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Building Message Specifications in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004

Messaging is the foundation of BizTalk Server, and message schemas are the bedrock on which messaging is built. This chapter will help you to get started in BizTalk messaging by specifying message schemas.
This chapter is from the book

In This Chapter

  • Editor Details

  • Flat-File Specifications

  • Property Promotion and Property Schemas

  • Using InfoPath Documents with BizTalk

Messaging is the foundation of BizTalk Server, and message schemas are the bedrock on which messaging is built. Schemas are used by the messaging runtime to understand the structure of data messages and find specific fields. The property fields specified by schemas can be used to help route a message to its destination. Messaging is the exchange of structured data, and schemas are where that structure is defined.

BizTalk Server makes use of XML Schemas to describe a wide range of message structures. Messages in BizTalk encompass the full range of features supported by XML and can also include positional and delimited flat-file formats. Because the same tool is used for both XML and flat-file formats, BizTalk abstracts messages into records and fields. This is a common notion that will be familiar to many programmers. Visually, BizTalk Editor treats both as nodes in a tree. We will begin by looking at how you can use Editor to visually describe a textual structure as nodes in this tree. After you've mastered that, we'll move on to see how various XML structures are described as the properties of these nodes. Then we'll move to the slightly more difficult task of doing the same thing for flat-file formats. Finally, we'll see how BizTalk's use of XML Schemas allows us to prepare the messaging system for use with another technology that uses forms in Microsoft Office as Web service clients.

Editor Details

Recall from Chapter 2, "Your First BizTalk Server Integration," that BizTalk Editor has three principal views: the Schema tree view, the XSD Source view, and the Property view. Because the XSD Source view is read-only, you'll be spending your time in the other two views. Because a lot of the properties you'll set and the options available to you depend on the type of the schema (XML or flat file), we'll concentrate on the basics of navigating the user interface and building a general document structure in this section.

Schema Properties

The first thing you see when you open a new schema is a <Schema> node with a single child node named Root. <Schema> is something of a metanode and as such is really a placeholder for the document as a whole. You'll set two kinds of properties for this node: properties that pertain to the schema as part of an overall BizTalk project and properties that pertain to the schema itself. The former are found and set in a properties dialog box that you open, whereas the latter are manipulated through the Properties window that is typically open throughout your Visual Studio session.

In the Solution Explorer node, right-click the schema file entry and click Properties. You'll see the Property Pages dialog box depicted in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1Figure 3.1 Schema item properties for the project are set in the Property Pages dialog box.

There are four properties you can set, but they pertain to two features: Instance Document Interaction and Property Promotion. Editor lets you generate sample instance documents from the schema or validate sample instance documents. These are useful features that let you compare your schema to the sort of instance document you envision. Without setting instance document filenames, Editor can generate a temporary file for output, but you need an actual input document to use the validation feature. If you need a bit more permanence in output, you'll need to set the following properties:

  • Output Instance Filename—The name and location of the sample instance document generated by Editor from the schema.

  • Input Instance Filename—The name and location of the sample input document you provide for validation against the schema.

When generating instance documents, you may also need to set the Create Instance Output Type property. This defaults to XML, but when you are dealing with flat files, you'll need to set it to Native. You generate an instance document by right-clicking the schema document in Solution Explorer and clicking Generate Instance. When you want to validate the existing document pointed to by the Input Instance Filename property, you right-click as before and click Validate Instance.

The remaining property, Default Property Schema Name, refers to a schema that is used in conjunction with the property promotion feature we discuss in the "Property Promotion and Property Schemas" section later in this chapter. This property defaults to PropertySchema.xsd. Note that unlike the Filename properties we set for instance files, this is an unqualified filename.

Close the Property Page dialog box now and turn your attention to the Visual Studio Property window. With the schema file selected in the Solution Explorer, the Property window displays a variety of properties, mostly names and file locations. The Namespace property is a .NET-style namespace and differs from the Schema node's Target Namespace property. It turns up throughout the tools when qualifying .NET types. Similarly, the Type Name property is derived from the filename and is the unqualified typename.

If you select the <Schema> node in the tree view, however, you find a richer set of properties. In this view you can declare a namespace for the schema, indicate whether you are specifying a message or an envelope used to enclose messages, specify the standard for the schema, and even specify a root node to use when you are sending a message with multiple top-level nodes.

NOTE

This may seem curious if you are an XML programmer. An XML document will not be well formed if it has more than one top-level node. You do not have this restriction with flat-file formats. It is not uncommon to encounter a situation where you want to work with a subset of data exported by a legacy application. Rather than change the code and modify the export (which may not even be possible for your project), you can specify which top-level node BizTalk should use to begin processing. The data anchored by other top-level nodes will be ignored during message processing.

