Going binary with BizTalk
When you want to create new message programmatically within an orchestration, you'd normally assign an XmlDocument object to your message. However: did you ever wonder how you could create non-XML messages within BizTalk Server orchestrations? (Assigning an XmlDocument would clearly not work here :-) )
For all of you "bitheads", here it is :
Option Explicit On
Option Strict On
Imports System
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices
Imports Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes
Namespace CLAESSENS.BTS2004.SAMPLES
<Serializable()> _
Public Class MyStreamFactory
Implements Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.IStreamFactory
Private m_mystringdata As String = ""
Public Sub New(ByVal stringdata As String)
m_mystringdata = stringdata
End Sub
Public Overridable Function CreateStream() As System.IO.Stream _
Implements Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.IStreamFactory.CreateStream
return New IO.MemoryStream( _
System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes(m_mystringdata ))
End Function
End Class
<Serializable()> _
Public Class MyMessageCreator
Public Sub CreateMyMessage(ByVal mydestmsg As XLANGMessage)
mydestmsg(0).LoadFrom(New MyStreamFactory("this is my data to create message from"))
End Sub
End Class
End Namespace
The trick here is in the IStreamFactory. BizTalk Server is able to create messages from such a factory class. In this example, I've just created a 'binary' message from a string, using ASCII encoding. However: you could just as well assign something like a .PDF file or image to your message if you want.
No limits! BizTalk Server rocks!