Duplicate Namespace Issue with Schema Validation in Pipeline Components

Today I was tasked with enabling XML schema validation for an existing WCF receive location in BizTalk. The client was already using the out-of-the-box XmlReceive pipeline, so I figured this would be short work, finished by lunchtime after all the regression tests had been run. Little did I suspect that I would run into a snag that would enlighten me to a new BizTalk “feature”.

Because of a compressed time schedule, we wanted to avoid having to add a new custom pipeline to the solution, even one as simple as containing a standard XmlValidator component. So instead, I opted to use port-based configuration by enabling validation within the XmlDissembler component in the existing XmlReceive pipeline. Of course, this does require specifying the list of specific schemas in the DocumentSpecNames property on the port instance:

The trick here, of course, is to ensure you get these specifications correct, as they need to be fully qualified assembly (FQN) references. Moreover, if you are expecting multiple message types, you need to separate the entries with a pipeline (“|”) delimiter, something not so obvious if you don’t read the Microsoft documentation. Even less obvious is how to deal with multipart schemas that contain multiple root nodes (at least this blog post sheds some light there).

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