You can usually accept the defaults for Schema node properties, particularly when writing a schema for an XML message. There is one property, however, which may seem curious to you, especially if you have experience with previous versions of the Editor. If you peruse the Schema node properties for a newly created schema, you will not find a property that permits you to declare a flat file. Experienced BizTalk programmers will look at the Standard property without success. The answer to this dilemma lies in the fact that Editor is now composed of an XML subset plus extensions. To declare a flat-file schema, go to the Schema Editor Extensions property, click the ellipsis button, and check Flat File Extension in the Schema Editor Extensions dialog box. This dialog box also lets you load the Human Workflow extension. After the flat-file extension is loaded, new properties appear in the Property view, and new property values are added to the standard property list box. One of these is Flat File.

Adding Records and Fields

After you've created a schema and renamed the root node, you're ready to add some content. The commands to do this are found on the BizTalk menu off the main menu bar or directly through right-clicking and selecting from the context menu. Regardless of which menu you use, you point to Insert Schema Node and make a selection from the submenu.

The first distinction you have to worry about is whether to insert a record node or a field node. This distinction is easy when you are solely concerned with structure. Records can contain other records and fields or can have values directly. Fields take only values. This is directly analogous to database design. When you move into schemas for XML messages, you have another choice to make. Only elements can have child content, so they have to be implemented as elements. Both elements and attributes can have values, so BizTalk message fields can be implemented as either XML node type.

Now that you've decided what sort of node to add, you need to think about where the node is going. Your choices are all relative to the node currently selected in the tree view. Consequently, the Insert Schema Node menu has choices for Child Record, Child Field Attribute, and Child Field Element as well as Sibling Record, Sibling Field Attribute, and Sibling Field Element. After child content is created, you can change the order of the child nodes by dragging them within the tree view.

The XSD Schema format includes several kinds of group constructs. BizTalk takes advantage of this. By default, child content for a node is presumed to occur in order in the sequence provided. You can get the same effect explicitly by using the Sequence Group menu item, in which case a sequence element is created in the XSD Source view. Sometimes, though, you want to specify a series of records or fields from which to choose in creating a message instance. If you had a message schema representing this chapter, for example, you'd need to be able to select from a choice of paragraphs, figures, notes, and tables at any given point under the chapter record. To do this in BizTalk Editor, you insert a Choice group. The node in the tree view is labeled <Choice>, and the available choices are specified as the child nodes of this node. You control the number of times the message instance can choose from these options with the Min Occurs and Max Occurs properties of the <Choice> node.

XSD format schemas also allow you to specify an element that acts as a wildcard placeholder. At some point in the schema you know that you will have some element, and you know what the child content of that node will be, but you do not know in advance what the node itself will be. A family of applications might have various specialized views of an individual, but you are concerned only with some subset of the content. For example, a hospital information system might embrace Nurse, Doctor, and Other Staff types of employees, but all have a common substructure for the purposes of employee benefits. An HR application, then, might use a schema that ignores Nurse, Doctor, and OtherStaff elements while paying attention to the child content. This is the purpose of the All Group type of node. This option appears only when the selected node meets the constraints of the XSD Schema Recommendation for the use of the all element. To use this in BizTalk Editor, insert a child record, set the record's Content Type property to ComplexContent, and then point to Insert Schema Node and click All Group.

The final type of group you can create in Editor is an Attribute Group. You might have a series of field attributes that you need to apply to multiple records, and you want to avoid respecifying them every time you use them. You can do this by inserting an Attribute Group node and then inserting child field attribute nodes. When you want to reuse the group in another record, insert an Attribute Group node and then change the Group Name property value from what Editor generated to the value in the first attribute group. All the field attributes you defined there will automatically appear in the new group node.

Continuing our tour, you'll see that BizTalk Editor offers two singleton node types that, like the All Group node, allow you to inject some degree of ambiguity into a schema to accommodate uncertainty. The first is created with the Any Element command on the Insert Schema Node menu. When created, it inserts an <Any> node into the tree view and an XSD Schema any element into the schema source view. Like the All Group, the Any node accommodates some unknown well-formed element content. In contrast to the All Group node, it cannot have child content specified for it. The schema allows child content, but that content will be ignored for validation purposes. If you are specifying a schema for a very complex schema, you might, for example, want to skip specifying content for areas of the message that you know will never be used by the receiving application or partner. Similarly, if you are modeling an element that you know will have some unknown attributes (that you don't care about), you may use the Any Attribute command to insert an <AnyAttribute> node into the tree view. An XSD Schema anyAttribute element is added to the source view. Like the Any node, AnyAttribute is used to provide for the existence of content while ignoring its particulars.

