October, 2004

It can sometimes be challenging when mapping schemas in BizTalk 2004. One common problem is when the inbound document has one record and the source creates multiple records based on the data inside your single record. The root problem arises because you have nothing to loop around in the inbound document and need to create multiple nodes on the output. How can this be handled in the mapper? Two ways: Functoids or XSLT Template BizTalk 2004 introduces a new Functoid just for this situation. It is...

Working with XPath inside Orchestrations is a powerful and simple feature of BizTalk 2004. The help guide does a good job describing the process (under Using XPath in Message Assignment). I have found that the XPath queries can only be done against a Message and the results can be set to a Message, XML Document or other orchestration variables. XPath queries can also be executed against untyped messages. That is, a Message that is of type System.Xml.XmlDocument. CRITICAL: BizTalk xpath can be used...

InfoPath is something I heard a lot about several months ago, but not much since then. Recently, I had to set an InfoPath template to a message in BizTalk 2004. This is something that is rather simple, as long as you know what properties you need to set. To set an InfoPath template for use on an outgoing message just use this code inside the Message Assignment shape. This is set up to use an InfoPath template that has been deployment to a Sharepoint site. Other options are a Web Server or File Location...

Have you seen an error that looks like the one below on your Send Pipelines? There was a failure executing the send pipeline: "Microsoft.BizTalk.DefaultPipelines.XMLTransmit" Source: "XML assembler" Send Port: "some location" Reason: This Assembler cannot retrieve document specification by using this type: "namespace#rootnode". This is caused by not having a unique combination of namespace and root node (MessageType). BizTalk by default does not like unrecognized messages. The XML Disassembler has...

I found out tonight that Delivery Notification set to Transmitted works differently for Send Groups. In the case of Send Groups, no NACK is returned if any of the Send Ports in the group fails.

I think most BizTalk users have some idea about what Property Promotion is. I would say Property Promotion is the process of taking message or system data and putting it into the message context. The tricky part is when and how properties get promoted. The items that are promoted using a property schema attached to your schema are promoted in the pipelines. When and how the system properties are promoted is somewhat of a mystery. I think some items are promoted in the adapters (like the specific...

Make sure you check out Todd Uhl’s Blog . He has a sample working with Role Links in BizTalk 2004. This is something I had not looked into yet but his sample makes it look easy and useful. Todd is working on the Tech Arch team on my current project. Watch for more great deployment and architecture posts from him in the near future.

Here is another sample of a Sequential Convoy in BizTalk 2004. This is a little different then most, it contains a Parallel Action shape that allows for concurrent parallel processing of inbound messages. What does this accomplish? It is all about control. This process allows for processing a pre-defined number of messages at the same time in a controlled manner. Performance? Ok, it is not the fasting running Orchestration I have ever seen. Actually, in some of my tests this parallel action processed...