BizTalk Server Team Blog

Announcing BizTalk Server 2013 in Windows Azure Infrastructure Services

BizTalk Blog — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:54:00 GMT

On Mar 21, we announced the RTM of BizTalk Server 2013. As of April 1 the English version of Biztalk Server 2013 is now generally available (GA), and the other language versions will be GA on May 1.

One of the exciting features of BizTalk Server 2013 is support for running in Windows Azure. The Windows Azure team announced today the general availability of Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, and we are now announcing that BizTalk Server 2013 is live on Infrastructure Services and in the image gallery.

Prebuilt images for you to deploy in minutes

We are enabling the following BizTalk images in Windows Azure:

BizTalk Server 2013 Enterprise
BizTalk Server 2013 Standard
BizTalk Server 2013 Evaluation

The Enterprise and Standard images contain BizTalk Server 2013 and its pre-requisites already installed. These images are targeted towards scaled out BizTalk Server environments. SQL Server images are also available in the platform gallery as part of the Infrastructure Services general availability. To create a BizTalk Server scaled out environment, you can provision the required number of BizTalk nodes as well as the backend SQL nodes, before configuring the BizTalk group.

The Evaluation image will help you get started with the evaluation bits of BizTalk Server 2013 and SQL Server 2012. You can create an eval image and configure a BizTalk Group to get started.

Licensing options

BizTalk Server 2013 will be available for use in Windows Azure Infrastructure Services through license mobility and per-hour licensing options.

With the license mobility option, you can use your existing BizTalk Server 2013 licenses. You can install BizTalk Server 2013 on a Windows Server instance in Windows Azure, using the installer obtained through your license. With the per-hour licensing model, you provision off one of the gallery images mentioned earlier. Similar to other cloud services, you will pay on a usage basis, prorated hourly. To learn more about the per-hour pricing, click here.

Get started

We are excited to enable BizTalk Server 2013 images in Windows Azure. The best way to get started is to try this yourself. We hope you do and you can provide us feedback through our MSDN forums.

Cheers

The BizTalk Team

BizTalk Server 2013 is now RTM!

BizTalk Blog — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:44:00 GMT

We are excited to announce that BizTalk Server 2013 is now “Released to Manufacturing” (RTM)!

BizTalk Server 2013 will be available for download on MSDN starting today. The English locale SKUs will be available for purchase starting April 2013. Other language SKUs will be available for purchase starting May 2013. Host Integration Server 2013 will ship at a later date, however, BizTalk Server 2013 is fully compatible with Host Integration Server 2010.

This is the eighth release of BizTalk Server, another step in the on-going investments we are making in BizTalk. As discussed in our Beta announcement, we’ve made improvements in the following areas:

Improved Performance
Simplified Development and Management Experience
Cloud Connectivity
Running BizTalk Server in the cloud (IaaS)
Support for the latest platform and standards

Check back here for a series of blog posts going into detail on all the new features and improvements.

With this release, we are moving to a per-core licensing model. This keeps BizTalk consistent with our SQL Server licensing, and reflects the evolution of hardware capacity and the trend towards virtualization and cloud computing. With these changes, Microsoft will continue to be the Enterprise Integration server with the best TCO in the industry. Learn more about the licensing changes in this document.

We are very excited about this release and our future plans for BizTalk. BizTalk Server 2013 runs your on-premises integration solutions better and faster than ever before, and makes it easier to build hybrid solutions that span on-premises and the cloud.

The BizTalk Server Team

Announcing BizTalk Server 2013 Beta!

BizTalk Blog — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:45:46 GMT

We are super excited to announce the Beta release of BizTalk Server 2013 (yes, this is a major release). We announced our CTP in August and since then we have added a bunch of really cool capabilities, including SFTP support, ESBT integration, better SharePoint integration, and simplified manageability via dependency tracking in BizTalk Admin console.

We enabled a bunch of integration capabilities in CTP, and with the Beta release it just got better. You can now download the Beta bits here. All these capabilities will be available in Windows Azure Virtual Machine platform gallery soon. This beta release of BizTalk Server 2013 includes the beta version of new HIS capabilities as well.

Following is a quick overview of the capabilities in BizTalk Server 2013 Beta, including the ones that have been added since CTP

Integration with Cloud Services – BizTalk Server 2013 Beta includes new out-of-the box adapters to send and receive messages from Windows Azure Service Bus. It also provides capabilities to transfer messages to relay endpoints hosted on Azure.
RESTful services – BizTalk Server 2013 Beta provides adapters to invoke REST endpoints as well as expose BizTalk Server artifacts as a RESTful service.
Enhanced SharePoint adapter – Integrating with SharePoint using BizTalk Server 2013 Beta is now as simple as integrating with a file share. We have removed the need for dependency on SharePoint farms, while still providing backward compatibility.
SFTP adapter – BizTalk Server 2013 Beta enables sending and receiving messages from an SFTP server.
ESB Toolkit integration – With BizTalk Server 2013 Beta, ESB Toolkit is now fully integrated with BizTalk Server. Also, the ESB Toolkit configuration experience is vastly simplified to enable a quick setup.
Dependency tracking - The dependencies between artifacts can now be viewed and navigated in Admin console
Improvements in dynamic send ports – BizTalk Server 2013 Beta provides the ability to set host handler per adapter, instead of always using the default send handler of the adapters.
XslCompiledTransform – BizTalk Server mapping engine makes use of XslTransform API for mapping needs. With BizTalk Server 2013 Beta release, the mapping engine makes use of the enhanced XslCompiledTransform API. This will provide improvements in mapping engine performance.
Ordered Send Port improvements – With BizTalk Server 2013 release, we have made changes to the BizTalk runtime engine which increases the performance of ordered send port scenarios.
BAM Alerts update – In previous releases of BizTalk Server, BAM Alerts feature had a dependency on SSNS (SQL Server Notification Services). With the current release of SQL Server (SQL Server 2012), SSNS is no longer available. However, we have made sure your existing BAM Alerts scenario work just the same even if your backend is targeting SQL Server 2012. If your backend is SQL Server 2008 R2, you will continue to require the dependency on SSNS.

In HIS 2013 Beta, we have made significant improvements in the following areas:

Data Integration – New OLE DB Provider for Informix and new Service for DB2 DRDA.
Application Integration – New Transaction Integrator runtime and web configuration-based administration and deployment.
Network Integration – New 3270 emulator and improved Session Integrator, both with direct TN3270 connectivity.
Platform Support – Support for Window Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012, SQL Server 2012, BizTalk 2013 and new IBM Systems.

Over and above these, BizTalk Server 2013 Beta continues to enable integration solutions with heterogeneous Line-of-business systems. It helps you optimize user productivity, gain business efficiency and increase agility. BizTalk Server 2013 Beta allows .Net developers to take advantage of BizTalk capabilities right out of the box to rapidly build solutions that need to integrate transactions and data from applications like SAP, Mainframes, MS Dynamics, and Oracle. Similarly SharePoint developers can seamlessly use BizTalk capabilities directly through the new Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint.

You can use the following resources to get started

Download BizTalk Server 2013 Beta – click here
BizTalk Server 2013 Beta documentation – click here

Connecting to Windows Azure Service Bus from BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP

BizTalk Blog — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:41:28 GMT

We recently announced the availability of BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP. BizTalk Server 2010 R2 comes with a lot of features to take advantage of the whole cloud push. In the last post, we have shown how you could leverage the power of the Azure IaaS cloud to get your BizTalk deployments up and running in no time. In this post, we will talk another feature which will help you take advantage of the cloud – the Service Bus Messaging adapter. The Service Bus Messaging adapter, in a nutshell, allows BizTalk Server to read and send messages to Azure Service Bus Queues and Topics/Subscriptions.

The presence of a messaging infrastructure on the cloud has many advantages – which is not the subject of this blog, but is well documented elsewhere. Let us take a simple scenario: Our customer is an insurance company and it deals with multiple partners who help in administering insurances to the end customers. An on-premise BizTalk Server would handle insurance claims coming from multiple partners. Each of the partners submits these claims to an incoming Service Bus queue. BizTalk Server picks up these claims from the incoming queue and processes them. Once it is done, BizTalk Server would publish the status of the claims to an outgoing topic. The partners could create a subscription on the topic to receive the claim status. Such a scenario that leverages Azure Service Bus can now be easily integrated with BizTalk Server with the new Service Bus Messaging adapter. Let us have a quick walk through of this adapter.

Getting Started

In order to get started, you will need two things: A Windows Azure Service Bus namespace and BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP. You can get both of these on Windows Azure – sign up for a free trial here if you do not have one. Now, as outlined in this article, you can create your queue/topic. And as outlined here you can quickly create an instance of BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP running in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine.

