Update: I’ve just realised the links in this article were wrong when I published
it, so have updated them.
I’ve decided to update my 2008 article on Understanding the BizTalk Mapper for BizTalk 2013R2. You can download the article here (in .docx and .pdf formats):
Understanding the BizTalk Mapper v2.0.docx (243.08 KB)
Understanding the BizTalk Mapper v2.0.pdf (1.49 MB)
I originally wrote this article in 2008, and it was aimed at BizTalk 2006 R2. Since then, we’ve had 3 more versions of BizTalk: 2010, 2013, and 2013R2. With BizTalk 2016 entering CTP in the next few days, I thought it was time to revisit this article and update it for the latest (public) version of BizTalk.
At the time I wrote this article, I was of the view that the mapper was always the answer. In fact, the reason I started the article was that I had an argument with a colleague over what technology was better for transforming data in BizTalk: Maps (i.e. XSLT) or C# (serializing/deserializing your XML into a class). I actually set out to prove my colleague wrong by comparing the two – and ended up surprising myself
by just how little there was in the comparison. 8 years on, and my views have changed (somewhat): I spent 4 years working on a very large BizTalk system that had huge throughput (200tps) and very low latency (
But this was not your average run-of-the-mill BizTalk system. The BizTalk Mapper is still a very powerful tool, and with the advent of Azure and Microsoft’s cloud integration platform (Logic Apps et al) the mapper will live on.
Over the last 8 years, people have asked why it’s important to know what each of the functoids emit: The answer is that it’s the best way to understand what each functoid does. If you can’t get your head around the documentation for the Table Looping functoid (for example) then just look at what XSLT the functoid emits: this should help you understand what it does.
What surprised me in doing this update is that there have been zero changes to the mapper functoids since BizTalk 2006R2. The biggest change has been that support for choosing whether to use XslTransform or XslCompiledTransform for your maps – this can have a significant impact on performance (as seen later).
I’m still a firm believer that you shouldn’t be creating complex maps in the Mapper unless you understand how XSLT works, and I hope that this article helps you with that understanding.