Is the ability to create Solicit-Response ports that query Active Directory on demand part of the Receive Adapter or the Send Adapter?
Both. The query is sent out by the send adapter. The actual querying is done by components of the receive adapter. Therefore, to be licensed to create Solicit-Response send ports, you need to be licensed for both the ActiveADAPTER send and receive adapters.
What will ActiveADAPTER add to what I see in BizTalk Server?
After installing ActiveADAPTER you will see a new transport type option when configuring a send port or receive location. With BizTalk send ports, you can create, delete, rename, move, and modify Active Directory objects. With BizTalk receive locations, you can draw XML messages into BizTalk containing Active Directory query results.
On your Programs menu you will also have an ActiveADAPTER program group containing shortcuts to documentation, sample orchestrations and schemas to get you developing your solutions quickly.
Will the ActiveADAPTER Send Adapter return error information back to my orchestration?
Yes. The adapter will return any exceptions back to your application AFTER any retries you have configured have been done.
Within your orchestration you can use Scope shapes to catch exceptions. In your exception handlers you can retrieve the error description to determine which way to branch.
Sample orchestrations that illustrate exception handing are included in the ActiveADAPTER Samples folder.