Receiving messages from a Queue or a Subscription

BizTalk Server 2010 R2 provides a receive adapter to fetch messages from a Windows Azure Service Bus queue or a subscription. The receive adapter is one-way and will work with messages that you post on the queue. The adapter is simple to set up and configure. You just need to provide the URL of the Service Bus queue or subscription from where you need to pick the messages from and the credentials for authenticating with Service Bus. To set up a receive adapter for Service Bus Queue:

(1) Create a one-way receive port in your BizTalk application.

(2) Create a new receive location and select “SB-Messaging” as the Transport Type as shown below.

(3) Click on “Configure…” to configure the properties of the receive location. In the transport properties General Tab, specify the URL for the queue or subscription from where BizTalk Server needs to fetch message from. You could also configure connection properties like open/close/receive timeout as well as the prefetch count. The Prefetch Count specifies the number of messages that BizTalk Server will fetch at a time. This can help increase the throughput of the adapter as well.

(4) On the Authentication Tab, you need to specify how BizTalk Server will fetch the required ACS Token for authenticating with Service Bus. You can read on how Service Bus uses Access Control Service for authentication here. In a nutshell, you will need to specify the Access Control Service URL for the service namespace. It is usually derived from the service bus namespace (suffixed with “-sb”) and you will only need to update the service namespace in the default template. You can find this in the Azure management portal as well. You also need to specify an issuer name and issuer key. You will need to ensure that the service identity has a Listen claim. If you are using the default service identity (“owner”), it will have the necessary claims.

(5) Click on “OK” or “Apply” to create the Receive Location.

You can then start your Receive Location and BizTalk Server will now start to fetch messages from the Queue or subscription. Easy!

Handling Brokered Message Properties in Receive Adapter

The SB-Messaging receive adapter understands BrokeredMessage properties. This means two things. First, BizTalk Sever 2010 R2 comes with a predefined property schema for all the standard properties of a BrokeredMessage. The adapter will also promote these properties automatically for you. Second, the adapter can write custom user-defined Brokered Message properties in the BizTalk message context. And, if you desire, you could also promote them. Promoting them will allow you to use them in your routing filters. For example, for our insurance claims applications, different applications could be routed based on who the type of insurance, the partner, the claim amount, etc. These properties could be defined as Brokered Message properties and passed on with the incoming message. These properties could be used to route the message to different backend systems or workflows/orchestrations in BizTalk Server. To promote the properties though, you need to create and add a property schema in your BizTalk application. Then, on the properties Tab of the adapter, you could specify the namespace for your schema and check the option to promote the property.

Sending messages to a Queue or a Topic

BizTalk Server 2010 R2 also provides a send side adapter for posting messages to a Service Bus Queue or Topic. This is a one-way send adapter. To set up a send port for posting messages to a Service Bus Queue or a Topic:

(1) Create a Send Port and select SB-Messaging as the Transport Type. Click Configure to configure the properties of the adapter.

(2) Click “Configure…” to configure the transport properties of the send adapter. You need to specify the URL of the Service Bus Queue or Topic where the message should be posted.

(3) On the Authentication Tab, you enter the credentials for authenticating with Service Bus. This is the same as you see on the receive adapter.

(4) Click on “OK” to save the transport properties of the adapter.

(5) Specify the other properties of your Send port like pipeline, handler, Filters, etc.

(6) Click “OK” to finish creating your Send port.

Now, you can enlist and start the send port. The adapter will now post outgoing BizTalk message to the Service Bus queue or topic.

Handling Brokered Message Properties in Send Adapter

As in the case of receive adapter, the send adapter is aware of Brokered Message properties. If the outgoing BizTalk message has any of the standard Brokered Message in its context, the adapter will automatically set them as Brokered Message property. In addition, you could also specify defaults as part of the Send port properties. For custom user defined Brokered Message, you could specify a namespace as part of the adapter configuration. The adapter will take any property in that namespace and set them as Brokered Message Properties.

Finally, a note on serialization

When you start using the adapter, you may find that the message you receive in BizTalk Server is garbled – especially if you are using the Service Bus .NET API. Let me explain why this happens and what the adapter expects.

The Service Bus messaging adapter just fetches the stream in the incoming message and submits it to BizTalk Server. While sending out a BizTalk message, it simply uses the content as a stream. We preserve the message format on the wire. So, if you write or read the stream directly in your code, say using the Service Bus REST API, you would see the same data in the payload as you would expect. However, if you are using the Service Bus .NET API, you may find that there is a serialization issue if you use the default serializer (DataContractSerializer with binary XmlDictionaryWriter). This is because the default serializer in the Brokered Message .NET API uses Binary encoding. To avoid this issue, you will need to use Text by explicitly provide your own serializer, instead of the default serializer.

For sending message:

// For sending message using DataContractSerializer with Text encoding

var message = new BrokeredMessage(data, new DataContractSerializer(typeof(MyDataType)));

While reading the message:

// For receiving message using a DataContractSerializer with Text encoding

var data = message.GetBody<MyDataType>(new DataContractSerializer(typeof(MyDataType)));

You could, of course, directly read the stream as well. For a detailed write-up on the content serialization of Service Bus messages, you can refer to this blog post.

Next Steps

This post provides an overview of the new Service Bus messaging adapter in BizTalk Server 2010 R2. This is one of the new features that we have enabled with BizTalk Server 2010 R2. With this adapter, BizTalk Server can seamlessly integrate with your applications that leverage the Windows Azure Service Bus Queues and Topics. We encourage you to try out this feature and provide your comments and feedback. You can use the BizTalk forum to post your questions/queries as well.

Thanks

BizTalk Server Team

Getting started with BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP in Windows Azure Virtual Machines

BizTalk Blog — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:54:00 GMT

To get started, you need access to a Windows Azure subscription. If you don’t have one already, you can sign up for Windows Azure 90-day free trial here.

Create a Virtual Machine running BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP

To use this feature and other new Windows Azure capabilities, login to your account and sign up to use the preview features.

It's easy to create a virtual machine that is running BizTalk Server 2010 R2 (CTP) when you use the Image Gallery in the Windows Azure Management Portal. This post will walk you through the steps involved to create a virtual machine running BizTalk Server 2010 R2 (CTP) in the cloud.

To learn more about Windows Azure and Virtual Machines, refer to this blog post.

Management Portal Experience

You use the From Gallery feature to create a custom virtual machine in the Management Portal. When you create this virtual machine, you can define the size of the virtual machine, the connected resources, the DNS name, and the network connectivity if needed.

Sign in to the Windows Azure Management Portal.
On the command bar, click New.
Click Virtual Machine, and then click From Gallery.
The VM OS Selection dialog box appears. You can now select an image from the Image Gallery.
Click Platform Images, select the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP image, and then click the arrow to continue.

The VM Configuration dialog box appears.
In Virtual Machine Name, type the name that you want to use for the virtual machine. For this virtual machine, type MyBTSVM1.
In New Password, type a password for the Administrator account on the virtual machine. For this virtual machine, type MyPassword1. In Confirm Password, retype the password.
In Size, select the size of the virtual machine. The size that you select depends on the number of cores that are needed for your application. For this virtual machine, select Medium.
Click the arrow to continue.
The VM Mode dialog box appears.
You can connect virtual machines together under a cloud service to provide robust applications, but for this tutorial, you are creating a single virtual machine. So, select Standalone Virtual Machine.
A virtual machine that you create is contained in a cloud service. In DNS Name, type a name for the cloud service that is created for the virtual machine. The entry can contain from 3-24 lowercase letters and numbers. This value becomes part of the URI that is used to contact the cloud service that the virtual machine belongs to. For this virtual machine, type MyService1.
Select the storage account for the VHD file. For this tutorial, select Use Automatically Generated Storage Account.
In Region/Affinity Group/Virtual Network, select West US as the location of the virtual machine.
Click the arrow to continue.
The VM Options dialog box appears.
The options on this page apply only if you are connecting this virtual machine to other virtual machines or if you are adding the virtual machine to a virtual network. For this virtual machine, you are not creating an availability set or connecting to a virtual network. Click the check mark to create the virtual machine.
Windows Azure creates the virtual machine and configures the operating system settings. After Windows Azure creates the virtual machine, it is listed as Running in the Windows Azure Management Portal

How to log on to the virtual machine after you create it

You can log on to the virtual machine that you created to manage both its settings and the applications that are running on it.

1. Sign in to the Windows Azure Management Portal.

2. Click Virtual Machines, and then select the MyBTSVM1 virtual machine.

3. On the command bar, click Connect.

4. Click Open to use the remote desktop protocol file that was automatically created for the virtual machine.

5. Click Connect.

6. In the password box, type MyPassword1, and then click OK.

7. Click Yes to verify the identity of the virtual machine.

You can now work with the virtual machine just like you would a server in your office.

Configure BizTalk Group

1. Log into the machine using the steps mentioned above

2. On first logon, a few start up tasks will be executed. Wait until the SQL Server – Getting Started link is created on desktop.

3. The machine already has all the pre-requisites for running BizTalk Server from SQL Server to BizTalk Server installation to IIS configuration, etc.

4. Launch BizTalk Configuration Wizard

5. Use the basic or custom configuration and apply configuration Settings

6. Once configured, you have a fully configured and running BizTalk Server environment in Windows Azure.

Next steps

The best way to get started with the offering is just to do some experimenting, developing and testing BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP on a Virtual Machine. This means you can deploy a Virtual Machine, perhaps as part of your new free trial and install BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP.

If you have any issues, problems, or questions, you can always find us on the help forums.

Announcing Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP Release!

BizTalk Blog — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Today we are releasing a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 R2 to a limited number of our Technology Adoption Program (TAP) customers. We are also making the CTP available for preview to all customers as a predefined image in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine. BizTalk Server is Microsoft’s premier Integration and B2B communications server that enables organizations to connect disparate systems and business processes together.

In this CTP release, we provide a preview of brand new capabilities that bring together BizTalk on-premises and in the cloud via Windows Azure Virtual Machines to simplify building hybrid applications, drive increased productivity using the latest Microsoft platform (be it Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc.), better collaborate with their business partners using the improved B2B capabilities, and reduce operations cost with better manageability.

Here are the details:

Improved productivity with new Microsoft Platform support

Customers can now leverage the latest platforms and tools from Microsoft, such as Windows Server 2012 RC, SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 RC. All new BizTalk projects will target .Net Framework 4.5 RC by default. The CTP also provides support for the latest LOB versions enabling customers to use BizTalk for integrating their applications with the latest versions of SAP, Oracle and SQL Server.

The new adapters provide a seamless experience to enable hybrid connectivity, all done via configuration. The CTP provides native support for Windows Azure Active Directory Access Control (ACS) authentication and is extensible for other authentication mechanisms.

Platform support

Windows Server 2012 RC, Windows Server 2008 R2
SQL Server 2012, SQL Server 2008 R2
Visual Studio 2012 RC
Office 2010
Support for latest LOB versions
Support for SQL Server 2012
Support for SAP 7.2
Support for Oracle DB 11.2
Support for Oracle EBS 12.1 …

Adapters

WCF-WebHttp adapter, to consume REST service or expose REST service
SB-Messaging, for sending/pulling data from Service Bus Queues/Topics
WCF-NetTCPRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to NetTCPRelay end points
WCF-BasicHttpRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to BasicHttpRelay end points

Better B2B with schema updates

EDI standards evolve and one of the key investments made in this new BizTalk CTP is to ensure that we support the latest B2B standards natively. This enables you to transact messages based on the latest versions of EDI protocol.

B2B enhancements to support latest standards natively

Support for X12 5040, 5050, 6020, 6030
Support for EDIFACT D06A, D06B, D07A, D07B, D08A, D08B, D09A, D09B, D10A, D10B
HL7 2.5.1

We are working on further schema updates such as HL7 2.6, these will be enabled in the BizTalk 2010 R2 Beta.

Improved Performance

The CTP provides performance improvement for certain key scenarios. In case of two way MLLP adapter scenarios where ordered delivery is set, the tests have revealed up-to 5X performance improvement so far in our environments. We have also made enhancements in our engine to improve the performance in ordered send port scenarios.

Building hybrid applications

Today, there is an increase in the adoption of hybrid application scenarios where some components of an application run in the cloud while other components/LOB applications remain on-premises. The ability to integrate these components and leverage the richness of both worlds is growing in importance.

In this CTP release, we enable hybrid connectivity by providing first class support for integrating with Windows Azure Service Bus Queues/Topics/Relays. We are introducing the following adapters

SB-Messaging, for sending/pulling data from Service Bus Queues/Topics
WCF-NetTCPRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to NetTCPRelay end points
WCF-BasicHttpRelay, for hosting relays or sending data to BasicHttpRelay end points

Integrating with Windows Azure Service Bus entities is now just a few configurations away!

Integration with RESTful services

One of the other prevalent trends in the market today is the proliferation of RESTful services. Almost all new services, as well a lot of existing services, have a REST interface exposed. For example, all services in Windows Azure (e.g. Windows Azure Marketplace), Salesforce, etc. have support for REST services. With this CTP release, we are making it really easy for you to integrate RESTful services with BizTalk Server using the new WCF-WebHttp adapter. All the HTTP operations like GET, PUT, POST and DELETE are now supported natively. It gets better.

We initially planned for this feature to only support consuming REST services from BizTalk, however we received feedback from customers that there should be a way to expose REST services as well from BizTalk. We listened to your feedback and we are excited to announce that you now have an early preview to exposing REST services from BizTalk Server as well in this CTP.

