Chapter 4. The BizTalk Editor
By Susie Adams and Charlie Kaiman
In This Chapter
BizTalk Server Messaging guarantees the reliable delivery and transformation of structured documents between applications and organizations. To transform and route a document, the BizTalk Server Messaging engine parses it and then maps it into its desired outbound format. The parsing is accomplished by a BizTalk parser that's been developed specifically for that document type. The serialization of the document into its native format is handled by that document type's corresponding BizTalk serializer. The BizTalk Messaging engine associates inbound and outbound documents to their parsers and serializers using a BizTalk specification that describes the type and structure of the document.
The BizTalk Editor tool allows developers to create, manage, and edit specifications that define a structured document. A BizTalk specification is an XML Data Reduced (XDR) definition of a structured document, which provides a common vocabulary that is capable of handling the overlaps that commonly occur between syntactical, database, and conceptual data schemas. Specifications represent the structured data as XML regardless of their original format. When a document is received by the BizTalk Messaging Engine, the document is parsed by a BizTalk Server parser according to the properties of the records and fields contained in the specification. The resulting document is the XML representation of the original inbound document. The properties of the records and fields are represented as BizTalk Server-specific XML annotations in the XDR schema.
The BizTalk Mapper uses BizTalk specifications to create maps between inbound and outbound documents. A BizTalk map is an XLST style sheet that when applied to an inbound document transforms the document into an XML representation of the desired outbound document. The Messaging engine then uses a BizTalk serializer to read the outbound specification and serialize the XML document into its native outbound document format. This allows the BizTalk Messaging Engine to process documents based on any of the following document types:
Well-formed XML
XDR schemas
Document type definitions (DTDs)
Electronic data interchange (EDI) X12 and EDIFACT
Flat files, including delimited and/or positional files, SAP IDOCs
Structured document formats
The BizTalk Editor allows you to create specifications starting with a blank specification or by importing an existing schema or well-formed XML document. You can import XDR schemas, well-formed XML documents, and DTDs documents. The BizTalk Server Editor also provides several templates that can be used as starting points for creating specifications for common document types, such as common XML purchase orders, EDI X12, and EDIFACT documents.
In this chapter, we will discuss how to create BizTalk specifications using the BizTalk Editor. Specifically, we will discuss how to create specifications for an XML document, a delimited flat file document, and a positional flat file document.