BizTalk 2010 Determine Host Throttle settings for receive locations

Question

Because a required pipeline components seems to have trouble hitting a database to details of messages, I am planning to use Host Throttling to limit the amount of files BizTalk is processing at the receive location. I want to be able to indicate that X number of messages should be processed within Y seconds (or any other feasible timespan). Does anyone know which throttling settings can be used to force this behavior?

I know how to set values, however I cannot find the best configuration.

(note: one of the solutions might also adjust the pipeline, but it contains third party components which cannot be adjusted.)

Answer 1

From How BizTalk Server Implements Host Throttling BizTalk looks at

• Amount of memory in use (both systemwide and host process memory).
• Number of in-process messages being delivered or processed (threshold for outbound throttling).
• Number of threads in use. Database size, measured by the number of items in the queue tables for all hosts and the number of items in the spool and tracking tables.
• Number of concurrent database connections.
• Rate of message publishing (inbound) and delivery or processing (outbound).

The only one that throttles inbound is the Rate of message publishing, but that is possible after the pipeline/port has processed the message so may not be of any use in this scenario, but you would have to test that.

You will probably want to set up that process under it's own host so if it hits throttling thresholds it does not throttle everything else as well.

If possible you should move the component to a send port pipeline as throttling send ports is much more controllable. One way is to set the send port to ordered delivery, although that can cause a backlog especially if you get a suspended message.

Answer 2

I think your most straightforward approach here would be to write a custom adapter. Unfortunately, the out of the box File Adapter does not directly support throttling/polling intervals, and I don't think the suggestions given already would not directly impact the custom pipeline processing if it's directly hitting the DB through ADO.NET (but it couldn't hurt to try). You can set the BatchSize property on the file adapter settings, but even then there's nothing stopping it from submitting that batchsize as fast as it possibly can over and over again.

A custom adapter could be created to wait for a period before submitting additional files for processing. You could base it on the SDK File Adapter sample.