BizTalk BAM: Data is null

I've encountered an issue where the BizTalk BAM Portal was not showing deployed views "Views or Activities may be missing because one or more database(s) could not be contacted."; and when trying to list accounts with "bm get-accounts" for a deployed view I was receiving the error "Data is Null. This method or property cannot be called on Null values.".

It won't take you long to find the cause of this error with a bit of searching is to do with the accounts setup on the database in SQL. It's often caused by an account being deleted from AD (or at the SQL login level) and not on the database, effectively orphaning the user.

It can also happen, it seems, if there is not a logon associated with the dbo account at the database level. This is slightly less obvious as dbo isn't something you logon to, and something DBAs have a habit (for good reason) of not associating with logons. Unfortunately this is a requirement for BAM to work.

To link a dbo account you have to use the sp_changedbowner proc, in it's simplest form you can do sp_changedbowner 'sa' to link it to a SQL account (which can be disabled). This should clear your Data is null error.