Orphaned service instances

Question

We have a BizTalk 2010 solution where we receive an HL7v2 message over MLLP using a request/response receive port. An orchestration processes the message, calls a web service and returns a custom ACK to the client. Seems to work well.

In testing, I created 2 scenario:

1. An error would occur when generating the ACK
2. An error would occur when sending the ACK to the client via the send pipeline of the request/response receive port. I did this by incorrectly setting a configuration parameter on the send pipeline.

My orchestration contains scope and catch blocks so that I don't end up with suspended messages in the messagebox. Essentially if there are errors, we just want to log them, there's nothing we can do to remediate so suspended messages are unnecessary and clutter the messagebox. In my testing scenarios, if errors occur then the ACK does not get sent to the client, and althouth the orchestration completes, there is still a running service instance for the receive port. I imagine that is because the send pipeline is still subscribing to the ACK and waiting for it. Is there a way to avoid this or terminate the service instance somehow through the orchestration?

Answer 1

I'd suggest adding a fault message to the operation on the port and throwing a fault message out from your catch block.