Flat-file and the pass-through pipeline

Question

Hi there, 
I have  a technical questions about the inner workings of BizTalk. 
The MSDN says that BizTalk is XML-centric and enything that is going through it and is posted to the MsgBox is converted to XML format.
The question: Is this also true in a scenario including flat-file and a pass-through pipeline ? 
Lets say the flat file needs not to be translated, the external organisation will except the flat-file format we are receiving on the receive port. So we use the receive location with the pass-thrugh pipeline (a pipilene without any components in it) and
a send port with a simple filter pointed to the ReceivePort name. No need to convert the file to XML whatsoever, and it would be a waist of time and resources IMHO.
So the question is, will BizTalk (being XML-centric) do the translation anyway ? In what format is the received file being posted and stored in the MsgBoxDb ?
Thanks in advance.
Peter 

Answer 1

In a pass-through scenario (with pass-through pipelines) BizTalk will not process the message payload. 
More information here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa561008.aspx
The pass-through receive pipeline has no components. It is used for simple pass-through scenarios when no message payload processing is necessary. This pipeline is generally used when the source and the destination of the message are known, and the message
requires no validation, encoding, or disassembling. This pipeline is commonly used in conjunction with the pass-through send pipeline.
Glenn Colpaert - MCTS BizTalk Server - Blog : http://blog.codit.eu