Share via

BizTalk Property Schemas Separated From Associated Schemas

  • Article

I caught a glimpse of something in the BizTalk Server 2006 Help the other day that surprised me a bit. The note said:
If a property schema is associated with a message schema, then these two must be in the same BizTalk project. Separating property schema from its associated message schema in different BizTalk projects is not supported.
I had seen that mentioned elsewhere and had mentally discarded it, but I wanted to see whether it's not possible, or it's not supported.

First step was to build two separate projects; one to hold my property schema, another to hold my working schemas.


The property schema has a single field, OrderID. After building and compiling the project, I referenced that project from my primary schemas project. I then tried to promote the OrderNumber value in the schema, and sure enough, I was allowed to pick a schema from a referenced assembly. So far so good.

After also promoting the value in my second schema, I deployed all the projects. Next step was to build a send port that had a subscription filter in the OrderID property field. Finally, I dropped two different messages into BizTalk (via FILE receive location), and both messages were picked up by the send port.

So, from a technical standpoint, this seems to work fine. Clearly there's some reason for us making this an unsupported configuration, and I'm all ears as for why that's the case. It would seem to me that separating my property schemas into a separate assembly creates a much more flexible architecture than forcing it to live with the schemas that use it. Thoughts?

BTW, I'm jazzed that this is my first post using Microsoft Windows Vista RTM, Office 2007 RTM, and Expression Web Designer (to write the post itself). After installing Windows Vista, I finally had to discard my trusty Allaire Homesite which wouldn't install correctly. I've used Homesite (now owned by Macromedia) for years to write all my HTML, but finally have to upgrade my toolset. Of course, I'll still do the HTML by hand, but now in a snazzier shell.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 19, 2006
    This is indeed interesting. I guess what we can additionally try is how does it behave across applications? For a single application having property schema in another project isn't going to achieve much and there will be an additional assembly to load.

  • Anonymous
    November 22, 2006
    I opened a support request sometime ago with MS about a issue very similar to this. The issue was in Bts 2004 SP1, and MS support said it was a "limitation" in the way VS locates assemblies in referenced projects. I was told the problem is fixed in 2006. I can lookup the exact problem description if you are interested.

  • Anonymous
    November 23, 2006
    Both good points.  I'd be interested in the problem description, yes.