Mapping xsi:nil attributes in the Biztalk 2004 mapper

Mapping null elements or dealing with nulls in BizTalk is a pain.

In a recent scenario i have some input data that contains nillable fields. This means we get instance data with the xsi:nill attribute set to "true".

The BizTalk mapper for 2004 is a pain because its not smart enough to understand it is nill and instead recognises the source nilled element as a real element and consequently maps an element with no content. The result is a validation error. There are some work arounds but there are "nasty" in my opinion:
Roy Wilson's WebLog