Biztalk Esb Toolkit Interview Questions & Answers

Question 1. What Is Esb Toolkit And Why Do We Need It?

Answer :

BizTalk ESB Toolkit provides a set of services on top of the existing BizTalk Server 2010 architecture to enable service consumers and service providers to be part of a loosely-coupled but mediated environment. Using ESB toolkit, it helps to enable Dynamic Routing, Transformation and Exceptions handling and considered to be a platform to realize a service-oriented architecture and by solving the problems of point-to-point service connectivity with the help of a common mediation layer (the "bus").

Question 2. What Is The Esb Toolkit Version Shipped With Biztalk Server 2013 R2 ?

Answer :

2.3

Question 3. Can There Be Any Drawbacks Which You Need To Take Care Before Deciding To Implement Esb Toolkit ?

Answer :

It is a security issue that can happen while doing ESB Toolkit setup in a multi-server configuration. This happens when ESB Portal web application refused to forward the impersonated credentials to the SQL Server since it is on another server. An identity delegation rights should be given to the application pool. 

Question 4. Can You Highlight The Features Of Esb Toolkit?

Answer :

Below are are some underline features of ESB toolkit:

• Location & Version Transparency
• Transport Protocol Conversion
• Dynamic Data / Format Transformation
• Lightweight Service Composition
• Error Handling & Repair
• Service Interactions Support

Question 5. Does Esb Toolkit Improves Biztalk Performance?

Answer :

ESB Toolkit doesn't address to improve run-time performance.

Question 6. How You Can Use Esb Toolkit And Bre For Biztalk Application Development ?

Answer :

We can have BRE resolver to achieve more dynamic routing approach. Rules can be configured not only for transport or transformation but also for itinerary itself.

Question 7. What Are The Esb Toolkit Core Components?

Answer :

• Itinerary Services
• Resolver, Adapter Provider Frameworks
• Exception Management Framework

Question 8. What Is An Itinerary?

Answer :

Itinerary (also described as "Routing slip") is a mediation Policy which can be attached to a message which comes to the ESB dynamically. Itinerary provides pictorial view of message flow with On/Off Ramp 

Question 9. Can We Encrypt Itinerary?

Answer :

Yes, in fact, visual studio default option is to enforce encryption. Since Itineraries may potentially contain sensitive configuration information, “Itinerary Encryption”was introduced to encrypt your itineraries with a certificate before exporting them.

Question 10. What Is Resolver, And Can You List Out The Esb Toolkit Provides?

Answer :

A component which feeds runtime configuration values to the Adapter provider the so that it can dynamically configure the Dynamic Adapter at run-time. It is a .NET component having a collection of entries which tells what values to use for various BizTalk components.

Example: STATIC, UDDI, XPATH, BRE, BRI, ITINERARY, ITINERARY-STATIC, LDAP 

Question 11. What Are On/off Ramps?

Answer :

• On-Ramp is receive location which provides esb context (Corresponds to Receive port)
• Off-Ramp (typically dynamic) is send port with respect to esb context (Corresponds to the send port) 

Question 12. What Is Esb Management Portal?

Answer :

The ESB Management Portal provides views of fault information that make it easy to monitor, manage, and debug ESB applications. It also provides features that you can use to manage alerts, publish UDDI information, and administer the portal.

Question 13. What Is Routing Slip Pattern? How Esb Toolkit Supports It?

Answer :

Routing Slip pattern is widely used message routing pattern and used when a message is routed through a series of components in a pre-defined order (may be unknown during design time). ESB provides this pattern via Itinerary-based processing. A business rule can be used to select an Itinerary for a message dynamically.

Question 14. Can We Develop A Custom Itinerary Resolver?

Answer :

Yes, by implementing IResolverProvider interface.

Question 15. What Is The Use Of Export Mode Property In?

Answer :

Export Mode property can be used to define where the service will execute. 

Strict: ensures that the itinerary service executes in its prescribed container; itinerary has a stage property that specifies the pipeline in which the service executes. 

Default: the itinerary service executes in the order prescribed, but not necessarily in the pipeline stage desired.

Question 16. I Can See My Itinerary In The Esbitinerarydb Database And Set The Correct Resolver Connection String In The Pipeline But I Still See The Error "the Itineraryesbtransformserviceitinerary Was Not Found In The Repository. ", Why?

Answer :

The Itinerary need to be in the Deployed status in order to use it. To verify this, you can either check nStatus column value "1? in Itinerary table or ItineraryStatus column in Visual Studio by selecting Model Exporter as Database. 

You won't be able to call the itinerary in Published status.

Question 17. Why There Is No Itinerary Status Option When Choosing Xml Itinerary Exporter?

Answer :

Because you have chosen to export your Itinerary in XML for moving it to a different environment. Once you are importing it to the targeted environment, you have an option for "Publish" / "Deploy".

Question 18. How To Move Itineraries From One Environment To Another (e.g. Qa To Production)?

Answer :

An Esb ImportUtil.exe   utility tool is a good option used to publish or deploy the itinerary XML into the ESB Itinerary DB database. 

Question 19. What Is Esb Dispatcher?

Answer :

It sets endpoint location properties for the outbound message using ESB resolution guidance.

Question 20. Can You Summarize A Typical Message Life Cycle In Esb Toolkit?

Answer :

On-Ramp -> ESB Pipeline (ESB Context promotion) -> Itinerary -> MessageBox -> Queue message for subscriber -> Subscriber (Orchestration / Off-Ramp).

Question 21. Can We On-ramp / Off-ramp Message With Message Box?

Answer :

Yes (with some trick), a message created within BizTalk Orchestration can promote properties with ESB context and published to MessageBox.

Question 22. Can We Perform Multiple Transformations In Sequence Inside Itineraries?

Answer :

Yes, you need to add multiple Itinerary Services in sequence to achieve this.

Question 23. How Can You Call An Orchestration Inside The Itinerary ?

Answer :

Using Orchestration Service Extender.

Question 24. What Are The Three Commonly Used Promoted Properties To Subscribe Correct Message Of An Itinerary Service?

Answer :

ServiceName, ServiceState, ServiceType

Question 25. What Are The Common Patterns Implemented In Itineraries?

Answer :

Message Routing:

Message Router : determines the recipient of the message based on a set of conditions

Content-Based Router : determines the recipient of a message based on message content

Routing-Slip : a message must be routed through a series of components in a pre-defined order, which may not be known at the design time. 

Recipient List: a message is routed to one or more recipients (static / dynamic)

Splitter : Breaking one message to multiple chunks

Message Transformation:

Translator : Solves the problem of translating incompatible data formats between two systems

Normalizer : Solves the problem when messages received from different sources are semantically equivalent but format is different 

Content Enricher : Solves the problem by furnishing additional data to the received message required by target system

Service Mediation:

VETO / VETRO : Solves the problem using esb pipelines for Validate, Enrich, Transform, Route, Operate

Request-Response: Solves the problem of two-way communication

Service Management:

Repair and Resubmit: Solves the problem with the use of ESB Management Portal

Question 26. Is It Possible To Implement Service Chaining In Itineraries (i.e.sending A Message To A Service And Feeding The Response Received From That Service As Input To The Next Service And So On...)?

Answer :

Yes. It is possible in itineraries.