Frequently Asked Questions

The BizTalk Adapter Pack is included with Microsoft BizTalk Server. Install the version included with your BizTalk Server version. Installing the BizTalk Adapter Pack from another BizTalk Server version is not supported.

Run the BizTalk Adapter Pack setup using an account that is a member of the local administrators group and BizTalk Server Administrators group.

Related link: Minimum Security Rights

If you're familiar with BizTalk Server and the BizTalk Adapter Pack, then install BAP 2016 or BAP 2013 R2 and 2013, and then get started with the different adapters.

If you're brand new BizTalk Server or the BizTalk Adapter Pack, then look at the get started topics, and step through the tutorials:

Get started with the BizTalk Adapter for Oracle Database
Get started with the BizTalk Adapter for Oracle E-Business Suite
Get started with the BizTalk Adapter for mySAP Business Suite
Get started with the BizTalk Adapter for Siebel eBusiness Applications
Get started with the BizTalk adapter for SQL

The BizTalk Adapter Pack enables adapter clients to enable Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) tracing and adapter-specific tracing. When you enable tracing, you also choose the folder path and file name. So, the traces are stored where you prefer. To view the traces, use the WCF Service Trace Viewer tool. See Using Service Trace Viewer for Viewing Correlated Traces and Troubleshooting.

For more information about tracing, and other troubleshooting ideas, see:

Troubleshoot the Oracle Database adapter
Troubleshoot the Oracle EBS adapter
Troubleshoot the SAP adapter
Troubleshoot the Siebel adapter
Troubleshoot the SQL adapter

Yes. The BizTalk Adapter Pack provides a LOB Time (Cumulative) performance counter to measure the time, in milliseconds, that the LOB client library takes to complete an action initiated by the adapter. You can enable the performance counters by setting the EnablePerformanceCounters binding property to True. To disable performance counters, set EnablePerformanceCounters to False (the default value).

There are several tools that can help with the artifacts that use these adapters:

Yes. A binding creates a mapping between a logical endpoint, such as an orchestration port or a role link, and a physical endpoint, such as a send and receive port. This enables communication between different components of a BizTalk business solution. The binding information is stored in an XML file that contains binding information for each BizTalk orchestration in the scope of a BizTalk assembly, application, or group. You can export the bindings of a BizTalk assembly, application, or group, and then reuse it by importing into any other BizTalk application or group. For more information, see

Reuse Oracle DB adapter bindings
Reuse Oracle EBS adapter bindings
Reuse SAP adapter bindings
Reuse Siebel adapter bindings
Reuse SQL adapter bindings

The transaction isolation level determines the degree to which a transaction is isolated from the data changes made by other transactions. It defines the locking behavior of the Transact-SQL commands issued by a connection to the Line-of-Business (LOB) system.

This is configurable for some of the adapters. See:

Oracle Database: Configure transaction isolation level and transaction timeout
Oracle E-Business Suite: Configure transaction isolation level and transaction timeout
SQL: Configure Transaction Isolation Level and Transaction Timeout

Isolation Levels in the SQL Database Engine describes the different levels in SQL.

WCF stands for Windows Communication Foundation. WCF is a programming framework developed by Microsoft for building service-oriented applications. WCF is a part of .NET framework, and enables developers to build secure, reliable, and transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments.

Related link: What Is Windows Communication Foundation

The WCF LOB Adapter SDK is a collection of tools and components that provide a consistent framework for developing reusable, metadata-rich adapters for line-of-business systems. Adapters written using the WCF LOB Adapter SDK are surfaced as custom WCF bindings and can be consumed by a WCF-capable client.

Related link: WCF Line of Business Adapter SDK documentation

The WCF service model is a programming model provided by WCF in which the LOB system (such as Oracle or SAP) is exposed as a WCF service. The service contract that exists between a client and a service is represented as a .NET interface, and operations are represented as methods on this interface. The WCF service model generates a proxy class — the WCF client class — through which your code can invoke operations and receive data using the adapter.

All adapters in the BizTalk Adapter Pack support the WCF service model.

The WCF channel model is a low-level abstraction of the SOAP message exchange between clients and services. It provides interfaces and types that enable you to send and receive messages by using a layered protocol stack called a channel stack. Each layer of the stack is composed of a channel, and each channel is created from a WCF binding. Each adapter is a WCF custom transport binding that exposes the LOB system as a WCF service.

All adapters in the BizTalk Adapter Pack support the WCF channel model.

The WCF service model presents a model that is familiar to .NET programmers, and hides the underlying complexities of SOAP message exchange over a channel. Moreover, the Add Adapter Service Reference Plug-in is integrated with the Visual Studio design experience, and presents a standard Microsoft Windows interface that provides powerful browsing and searching capabilities on operations exposed by the adapter. Therefore, the WCF service model is often the best choice to develop programming solutions for any WCF-based adapter.

You want to use the WCF channel model over the WCF service model when:

• The WCF channel model provides more fine-grained control over the operations that you perform on the LOB system because in the WCF channel model, you directly control the contents of the messages that you send over the channel.

• The WCF channel model provided more comprehensive support for end-to-end streaming of large object (LOB) data types than the WCF service model. This is because in the WCF channel model, you directly control how you provide the message body on outgoing messages and how you process the message body on incoming messages.

You can use either of the following tools provided by the WCF service model to generate a WCF client class or a WCF service contract and associated helper code from the service metadata exposed by each adapter:

• The ServiceModel Metadata Utility Tool (svcutil.exe), which ships with WCF.

• The Add Adapter Service Reference Visual Studio Plug-in, which ships with the BizTalk Adapter Pack.

Using the WCF channel model, you can invoke operations and receive the results of a polling query by exchanging SOAP messages with the adapter over a WCF channel. To get started, you need to create outbound (client) and inbound (service) channels.

See Also

BizTalk Adapter Pack