If you have been working with Biztalk for a considerable amount of time like me
you would have gone through the pains of the Undeploy Regac - Deploy loop , Sometime when you are making changes to Schema , it is quite unavoidable but at lot of time you really don't need to , Just re-gacing your dll and restarting the Biztalk service will do the trick . I have not seen a comprehensive documentation for the same . So the list below is mostly from my own experiences
Schemas
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Any changes to Schemas like Namespace , Root Node Name , Promoted properties require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY Cycle.
Changing a node which is not a promoted one and not a root node , you can get by with just a GAC and restart
The reason for the same is Your Schema#rootnode is used in subscription evaluation , A changes to this without deploy undeploy will give you an subscription not found error
Maps
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Changing mapping or Functoids in maps DO NOT require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY unless the Schema itself has changed ( See schema Above )
Orchestrations
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Changes in Orchestration DO NOT require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY Cycle unless Send/receive Port shapes are changed
This is mostly because Schemas would change or you add a new port based on a new schema which needs to get updated in the subscription viewer and this requires undeploy - deploy
Pipelines
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Changes in Pipeline DO Require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY
Assembly
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External Assembly change DO NOT require a UNDEPLOY - DEPLOY Cycle unless you change the version number
In VB assembly info if the assembly version is set to 1.1.* it will increment the assembly number for every small change. Though it is good from a certain point of view , it can quickly become a pain if you just want to make a little minor change .
So I suggest you control the version number manually , So you can just re-gac the assembly
Please note Gac-ing the change and restart of the BTSservice is needed for all steps
Last but not the least , you should learn ,try and use BTSNANT tool , It is well worth the effort you spent
