BizTalk Mapper - Looping Tricks

This post is intended to demonstrate 2 ways of using the looping functoid. One is pretty obvious, and the other shows a use for the looping functoid that requires a bit of help from a logical functoid.

Along the way I'll also show how a value mapping functoid works.

I have created 2 schemas intended to represent the status of a previously sent purchase order. POS.xsd is the output from a Line of Business (LOB) application, and PO_Status is intended to be sent to the customer. The LineItem node in POS.xsd and the Product node in POStatus.xsd both repeat 1 to unbounded times. Here's how the map looks:

The red functoid is a String Concatenate functoid, which has 3 inputs - ShipperName, a constant " - ", and ServiceLevel. The DateShipped element is mapped straight across, or "as is".

The turquoise functoids are Greater Than (GT) functoids. The first input you can see on the screen for the upper GT functoid is the QuantityOrdered element, and the second input is "0". This functoid will return true if the value in QuantityOrdered is more than 0. The output of this functoid is mapped into 2 Value Mapping (VM) functoids. A value mapping functoid will return it's second input only if the value of the first input is 0. So the uppermost VM functoid will return its second input (the string "Ordered", which you can't see) if the value in QuantityOrdered is > 0, and that is mapped into GlobalQuantityTypeCode. The second VM functoid will return its second input (QuantityOrdered) if QuantityOrdered is > 0, and that value is mapped into ProductQuantity.

And Here's a sample of the input XML:

<ns0:PurchaseOrderStatus xmlns:ns0="http://Test.POS">
 <ShipperName>UPS</ShipperName>
 <ServiceLevel>2nd Day</ServiceLevel>
 <DateShipped>05/17/2005</DateShipped>
 <LineItem>
   <ItemNumber>X-12</ItemNumber>
   <QuantityOrdered>10</QuantityOrdered>
   <QuantityShipped>5</QuantityShipped>
   <QuantityBackordered>5</QuantityBackordered>
   <QuantityCancelled>0</QuantityCancelled>
 </LineItem>
 <LineItem>
   <ItemNumber>A-24-P</ItemNumber>
   <QuantityOrdered>200</QuantityOrdered>
   <QuantityShipped>200</QuantityShipped>
   <QuantityBackordered>0</QuantityBackordered>
   <QuantityCancelled>0</QuantityCancelled>
 </LineItem>
 <LineItem>
   <ItemNumber>T-707F</ItemNumber>
   <QuantityOrdered>12</QuantityOrdered>
   <QuantityShipped>0</QuantityShipped>
   <QuantityBackordered>6</QuantityBackordered>
   <QuantityCancelled>6</QuantityCancelled>
 </LineItem>
</ns0:PurchaseOrderStatus>

Notice in the Visual Studio output window above that there is an error. This occurred when I tried to test the map you see above. The warning immediately below the error reads in full: "The destination node "GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode" has multiple inputs but none of its ancestors is connected to a looping functoid."

This error can be easily remedied by adding a looping functoid, which can be found in the Toolbox under Advanced Functoids:

In the image above, you can see that I have added a purple functoid (the Looping functoid) that connects the LineItem node in the source schema with the Product node in the destination schema. But there's still an error. What I've done in effect is to tell BizTalk, for every LineItem in node in a source document, create a Product node in the output document. But I'm going to have to also account for the fact that within 1 Product node in the output, there are possibly multiple OrderStatusQuantity nodes.

Here's another attempt:

I have put another Looping functoid on the map, and connected the QuantityOrdered and QuantityShipped node outputs to it. What does this do? Essentially, it says that whenever you have an input node, create another OrderStatusQuantity node. Well if I'm so clever, why am I still getting an error? Because other functoids that I've explained above say to only create the nodes under OrderStatusQuantity node if the source value is greater than 0. QuantityShipped in the 3rd LineItem in the sample XML is 0, so I'm essentially telling BizTalk to create an OrderStatusQuantity node, but don't create its children. Since the children are required in the schema, I get an error.

Let's try one more time:

Finally! If you look closely at the map, you can see that I've drawn lines from the GT functoids to the OrderStatusQuantity node. This shows a very useful property of logical functoids. If you map the output of a logical functoid to a node, it will act to suppress the production of that node when the output of the logical functoid is false. So the OrderStatusQuantity node will be created if and only if the QuantityOrdered or the QuantityShipped field contains a value greater than 0.

Here's the XML output. Note that in the last Product node, there is only one OrderStatusQuantity:

<ns0:PO_Status xmlns:ns0="http://Test.POStatusOut">
   <ShipDate>05/17/2005</ShipDate>
   <ShippedVia>UPS - 2nd Day</ShippedVia>
   <Product>
      <ProductIdentifier>X-12</ProductIdentifier>
      <OrderStatusQuantity>
         <GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>Ordered</GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>
         <ProductQuantity>10</ProductQuantity>
      </OrderStatusQuantity>
      <OrderStatusQuantity>
         <GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>Shipped</GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>
         <ProductQuantity>5</ProductQuantity>
      </OrderStatusQuantity>
   </Product>
   <Product>
      <ProductIdentifier>A-24-P</ProductIdentifier>
      <OrderStatusQuantity>
         <GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>Ordered</GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>
         <ProductQuantity>200</ProductQuantity>
      </OrderStatusQuantity>
      <OrderStatusQuantity>
         <GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>Shipped</GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>
         <ProductQuantity>200</ProductQuantity>
      </OrderStatusQuantity>
   </Product>
   <Product>
      <ProductIdentifier>T-707F</ProductIdentifier>
      <OrderStatusQuantity>
         <GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>Ordered</GlobalOrderQuantityTypeCode>
         <ProductQuantity>12</ProductQuantity>
      </OrderStatusQuantity>
   </Product>
</nso:PO_Status>

What's My Blog?

I've been reflecting on "what my blog is about". I used to reflect on my life in the same way, but never came to a definite conclusion. So I'm narrowing the focus of my question to just the blog.
:-)

My intention is to write about some technical items that should be easy, but weren't necessarily (at least to me). A lot of what I write might look like it's for beginners, but if it took more than a little research to find it, I think it's worth writing down.

Hopefully you'll either agree, or read someone else's blog.
;-)

BizTalk 2006 SMTP Adapter

I found a couple of great articles on using the SMTP adapter on Richard Seroter's blog here, and Tomas Restrepo's blog here. What follows are a couple of things that I had to find elsewhere.
For the following examples, I assume you've already created 2 multipart messages EmailIn and EmailOut, each with a body part and an attachment part called Remainder. EmailIn has been used to receive an email using the POP3 adapter (see my previous post), and EmailOut is for sending an email out via SMTP. I also assume that you've at least partly built the EmailOut message, see the 2 links above if you don't know how.

To set the filename for the attachment:
EmailOut.Remainder(MIME.FileName) = "MySpecialTitle.XML";
To set the subject of the outgoing email from the incoming email:
EmailOut(SMTP.Subject) = EmailIn(POP3.Subject);
By the way, these need to be done in a constructor for EmailOut.

To send your email to an address that is to be configured at run-time, assuming that you've managed to get the correct address into the variable emailAddress:

1. Creating a dyamic port
2. Create an expression shape
3. Enter code that looks like this in the expression shape:
   DynamicPort(Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.Address) = "mailto:" + emailAddress;

It took me a while to figure out how this could work, my guess is that the "mailto:" prefix somehow indicates to BizTalk that it should use SMTP for that port, just as http tells your browser to use port 80.

Hopefully you can extrapolate other things that you might need from the links and these examples.