Extending MsgBoxViewer with BizTalk Message Body Tracking Count queries

Posted: March 19, 2009  |  Categories: BizTalk Uncategorized

 

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UPDATE: See this post for an update on the extension file for MsgBoxViewer with the query builder tool

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I have recently blogged about some queries I wrote that report on the message body tracking counts that are currently on a system’s BizTalk Server Tracking database (BizTalkDTADb usually).

The tracking service (TDDS) monitors the message box database(s) for message details and message bodies that have been marked to be tracked, and moves them to the tracking database. It is very important to consider and test the amount of tracking enabled on your BizTalk solution so that, while still meeting your business requirements,  it doesn’t affect performance and doesn’t grow the tracking database to an unmanageable size. Therefore it is important to have an overview of the message body tracking on a system while analysing it.

The Message Box Viewer tool is extensible so you can include your own custom queries. This is done by creating a file called MBVEXT.XML and placing it on the same folder as the message box viewer GUI executable (MsgBoxViewer.exe) or the console executable (BtsDbCollect.exe):

image  image

This was brought to my attention by Jean-Pierre Auconie, the creator of the tool, who provided me with the content of the MBVEXT.XML file with my Message Body Tracking Count queries (thanks JP!).

Download the MBVEXT.XML file.

In the GUI the new queries appear under the Queries tab, Custom Queries sub-tabs:

image

And after the collect on the GUI or console, the results of the queries now show up at the end of the queries:

image

Keep an eye out for an upcoming blog post by Jean-Pierre that explains the extensibility of the tool in further detail, and in the meantime feel free to use this MVBEXT.XML with the tracking body queries. If you do please let me know if you have any comments.

Of course, make sure to be very careful with the queries you add to the tool and test them extensively before running them on any production environment.

Have fun!

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UPDATE: See this post for an update on the extension file for MsgBoxViewer with the query builder tool

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Thiago Almeida

4 thoughts on “Extending MsgBoxViewer with BizTalk Message Body Tracking Count queries”

  1. Hi Thiago

    Good stuff… would you pls mind sharing the latest version of the original MVBEXT.xml file that comes with MBV from jearn-Pierre?
    I want to see the queries running behind the scene. I have another application which uses these queries to report to a monitoring system

    Thanks
    Firoz

    1. Hi Firoz,

      The queries that come with MBV are built into it and aren’t part of an extension file. You use the MVBEXT.xml to add your custom queries to it.
      You can get the SQL queries from it by running SQL Server Profiler while MBV is collecting, or you can try contacting JP on his blog ( http://blogs.technet.com/jpierauc/ ).

      Cheers,
      Thiago

  2. Hi,

    I download the mbvext.xml, put it in the same directory than mbvgui.exe
    but when i launch it , i didn’t see the subtab custom query.
    can you help me please?
    thanks

Comments are closed.

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