This time I decided to create a brand new component called the Message Archive Pipeline Component.
For those who aren’t familiar with it, the BizTalk Pipeline Components Extensions Utility Pack project is a set of custom pipeline components (libraries) with several custom pipeline components that can be used in receive and sent pipelines. Those pipeline components provide extensions of BizTalk’s out-of-the-box pipeline capabilities.
Message Archive Pipeline Component
The Message Archive Pipeline Component is a pipeline component that can be used to arch incoming/outgoing messages from any adapters into a local or shared folder. It is very identical and provides the same capabilities as the already existing BizTalk Server Local Archive pipeline component:
It can be used in any stage of a receive pipeline or send pipeline;
It can be used in multiple stages of a receive pipeline or send pipeline;
It provides an option for you to specify the location path for where you want to save the message: local folder, shared folder, network folder.
It can be used from any adapter:
If the adapter provides the ReceivedFileName property promoted like the File adapter or FTP adapter the component will take this value into consideration and save the message with the same name;
Otherwise, it will use the MessageID, saving the file with the MessageID has its name without extension.
So what are the differences between them?
The significant differences between these two components are that the Message Archive Pipeline Component allows you to:
Set the filename using macros like %datetime%, %ReceivePort%, %Day%, etc.
For example, %ReceivePort%_%MessageID%.xml
Set the archive file path once again using macros:
for example C:BizTalkPortsArchiveARCHIVE%Year%%Month%%Day%
If you don’t want to overwrite existing files, you can specify an additional Macro to distinguish them.
For example _%time%
You can set up this component for high performance using forward-only streaming best practices.
In short, this means developing your pipeline components so that they do their logic either as a custom stream implementation or by reacting to the events available to you through the Microsoft.BizTalk.Streaming.dll stream classes. Without ever keeping anything except the small stream buffer in Memory and without ever seeking the original stream. This is best practice from the perspective of resource utilization, both memory and processor cycles.
This is the list of properties that you can set up on the archive pipeline component:
Property Name
Description
Sample Values
OverwriteExistingFile
Define if the archive file is to be overwritten if already exists
true/false
ArchivingEnabled
Define if the archive capabilities are enabled or disabled
true/false
ArchiveFilePath
Archive folder path. You can use macros to dynamically define the path.
C:Archive%Year%%Month%%Day%
ArchiveFilenameMacro
File name template. If empty the source file name or MessageId will be used. You can use macros to dynamically define the filename.
%ReceivePort%_%MessageID%.xml
AdditionalMacroIfExists
If a file already exists and OverwriteExistingFile is set to false, a suffix can be added. If empty the MessageId will be used. You can use macros to dynamically define this suffix.
_%time%
OptimizeForPerformance
Setting to apply high performance on the archive
true/false
Available macros
This is the list of macros that you use on the archive pipeline component:
Property Name
Description
%datetime%
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) date time in the format YYYY-MM-DDThhmmss (for example, 1997-07-12T103508).
%MessageID%
Globally unique identifier (GUID) of the message in BizTalk Server. The value comes directly from the message context property BTS.MessageID.
%FileName%
Name of the file from which the File adapter read the message. The file name includes the extension and excludes the file path, for example, Sample.xml. When substituting this property, the File adapter extracts the file name from the absolute file path stored in the FILE.ReceivedFileName context property. If the context property does not have a value the MessageId will be used.
%FileNameWithoutExtension%
Same of the %FileName% but without extension.
%FileNameExtension%
Same of the %FileName% but in this case only the extension with a dot: .xml
%Day%
UTC Current day.
%Month%
UTC Current month.
%Year%
UTC Current year.
%time%
UTC time in the format hhmmss.
%ReceivePort%
Receive port name.
%ReceiveLocation%
Receive location name.
%SendPort%
Send port name.
%InboundTransportType%
Inbound Transport Type.
%InterchangeID%
InterchangeID.
How to install it
As always, you just need to add these DLLs on the Pipeline Components folder that in BizTalk Server 2020 is by default:
In this particular component, we need to have this DLL:
BizTalk.PipelineComponents.MessageArchive.dll
How to use it
Like all previous, to use the pipeline component, I recommend you to create a generic or several generic pipelines that can be reused by all your applications and add the Message Archive Pipeline Component in the stage you desire. The component can be used in a stage of the receive and send pipelines.
Download
THIS COMPONENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
You can download Message Archive Pipeline Component from GitHub here:
Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform and Azure iPaaS?
Integration weekly updates can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.
For those who are not familiar, this project is a set of custom pipeline components (libraries) with several custom pipeline components that can be used in received and sent pipelines, which will extend BizTalk’s out-of-the-box pipeline capabilities.
Receive Location Name Property Promotion Pipeline Component
Receive Location Name Property Promotion Pipeline Component is a simple pipeline component to promote the Receive Location Name (ReceiveLocationName) property to the context of the message. Several BizTalk Server context properties are not promoted by default with BizTalk Server, which means that they are not available for routing.
One such property is the ReceiveLocationName property. While the ReceivePortName property is available in the BTS namespace, the ReceiveLocationName property is not promoted. It cannot be used for routing nor access it from inside an orchestration.
My team and I kept that behavior creates this project as a proof-of-concept to explain how you can promote properties to the context of the message.
Create a Property schema
To promote properties to the context of the message, we will need a Property Schema with these properties. In our case, we will add only one property called: ReceiveLocationName.
Property Name
Date Type
Property Schema Base
ReceiveLocationName
xs:string
MessageContextPropertyBase
Note: A MessageContextPropertyBase property means that the XPath may or may not exist.
Create a Pipeline Component
To actually promote the properties to the context of the message, we need to create a pipeline component to do the trick.
Once you deploy the property schema and a receive pipeline component containing the Receive Location Name Property Promotion Pipeline Component, you can start to apply Content-based routing using the Receive Location Name.
Download
THIS COMPONENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
You can download Receive Location Name Property Promotion Pipeline Component from GitHub here:
For those who are pt familiar, this project is a set of custom pipeline components (libraries) with several custom pipeline components that can be used in received and sent pipelines, which will extend BizTalk’s out-of-the-box pipeline capabilities.
BizTalk PDF2Xml Pipeline Component
BizTalk PDF2Xml Pipeline Component is, as the name mentioned, a decode component that transforms the content of a PDF document to an XML message that BizTalk can understand and process. The component uses the itextsharp library to extract the PDF content. The original source code was available on the CodePlex (pdf2xmlbiztalk.codeplex.com). Still, I couldn’t validate who was the original creator. So, the component first transforms the PDF content to HTML, and then using an external XSLT, will apply a transformation to convert the HTML into a know XML document that BizTalk Server can process.
My team and I kept that behavior, but we extended this component and added the capability also to, by default, convert it to a well know XML without the need for you to use an XSTL transformation directly on the pipeline.
How does this component work?
This is the list of properties that you can set up on the PDF2XML pipeline component:
Property Name
Description
Sample Values
InternalProcessToHTML
Value to decide if you want the component to transform the PDF content to HTML or XML
True/False
IsToApplyTrasnformation
Value to decide if you want to apply a transformation on the pipeline component or not
True/False
XsltFilePath
Path to an XSLT transformation file
C:transfmymap.xslt
Once you pass the PDF by this component and depending on how you configure it, the outcome can be:
All PDF content in an HTML format;
All PDF content in an XML format;
Part of the PDF content on an XML format (if you apply a transformation)
Unfortunately, on my initial tests, this component works well with some PDF files, but others simply ignore its content. Nevertheless, I make it available as a prof-of-concept.
Download
THIS COMPONENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.
You can download BizTalk PDF2Xml Pipeline Component from GitHub here:
Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform and Azure iPaaS?
Integration weekly updates can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.
Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform and Azure iPaaS?
Integration weekly updates can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.
Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform and Azure iPaaS?
Integration weekly updates can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.
Do you feel difficult to keep up to date on all the frequent updates and announcements in the Microsoft Integration platform and Azure iPaaS?
Integration weekly updates can be your solution. It’s a weekly update on the topics related to Integration – enterprise integration, robust & scalable messaging capabilities and Citizen Integration capabilities empowered by Microsoft platform to deliver value to the business.
by Xinli Shang, Mohammad Islam, Pavi Subenderan, and Jianchun Xu
