BizTalk Server 2010 : Using the Relevance Tree View

1. Problem

You have complex schemas in your map, and you are having difficulty seeing what nodes are being used.

2. Solution

By using the relevance tree view, only the nodes that are actually being used in mapping the active tab will be shown. Use the following steps to work with this functionality:

1. Open an existing map in Visual Studio. By default, the full tree view will be shown. Dotted lines show that some child node is being mapped, but the schema would have to be manually expanded to see what specific node it was. An example of this is shown in Figure 1.

   Figure 1. Default full tree view

   

2. Click the first button on the mapping toolbar to show the relevant links for the source schema, or click the last button to show them for the target schema. Clicking this button causes only the mapped nodes to be displayed, as shown in Figure 2.

   Figure 2. Showing only the nodes that are being mapped

   

3. Click the button again to return to the full tree view.

3. How It Works

Showing only the nodes that are actually being mapped can save a lot of time on schemas that have more than a few nodes. Developers of EDI maps will find these particularly helpful, since there can be hundreds or thousands of nodes and elements in a schema. Having to manually sort through all of the nodes can be confusing and time consuming.

There also exists the ability to show only links that are relevant. The mapping surface can become crowded with all of the links, and it can help to turn off any that are not pertainent to the current mapping taking place. The relevant links can be turned on and off by clicking the second button that appears on the mapping toolbar. An example of a map with all of the links turned on is shown in Figure 3, while the same map with only the relevant links showing appears in Figure 4.

Figure 3. Showing all links

Figure 4. Showing only relevant links