Grinder came about after having dealt with BizTalk’s file adapter’s limitations. I wanted to build something that could monitor several directories all at once. I also wanted to be able to do some preprocessing before the file was given to BizTalk. The result became a service that in some ways is a miniature BizTalk. It is multithreaded, makes use of Microsoft’s Workflow engine, provides its own workflow editor and configuration tools.
I plan to continue developing this tool over time, but I think it also demonstrates the lengths that I will go to in order to get a solution to a problem. Grinder does everything BizTalk’s file adapter does and then goes on to do almost everything you would use BizTalk for when using a File Adapter.
One thing I wanted to address with Grinder was the need to do custom programming every time my client’s hooked up a new customer. I have had clients in the past where they needed to write additional code each time a deal was made with a customer. Customers would FTP files to them and they would FTP files back. This required new code to be added to the system each time.
With Grinder a system administrator can create a new workflow, specify what needs to be done to the file prior to giving it to the application, configure the Grinder service and then test it out. If it was done right they can go to production. Otherwise fix it and try again.