BizTalk Orchestration Opens in Text View in VisualStudio Orchestration Designer

Question

While working on a rather large BizTalk 2010 project I came across this very strange behaviour and wanted to post a solution to it here in case anyone else may experience this.

When attempting to open an orchestration in the orchestration designer within Visual Studio 2010, I noticed the orchestration opened in text only view and I was unable to view the orchestration designer. This was for one orchestration only, all other orchestrations in the project opened properly. The project also compiled properly without any errors. I right-clicked on the affected orchestration and choose Open With -> BizTalk Orchestration Designer. I also clicked Set as Default. I could then view the orchestration in design mode as expected. However upon closing and re-opening the solution, I noticed that once again the orchestration was opening in a text only view.

I then opened the .btproj file in a text editor and noticed the following (this is a snippet of my .btproj file):

    <ItemGroup>
        <XLang Include="OrderCancel.odx">
            <TypeName>OrderCancel</TypeName>          
            <Namespace>MyNamespace.Orchestrations</Namespace>      
            <SubType>Designer</SubType>
        </XLang>
    </ItemGroup>
    <ItemGroup>
        <XLang Include="OrderModify.odx">
            <TypeName>OrderModify</TypeName>
            <Namespace>Mynamespace.Orchestrations</Namespace>
        </XLang>
    </ItemGroup>

Note the tag:

<SubType>Designer</SubType>

I simply removed the SubType tag, saved the .btproj file and reopened the solution in Visual Studio and the orchestration opened normally again.

Big+1 - thanks. This is easy to repeat - right click on an ODX, choose "Open with..Xml (Text) Editor". Even if you don't change anything on the ODX, when you save your .btproj, the `` will be there. — StuartLC, Dec 14 '12 at 09:17
Sorry for barging in on a 4 year old post, but could you possibly add this as an answer instead of an edit of your question? Would make more sense in regard of SO. Thank you. — zurebe-pieter, Sep 12 '16 at 12:09

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered May 14 '12 at 18:30

I would prefer to add a comment, but it appears I am too new to the site to be able to do that. This "question" was the exact solution that I was looking for, so thanks for submitting this. The only thing that I can add is that the orchestration did open in a "designer" mode, because there were three tabs at the bottom "design", "split" and "source" but as the original poster points out, only the text of the orchestration content was visible. The designer options at the bottom lead me to believe that VS was using the HTML WYSIWYG designer, rather than the Orchestration designer.

Removing the tag from the btproj file solved the issue so I want to thank Ian again for posting the solution.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 07 '16 at 17:23

2

Adding additional point to main post. Actually this issue can be cause, if we open the orchestration in xml mode, then project file will save orchestration Subtype property to Designer mode.

Then from this point, whenever you try to open the orchestration by double clicking, then orchestration will open in xml mode, as project had the orchestration Subtype property set to designer mode.

I hope this will help some one.

answered Apr 07 '16 at 17:23

Software Enginner

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2
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That is exactly the cause for my problem, for example Designer removing the SubType node, reload the project, and then the problem is fixed. Many thanks!! – Lin Song Yang Sep 22 '17 at 01:19

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 13 '12 at 09:03

0

I would rather do a Visual Studio reset plugin

devenv.exe /resetaddin * (http://www.mztools.com/articles/2006/mz2006014.aspx)

than manually editing the project files. We have seen situation like this in the past and VS reset worked for us.

answered Sep 13 '12 at 09:03

Saravana Kumar

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3
8

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 09 '16 at 09:25

I had this problem in VS 2013 + TFS + BizTalk 2013 R2.

My solution was the following: Tools -> Options -> Source Control -> Environment

Uncheck the option "Get everything when a solution or project is opened"

I think this is a bug related with VS 2013 and therefore should be reported to Microsoft!

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 09 '12 at 17:19

That is weird, I have not seen that before. It sounds like the default editor for the .odx file type is set to text. I think this preference must be stored somewhere in the user profile or perhaps as a VS preference. If it is a VS preference, you might have to elevate to Administrator when opening VS to get the preference to save between times that VS is open.

This is just a guess because I have not seen this problem before.

Thanks,

BizTalk Orchestration Opens in Text View in VisualStudio Orchestration Designer

5 Answers5