More Binding File Magic…

In my last entry, I discussed some ways that can making working with binding files
a bit easier.  Here is another post in that same vein that addresses a common
pain point…

Un-escaping TransportTypeData

One of the annoying things about binding files is that adapters only have a string
element available to store adapter-specific information for send ports and receive
locations.  As a result, adapters will store escaped XML (or even “doubly escaped”
xml…)  This can be extremely hard to manage, especially for adapters such as
MQSeries that keep quite a bit of information in this form. 

To solve this problem, I introduced a new command-line tool in the most recent version
of the Deployment
Framework called “ElementTunnel.exe” (the source for which is in the Tools download.) 
This utility will take in an xml file, along with a file containing xpaths to elements
that should be “encoded” or “decoded”.  The end result is that you can choose
to manage a “master” binding file (not directly useable) and run ElementTunnel on
it immediately prior to deployment.  (You may also run XmlPreProcess on the same
file for macro expansion! The sample in the deployment framework shows both occurring
– XmlPreProcess should occur first!) 

So what does this mean?  An example for a single Send Port snippet: It means
that, in the case of MQSeries, instead of storing and maintaining this mess: