Hello,

I created this page to centralize your feedbacks on MBV tool and also your suggestions of new features or improvements you would like to see included in next versions of MBV.
Based on my own experience with BizTalk usage in production and some features that were already suggested to me to add or improve, I will estimate your suggestions and if they are also pertinent for all other MBV users, I will implement them asap in next versions.

Thanks to use the tool and I'm waiting so for your comments.

JP

Hello everyone,

This is another “MBV - HOW TO” post, this time about a MBV usage as some sort of periodic Monitoring tool.

MBV can also be used indeed as a  periodic Monitoring tool alerting user of warnings but w/o need to look each time at the HTML Summary Report

Indeed, since version 10.00, MBV can generate Red and/or Yellow warnings in the Application EventLog in the following Format :

<< 

Event Type:       Error

Event Source:   MBV Engine

Event Category:               None

Event ID:             0

Date:                    23/03/2009

Time:                    09:41:50

User:                    N/A

Computer:         MJPIERAUC2K3B

Description:

Category : Other MsgBox Checks

Caption : Total active 'Cache msg' for MsgBox MSGBOX DB 1 (MASTER) "BizTalkMsgBoxDb" on FRDSIBTS-BTS2K6

Value : 6087 (they do NOT appear in HAT or BTS MMC and large number can impact MsgBox perfs) !!

Links:

kb 944426 - Orphaned cache instances may be built in the Instances table: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/944426/en-us

You experience performance issues with BizTalk Server 2006 and throttling messages are logged in the performance log file: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936536/en-us

>> 

This feature can be specially interesting if MBV user  has already some  tool monitoring the EventLog application

You can enable this feature with or w/o generating a HTML report.

These are for example the few steps to raise ALL REDS warnings in the application EventLog and generate NO HTML Report and Output files in the MBV Folder:

-          Select the global property “Log RED Warnings in the Journal” to “True”

-          Select the global property “Generate HTML file” to “False”

-          If you don’t want keep history of MBV report, Select the global property “Update History File” to “False”

-          If you don’t want keeping Status of MBV report, Select the global property “Update status File” to “False”

Once these global properties configured, each next Collect process will also raise in  Application EventLog all Red warnings raised but will  NOT produce any HTML or text files. You can of course  select also the Yellow warnings if you want

All these changes will be kept in MBVSETTINGS.XML located in same folderv than MBV

Now, you can schedule  Console version of MBV (BTSDBCOLLECT.EXE) to run perdiocally and it will use this settings file if is also present in the folder of BTSDBCOLLECT.EXE.

Look at this post from Richard about scheduling Btsdbcollect.exe using Windows Task scheduler :

http://www.richardhallgren.com/receiving-scheduled-msgboxviewer-reports-via-e-mail/

Let me know your comments/questions on this post

Thanks

JP

Hello,

Let me discuss about a new feature that I introduced in version 10.11 that I released recently (http://blogs.technet.com/jpierauc/pages/msgboxviewer.aspx)  :

MBV 10.11 (in GUI tool) allow you now to unselect some “mandatory” queries and prevent them to execute so, and select only some of them.

Maybe this feature can surprise you first if we consider these queries as "mandatory" but I found in fact the need to be able to select sometimes only few important queries to have very quickly result of a report, like the Jobs one, or the MsgBox Integrity one, or the MsgBox or DTA Tables size, or only send ports, etc..

if we are now able to disable some mandatory queries, there can not considered anymore as mandatory ;-) so I decided also to rename the  “Mandatory queries” list to “Important Queries” in the interface.

Let me explain now how to unselect some important queries (so previously named "Mandatory") :

There is now a global option in MBV named ”Can unselect some important queries” that you have to turn to “True” (it is “False” by default) in the global properties grid.

When you set it to "True" and display the Important Queries List, you will notice then check boxes in this list and also two butons Check All /Uncheck ALL , and you will be able so to select/unselect also these queries.

Notice that by default the behaviour is same than in previous versions: no check boxes are visible in this first Queries list,
so by default this feature is invisible !

Be careful however :

Topology Report and Warnings Report can be impacted if you unselect some specific important queries as some optional queries need for example some information returned by some important queries so you can have some errors or incomplete Topology and Warning reports depending of  which important queries you have unselected.

So my recommendation is to use this feature only if you are interested by some specific query reports that you want  to monitor

Let me kow your comments/questions on this feature !

JP

Hello,

Following a recent  discussion I had with a US colleague about that,  I would like to share with you below the few steps to follow to be able to run only some specific queries in the Console version of MBV - BTSDBCOLLECT.EXE.

As you maybe already know it :

-          BtsDbCollect.exe  will execute by default – w/o arguments - all important queries + most of the optional ones

-          BtsDbCollect.exe /ALL will execute ALL queries

Now, if you want BtsDbCollect to run only a subset of queries, follow these steps :

1)      Run the GUI version of MBV - MsgBoxViewer.exe – and select only the queries you want in the interface.
You can even unselect some important queries - previously named “Mandatory“ - :  set the global option “Can Unselect some important queries” to “True” and then unselect the important queries you want via the checkboxes - see my mail below for more details on this new feature.

2)      Close the tool

3)      copy the resulting file “MBVSettings.xml” in the same folder than BtsDbCollect.exe

4)   If needed, change this settings file the 3 properties specifying the correct path for the output files, ex:

<HTMLandXMLFolder>C:\JP\MyProjects\BtsDBCollect</HTMLandXMLFolder>
<HistoryLogFilePath>C:\JP\MyProjects\BtsDBCollect\MsgBoxViewer_History.log</HistoryLogFilePath>
<StatusLogFilePath>C:\JP\MyProjects\BtsDBCollect\MsgBoxViewer_Status.log</StatusLogFilePath>

6)      And that’s it !  Each time you will execute BtsDbcollect.exe, it will use this Settings XML  file and so will execute only the queries you chose before

Let me know if you have any questions

JP