Biztalk WCF adapter how to send empty message body response from biztalk

Question

I have a Biztalk orchestration consumed via a request-reponse WCF port. Since the client is not interested in the reply (i.e. fire and forget) I only want to send the soap message body in the response e.g.

since I understand that the Biztalk WCF adapter does not support true one way operations. I have tried sending an empty XML document but I receive an EmptyPartException XLANG error. Any suggestions on how to just send the message body please?

schellack schellack · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-06T14:46:46

I have accomplished this before by using IIS and a BizTalk receive location with the WCF-CustomIsolated adapter.

In the receive location's transport configuration for WCF-CustomIsolated, the Binding should be set to httpTransport. There's not much else to configure there. If you wanted to use Basic authentication (make sure it goes over SSL!) and enable HTTP GET to provide the WCF metadata (not really a good idea in production), then the exported configuration would look something like this (for BizTalk 2010):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
  <enterpriseLibrary.ConfigurationSource selectedSource="ESB File Configuration Source" />
  <system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="ServiceBehavior" name="BizTalk">
        <endpoint address="http://localhost/MyAwesomeService/SuperiorEndpoint.svc" behaviorConfiguration="EndpointBehavior" binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="88BC0BD4-A7DD-11E0-86EF-DF374824019B" name="WcfService_AwesomeService/SuperiorEndpoint" contract="BizTalk" />
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="EndpointBehavior" />
      </endpointBehaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="ServiceBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" httpGetUrl="" httpsGetEnabled="true" httpsGetUrl="" />
          <serviceDebug />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
    <bindings>
      <customBinding>
        <clear />
        <binding name="88BC0BD4-A7DD-11E0-86EF-DF374824019B">
          <httpTransport authenticationScheme="Basic" />
        </binding>
      </customBinding>
    </bindings>
  </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

I used the BizTalk WCF Service Publishing Wizard to generate the actual WCF service, with the transport type set to WCF-CustomIsolated. The method used to create the WCF service was "Publish schemas as WCF service". You have to have a BizTalk schema compiled into an assembly first, of course.

For the web service description, I deleted the default Operation/web method and added a new, one-way web method to the service. To set the schema for your input message, you right-click on it, choose Select Schema, and browse to your BizTalk schema's assembly. You should name everything appropriately, of course. After publishing the service, hop over to IIS (or the newly created web.config) to configure your shiny new web application (i.e., its authentication and authorization).

You may have to fiddle around with it some more to get everything working exactly as you want, but I was able to create WCF service for BizTalk to accept a very simple HTTP Post. The response then looks like this:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private
Content-Length: 84
Content-Type: application/soap+xml; charset=utf-8
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:16:58 GMT

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope"><s:Body/></s:Envelope>

Just make sure that the caller can understand HTTP status codes, as if something is wrong, that is what will indicate the problem (i.e., HTTP 501, etc.). You can also experiment with

Biztalk WCF adapter how to send empty message body response from biztalk

2 Answers