The text below is based on the beta release of BizTalk 2010. It might not (completely) apply to the RTM release.
This blog post is part of a series of blog posts about my favorite new features in the BizTalk 2010 mapping tool. You can find an overview here.
Functoid intellisense is a visual improvement which shows the developer when a functoid has not been properly configured. Before BizTalk 2010 the only way to find out that a functoid was not fully configured was at compile time or even worse at run time. With BizTalk 2010 this is different.
When we drag for example an ‘Equal’ functoid to the map this is what happens:
The functoid has an icon that shows that there is something wrong with the functoid configuration. When I hover over the functoid I’m presented a tooltip that shows me what is wrong:
Opening the properties for the functoid also shows me that the second input parameter has not been defined: (Also note the nice layout of the functoid properties window)
| side note: | Besides the nice layout of the functoid properties window is also resizable now. In case of the scripting functoid the inputs and script dialogs are now unified in one single dialog. This also allows you to resize the scripting functoid code window (GREAT !!!). Furthermore you can choose to import code from a text file and set a specific script type as the default. |
When I set the second parameter to a constant value and connect the output to the destination schema, there are no more icons which tells me the functoid is configured properly:
I think this feature is great because it shows in an early stage (during development) that there is something wrong with the map. This is absolutely a time safer.
The next post in this series will be about ‘Relevance View’.
Tagged: BizTalk, BizTalk 2010, Functoid, Map
