Enabling Schema Validation on Messages

Biztalk 2000 had schema validation turned on by default and I thought it was very useful in Development while I wasn't sure whether the messages were created properly from my parser.

Biztalk 2004 has them turned off by default and I would have to use a custom pipeline with Xml validator if I had to validate schema. One drawback to this approach was I did not want Validation turned on in Production. So I had to maintain different binding files for each environment and often run into configuration issues.

Recently I found the following in Biztalk Server 2004 Documentation.

You can turn on Global Schema validation by changing the BTSNTSvc.exe.config file. You can see this in the BiztalkServerInstallation folder (By default its in Program files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004)

<configuration>
<xlangs>
<Configuration>
<Debugging ValidateSchemas="true"/>
</Configuration>
</xlangs>
</configuration>

Restart Biztalk Service and there you go, all the messages entering Orchestration would be validated.