Sharepoint

BizTalk Map: Comparison between Table Looping and Looping functoids

Chilberto — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:40:34 GMT

I had a surprise recently about the behaviour of the Table Looping and Looping functoids that I wasn't expecting and involves when the scripting functoid is evaluated.

For those of you only interested in the comparison...

In the following map, the highlighted scripting functoid will be evaluated once per Client element.

In the following map, the highlighted scripting functoid will be evaluated once per element in the Client element. In other words, for every Client element, the scripting functoid will be evaluated 11 times.

In other words, for an message containing 100 clients:

Looping Map: 1100 script evaluations

Table Looping Map: 121,000 script evaluations (100 clients * 11 script functoids * 11 elements)

Details of Comparison

Schemas

Both of the example maps accomplish the same thing, namely going from one schema to another where the content structure does not match.

An example source xml message:

An example destination xml message:

Note: The destination xml is based on the Sharepoint Lists.asmx UpdateListItems() method

Script Functoid

In this example, I am just calling an external assembly that updates a performance counter. In the real-world scenario, I was calling an external assembly that did a Sharepoint lists lookup to determine the lookup id for a lookup list. For clarity, the script functoid settings in the Table Looping Map are:

Where the IncrementTable in the Table Looping Map and IncrementLoop in the Looping Map method updates a Performance Counter BTSComparison for instance Table and Loop respectively.

Orchestration

The orchestration simply reads in a single xml file and using the maps generates two identical output files.

Summary

As there are a ton of resources on the net showing similar maps and orchestrations, I have not gone in to much detail. If anyone is interested in this example in more detail, let me know and I'll post a better explanation and source.

Obviously I am still getting my head around the mapping functoids as to when best to use which one. Like elsewhere in BizTalk there are more than one way to accomplish the same task...

Sharepoint Lists.asmx UpdateListItems: Root Folder

Chilberto — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:51:30 GMT

The RootFolder attribute on the Batch element controls the folder of the item. This can be used to access a sub-folder. The structure is Lists/list/folder where folder is optional.

For example, if the list being updated is Contacts and there are two sub-folders Work and Personal. To update an item in the Contacts list:

And to update an item in the Work folder:

Sharepoint WSS 3.0: Lists.asmx Error Codes

Chilberto — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:59:06 GMT

Just some notes relating to error codes received during Sharepoint integration using the UpdateListItems method of the lists.asmx service.

A value in the update for a column exceeded the maximum column size.

<ErrorCode xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">Invalid text value

A text field contains invalid data. Please check the value and try again.</ErrorText>

A column to be updated was passed in that did not exist.

<ErrorCode xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">One or more field types are not installed properly. Go to the list settings page to delete these fields.</ErrorText>
</Result>

The field being updated was a lookup field that allows multiple values and the value passed in contained a trailing ";". A trailing semi-colon only seems to be an issue when it is the first item in the list.

<ErrorCode xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/">Bad parameter passed to Web Server Extensions. Check the information you entered and try again.</ErrorText>
</Result>

BizTalk Map: Choice Element

Chilberto — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:01:50 GMT

In my schema file, I have a choice element that only contains a single child element. For example:

The above example is actually a crude schema of the where clause of a Sharepoint call to Lists.asmx where in the case I have only 1 item, I want to send a where clause of

<Where>
<Eq>
<FieldRef Name="ItemID"/>
<Value Type="Text">99900</Value>
</Eq>
</Where>

And in the case that I have multiple items, I want to send something like:

<Where>
<Or>
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="ItemID" />
      <Value Type="Text">3394</Value>
    </Eq>
...
    <Eq>
      <FieldRef Name="ItemID" />
      <Value Type="Text">9867</Value>
    </Eq>
</Or>
</Where>

In my map, it is a simple operation of using

A Record Count functoid to receive a count of the number of items
A Greater Than functoid to compare the result of the count of items against 1
A Equal To functoid to compare the result of the count of items against 1

The map is then composed by connecting the items record in the source document to the Record Count functoid, the result of the Greater Than functoid to the Or choice element, and the result of the Equal To functoid to the Eq choice element.

Where, oh where has my Sharepoint feature gone...

Chilberto — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:56:18 GMT

Yes, another newbie to Sharepoint post; but it may help the others out there who are working through labs and exercises and not getting the "expected" results.

If after you have deployed your new feature (e.g., workflow, web part, etc) you do not have it listed as an available content type, it might have been added successfully but not activated.

To activate a feature go to the Site Settings:

Select Site collection features option from the Site Collection Administration section.

A list of loaded features is presented with the option of activating and deactivating.