BizTalk Server Void Adapter

We usually see two implementation cases when dealing with unwanted or obsolete messages:

  • They get suspended on BizTalk Server – not that common, at least in the long run. We may see this earlier when these types of messages are encountered.
  • or a common way to solve these situations is to create a send port to filter these types of messages and send them to a support folder in BizTalk Server hard drive or a shared location.

Of course, this last option should be considered as a backup plan that can work as intended if you have good control and clean best practices like creating a scheduling task that cleans these messages from the hard drive from time to time. Otherwise, your hard drive becomes full at some point, and more critical issues will arise.

BizTalk Server Void Adapter

The BizTalk Server Void adapter is a simple way to easily discard all unwanted messages from your BizTalk Server environments instead of getting suspended or sent to a hard drive support folder.

This custom send adapter for BizTalk Server discards outgoing messages – sends messages to nowhere – into the void! Without the need for external jobs (like scheduling tasks) or added cleaning concerns.

How to install it?

If you want to install the BizTalk Server FILE-RADITZ Adapter, you need to:

  • Access the BizTalk Server Void Adapter GitHub page and download the content of the folder executables.
  • Place the folder BizTalkVoidAdapter on any location on your BizTalk Server box. I will recommend to put it in:
    • C:\Program Files (x86)\
    • Note: if you put in any other path you need to modify the VoidAdapter.reg file
  • Access the folder and double-click on the VoidAdapter.reg file

This will register the adapter to run under 32-bit host instances. To make it available also for 64-bits, you need to:

  • Click Start
  • Type %windir%\SysWoW64\cmd.exe in the search box and press enter
  • Run the same adapter registry (.reg) file from this command prompt

Now you just need to add this adapter to the BizTalk Server Administration Console:

  • Open BizTalk Administration Console by pressing the Windows key to switch to the Start menu, type BizTalk Server Administration or BizTalk, click the BizTalk Server Administration option from the Search window.
  • In the console left tree, expand BizTalk Server Administration > BizTalk Group > Platform Settings and then Adapters.
  • In the Adapter Properties
    • In the Name box, type a descriptive name for this adapter.
      • Void
    • In the Adapter combo box, select the adapter from the drop-down that you want to add.
      • Void
    • In the Description box, type a description for the adapter (this is optional).
      • The BizTalk Server Void adapter is a simple way to easily discard all unwanted messages from your BizTalk Server environments instead of getting suspended or sent to a hard drive support folder.
  • Click OK to complete the process of adding the adapter.

Note: If you want to use the Event Viewer to track/log the discarded messages you should first create the Log Name and Log Source. This way the tracking data will not be registered in the Application Log but instead in a custom log. To do that you can use the PowerShell provided on the runtime folder: mngt-Create-Event-Source.ps1.

Where can you use it?

This version available on GitHub is currently compiled on .NET 4.6 and optimized for BizTalk Server 2020. Nevertheless, you can take this code and compile it in other versions of .NET and BizTalk Server. It will be 100% compatible.

One of the first adapters made with this concept was created by Tomas Restrepo back in 2004 called BizTalk 2004 Null Send Adapter but you can also find similar ones like WCF-NULLAdapter.

Download

THIS ADAPTER IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

You can download the BizTalk Server Void Adapter from GitHub here:

Author: Sandro Pereira

Sandro Pereira lives in Portugal and works as a consultant at DevScope. In the past years, he has been working on implementing Integration scenarios both on-premises and cloud for various clients, each with different scenarios from a technical point of view, size, and criticality, using Microsoft Azure, Microsoft BizTalk Server and different technologies like AS2, EDI, RosettaNet, SAP, TIBCO etc. He is a regular blogger, international speaker, and technical reviewer of several BizTalk books all focused on Integration. He is also the author of the book “BizTalk Mapping Patterns & Best Practices”. He has been awarded MVP since 2011 for his contributions to the integration community.

1 thought on “BizTalk Server Void Adapter”

  1. Hi, Sandro, thanks for the nice adapter. Somehow I didn’t see one file for the voidAdapter package. Do I have to download the individual files and put them at my BizTalk server?

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