Field Position Calculation

Overview

When you use the Positional Length and Positional Offset properties of the Field Element and Field Attribute nodes in your schema to define the layout of the positional records in your flat file message, the Start Position and Length columns of the Flat File tab in BizTalk Editor show the calculated starting positions and lengths, respectively, of the relevant fields and records.

Note

The Flat File tab appear as an alternate tabbed view with the XSD view in BizTalk Editor when you have configured the flat file extension using the Schema Editor Extensions property of the Schema node. More details on this property in the UI guidance and developers API namespace reference.

In general, the starting position of a particular field N is the starting position of the previous field, plus the length of the previous field, plus the (positional) offset you have specified for field N.

All field position calculation in Microsoft BizTalk Server is performed automatically, on-the-fly, without any need to execute a command (as was required in previous versions of BizTalk Server).

See Also

• Positional Record Considerations
• Positional Length (Node Property of Flat File Schemas) and Positional Offset (Node Property of Flat File Schemas) in the UI guidance and developers API namespace reference