Martijn's blog - E-Commerce, EAI, BizTalk and .NET

2006/01/11

Default values in maps - better option in BizTalk 2006

In a course I'm following today we discussed different ways of keeping nodes from dissapearing after a map has been applied. We discovered a new option in 2006 b2, which I'm very font of. Basically, up until now, we had a few ways (maybe even more?) of ensuring output nodes were created correctly:
  1. default value in schema (space) - drawback: not visible in editor, schema specific, where as we might want to leave some nodes out in other mappings.
  2. space in value in map - drawback: not visible in editor.
  3. use some string functoid to fill the value (empty argument for the functoid) - drawback: non-functional functoids in the map, warning if the datatype is not string.
  4. scripting functoid - ability to return a null value, which works with any datatype on the right hand side. drawback: non-functional functoids in the map
  5. map a record (any record) into the elements or attributes - drawback: clutters the map with non-functional and illegal links.
in 2006 b2, there's a 6th possibility:

The value property of the right hand side map now has a dropdown, containing '<empty>', which greatly enhances the functional aspect of the property.

2 Comments:

  • Awesome!

    Is that property only settable inside a map? Would be nice to be able to set that on the schema…

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:31 PM  

  • Alas, the property is currently (beta 2) only in a map...

    By Blogger Martijn Hoogendoorn, at 7:27 PM  

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