Duplicate node name in schema

Question

Hello,
I am supposed to write transformation map, to map one XML file to another one. I am obliged to use Biztalk Server 2002.
The problem is, that my source XML file has some elements that have exactly same name. Something like this:
<root>
 <special.code>
   <code.id>12</code.id>
   <date.start>20090101</date.start>
   <date.end>20100101</date.end>
   <special.code>QQQ999</special.code>
   <useCode>0</useCode>
 </special.code>
...
</root>

The problem is within the element "special.code". When I try to make a document specification in biztalk, for the second "nested" element <special.code>, the Biztalk reports an error message, that there is already an element with that name.
So it gives me 2 options:
1. Create cycle element - that would not correspond to the reality
2. Rename element - that is not an option, because I can`t change the schema.

How can I solve this, please?

Thank you

Ferdolyzer

Answer 1

Hi

I am afraid that you don't solve that. In BizTalk 2002, Microsoft used XDR (Xml Data Reduced) schemas instead of XSDs. This is simply a limitation of the XDR format.

The only way I can think of right now (there might be other ways around it - BizTalk 2002 isn't all that fresh in memory :-) ) is to write a preprocessor that will read in the XML and change the node name of one of them. Then let your schema relect this other node name.

---

eliasen, representing himself and not the company he works for.
MVP and three times MCTS in BizTalk.
Blog: http://blog.eliasen.dk

Answer 2

You can try the same way as Jan proposed with the preprocessor.
But this preprocessor would make the whole transformation with XslTransform (and using xsd schema inside).

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Leonid Ganeline [BizTalk MVP] http://geekswithblogs.net/leonidganeline

Answer 3

Actually, I would just load the XML into an XmlDocument and do stuff without XSLT. And for preprocesors you are limited to .NET 1.1 bye the way :-/

Maybe I would use an XmlReader and an XmlWriter.

---

eliasen, representing himself and not the company he works for.
MVP and three times MCTS in BizTalk.
Blog: http://blog.eliasen.dk

Answer 4

Thank you eliasen,

XmlReader/Writer was one of my options, but i wanted to avoid coding as much as possible. We have som solution that is already in production, but the schema change appeared, and now i need to recreate it from the base :).

Basically, doing this, i don`t really need to implement biztalk.

Maybe I can persuade our business head`s to use Biztalk 2006 :)

Thanks once again.

Answer 5

Quick note: BizTalk 2009 is already available, so go with that instead of 2006 :-)

---

eliasen, representing himself and not the company he works for.
MVP and three times MCTS in BizTalk.
Blog: http://blog.eliasen.dk