BizTalk Cross Reference Data Management Strategy

Posted by charlie.mott on Geeks with Blogs See other posts from Geeks with Blogs or by charlie.mott
Published on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:32:49 GMT Indexed on 2010/03/14 17:45 UTC
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Article Source: http://geekswithblogs.net/charliemott

This article describes an approach to the management of cross reference data for BizTalk. Some articles about the BizTalk Cross Referencing features can be found here:

Options

Current options to managing this data include:

Maintaining xml files in the format that can be used by the out-of-the-box BTSXRefImport.exe utility.
Use of user interfaces that have been developed to manage this data:
- BizTalk Cross Referencing Tool
- XRef XML Creation Tool

However, there are the following issues with the above options:

The 'BizTalk Cross Referencing Tool' requires a separate database to manage. The 'XRef XML Creation' tool has no means of persisting the data settings.
The 'BizTalk Cross Referencing tool' generates integers in the common id field. I prefer to use a string (e.g. acme.country.uk). This is more readable. (see naming conventions below).
Both UI tools continue to use BTSXRefImport.exe. This utility replaces all xref data. This can be a problem in continuous integration environments that support multiple clients or BizTalk target instances. If you upload the data for one client it would destroy the data for another client. Yet in TFS where builds run concurrently, this would break unit tests.

Alternative Approach

In response to these issues, I instead use simple SQL scripts to directly populate the BizTalkMgmtDb xref tables combined with a data namepacing strategy to isolate client data.

Naming Conventions

All data keys use namespace prefixing. The pattern will be <companyName>.<data Type>. The naming conventions will be to use lower casing for all items. The data must follow this pattern to isolate it from other company cross-reference data. The table below shows some sample data. (Note: this data uses the 'ID' cross-reference tables. the same principles apply for the 'value' cross-referencing tables).

Table.Field	Description	Sample Data
xref_AppType.appType	Application Types	acme.erp acme.portal acme.assetmanagement
xref_AppInstance.appInstance	Application Instances (each will have a corresponding application type).	acme.dynamics.ax acme.dynamics.crm acme.sharepoint acme.maximo
xref_IDXRef.idXRef	Holds the cross reference data types.	acme.taxcode acme.country
xref_IDXRefData.CommonID	Holds each cross reference type value used by the canonical schemas.	acme.vatcode.exmpt acme.vatcode.std acme.country.usa acme.country.uk
xref_IDXRefData.AppID	This holds the value for each application instance and each xref type.	GBP USD

SQL Scripts

The data to be stored in the BizTalkMgmtDb xref tables will be managed by SQL scripts stored in a database project in the visual studio solution.

File(s)	Description
Build.cmd	A sqlcmd script to deploy data by running the SQL scripts below. (This can be run as part of the MSBuild process).
acme.purgexref.sql	SQL script to clear acme.* data from the xref tables. As such, this will not impact data for any other company.
acme.applicationInstances.sql	SQL script to insert application type and application instance data.
acme.vatcode.sql acme.country.sql etc ...	There will be a separate SQL script to insert each cross-reference data type and application specific values for these types.

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