Using the BizTalk FTP Adapter
Recently as I have been learning more about BizTalk I decided to explore the FTP adapter that comes packaged with BizTalk 2004. This adapter is easy to setup and use as demonstrated here. First create a receive port and add a file receive location to drop messages for later pickup and ftp. Next create a send port with a filter to pickup the dropped message for delivery. Choose FTP as the send port's primary transport type as seen here:
The ellipse in the Address(URI) field opens the FTP transport properties dialog seen here with necessary parameters filled:
The most important properties being the target ftp site host address in the "Server" parameter. Next would be the account used to log in to the ftp site as "User Name" and that accounts password is the "Password" field. I also chose to put create a local log file of all activity through the send port by adding a local file path in the "Log" parameter. The FTP adapter also has a guaranteed delivery feature that is detailed in this post on Charles Young's BizTalk blog which can be utilized by setting the "Temporary Folder" parameter under tuning parameters. Test by dropping a file in the file receive location folder and it should be picked up and sent via ftp to the destination ftp site. Simply refer to the log file created to confirm or trace problems. I hope to have a post in the near future on using the /n Software SFTP adapter.