How-to: Walkthrough to create an Azure BizTalk Service project

Just create a new solution in Visual Studio 2012. To get the BizTalk Service option see my other blogpost How-to: Get BizTalk Services in Visual Studio 2012

You now yet something like below.

The “MessageFlowItinerary.bcs” is your design surface. This file defines the flow of data between source an destination endpoints.
After you created the WABS project you can add XML schema’s, flat-file schema’s and mappings.

First we talk about the schema’s itself. The MABS Schema Editor looks identical to the on-premise BizTalk Server Schema Editor and let you define an xml or flat file message.

When we have some schema’s we can talk about the mapper in MABS. Instead of the schema editor, the MABS schema mapper is different from the BizTalk mapper.

You have some nice Operations and Expressions like the “ForEach loop” and the “If-Then-Else Expression”

In the on premise you don’t have the option for an If-Then-Else expression
As you can see we have many options in the MABS Schema mapper

I don’t talk about all of them. But maybe after some time you can see a blog post about that…

Now if we go back to our design surface. We have also a toolbox full of nice stuff.

First you can find the different bridges that we have available. I think the names are telling everything… If not just reply on this blog post.

We also have some sources available. The source is used to get the info into the bridges. You can see that at the moment can use HTTP, FTP, SFTP, Service Bus Queue Source, Service Bus Subscription Source. You don’t see the HTTP in the list but it’s automatically associated with an Windows Azure ACS-secured HTTP endpoint.

We also have some Destinations available, i don’t mention them all in this text. But you can see some common with the Sources and some other specific Endpoints.

Now we can drag and drop some components to the design surface.

The only thing you need to do is deploy this solution. That’s also very easy. Just click in the context menu on your solution on the deploy solution item.
You only need to fill in your “ACS Namespace”, “Issuer Name” and the “Shared Secret”.

Your BizTalk Service is ready…. Enjoy