BizTalk Map Viewer: Graphical interface for the BizTalk Map Documenter

Quite a while ago during an assignment we needed a way to display the logic in BizTalk maps for developers that didn't have BizTalk installed on their workstations. We quickly turned to the BizTalk Map Documenter which simply is an XSLT file built to take a standard BizTalk map file (.btm) and output it in a human readable format as an HTML page.

In order to use the XSLT file you need to execute it, preferably with the utility msxsl.exe which can take the .btm file and XSLT file as arguments and then output the result to be viewed by the user. However, this caused a bit too much command line hacking in our case and I took an evening in the hotel bar to quickly whip together a GUI for it and thus, the BizTalk Map Viewer was born.

The application is very simple and in it's basic form simply allows you to open a BizTalk map file which then will be parsed by the BizTalk Map Documenter XSLT file and the result will be shown in the application window. I added functionality to save, print and copy the result. I also added functionality to register the application as a valid right-click option for .btm files. If enabled, you will get the option to "Open with BizTalk Map Viewer" when right-clicking on BizTalk map files which then will open the selected file in the application. Just be sure to have placed the application executable in a good folder before registering it since the current path will be used.

Feel free to download the code and executable.

Use it as you please.