FIX: Basic Authentication Proxy Support Is Added to BizTalk Server (287533)

SYMPTOMS

When you configure a channel, BizTalk Server 2000 provides a User name: text box and a Password: text box in the Primary Transport properties. (To access this, click Advanced in the Advanced Configuration dialog box for the Channel properties.) This user name and password only applies to the WWW-Authenticate header field, and not the Proxy-Authenticate header field. Therefore, it cannot be used to pass credentials for authentication against firewalls for outbound HTTP communications with trading partners.

CAUSE

Proxy Authentication, which is allowed in the HTTP 1.1 specification, is not supported in BizTalk Server 2000. BizTalk Server supports Basic Authentication against the remote server, which requires a user name and a password. BizTalk Server also allows for the configuration of a proxy server, which sits between BizTalk Server and the remote server. However, there is no way to set a user name and password for the proxy server, which may require its own authentication.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

299664 INFO: How to Obtain the Latest BizTalk Server 2000 Service Pack

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 Service Pack 1.

MORE INFORMATION

In the channel's Advanced properties for HTTP in the BizTalk Messaging Manager, there are two new properties:

Proxy User Name: The user name to send to the proxy server
Proxy Password: The password to send to the proxy server

NOTE: This fix is subject to the following limitations:

This setting only supports Basic/Clear Text Authentication against the proxy server or firewall.
This setting must be applied on a per channel basis. There is no global override to set the configuration one time and apply it everywhere.