Routing Services in biztalk

Routing services are used for routing the messages to the target endpoint based on the content of the message.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/biztalkgeneral/thread/82112f67-9bc4-4b9a-b065-6af942e643c9/

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee236697(BTS.10).aspx


Using BizTalk as a router will be a less lightweight approach, but will enhance flexibility as you can route over multiple protocols and technology (through its adapters). Routing can be done message-based based on certain properties, but since you do not want to deploy any schema's you will have to go for content-based routing principle using orchestration and xpath (retrieving soap-action). Since you want to use un-typed messages this would be the approach to follow. Regarding performance it will be less performant as it's solution is pub/sub (BizTalk uses database) compared to WCF, where routing will take place in memory. A third option (alternative) can be using ESB Toolkit. In the end it depends what you want to achieve based on requirements and long-term strategy for your routing solution.

Regards,
Steef-Jan Wiggers
MCTS BizTalk Server
http://soa-thoughts.blogspot.com/