BizTalk Server 2010 : Navigating the Mapping Surface

1. Problem

You want to be able to access elements of the mapping surface as rapidly as possible and need to understand how to use the new functionality.

2. Solution

There are a number of new tools that can be used to move and view the mapping surface. These include

• Panning

• Zooming

• Searching

• Grid preview

This solution walks through the use of each of them.

1. Open an existing map in Visual Studio.

2. To pan a map from top to bottom or left to right, click the hand button on the mapping toolbar, which is shown in Figure 1. You can now drag the mapping surface in any direction needed.

   Figure 1. The pan button

   

3. To zoom in and out on the map, use the zoom functionality on the mapper toolbar. Zooming out can give you perspective on where your functoids are and allow you to easily locate and modify mappings. If you zoom in and the functoids loose focus, you will notice flashing blue arrows to guide you to where the components are (see Figure 2).

   Figure 2. Arrow indicating where functoids are after zooming in

   

4. To find a specific value or word in a schema or a functoid, you can use the search functionality (see Figure 3). You can search on name, label, comments, inputs, and scripts in functoids. Searching on a value will highlight all of the results; you can use the up and down arrows to navigate through the results (see Figure 4).

   Figure 3. Searching for a value in a functoid

   

   Figure 4. Search resultsare highlighted

   

5. To use the grid preview functionality, right-click the mapping surface, and select Grid Preview. This will pop up a window that shows a box and all of the functoids (see Figure 5). You can drag and drop the box over the area of the map you want to scroll to, and the map will automatically move.

   Figure 5. Using the grid preview functionality

   

3. How It Works

There are a variety of ways to move around a map now. Prior to BizTalk 2010, the mapping interface was pretty rudimentary and didn't provide a lot of options. Based on feedback from developers, the mapper user interface has been greatly improved.

NOTE

Make sure to comment your functoids so that you can use the search functionality to more easily find them. If you've got more than a handful of advanced scripting functoids, for example, you will find that by adding comments you will save a lot of time trying to figure out which ones contain the methods you are looking for.