how to create an entity that holds references to other entity's : using biztalk 2006 r2 that call's the wcf-service

Question

There is a custom entity i have to create...

it holds about 6 entityreferenceid (so id's of other entity's)

this means that I will have to go back and forth 6 times to select the different id's  before I can create  the one entity?

Is there really no other/better way? 

I don't know much about CRM but I know you have plugin's for data leaving CRM.......

Isn't there a way to call logic that has to be performed after you 'create' an entity (be it in CRM or through WCF)?

Remark : I'm not using code to call the WCF , I'm using biztalk to call the WCF , so this would mean I have to use an orchestration

that will have to get the 6 id's (6 different WCF-req-responses) and use this info to do a final WCF-create call.....

This seems to be quite heavy processing for something 'simple'...

How would you recommend doing something like this?

 

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Kind regards Isabelledc

Answer 1

You would create a plugin that would be registered "post-operation" on the create message for that entity using the plugin registration tool that comes with the SDK.  Download the CRM 2011 SDK and you can find the tool in the /sdk/tools folder.  You need to build it first using Visual Studio.

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Jamie Miley
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Answer 2

here's the solution I'll use (it works in development)

I use the database functoids  (lookup functoid and value extractor) in the map to get the id's.

Now all that remains is implement error handling

     question : how do you use the error return if you can't change the destination schema?

                      will I have to use an orchestration so I can map to a second own schema?

i do wonder how those database-functoids will behave in production , need to do some load-testing....

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Kind regards Isabelledc

Answer 3

ADO functoid stuff is very unsupported against the CRM database.  You cannot use ADO stuff.  You need to use the CRM SDK or Microsoft will not support your implementation.

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Jamie Miley
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