Sample Schema: Structure

We've given you all the commands BizTalk Editor provides for creating structure, and that's a lot of material for one sitting. Let's ground this in a practical sample. You can examine this schema in the file BasicXMLSchema.xsd in the chapter download, or you can use the steps that follow to create it from scratch. The purpose of this message schema is to model a single person who serves as a point of contact, possibly as part of a customer management system. Each message instance must model the contact's name as well as a list of one or more home or office addresses. For simplicity, we'll assume United States style postal addresses and SSNs and ignore electronic means of contact.

  1. Within a BizTalk project, right-click the project node in Solution Explorer, point to Add, then click Add New Item. From BizTalk Project Items, select the Schema template to create a new schema file.

  2. Change the root node's Node Name property to Contact. Enter ContactType for the value of Data Structure Type.

  3. Right-click Contact in the tree view, point to Insert Schema Node, and then click Sequence Group. Set the Max Occurs and Min Occurs properties of this new node to 1.

  4. Right-click <Sequence>, point to Insert Schema Node, and then click Child Record. Change the Node Name property to Person and the Min Occurs and Max Occurs properties to 1.

  5. Right-click Person and insert a Sibling Record. Name this Locations and set Min Occurs and Max Occurs to 1.

  6. Return to Person and insert a Child Field Attribute. Name it SSN. Set the Use Requirement property to Required.

  7. Return to Person and insert a Child Field Element. Name it FirstName and set Min Occurs and Max Occurs to 1.

  8. Repeat step 7, inserting MiddleName (Min Occurs = 0, max Occurs = 1) and LastName (Min occurs = 1, Max Occurs = 1).

  9. NOTE

    Locations is intended to be a collection of one or more instances of home and or office addresses. These can occur in any order and any number, provided that at least one instance of an address record occurs. We'll model this with a Choice Group. Further, we note that home and office addresses have something in common: the street address. They differ in that a home address can have an apartment number, whereas an office can have a room number or mailstop. We can therefore create a reusable type to model addresses.

  10. Right-click Locations, point to Insert Schema Node, and then click Choice group. Set the Min Occurs property to 1. This will ensure that at least one selection must be made from the permissible choices.

  11. Right-click <Choice> and then insert a Child Record. Change the Node Name property to Home.

  12. Right-click Home and insert a Child Field Attribute. Name this node apt.

  13. Right-click apt and insert a Sibling Record. Name it Address and then type AddrType into the Data Structure Type property field. AddrType(ComplexType) appears in bold.

  14. Insert a Sequence Group node as a child of Address. Set Min Occurs and Max Occurs to 1.

  15. Select the <Sequence> node and insert the following five Child field Elements, setting their properties as shown in Table 3.1.

  16. Table 3.1 Child Field Elements for the AddrType Global Type

    Node Name

    Min Occurs

    Max Occurs

    Street1

    1

    1

    Street2

    0

    1

    City

    1

    1

    State

    1

    1

    ZIP

    1

    1


  17. Under Locations, select <choice>, and then insert a Child Record. Set Node Name to Office.

  18. Right-click Office and insert a Child Field attribute. Name it room. Set Use Requirement to optional.

  19. Repeat step 16 to create mailstop.

  20. Right-click Office and insert a Child Record. Set Node Name to Address. Select AddrType (ComplexType) from the list in the Data Structure Type property. Note that the child content previously declared in step 14 appears.

  21. Save your work as BasicXMLSchema.xsd, then right-click the Schema node in Solution Explorer and click Validate Schema. The Output window should indicate Validate Schema succeeded.

At this time, the tree view should look like Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.2Figure 3.2 Final structure for your first sample schema.

Node Properties

We've covered a few of the properties of various nodes in the course of our previous discussion and introductory structural sample. The online documentation for BizTalk covers node properties in exhaustive detail. You need to know a bit more about node properties. Rather than repeat the BizTalk topics on node properties in their entirety, we'll cover the properties you are most likely to use in normal BizTalk development projects.

Schema Node Properties

Starting at the top, we should first consider the <Schema> metanode. Schema nodes are commonly configured with the properties in Table 3.2, although we'll be discussing several more properties when we get to flat-file schemas.

Table 3.2 Commonly Used Schema Node Properties

Property Name

Meaning and Usage

FinalDefault

Specifies how types in the schema can be used to create derived types using common XSD techniques. The value of this property is mapped to an XSD finalDefault attribute. Permissible values are

 

(Default)—Removes the finalDefault attribute if present and makes normal derivation mechanisms available through the schema.

 

All—Permits new types to be derived from any type declared in the schema using any XSD technique.

