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About Custom BizTalk Pipeline Components

Important

The DTA Logging is not operational if custom pipeline components are not built with the best practices outlined on this page. Ensure Developers follow these best practices.

It is important when developing custom BizTalk pipeline components because it ensures proper resource management of the stream within the BizTalk Server environment.

Key Reasons for Importance

  1. Automatic Resource Cleanup

    • BizTalk Server uses the ResourceTracker to track disposable resources (such as streams, file handles, or database connections).
    • By adding the stream to the ResourceTracker, the BizTalk runtime takes responsibility for disposing of it at the appropriate time, preventing resource leaks.

  2. Efficient Memory Management

    • BizTalk processes a large volume of messages, and improper resource handling can lead to memory leaks, performance degradation, or even system crashes.
    • This ensures that when BizTalk finishes processing, it will release the resource.

  3. Supports Streaming Model

    • BizTalk pipelines work with large messages by using streaming rather than loading entire messages into memory.
    • The ResourceTracker ensures that the stream remains available as long as needed but gets cleaned up after use.

  4. Best Practice for Custom Components

    • When developing a custom pipeline component, it is recommended to use ResourceTracker.AddResource for any stream-based transformations or processing.
    • This aligns with BizTalk’s built-in behavior and improves reliability.

Example Scenario

Imagine you create a custom pipeline component that modifies an incoming stream. If you don’t add it to ResourceTracker, BizTalk might not release it properly, leading to resource leaks and potentially lost tracking.

Example Usage in a Custom Component 

public IBaseMessage Execute(IPipelineContext pContext, IBaseMessage pInMsg)
{
    Stream originalStream = pInMsg.BodyPart.GetOriginalDataStream();
    Stream transformedStream = new CustomStreamWrapper(originalStream); 

    // Add the new stream to the ResourceTracker to ensure it's properly managed
    pContext.ResourceTracker.AddResource(transformedStream);

    pInMsg.BodyPart.Data = transformedStream;
    return pInMsg;
}

Conclusion

By using pContext.ResourceTracker.AddResource(stream);, developers ensure that BizTalk manages resources efficiently, leading to better performance, stability, and reliability in custom pipeline components.

If the built-in DTA Tracking is not operational, then Nodinite is not operational either.