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. It contains a few upgrades to the SSMS IDE

http://www.ssmstoolspack.com/

deployment framework for biztalk

The Deployment Framework for BizTalk eliminates the pain associated with BizTalk application deployments, and goes far beyond BizTalk’s out-of-the-box deployment functionality. It also includes additional tools to enhance developer productivity, such as binding file management.

http://biztalkdeployment.codeplex.com/

biztalkcop

A set of FxCop rules for enforcing coding standards on BizTalk projects. First release includes configurable naming rules based on Scott Colestock's published conventions.

http://biztalkcop.codeplex.com/

smsniff

SmartSniff is a network monitoring utility that allows you to capture TCP/IP packets that pass through your network adapter, and view the captured data as sequence of conversations between clients and servers.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/smsniff.html

bizunit

BizUnit is a flexible and extensible declarative test framework targeted that rapidly enables the automated testing of distributed systems, for example it is widely used to test BizTalk solutions. BizUnit is fully extensible. Its approach is to enable test cases to be constructed from generic reusable test steps, test cases are defined in XML which allows them to be auto-generated and also enables the ‘fixing up’ of Url’s for different environments, e.g. test, staging and production environments. Defining test cases in XML enables test cases to be auto-generated.

http://bizunit.codeplex.com/

resharper

ReSharper is a renowned productivity tool that makes Microsoft Visual Studio a much better IDE.

http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

dansharp xmlviewer

DanSharp XmlViewer is a lightweight XPath generation and testing tool, making it easy to generate and test XPath queries. It also allows for validation of Xml documents against schemas, display of Xml documents in tree-view format, and generation of BizUnit test cases.

http://dansharpxmlviewer.codeplex.com/

bts terminator

A tool which allows for common biztalk problems to be addressed by scripts provided by the biztalk team. Replaces terminate.vbs with more functionality including the ability to suspend, resume and terminate by date range. Powershell script functionality provided for performance tuning. Integration with mbvcleanupscripts.xml from the messagebox viewer utility

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=2846
Guideline on biztalkadminsblogging.com

debugview

DebugView is an application that lets you monitor debug output on your local system, or any computer on the network that you can reach via TCP/IP. It is capable of displaying both kernel-mode and Win32 debug output.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647

msbuild explorer extension

The MSBuild Extension Pack provides a collection of over 400 MSBuild Tasks, MSBuild Loggers and MSBuild TaskFactories.

http://msbuildextensionpack.codeplex.com/

ilspy

ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

http://wiki.sharpdevelop.net/ILSpy.ashx

biztalk map documenter

The BizTalk Map Documenter stylesheet will transform a a BizTalk map into an HTML view containing the following information:

• The node links between source and destination schemas.
• All functoids used in the map are displayed with their parameters.
• Chained functoids are displayed as nested “function” calls.
• Labels
• Constants
• For HL7 schemas where source and desitnation are the same message type, links between different nodes are highlighted.

http://biztalkmapdoc.codeplex.com/

msxsl.exe

The msxsl.exe command line utility enables you to perform command line Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) transformations using the Microsoft XSL processor.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=21714

Microsoft BizTalk LoadGen 2007

Microsoft LoadGen 2007 generates message transmission loads to run performance and stress tests for your Microsoft BizTalk Server applications, and provides performance counters to monitor the performance of the infrastructure running BizTalk Server.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=14925

BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer

he BizTalk Server Best Practices Analyzer V1.2 examines a BizTalk Server 2006, BizTalk Server 2006 R2, or BizTalk Server 2010 deployment and generates a list of issues pertaining to best practices standards for BizTalk Server deployments.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=15963

Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL)

The PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) tool is a new and powerful tool that reads in a performance monitor counter log (any known format) and analyzes it using complex, but known thresholds (provided). The tool generates an HTML based report which graphically charts important performance counters and throws alerts when thresholds are exceeded.

http://pal.codeplex.com/

Log Parser 2.2

Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows® operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=24659

Process Explorer

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Message Box Viewer

The goal of MBV is to retrieve the maximum amount of information from a BizTalk System in one click in the minimum amount of time, identify all possible issues which could be critical or need attention and present them in a user friendly format.

More info: http://blogs.technet.com/b/jpierauc/archive/2008/07/22/msgboxviewer-mbv-q-a.aspx%22
http://blogs.technet.com/b/jpierauc/archive/2007/12/18/msgboxviewer.aspx

TCP Trace

Used to monitor text based network traffic between client and server. Useful while using adapters like SOAP,HTTP,POP3 etc to see the message travelling via the wire.

http://www.pocketsoap.com/tcptrace/

DTCPing

This tool is designed to assist with troubleshooting Microsoft DTC Firewall Issues, which you'll often see in a multiserver BizTalk deployment.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=2868
BizTalk Message Decompressor

This tool enables you to decompress BizTalk messages/context from a screen that looks like SQL Query Analyzer.

http://btsdecompress.codeplex.com/