XPath inside BizTalk

XPath is a powerfull feature in BizTalk solutions, but is little complicated when we have a lot of namespaces and elements.

If we develope a solution wich uses this feature, it can be very frustrating, because it's a thorny issue.

There is a good tool that help us to test our xpath expressions, XPathmania.

This tool is a plug-in for Visual Studio 2005 and allows us to do queries against a XML document. After install it, we open this tool in View -> Other Windows -> Xpathmania menu:


If we open a XML document, we can test our xpath queries:


If xpath query is correct, Xpathmania will set the backcolor of selected nodes to green. If it is any sintax error in our query, Xpathmania will tell us the error: