BizTalk Server General - BAM vs Indexed view (Conceptual question)

Author

BAM vs Indexed view (Conceptual question)

siddhath

2005-10-25, 5:52 pm

Hi All,
I wanted to understand when to use BAM ..more from design perspective.

So lets say RTA in BAM . there are other way to get the aggregate reports
from sql server for example Indexed views.

Indexed view are relatively simple to implement so it's not like as you are
re-inventing the wheel.

so now , i don't just want use RTA ,I want to understand how it is different
than these other techniques.

Now one thing bam provides you is you can monitor (collect) the data while
it's flowing through your pipleines,Orchestration etc.

but I want to understand a business case where you have to monitor the data
while it's flowing through the pipeline and orchestration. I mean why would
you not.. let it get save to a final or intermediate data store and then
drive(extract) you reports from that data store.

so lets take a example ..lets say I am getting a PO via a biztalk port .
so orchestration is instantiated to process it and at some point the
orchetration will send a request
out to another supplier to get a part to be able to serve the PO... lets say
request is sent over a soap adapter.

So now in this case i can use BAM to extract different reports ..like counts
of PO from a specific customer etc...

now i am trying to understand ..how often will this happen that you get a PO
and you don't make a persistent records in lets say sql server.
and if you do, then you can always get report form your tables(in this case)
using other techniques.

so i am not clear as to what is the best case for using BAM (and compare it
with other ways of getting aggregation repots)?

Please see if some one could help me understand conceptually.
Thanks
Siddharth

Keith Lim

2005-10-25, 5:52 pm

Hi Siddharth, you brought up a lot of great questions. Let me give you
one compelling reason for using BAM.
Based on your scenario where a PO flows thru an Orchestration and will send
a request to another supplier to a part to be able to serve the PO,
wouldn't you want to know how long on average the supplier takes to reponse
and fulfil the request? Perhaps if it takes too long, you would want to
be notified? Not only that, you may want a selective group of people to be
notifiied thru email.
You can do all these thru Pathfinder BAM, almost any query you can do, you
can set an alert for it and have it notify you.

Thanks,
Keith [MSFT]
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siddhath

2005-10-25, 8:47 pm

Is this something new in pathfinder BAM that's not there in biztalk 2004?
Thanks.
-Siddharth

"Keith Lim (MSFT)" wrote:

> Hi Siddharth, you brought up a lot of great questions. Let me give you
> one compelling reason for using BAM.
> Based on your scenario where a PO flows thru an Orchestration and will send
> a request to another supplier to a part to be able to serve the PO,
> wouldn't you want to know how long on average the supplier takes to reponse
> and fulfil the request? Perhaps if it takes too long, you would want to
> be notified? Not only that, you may want a selective group of people to be
> notifiied thru email.
> You can do all these thru Pathfinder BAM, almost any query you can do, you
> can set an alert for it and have it notify you.
>
> Thanks,
> Keith [MSFT]
> --------------------
> are
> different
> while
> data
> would
> say
> counts
> PO
> case)
> it
>
>
> --
>
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
> Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
> http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm
>
> Note: For the benefit of the community-at-large, all responses to this
> message are best directed to the newsgroup/thread from which they
> originated.
>
>

Keith Lim

2005-10-26, 5:52 pm

Yes. If you or your client already using BizTalk, it doesn't take very
much effort to "BAMify" business process (i.e. if you already have the
pipelines and orchestrations setup).
Here is a summary of steps that you would need:

1) Create an activity definition (here you creates items that you want to
track as well as aggregate values you want to see, among others). Once you
are familiar this will take you less than 15 minutes. (This feature is
available as an add in for Excel, comes with the install). Once you have
done that, you deploy it which will automatically creates all the necessary
tables, views and stored procs associated with the activity schema.

2) You bring up the TPE (a UI that will show you the deployed activity
(from step 1) and the deployed Biztalk orchestrations and pipelines) and
you start mapping schema items to the activity. (15 minutes). Then you
deploy it.

3) Now your orchestrations and pipelines are BAMified. Messaged processed
thru the orchestration and pipelines would now automatically be intercepted
at mapped points and persisted to BAMPrimaryImport (BAM PIT) database.

4) To see what's happening, you can bring up BAM Portal UI, here you can
query and create alerts.

5) When the alert criterias are met, you will get notification (email is
one of the options).

Keep the questions coming and happy BAMifying :-)

HTH,
Keith Lim [MSFT]

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--

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Use of included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
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