 

Restriction—Allows derivation from all types in the schema using restriction.

 

Extension—Permits derivation throughout the schema using extension.

 

List—Permits a new type to be derived such that it is a space-delimited list of values permitted to the base type.

 

Union—Permits a new type to be declared such that it is a value permitted to any one of a list of base types.

 

Restriction, Extension, List, and Union may be chosen in combination by using the check boxes associated with each value.

Imports

Manages the schemas and namespaces used by this schema. Only schemas that are part of the current project may be imported. By default, the target namespace for the current schema, the W3C XSD namespace, and the core BizTalk namespace are members of this collection property.

Schema Editor Extensions

Specifies Editor extensions to be loaded. These extensions add node properties specific to a given class of messages. An example is the Flatfile extension that ships with BizTalk. Developers can create their own extensions.

CodeList Database

Locates the mdb format database that contains code lists.

Promote Properties

Used to promote fields in message instances as properties in the message context.

Node Name

Name of the node. This is read-only and fixed to <Schema> for the Schema node.

Schema File Location

Location of the annotated schema document persisted by the Editor for the message schema. This property is read-only for the Schema node and may be changed only through the File, Save As menu item.

Target Namespace

Namespace URI identifying the declarations in the schema (limited to 255 characters).

Case

Controls character case conversion in message instances during processing by the BizTalk messaging engine. Permissible values are

 

(Default)—Removes any prior case annotations from the schema. Characters will be unchanged during processing.

 

Uppercase—Messages will be forced to uppercase.

 

Lowercase—Characters in messages will be forced to lowercase.

Code Page

Used with flat-file schemas to define the character code page to use for message parsing.

Document Type

Used to specify an arbitrary identifier defining the type of document being specified. This identifier should be meaningful to your application and is chiefly used with flat-file schemas.

Document Version

Value of an arbitrary, application-specific version identifier. Usually used for flat-file schemas.

Envelope

Denotes whether the schema represents an envelope specification. Permissible values are

 

Yes—The schema defines an envelope.

 

No—The schema does not define an envelope.

 

(Default)—Equivalent to No, this value also removes the attribute used to persist this property in the schema document.

Receipt

Indicates that messages associated with this schema are incoming receipts for previously sent messages. Values are

 

Yes—The schema defines a receipt message.

 

No—The schema does not define a receipt.

 

(Default)—Equivalent to No, this value also clears the attribute used to persist this property in the schema document.

Root Reference

Used to indicate which of several top-level nodes to use to anchor message processing. The default value is sufficient for schemas defining XML messages because well-formed XML documents may have but a single top-level element. You can select a record node name from a list of top-level nodes when defining other types of messages.

Schema Type

Denotes whether this is a document or a property schema. Values are

 

Document—This schema defines message instances.

 

Property—This schema is used for property promotion.

 

(Default)—Same as Document, this value also removes the attribute used to persist this property in the schema document.

Specification Name

An arbitrary string meant to be a human-friendly name for the schema.

Standard

Denotes the format used for the message. Values are

 

XML—XML syntax is used.

 

(Default)—Same as XML, but also removes the attribute used to persist this property in the schema document.

 

Other string—Arbitrary string denoting the standard syntax used; for example, X12 or EDIFACT.

Standard Version

Version of the syntax (specified by the Standard property) used; for example, 1.0 when Standard has the value XML.


Some of the properties discussed previously require further discussion. Schema importation is an important mechanism for structuring your schemas and reusing common constructions. We deal with this issue in the section on building schemas from existing schemas. Property promotion is a very important topic for BizTalk messaging. We alluded to this in Chapter 2 when we promoted some properties from message instances into the message context. We discuss property promotion and property schemas later in this chapter. Envelopes are useful for message routing. Envelopes are processed by pipelines, so we shall go into greater depth on the topic of envelopes in Chapter 5, "Building Pipelines."

Record Node Properties

Record nodes, which include the document root element, are most important nodes after the Schema metanode because they are the foundation of message structure. The most commonly used record node properties in XML messages are listed in Table 3.3. We'll be adding additional properties when we get to flat-file formats.

Table 3.3 Commonly Used Record Node Properties

Record Node Property Name

Meaning and Usage

Base Date Type

When inheriting from a globally declared type, you select the global type from which you are deriving this record from the list provided in Editor.

Content Type

Defines the type of content the record may contain. Values are

 

(Default)—Clears the property in the schema.

 

SimpleContent—Prevents the record from containing record and field element nodes.

 

ComplexContent—Allows the record to contain child records and/or field element nodes.

Derived By

If the content type property is set to ComplexContent, this property may be used to control how the record inherits from a global type. Permissible values are

 

(Default)—Clears the persisted property and clears inheritance for this record.

