Ok, as promised, here's a quick screenshot look at some of the BizTalk Server 2006 improvements that should catch your eye. Figure 1 When you open up a BizTalk project in Visual Studio, the "Add Items" menu has changed a bit, and includes the new flat...

Our man Don Box recounts his experience with installing BizTalk Server 2006 and likes what he sees. He's got a fever, and the only cure is more BizTalk.

So I got my hands on the BizTalk Server 2006 bits yesterday and thought I'd share my install and configuration efforts using the screenshots below. All in all, not a bad experience. Definitely like some of the great improvements in the installation and...

Enough about Google Maps (which is still darn cool), let's throw props at the MSN Virtual Earth guys! Very nice stuff. I like the ability to zoom in and out using my mouse wheel, and I actually was able to zoom in closer than with Google Maps. Also pretty...

Pretty good day. Microsoft earnings are up , and BizTalk Server 2006 beta 1 is publicly available. I'm in the process of planning some SoCal customer/partner visits to overview the new BizTalk 2006 release, so if you're interested in this circus stopping...

Don't forget that today we have a hosted Commerce Server chat where experts and product team folks are there to answer your questions and do your bidding. Pop on by and see if Commerce Server could be a solution for a project you're thinking of, or...

I'm working on some things with BizTalk Enterprise Single Sign On, and, I am about to light myself on fire. Ok not really, but close. We're making some SSO management improvements moving forward, which is good given my clumsiness with the command line...

Plenty of folks make the assumption that wrapping a couple BizTalk adapters in an atomic scope makes the entire scope behave transactionally. However, the adapter framework, and overall messagebox architecture actually make that a false assumption. When...

I've been spending some free time getting back up to speed on Indigo because (a) it is quite interesting, and (b) has big implications for BPI solutions moving forward. I've added a VS.NET 2005/Indigo machine to my BizTalk farm and want to see how I can...

I've been asked a few times how to get the "picture" of an orchestration out of VS.NET in a .jpg or .gif format. The absolute easiest way to do so is to fire up the BizTalk Documenter (latest version), click "Orchestration Info" and then choose "List...

We're very close to releasing the official beta of BizTalk Server 2006, and this article discusses a bit of that, and addresses some of the confusion around the pending launch/release.

Wow, if you have a Windows mobile device, this new Microsoft application lets you access your corporate GAL to do name lookups, free/busy information and more from the device. That's pretty freakin' cool. Given that the person I need to contact remotely...

I often write to the Event Log in my orchestrations to provide simple progress statements or error messages. However, if you set up a BizTalk environment where you assign specific user accounts to the various BizTalk services and are NOT running under...

In order to really grasp how a product like BizTalk Server works, you really need to build out a small farm of servers. It's such a great way to drive home the fault-tolerance and load balancing points. So, to keep fresh, I'm building out another farm...