BizTalk Load - Strange Behaviour with File Size

After upgrading to a new instance of BizTalk Server (2006 to 2010), strange behaviour was seen with a customised Voucher load. All of the records were imported into 3e, but certain internal 3e Object Code operations were not being performed to amend the imported data. This only happened when the imported flat file was greater than a particular size (32,218 Bytes in this case).

Following advice from this article, I changed the value of the Large Message Size in the BizTalk Group Settings from 100KB to 315KB.

This solves the problem. It seems message fragmentation caused by an insufficient message size threw errors which eventually led to the Process in 3e not executing methods further downstream.

See this msdn blog post for further information.

2.6 - Blank Fields in Report Headers

After upgrading to 3e 2.6 (from 2.5 CP12 in this case), field values in the headers of customised reports are no longer displayed. The report below is displayed with filed values in 2.5 but after upgrading, Client Name, Matter Name, Matter Number and an unlabelled Key Word field have missing values.

The issue is resolved by moving the fields into the group sections, rather than the header. In most cases this can be done without drastically altering the displayed layout:

In this case the Key Word field, Client Name, Matter Name and Matter Number have been moved into the Matter grouping section and Currency Code moved to the Currency grouping section.

This new behaviour is welcome as having grouped values in the header is bad practice. The values displayed in 2.5 headers could be any of the distinct values that are returned from the grouping. It was not usually noticed in 2.5 as the reports are normally viewed for specific Matters, Clients etc. where grouped values are the same for each returned record.