 

Extension—The record derives by extension (child content is added to that declared in the global type).

 

Restriction—The record derives by restriction, forming a subset of the base type; property value ranges for properties in the global type are restricted from the ranges declared in the global type.

Form

Defines whether elements from the target namespace of this schema (that is, elements declared in the schema) must be qualified with a namespace prefix in message instances. Although typically set for the document as a whole, you may set this property on a record-by-record basis. Permissible values are

 

(Default)—Removes the attribute used to persist this property in the schema document. Records with this property value may be unqualified in messages.

 

Qualified—Instances of this record must be qualified in messages.

 

Unqualified—Instances of this record need not be qualified (but are allowed to be qualified).

Group Max Occurs

Controls the maximum number of times a child group node may appear in a message instance. Permissible values are any positive integer or the literal string unbounded (also abbreviated with a literal asterisk character). Defaults to 1.

Group Min Occurs

Indicates the minimum number of times a child group node may appear in a message instance. Must be less than or equal to Group Max Occurs. Permissible values are zero or any positive integer. Defaults to 1.

Group Order Type

Used to control the ordering of child element groups. Permissible values are

 

All—Marks the child group as an All Group. Permissible only for top-level record nodes.

 

Choice—Marks the child group as a Choice Group.

 

Sequence—The child group is a Sequence Group; all content must appear in the order specified. This is the default value for this property.

 

None—Selecting this value clears any prior choice. You may not select this value if the record node has child records defined for it.

Mixed

If True, this record may have textual content, child records, or both. If False (default), this record must have either content or child records, but not both.

Notes

This property is used for user-defined comments or notes.

Block

Controls how the type defined by this node may be extended in an instance message. The mechanisms used are the ones provided by the XSD Schema recommendation for type derivation. Permitted values of this property are

 

(Default)—Lifts all restrictions and removes the attribute used to persist this property in the schema document.

 

All—Explicitly denies all forms of derivation.

 

Restriction—Denies derivation through the restriction mechanism.

 

Extension—Denies extension.

 

Substitution—Denies substitution.

 

Restriction, Extension, and Substitution may be used in any combination by using the check boxes provided in the drop-down list for this property.

Data Structure Type

Used when defining or referencing a reusable type. You may enter a string to name a new type or select from a list of declared types when declaring a record node to be an instance of a reusable type.

Final

Controls how the type declared by the record node may be used to derive new types elsewhere in this schema. Permissible values are

 

(Default)—Clears this property and the attribute used to persist it in the schema file.

 

All—Blocks all further derivation from this type.

 

Restriction—This type may not be used to derive a new type using the restriction mechanism.

 

Extension—Denies the use of extension for the derivation of new types.

 

Restriction and Extension may be combined by checking their restrictive check boxes in the drop-down list for this property.

Max Occurs

The maximum number of times the element represented by this node may occur in a message. Permitted values are any positive integer, the string unbounded (also abbreviated as an asterisk), or blank. If left blank, the property value defaults to 1.

Min Occurs

The minimum number of times this element may occur in a message. This value must be less than or equal to the value provided for Max Occurs. Permitted values are the integer zero, any positive integer, or blank. If left blank, the property defaults to 1.

Namespace

This read-only property displays the namespace of the node.

Node Name

Name of the node. Limited to 255 characters.


Field Node Properties

Field nodes have a greater number of commonly used properties. Because they represent data fields in your messages, field nodes need properties to specify and constrain the permitted values of that data. XSD Schemas provide rich mechanisms for type restriction, specification, and extension. This is reflected in BizTalk Editor's Property view for field nodes. Table 3.4 describes the properties you will most commonly use when working with message schemas.

Table 3.4 Commonly Used Field Node Properties

Field Node Property

Meaning and Usage

Base Data Type

When the Derived By property is set to Restriction, you can select one of the XSD simple types as the base data type from which this field node is derived.

Derived By

Specifies what XSD mechanism is used to derive the type of this node. Permissible values are

 

(Default)—Clears this property and its attribute in the schema document.

 

Restriction—The new type is derived by placing constraints on the value of the base data type. When this value is selected, the properties Enumeration, Length, MaxFacet Type, MaxFacet Value, MinFacet Type, MinFacet Value, Maximum Length, Minimum Length, and Pattern become available to you for defining simple constraints.

 

List—The value of this node is constrained to be a space-delimited list of simple types. The type of each item in the list is set to be the value of the Base Data Type property.

 

Union—The node is defined as having a value taken from any of a list of types. When this value is selected, the Member Types property is added to the Property view to enable you to select the types for the union.

Final

Used to control further derivation of this type elsewhere in the schema. Values are

 

(Default)—Clears the property.

