Orchestrations
This page contains links to and descriptions of useful information about orchestration development, debugging, and so on.
Compensation
BizTalk Server 2006: The Compensation Model (Find it here)Excellent blog post by Charles Young discussing the compensation mechanism in BizTalk orchestrations
Transactions and Compensation Using BizTalk Server (Find it here)Blog post by Richard Seroter that describes the compensation model
Development
Parallel actions, exceptions, and timeouts... (Find it here)BizTalk has some very useful behavior around parallel execution and scope-level timeouts that it is helpful to have a good understanding of. This blog post is a series of experiments & associated findings that should shed some light on this area.
Constructing BizTalk 2004 XML Messages (In an Orchestration) - Choices (Find it here)This blog post by Matt Meleski describes several ways of constructing messages from scratch inside an orchestration.
Messages from Scratch with Embedded Resources (Find it here)Scott Colestock describes how to construct a message from scratch using embedded ressources.
Creating a message "from scratch" (Find it here)The comments in this blog post by Yossi Dahan mention another undocumented and unsupoprted way of doing it using a API call.
XML Message Instantiation Sample (BizTalk 2006) (Find it here)Sample code of he usage of the undocumentet API.
Dealing with zombies (Find it here)This blog post from the core engine blog describes how to deal with zombies in your orchestrations
Ports
Demystifying Direct Bound Ports - Part 1 (Find it here)Kevin Lam has a great series on how direct bound ports work. This is the first part.
Demystifying Direct Bound Ports - Part 2 (Find it here)Kevin Lam has a great series on how direct bound ports work. This is the second part.
Demystifying Direct Bound Ports - Part 3 (Find it here)Kevin Lam has a great series on how direct bound ports work. This is the third part.
Demystifying Direct Bound Ports - Part 4 (Find it here)Kevin Lam has a great series on how direct bound ports work. This is the fourth part.
Demystifying Direct Bound Ports - Part 5 (Find it here)Kevin Lam has a great series on how direct bound ports work. This is the fifth part.
Demystifying Direct Bound Ports - Part 6 (Find it here)Kevin Lam has a great series on how direct bound ports work. This is the sixth part.
Runtime
Orchestration Engine Configuration (Find it here)The orchestration engine uses an XML file called BTSNTSvc.exe.config to determine certain behaviors. This article discusses nodes and potential values in this configuration file.