Biztalk Server 2006 R2 (scheduled to ship in early 2007) will include a number of new features such as better EDI support, adapter framework and new WCF adapter, RFID capabilities, and BAM interceptors for WF/WCF.  Over the next couple of posts, I will delve into more detail on the last of these features - the new BAM interceptors and how they can be used to provide real-time tracking capabilities to your existing WF/WCF applications through the BAM infrastructure.

For those of you new to Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), BAM provides real-time visibility into your business processes.  Please refer to the following link for an introduction to BAM.

What is BAM?

Usually BAM is used with Biztalk Server to monitor orchestrations in real-time.  A Biztalk user would use the Tracking Profile Editor (TPE) to map items in the orchestration to the BAM activity.  Customers that want BAM tracking for their custom applications can also use the BAM APIs (EventStream class) to send tracking data to the BAM infrastructure.  Please refer to the following link for EventStream documentation.

EventStream Class

For "BAM enabling" custom applications before, customers needed to do quite a bit of work since they need to write additional code to manually send tracking data to BAM.  With the new BAM interceptors for WF/WCF introduced in Biztalk Server 2006 R2, customers who already have existing applications developed using the new WF/WCF technologies will be able to utilize the BAM interceptors to have BAM tracking for free!  No additional coding is necesary!

In the next couple posts, I will go more into detail on how to actually use these interceptors so ... stay tuned. :)