 

All—Prevents all further derivation.

 

Restriction—Prevents derivation through restriction.

 

List—Prevents derivation through the List mechanism.

 

Union—Prevents derivation through the Union mechanism.

 

Restriction, List, and Union can be combined by selecting the appropriate check boxes in the drop-down list for this property.

Fixed

Specifies a fixed value to be used in all instances of this node. This property conflicts and may not be used with Default Value.

Item Type

When Derived By is set to List, the simple type chosen for this property's value is the data type of each item in the list.

Member Types

When Derived By is set to Union, this property specifies the list of permissible types for the field node's values.

Nillable

When True, the field node may have an XSD nillable attribute and must then be empty. False otherwise. Not available for attribute field nodes.

Code List

Used to indicate the code list to use for the allowable range of values for this field. Typically, the value of this property is an integer.

Notes

User-defined notes or comments.

Data Type

Used to specify the XSD simple type of this field node. The xs:long type is not recommended for messages that will be processed on Windows 2000 systems, because the related operating system data type is not supported.

Default Value

Used to specify a default value that will be used for this field when one is not explicitly provided by the message. Conflicts with Fixed.

Field Type

Denotes whether this field is an element or an attribute. Read-only.

Max Occurs

Maximum number of times the field may occur. Not available for field attribute nodes. Permissible values are any positive integer, the literal string unbounded, or the literal character *, which is the abbreviation for unbounded. Defaults to 1.

Min Occurs

Minimum number of times the field may occur. Not available for field attribute nodes. Must be less than or equal to Max Occurs. May be 0 or any positive integer. Defaults to 1.

Node Name

Name of the field node.

Namespace

Namespace of the field node. Read-only.

Required

When Yes, the field must appear in message instances. When No, the field is optional. Defaults to No (also represented as a blank value).

Enumeration

A linefeed-delimited list of permissible values for the field node.

Length

When the Base Data Type property is a string-related type and Derived By is set to Restriction, you can use this to set the exact length of the field's value. Conflicts with MaxLength and MinLength.

MaxFacet Type

When Base Data Type is a numeric simple type and Derived By is Restriction, the value of this property controls how MaxFacet Value is applied. Permissible values are

 

Inclusive—The permitted range for the field includes the value specified in MaxFacet Value.

 

Exclusive—The permitted range does not include the value of MaxFacet Value.

 

(Default)—Clears the property in the schema, signifying that there is no maximum value for this field.

MaxFacet Value

Specifies the maximum value of the field when the node is a numeric type and derived through restriction.

MinFacet Type

When Base Data Type is a numeric simple type and Derived By is Restriction, the value of this property controls how MinFacet Value is applied. Permissible values are the same as for MaxFacet.

MinFacet Value

Specifies the minimum value of the field when the node is a numeric type and derived through restriction.

Maximum Length

When deriving a string type through restriction, this property indicates the maximum length of the string. The permissible values are any positive integer or blank (to remove the upper limit).

Minimum Length

When deriving a string type through restriction, the value of this property denotes the minimum length of the string. This may be 0, any positive integer less than or equal to the value of Maximum Length, or blank (to remove the lower bound).

Pattern

When Derived By is Restriction, you may specify a regular expression to constrain the values of this field. The syntax for the regex is specified by the W3C Schema Recommendation.

Restriction Type

When True, inheritance from an XSD simple or built-in type through restriction is permitted. False otherwise.


This list—which, remember, is only the list of commonly used properties—is somewhat lengthy, but most of the list pertains to type derivation. This is a complex and powerful topic. An exhaustive treatment is found in the W3C Recommendation XML Schema: Datatypes (http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/). Type derivation is a useful technique, so we'll go over the basic ideas in the "Inheritance and New Types" section that follows.

Inheritance and New Types

You can go a very long way defining message schemas without once worrying about global types and type derivation. Business applications in the real world, however, frequently deal with objects that are variations on the same underlying idea. You will look at people, for example, in various ways, recording different attributes depending on whether they are employees, managers, customers, prospective customers, or vendor contacts. You can sell a physical good or perform a service, yet both are products. Each has slightly different attributes, but also have some things in common. Type inheritance in schemas is a useful tool for meeting the need of these variations while still capturing their commonality. Creating schemas from other schemas (multiple namespaces) is another tool, but that will have to wait for the "Creating Schemas from Existing Schemas" section.

Our basic XML sample defined a global type, AddrType, to capture common address fields. We used this as the data type for the Address child record in Home and Office. This was typing, though, not inheritance. Home and Office were variations on the idea of a place. We inserted what they had in common, Address, and then added the fields that made them unique. This met our admittedly simple needs but left no room for further refinement. Let's modify that schema to take advantage of inheritance.

