Not Using "http://namespace#root" as BizTalk Message Type

Not Using "http://namespace#root" as BizTalk Message Type

This has come up twice for me in the past week: once while reading the tech review comments on my own book (due out in April), and again while I was tech reviewing another BizTalk book (due out in July).  That is, we presumptively say that the BizTalk “message type” always equals http://namespace#root when that’s not necessarily true.  Let’s look at two cases demonstrated here.

This first simple case looks at a situation where an XML schema actually has no namespace.  Consider this schema

Perfectly fine schema, no target namespace.  I’ve gone ahead and created another schema (with namespace) and mapped the no-namespace schema to the namespace schema.  After I deploy this solution and create the necessary ports to both pick up and drop off the message, I can stop the send port and observe the context properties of the inbound message.

Notice that my message type is set to ReturnRequest which is the name of the root node of my schema.  Obviously, no namespace is required here.  If I throw my map on the send port, I can also see that the source schema is successfully found and used when mapping to my destination format.

So, for case #1, you can have schemas with no namespace, and the message type for that message traveling through BizTalk is in no worse shape.