Debatching A Flat File In Biz Talk || Splitting Multi Line Flat File to Individual Mesages

Post by Benny Mathew

Sometimes you receive a batch file containing multiple records and you have to split each record into a separate message and process them individually.

This kind of splitting of a batch file is also known as debatching.

Depending on your requirement, you can either debatch an incoming message inside the pipeline or inside the orchestration.

The technique used to debatch a message inside the pipeline depends on whether the input is an XML file or a flat file.

For an XML file, you will need to use an XML disassembler, an envelop schema and a document schema, which I will discuss some other time on separate blog post / article.

Here I will show you how you can debatch a flat file.

Let us assume that we need to debatch a flat file that contains the following structure.

Field1,Field2,Field3,Field4,Field5,Field6
Field1,Field2,Field3,Field4,Field5,Field6
Field1,Field2,Field3,Field4,Field5,Field6
Field1,Field2,Field3,Field4,Field5,Field6
Field1,Field2,Field3,Field4,Field5,Field6
Field1,Field2,Field3,Field4,Field5,Field6

First you need to create a flat file schema that looks similar to the one shown in the figure below.

Make sure you have specified the correct child delimiters for the Root (0x0D 0x0A) node as well as the Record (,) node.

Root Node:
Child Delimiter Type = Hexadecimal
Child Delimiter = 0x0d 0x0a
Child Order = Infix or Postfix

Record Node:
Child Delimiter Type = Character
Child Delimiter = ,
Child Order = Infix

Now select the Record node and set its MaxOccurs property to 1. This is actually the key to debatching. The flat file disassembler will automatically separate each record into individual message.

Important: If you have set the Child Order Property of the Root node to Infix, make sure you have also set the property 'Allow Message Breakup At Infix Root' to Yes

Next, as you would normally do, add a receive pipeline to the project and add a flat file disassembler and set the Document schema property to the schema we created.

That’s all there is to it.

Now suppose you have a flat file that also has a header record or a trailer (footer) record or both as shown below.

FirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
SubjectName1,Score1
SubjectName2,Score2
SubjectName3,Score3
SubjectName4,Score4
SubjectName5,Score5
SubjectName6,Score6
SubjectName7,Score7
SubjectName8,Score8
TotalScore

You would normally create a flat file schema as shown below to parse as one single message.

But for the purpose of debatching the body records, you need to create 3 separate schemas as shown below. Make sure the MaxOccurs of the Body record is set to 1.

And in the flat file disassembler, you need to set the Header schema, Document schema and Trailer schema properties appropriately.

Note: You might need to set a unique Tag Identifier property for each of the schemas, and also prefix the same tag identifier on the records as shown below, so that the flat file parser can distinguish the header, body and footer records.

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName1,Score1
BSubjectName2,Score2
BSubjectName3,Score3
BSubjectName4,Score4
BSubjectName5,Score5
BSubjectName6,Score6
BSubjectName7,Score7
BSubjectName8,Score8
FTotalScore

It is possible to preserve the header record into the message context, by setting the Preserve header property of the flat file disassembler to true, so that you can use it as a header record for each of the debatched message.

To use the preserved header, you need to set the Header schema property of the flat file assembler to the same header schema you used in the disassembler. Here’s how the output will look.

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName1,Score1

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName2,Score2

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName3,Score3

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName4,Score4

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName5,Score5

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName6,Score6

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName7,Score7

HFirstName,LastName,RegNo,School,City
BSubjectName8,Score8