Make a copy of your finished BasicXMLSchema.xsd file. In the download for this chapter, the file is called DerivedXMLSchema.xsd and it reflects the changes we are about to make. Now perform the following steps:

  1. Select the Home record node. In the Properties view, select AddrType from the list provided for the Base Data Type property.

  2. Click Yes to dismiss the dialog box warning you that you have performed an action that will delete structures defined in the schema.

  3. Note that the Content Type property has the value ComplexContent and the Derived By property defaults to Extension.

  4. Enter HomeType for the value of Data Structure Type.

  5. Note that Home now has a sequence node that contains another sequence node. The latter node contains the field element nodes for the actual information defined in AddrType.

  6. Select the sequence node that is the immediate child of Home. Right-click, point to Insert Schema Node, and then click Sibling Attribute.

  7. Name the new node apt.

  8. Repeat steps 1–3 for the Office record node.

  9. Enter OfficeType for the value of the Data Structure Type property.

  10. Repeat step 6 twice and name the new attribute field nodes room and mailstop.

At this point, you have the same message structure you had at the end of our basic XML schema, and you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. After saving your work, select any record node and insert a new record. Select either HomeType or OfficeType as the Data Structure Type property. When you do so, all the fields defined for the type, including the ones we added to differentiate Home and Office from AddrType, appear. We can now derive from these new types to create variations, perhaps to differentiate between a primary residence and a vacation home, or between primary and satellite offices.

Schema type derivation is about more than simply creating new types in the sense of class inheritance in an object-oriented programming language. The W3C Schema Recommendation devotes a considerable amount of space to deriving types through restriction. BizTalk Editor reflects a lot of this, mainly through the Pattern property and the Min and MaxFacetValue properties for numeric types.

NOTE

Facets in XML Schemas are more flexible than what BizTalk permits. They are abstract properties for characterizing the permissible range of values for some derived type, and new facets may be defined. BizTalk's message schemas are somewhat more focused, restricting facets to ranges for numeric types and patterns for string types.

Any application that includes a data entry form should include code for field-level data validation. BizTalk is integration middleware, though, so we have no idea whether the applications that are generating the messages flowing through BizTalk have checked their data thoroughly. Tightening up message schemas through the use of restriction is a very good way to ensure that bad data does not spread from one poorly written application to the rest of your system.

You make use of restriction by selecting Restriction for the value of the Derived By property of a node. When you do this, the value of Data Type is moved to the Base Data Type property. If you are working with a numeric type, you can then use MinFacetValue and MaxFacetValue to set lower and upper bounds, respectively. MinFacet Type and MaxFacet Type let you control whether the permissible range for your new type includes these boundary values.

Anyone who has used regular expressions in programming knows that regular expressions are a way to pack a lot of validation information into a compact expression. In general terms, the expression (or expressions) you provide for the value of the Pattern property is a string that specifies what can appear at any given point in the input data value. At runtime, the data in the message field must match the pattern expression for the message to be considered valid.

NOTE

Although the W3C borrowed liberally from Perl and other scripting languages when developing their regular expression syntax, differences exist and you should refer to Part 2 of the Schema Recommendation (http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/) for a complete treatment of the syntax used.

Our message schema includes a field for U.S. Social Security Numbers (SSNs). These numbers have a definite format, so the SSN field is an ideal candidate for demonstrating the use of restriction for string types. Perform the following steps using DerivedXMLSchema.xsd:

  1. Select the SSN attribute field node.

  2. Select Restriction from the drop-down list in the Derived By property.

  3. Select the Pattern property and click the ellipsis button that appears.

  4. Enter [0-9]{3}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{4} into the Edit field of the Pattern Editor dialog box.

  5. Click OK to close the dialog box.

The regular expression that you entered says that an acceptable value for this field will be a string consisting of 3 digits selected from the range 0–9, followed by a literal hyphen character, then 2 digits from the same range, another hyphen, and then 4 digits, again from the same range. After you save the schema, you can experiment with instance validation and different values for this field to test your pattern.

Creating Schemas from Existing Schemas

The same concepts usually occur in many places throughout an organization, and this is reflected in the data structures in the organization's applications. Consequently, when you develop more than a few message schemas for a system, you'll probably find yourself repeating the same structures over and over. A better approach is to create individual schemas for these frequently recurring structures and then import the schema into more complicated message schemas.

BizTalk Editor offers three mechanisms for doing this, all adopted from XML Schemas. These mechanisms are import, include, and redefine. All three make the types in an external schema available to the schema on which you are working. Include requires that the two schemas either have the same target namespace or that the included schema must come from the empty namespace. Both include and import prevent you from deriving new types from the included or imported schema. Redefine works like import, except that you are free to derive from the external types. BizTalk Editor restricts you to including, importing, or refining schemas that are part of your current project or that are part of the project references.

Let's assume, for the sake of illustration, that you need to write a schema for messages describing projects. You quickly realize a need for describing a project contact and decide to borrow the Contact structure we created in DerivedXML.xsd. To do this, perform the following steps:

  1. Add a new schema item to your current BizTalk project. Name it ProjectContactXML.xsd.

  2. Rename the root node Project.

  3. Add a child element field and name it Name. We'll leave other, non-Contact specifications as an exercise for the reader.

  4. Select the <Schema> node.

  5. Select the Imports property and click the ellipsis button.

  6. Ensure that XSD Import is selected from the list for Import New Schema, as shown in the Imports Dialog window (see Figure 3.3).

  7. Click Add.

  8. Select DerivedXMLSchema from the Schemas branch in the BizTalk Type Picker dialog box that appears. This type will be qualified by the value of the Namespace property for the schema.

  9. Click OK to close the type picker; then click OK again to close the Imports Dialog window.

  10. Select the Project record node, insert a child record node, and name it Contact.

  11. Select ns0:ContactType from the list of values for Data Structure Type property.

The Imports dialog box is shown in Figure 3.3. When you complete step 11, you'll see the nodes you defined in DerivedXML.xsd appear under the new node.

Figure 3.3Figure 3.3 The BizTalk Type Picker enables you to select a schema to import, include, or redefine.

Creating a Schema from an Instance Document

BizTalk enables you to make use of any of several types of existing resources you may have for the specification of messages. Earlier versions of BizTalk used the XDR schema syntax proprietary to Microsoft. Before we had XSD Schemas as a standard, XML metadata was specified in document type definitions (DTDs). Without a prior definition, you can always compose a well-formed XML document or generate one from an existing application. You can use any of these to generate a new message schema for your BizTalk project.

To do this, you right-click the project node in the Solution Explorer, point to Add, and then click Add Generated Items. The Add Generated Items dialog box appears. Select the Generate Schemas folder under the Generated Schema Files folder in the categories pane, and then select the BtsImportSpecifications template in the templates pane and click Open. When that dialog box closes, the Generate Schemas dialog box appears. A typical view of this is shown in Figure 3.4.

By default, the software to import XDR schemas is loaded when you install BizTalk Server, but not the software for DTDs or well-formed XML documents. This is easily remedied. Execute the InstallDTD.vbs script (for DTDs) or InstallWFX.vbs script (for well-formed XML) as needed to install these components. These scripts are found in the SDK\Utilities\Schema Generator folder under your BizTalk installation.

When you have the proper components loaded, you select the type of resource from the Document type list, browse to the resource itself, and then click OK in the Generate Schemas dialog box. Visual Studio will then generate a message schema and add it to the project.

To get an idea of the process, we'll import the XML document shown in Listing 3.1 (found in the code download as sample_proj.xml).

Figure 3.4Figure 3.4 You can select existing resources to generate a new schema using the Generate Schemas dialog box.

Listing 3.1 Sample XML for Schema Import

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 
<Project xmlns="http://project.xsd">
  <Name>Project 1</Name>
  <Start priority="3">2003-08-01</Start>
</Project>

Referring to Listing 3.1, you should take note of three items: First is a default namespace, denoted by the xmlns attribute on the Project element; second is a numeric type for the attribute priority; and third is an ISO 8601 format date we've inserted as the textual content of the Start element. How does the importer handle these? Keep this in mind as we examine the schema over the next few paragraphs.

When the schema is generated (sample_proj.xsd in the code download), select the <Schema> node and examine the value of the Target Namespace property in the Properties view. The default namespace in the document was taken for this value in the schema. This will likely differ from the naming convention Visual Studio uses by default when you create a new schema, but if you have taken the trouble to declare namespaces in your documents, you are either pointing to a schema, in which case you don't need to import the instance document, or you have a meaningful scheme for creating namespace URIs.

Now if you look at the value assigned to the Start element, which had textual content in the sample, you'll see that the schema generator recognized the possibility that we meant to enter a date and therefore assigned Start the XSD date type as its data type. The priority attribute was recognized as a numeric type and was assigned the smallest type consistent with the value found. Unsigned byte might not have been what we had in mind.

NOTE

There is a lesson in this. First, check generated schemas carefully. The generator code is good, but it cannot read your mind. Equally important, make sure you have a representative sample instance. If you have optional attributes or elements, make sure they appear in the sample code. It is easier to change the cardinality of a generated item than to insert a missing item.

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