InfoPath 2003 and the xs:any type

Question

I am implementing exception handling for our BizTalk services, and have run into a fairly major stumbling block.

In order to make the exception processing as generic as possible, and therefore to allow us to use it for any BizTalk application, our XML error schema includes an xs:any node, into which we can place a variety of data, depending on the actual exception. The generated XML should then be presented to a user through an InfoPath 2003 form for manual intervention before being represented back to BizTalk.

The problem is that InfoPath 2003 doesn't like schemas with an xs:any node. What we'd really like to do is the show the content of the exception report in a form with all relevant parameters mapped , and the entire content of the xs:any node in a text box, since users who are able to see these messages will be conversant with XML. Unfortunately, I am unable to make InfoPath even load the schema at design time.

Does anyone have any recommendation for how to achieve what we need, please?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Does your xs:any element have a minOccurs > 0?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb251017.aspx#UnsupportedConstructs

I've also read that due to the way that InfoPath works, it can not handly more than one schema for each namespace. Hence, your xs:any (and the sequence that it defines) should have a unique namespace.

Answer 2

Unfortunately, things have moved on, and we have (almost) made the decision not to use InfoPath for this requirement. It's only partially to do with the xs:any issue, but more to do with (external) audit trails, calls to custom code and web services, and a couple of other factors.