BizTalk Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines

Setting up a new BizTalk Server environment usually involves a long lead time to procure hardware, get the dependencies in place, set up the server, etc. This means long lead times before you can get started with your new BizTalk Server project. We are now leveraging the power of the cloud and the richness of Windows Azure to provide an experience where you can get up and running with your BizTalk Server environment in matter of minutes and move your existing applications to the cloud without making any changes. Furthermore, the CTP provides improvements to the BizTalk multi-machine configuration and now you can do this using some basic configuration settings with the click of a button in a single machine, without having to go and configure the BizTalk Server Group in each of the individual nodes.

In the coming months, we will broaden availability for interested customers to try the latest release of BizTalk Server prior to GA. For customers outside of the limited TAP program who want to try the CTP today, we have some great news. All the above enhancements are now available for you to preview with BizTalk Server in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine.

Resources to get started

If you are part of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 R2 TAP program, you can access our connect site and access resources, log bugs, provide feedback, etc.
To know more about BizTalk Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines, please check our blog post titled “Announcing BizTalk Server 2010 R2 CTP availability in Windows Azure Virtual Machines”.
To provide feedback on BizTalk Server in Windows Azure Virtual Machines, please provide feedback in our MSDN forum.

Here are some links to recent sessions at TechEd North America and TechEd Europe Sessions where you can learn more about all the new features and the future of BizTalk Server:

TechEd North America

TechEd Europe

Application Integration Futures: The RoadMap and what’s next on Windows Azure

We are excited about this next version of BizTalk, and invite you to test out the CTP release and to give us your feedback on the new features.

The BizTalk Server Team

BizTalk Server 2010 R2

BizTalk Blog — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:45:00 GMT

BizTalk Server is Microsoft's integration and connectivity server and is one of the most deployed integration servers in the industry. BizTalk Server 2010 was released just over a year ago. Today we are happy to share details on what customers can expect from the next release: BizTalk Server 2010 R2.

BizTalk Server 2010 R2 will focus on three primary themes:

Platform Support – Supporting new and current server and development platforms
Improved B2B – Aligning with industry standards and continuing to invest in performance improvements
Ready for the Cloud – Enabling customers to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing

BizTalk Server 2010 R2 will be delivered approximately 6 months following the release of Windows Server 8. Release timing for Windows Server 8 is yet to be announced and will be disclosed by the Windows Server team in the future.

In addition to the investments we are making in BizTalk Server 2010 R2, we will continue the tradition of providing regular cumulative updates on a quarterly basis. These include updates to comply with Line-Of-Business (LOB) systems, schema changes, accelerator certifications, and bug fixes.

We believe that with this release we continue to deliver a mature, reliable and stable integration server that honors the trust of the thousands of customers who run their mission critical business processes on BizTalk Server.

Below is the detailed view of the features we are releasing:

Platform Support

Improved B2B

Ready for the Cloud

New Platforms and Infrastructure

Windows Server 8*
SQL Server 2012*

Increased Developer and IT Productivity

Visual Studio 11* and Windows 8* to develop solutions
In-place migration from BizTalk Server 2010

Extended Platform Integration

DB2 client connectivity to SQL Server,
conversion of commands to T-SQL,
migration of packages to stored procedures
Adapter connectivity to new data sources, including IBM Informix V11 and IBM IMS/DB V11

Agile Alignment to Industry Standards

Regular updates to schemas, accelerators certifications and adapters. Highlights include:
Healthcare: HIPAA 5010 extensions: 2777CA, 999, HL7 2.5.1
Finance: SWIFT SRG 2011 support, SWIFT SRG 2012, SWIFTNet 7.0 (new messaging platform)

Improved Performance and Scalability

HL7 MLLP adapter performance improvements
Better performance with ordered send ports
Enhanced scale out configuration with multiple hosts
Expanded adapter options for faster batch processing

Extend on-premises solutions to the cloud

Easily extend your on-premises BizTalk Server solution to the cloud in a secure manner
Tighter integration of on-premises BizTalk Server applications with Windows Azure Service Bus

Improved Licensing

Adjustments to licensing that are geared towards cloud hosting, including:
Purchase from a hoster on a monthly basis (SPLA)
Register your existing license with a hoster (License Mobility)

* Release dates for these products have not been disclosed yet

For additional details on BizTalk Server and purchasing options please contact your local Microsoft Account Manager or visit our website.

The BizTalk Server Team.

HIPAA 5010 Errata support now available for BizTalk Server 2009

BizTalk Blog — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 06:24:00 GMT

BizTalk Server team is excited to announce the availability of updated schemas and runtime to support HIPAA 5010 Errata in BizTalk Server 2009. The update is available as part of BizTalk Server 2009 Cumulative Update 2 (CU2) package.

The following 6 transactions are available in the update:

Transactions affected by the 5010 Errata	Base Version ST03/GS08	Errata Version ST03/GS08
270, 271 Health Care Eligibility Benefit Inquiry and Response	005010X279	005010X279A1
834 Benefit Enrollment and Maintenance	005010X220	005010X220A1
835 Health Care Claim Payment/Advice	005010X221	005010X221A1
837 Health Care Claim: Professional	005010X222	005010X222A1
837 Health Care Claim: Institutional	005010X223	005010X223A2
837 Health Care Claim: Dental	005010X224	005010X224A2

The CU2 download is available from the support location here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2497794.

Note:

For HIPAA 5010, run the MicrosoftEdiXSDTemplatesKb973415.exe file in the hotfix package to self-extract the latest set of HIPAA 5010 compliant schemas. Save them to the following suggested directory: <Drive:>\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\XSD_Schema\EDI. The HIPAA 5010 support can also be downloaded from here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973415
For HIPAA 5010 Errata, run MicrosoftEdiXSDTemplatesKb2510733.exe file in the hotfix package to self-extract the latest set of HIPAA 5010 Errata compliant schemas. Save them to the following suggested directory: <Drive:>\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\XSD_Schema\EDI

Customers are encouraged to try the update and provide feedback.

Reference:

HIPAA 5010 Technical Reports Type 3 (TR3), commonly known as Implementation Guides, are available from the Washington Publishing Company http://www.wpc-edi.com/content/view/817/1

-Karthik Bharathy

Pipeline component for enabling legacy behavior in WCF-SAP adapter.

BizTalk Blog — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:07:00 GMT

Some of customers who have migrated for the old Sap Adapter (BizTalk Adapter 2.0 for mySAP Business Suite) to WCF-SAP adapter (comes with BizTalk Adapter Pack), have come back saying that there are some differences in behavior of the old SAP adapter and WCF-SAP adapter, which can break their scenarios.

Following differences are the most talked about -

The old version of the adapter accepted RFC messages with date field empty. In the new version, the same call results in an error. This is because WCF-SAP adapter doesn't allow blank XML nodes.
Unlike the old version, the new version does not accept ',' (comma) as decimal separator for fields of type DECIMAL. It mandates that '.'(Period) should be used as decimal separator.
WCF-SAP adapter doesn't return back tables exposed as CHANGING parameter, if the corresponding request message doesn't contain the table. You can refer to the post - "When I Execute BAPIs, I don't get back any data". Help!" for the details.

All these three behaviors are correct from a design perspective , justification follows -

Any XML node, if present should confirm to the data-type restrictions, or should have xsi:nil="true".
w3.org XML specification mandates a period(.) should be used as decimal separator.
This is an optimization in the WCF-SAP adapter to decrease the data transfer over-head.

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That said, many customers who are migrating from the Old SAP adapter do face these issues.
I have written a custom pipeline component that can help resolve these three issues.
The pipeline has three configuration properties, which can be used to tailor the behavior as per requirements -

Issue	Property Name	Description	Default Value
WCF-SAP adapter doesn't allow blank XML nodes, if the min-length is more than zero. (fields like DateTime )	RemoveEmptyDataNodesInRequest (bool)	When true, all empty leaf level node will be removed from the request message.	false
WCF-SAP adapter doesn't allow ',' as decimal separator	CultureInfoForDecimal (string) Eg: en-US, es-ES	Culture code for the CultureInfo to use for parsing decimal fields. When a valid culture code is specified, it will use the given Culture Info for parsing the xs:decimal, xs:float , xs:double fields and convert it to culture-invariant string representation(expected by the WCF-SAP adapter ). Vice-versa for response.	null
WCF-SAP adapter doesn't return back tables exposed as CHANGING parameter, if the corresponding request message doesn't contain the table. On the other hand, it returns a blank table node even if there is no data in the table, if the table is present in request message.	FetchAllTables (bool)	When true, will add empty nodes for all tables which don’t exist in request message. It will also remove empty table nodes from response message to get a response similar to the old adapter.	false

The outcome -

RemoveEmptyDataNodesInRequest (true) - You don't need to worry about removing empty XML tags from the input message, for fields like DateTime.
CultureInfoForDecimal(es-ES) - If the incoming message is using ','(comma) as decimal separator, the message will be sent to the WCF-SAP adapter successfully. Also, in the response message, you will have ','(comma) as decimal separator.
FetchAllTables(true) - When this property is set to true, all the tables will be fetched in the response message, irrespective of whether a corresponding node is present in the request message.

How to set the properties on the pipeline component -

While building the pipeline from this pipeline component (inside the pipeline editor in Visual Studio ), you can specify any valid culture-code , for CultureInfoForDecimal. This will become the default value for the pipeline.
Eg- You can use 'en-US' if you want '.' as decimal separator.
'es-ES' if you want ',' as decimal separator.
Whenever you use the pipeline for any port (send/receive), the value you gave in step 1 will show as the default value.
You can customize the value for a specific send port by opening the pipeline properties and specifying the desired value there.

Same applies for the other two properties.

Steps for using the pipeline component-

Build the project, or use the pre-built SapBackCompatPipelineComponent.dll.
Drop it here: <BizTalk Server installation folder>\Pipeline Components
Create a new BizTalk project in Visual Studio.
Pipeline Designer inside Visual Studio: toolbox -> choose items -> BizTalkPipeline components -> select your component -> ok.
Drop your pipeline component in encode stage. Set the default values for pipeline properties.
Build and deploy the BizTalk project.
On the WCF-SAP send port select your pipeline.
If you click the ellipses (...) button next to the pipelines selection drop-down, you will see a window where you can edit the properties for the specific instance of the pipeline.

Note:

You don't need to GAC any of the dlls.
It's recommended that you use this pipeline component in conjunction with "XML Disassembler " pipeline component, because of the following reasons -
a> For this pipeline to behave correctly the instance xml should validate against the schema.
(It doesn't log any error if validation fails.).
b> This pipeline component doesn't populate the MessageType context property
(So, subscription evaluation based on messageType will fail)
If you use "XML Disassembler " pipeline component along with this pipeline component, then you won't face these issues.
If you are using the pipeline component for making the old adapter installation work with the WCF-SAP adapter and are facing problems (1) and (2) mentioned in this blog, you can drop this pipeline component in a stage after that component in the pipeline designer.
However, you will need to generate the schemas for the new adapter, as this pipeline expects the new schemas to be present.

The source-code of the component is atttached, so you can modify the code(if need be) to tailor it to your requirements.

Rohit Singh

Handling of authentication for LOB Activities - Part III

BizTalk Blog — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 04:26:00 GMT

In the blog posts 1 & 2, we went over how a Workflow application can pass credentials to the LOB activities. While the mechanisms suggested work when the credentials originate from the application in question, a different approach is required when the credentials originate somewhere else. Consider a WCF service that’s implemented as a Workflow and uses the LOB activities to interact with the backend LOBs. The client of this service passes the credentials to the service which then needs to relay them to the LOB activities. In this post, we will go over one approach to handle this scenario. We will limit the scenario to the credentials being flown as Username/Password.

The approach makes use of the extensibility provided by WCF to hook in a custom SecurityTokenAuthenticator. The authenticator will extract the username/password and stuff it into the OperationContext. It does so by adding a claim-set in an authorization policy. Subsequently a custom ClientCredentials endpoint behavior will be used to extract it from the OperationContext and populate the UserName that will then be used by the underlying WCF LOB adapter to authenticate with the LOB.

Here’s a more detailed explanation of the approach. Please note that the main intention of the attached code is to illustrate the approach and the emphasis is not on making the code efficient/robust.

Extracting the username/password and associating it with the OperationContext

A custom ServiceCredentials service behavior (MyServiceCredentials in the attached code) is added
The above service behavior will create a SecurityTokenManager (MySecurityTokenManager in the attached code)
The above security token manager will create a SecurityTokenAuthenticator (MySecurityTokenAuthenticator in the attached code)
When the security token authenticator is called to validate the username/password, it will
- Create a custom claim that contains the username/password
- Create a claim-set containing the above claim
- Create an authorization policy containing the above claim set
- Return a list containing the above policy

Extracting the username/password from the OperationContext and populating ClientCredentials.UserName

A custom ClientCredentials endpoint behavior (MyClientCredentials in the attached code) is added to the endpoint used by the LOB activity
When the above behavior gets instantiated, it will Look up the authorization context from the current OperationContext’s ServiceSecurityContext
- Walk the list of claim-sets associated looking for the custom claim
- When found, it will extract the username/password from that claim and populate the UserName property

Sandeep Prabhu