Microsoft has announced the first full release of our ESB/SOA guidance kit.  The Microsoft ESB Guidance extends the functionality of BizTalk Server 2006 R2 to provide a range of new capabilities focused on building robust, connected, service-oriented applications that incorporate itinerary-based service invocation for lightweight service composition, dynamic resolution of endpoints and maps, Web service and WS-* integration, fault management and reporting, and integration with third-party SOA governance solutions.  The ESB/SOA guidance kit is a great and quick way to get started with your SOA proof-of-concept, HIPAA re-architecture projects, or other opportunities to continue to enable and automate business process management and workflow within your solution or your health plan organization.

This is the first full release of the Microsoft ESB Guidance. Building on the conent of the earlier community technology preview releases that I had previously mentioned in other blog posts, this new release contains the following key new features:

- New ESB Web services, including the Itinerary and Resolver services

- New samples that demonstrate itinerary processing, UDDI service integration, and the BizTalk Operations and Resolver services; the ESB Management Portal, and an implementation of the Scatter/Gather pattern for Web services

- New core features, such as itinerary processing, centralized event logging, the Exception Management Framework; it also introduces the AmberPoint Embedded Nano Agent for BizTalk Server and the SOA Software Management Point for BizTalk Server.  

I strongly encourage everyone using or thinking of using Microsoft's BizTalk Server to immediately download and become acquainted with the first full release of our ESB/SOA guidance kit.  This kit is a time-saver that is chock full of working samples and proven guidance.  The development of this guidance kit represents extensive investments by Mirosoft and our partners and the pre-configured and "pre-solved" solutions coupled with the working samples make the ESB guidance kit a must have.