Migrating a BizTalk Server Project

Article
07/07/2021

Visual Studio projects developed for BizTalk Server can be migrated to the newer environments by using Visual Studio conversion. For a list of the supported migration versions, see Supported Upgrade Paths and Installation Guides.

BizTalk Project Changes After Running the Conversion Wizard

The following table shows how BizTalk Server 2006 R2 project configuration names change, and where some specific configuration properties relocate after the project is converted to a newer BizTalk Server project. Most of the BizTalk Server-related project settings are located on the Deployment tab of Project Designer.

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 project	BizTalk Server project
Embed Tracking Information output configuration property	Define TRACE constant build option on the Build tab of Project Designer
Generate Debugging Information output configuration property	Define DEBUG constant build option on the Build tab of Project Designer
BPEL Compliance code generation configuration property	BPEL Compliance code generation property in the project properties window

Note

BizTalk projects now have two build types: Release and Debug, which replaces Development and Deployment of earlier versions. However, you will continue to see the Development and Deployment configurations for the projects that are migrated from BizTalk Server 2006 R2.

Caution

Only the *.btproj and *.btproj.user project files are backed up as a result of choosing the back up option during the conversion. Other files must be manually backed up.

Caution

Any customizations to auto-generated items such XSD and ODX files will be lost during conversion. This applies to XSD files generated when a web reference is added to a BizTalk project as well.

Project Migration and Delay Signing

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 projects that use Delay Signing may fail during the build process after being converted for BizTalk Server. This can happen if Generate serialization assembly build setting for the migrated project configuration is not set to Off.

Project Migration and MSMQT

MSMQT is no longer part of BizTalk Server. For more information on how this can affect project migration, see the topic MSMQT Deprecation.

Project Conversion requires the project and solution file

If you attempt to convert a BizTalk Server 2006 R2 project and do not have the solution file you will receive the following error:

Error converting project file. Child element <BIZTALK> of element <VisualStudioProject> is not valid.

Project conversion requires the solution file (.sln) from the BizTalk Server project. If the solution file is not available, you must create one with Visual Studio 2005 and add the BizTalk Server 2006 R2 project to the solution. Then run the Visual Studio conversion wizard.