BizTalk Server Team Blog

BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 FAQ

It’s been about 48 hours since we released the ESB Toolkit and the news are spreading very quickly.

We wanted all the relevant information on this hot topic to be easily discoverable.
Following is a set of Frequently Asked Questions regarding the new BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0, (this list is also published on the new ESB page on the BizTalk Developer Center on MSDN):

• When was the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 officially released?
  The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 along with documentation was released to the Web on Monday, June 8, 2009.
  
• From where are downloads provided?
  You can download the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 and documentation from the Microsoft Download Center. The toolkit is packaged as binaries and samples in a Windows Installer.
  
• What happens to those customers who are currently using ESB Guidance 1.0?
  Customers who are using ESB Guidance 1.0 are strongly encouraged to upgrade to BizTalk Server 2009 and the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0.  ESB Guidance 1.0 will be deprecated in the next few months. Also, proactive monitoring of the ESB 1.0 forums will no longer take place after the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 is released.
  
• What license does it use?
  It uses a standard Microsoft, free, binary-only license.
  
• How is the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 packaged?
  It is packaged as a binary-only Windows Installer (32- and 64-bit).
  
• Are BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 bug fixes provided?
  Bugs are addressed on a best-effort basis, by the BizTalk ESB Toolkit Team.
  
• Where do customers file bugs and requests?
  The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 Connect site has been created to log bugs with the product teams and to provide updates to additional tools over time. Once you log a bug, someone will respond to you within five days with an acknowledgment and status.
  
• What is the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 forum commitment?
  Assistance is provided through forums, with a one-year notice of deprecation plans. Any fixes and responses to questions in the forums are best effort, and we will continue to leverage the community to provide peer assistance, though with a capability to issue critical fixes if necessary.
  
• Where is the online community hosted?
  A dedicated ESB Toolkit Forum is provided.
  
• Will source code for signed binaries be provided?
  Source code for signed binaries will be available as a separate download (date to be determined).
  
• How does the support policy relate to the source code of the BizTalk ESB Toolkit?
  Microsoft will not support customizations to the BizTalk ESB Toolkit source code. The source for these components will be for reference only, not for making changes.  If there are critical issues that require it, we will use standard release processes to get fixes in place for the signed binaries. 
  

Announcing the Availability of the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0

As we have pre-announced during several BizTalk sessions at TechEd North America last month, the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0, formerly known as the ESB Guidance 2.0 - has been released today to the web. It is available on the new ESB page in the BizTalk Developer Center on MSDN.

This toolkit extends BizTalk Server 2009 capabilities to support a loosely coupled and dynamic messaging architecture. It functions as middleware that provides tools for rapid mediation between services and their consumers. Enabling maximum flexibility at run time, the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 simplifies composition of service endpoints without “hard-wiring” them and also provides management of service interactions at enterprise scale.

Why did we change the name ?

The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 has been renamed from “ESB Guidance2.0” to reflect the fact that it is now provided as a BizTalk Server 2009 value-add with a better support model. This will hopefully help customers develop mature ESB implementations that will be ready for enterprise-wide deployments.

How does this change support and community engagement?

The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 Connect site has been created to log bugs with the BizTalk ESB Toolkit Team and to provide updates to additional tools over time. Once you log a bug, someone from the BizTalk ESB Toolkit team will respond to you within five days with an acknowledgment and status. Any future updates or tools will be provided through the Microsoft Download Center.

In addition, an ESB Toolkit Forum is provided on MSDN. These forums target online communities—in particular BizTalk MVPs and other BizTalk community lists. Best-effort assistance will be offered through a closely managed forum. That is, any fixes and responses to questions in the forums are best effort. We will continue to leverage the community to provide peer assistance, although with the capability of issuing fixes if necessary.

What’s new with the ESB Toolkit 2.0?

The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 provides both architectural enhancements and new capabilities over the previous ESB Guidance 1.0. For more information, see SOA and Web Services section in the New Features in BizTalk 2009 Web page (rename will propagate soon …).

What does the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 provide?

The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 provides key building blocks that are required for implementing a comprehensive service-oriented infrastructure (SOI) including:

• Endpoint run-time discovery and virtualization.
  The service consumer does not need to be aware of the service provider location and endpoint details; a new or modified service provider can be added to the ESB, without interruptions to the service consumer.
• Loosely coupled service composition.
  The service provider and service consumer do not need to be aware of service interaction style.
• Dynamic message transformation and translation.
  The mapping definition between distinct message structure and semantics is resolved at run time.
• Dynamic routing.
  Run-time content-based, itinerary-based, or context-based message routing.
• Centralized exception management.
  Exception management framework, services, and infrastructure elements that make it possible to create, repair, resubmit, and compensate fault messages that service consumers or BizTalk components submit.
• Quality of service.
  An asynchronous publish/subscribe engine resolves different levels of service availability and provides high availability, scalability, and message traceability for ESB implementations.
• Protocol transformation.
  Providing the ability for service provider and service consumer to interact via different protocols including WS-* standards for Web Services. For example, a service provider can send an HTTP Web Service request, which will result in sending a message via the BizTalk SAP adapter.
• Extensibility.
  Providing multiple extensibility points to extend functionality for endpoint discovery, message routing, and additional BizTalk Server adapters for run time and design time.

How to get started with the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0?

• Download the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0
• Download BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 documentation
• View BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 documentation
• ESB Toolkit Forum

BizTalk at TechEd North America

After an exciting launch of the BizTalk Server 2009 release at RFID Journal Live in Orlando, we are ready to hit the road again and deep dive into the details of this release at TechEd next week May 11 –15 in LA, California.

We will present a generic session on Introducing BizTalk Server 2009 and the product roadmap as well as individual sessions on specific topics of the 2009 release and some popular themes.

We have designed a variety of breakout sessions , interactive sessions and hands on labs, to maximize attendees experience and learning about BizTalk throughout the conference week. Following is the full agenda sorted by dates:

Come join us at the BizTalk booths in the Blue section of the Technical Learning Center. Get into follow-up and deep dive  conversations with our speakers and members of the product team while watching compelling demos.

You may even try your luck to win cool prizes in one of the raffles that we will have throughout the week!

In the meantime you can find a wealth of new information on our refreshed BizTalk website.

See you at TechEd!!!

The BizTalk team.

Microsoft Announces General Availability of BizTalk Server 2009

Microsoft today announced the general availability of BizTalk Server 2009, which is available to Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) customers and will be made available broadly in nine languages — Chinese simplified, Chinese traditional, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish — on May 1. BizTalk Server 2009 delivers new capabilities to help customers more effectively integrate disparate systems, enhance end-to-end enterprise connectivity and more quickly exchange data across multiple platforms resulting in increased efficiency and lower costs. Key improvements in the BizTalk Server 2009 release include:

• New Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) experience to make development teams more productive
• New adapters and numerous enhancements that provide increased enterprise connectivity.
• New RFID mobile capabilities that will enable innovative solutions to drive business value.

As the sixth release for this mature server product, BizTalk Server 2009 provides a solution that allows organizations to more easily connect disparate systems. Check out the the following customer case studies to find out what early adaptors are already doing with BizTalk Server 2009:

Energy Firm Integrates Processes, Speeds Business Rules Development by 87 Percent

Software Company Speeds Bank Validation Process, Expects 20 Percent Productivity Gain

 
Microsoft Division Connects Systems and Virtualizes Servers to Improve Productivity

Microsoft’s BizTalk Server 2009 release offers a range of new capabilities and advancements, including:

• Simple, Cost Effective SOA Connectivity: With new and updated adapters, BizTalk Server 2009 advances interoperability by providing more than 25 industry adapters that make it easier for customers to connect critical business applications such as SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and Oracle E-Business Suite.
  
• Increased Developer Productivity: BizTalk Server enhances the first-class developer experience provided within Visual Studio 2008 by offering new integrated capabilities including visual debugging, unit testing, and access to code artifacts.
  
• Better Visibility into Data and Activities: BizTalk Server 2009 enhances its Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) capabilities by reducing the complexity associated with trusted data collection and simplifying access to data.
  
• Leverage the Benefits of Virtualization: With BizTalk Server 2009 running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, businesses can take advantage of the benefits that virtualization provide including cost savings, production server consolidation and business continuity management.
  
• Simple RFID Solutions: BizTalk Server 2009 RFID capabilities reduce the need for complicated custom coding for disparate device types. Businesses can now easily extend RFID capabilities to mobile environments and experience the benefits from updated standards such as TDT, EPC EPCIS and LLRP.
  
• Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Made Easier: BizTalk Server is now a first class citizen within the application development lifecycle by including new project management, testing and deployment capabilities.

BizTalk Server 2009 is again offered in four editions: Enterprise, Standard, Branch, and Developer. There will be no price increase over previous versions, and customers interested in upgrading to BizTalk Server 2009 can access complete pricing and licensing information on May 1 for all versions of BizTalk Server 2009.

New BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Guidance

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) is a module in BizTalk that captures business data and process milestones to allows business decision makers to gain insight of their in-flight processes.  Using BI tools to derive up-to-date metrics and key performance indicators from the BAM databases, users can forecast process trends and monitor processes in real-time. BAM also provides a mechanism to alert users to situations that require their intervention to prevent undesirable outcome or to encourage a beneficial result.

We have released last week a new whitepaper and code samples targeted at developers who are developing BAM solutions. The whitepaper titled “Business Activity Monitoring in Depth for Developers” covers the following topics:

• Business Activity Monitoring Overview – including the BAM observation model and how to define it
• Using BAM to instrument events from applications – programmatically and declaratively
• An overview and detailed description of the BAM infrastructure
• Retrieving BAM data through various BI tools
• Extending the BAM API with a RESTful services

The paper was authored by Jesus Rodriguez and Joe Klug from Microsoft’s partner Tellago. Jesus has included some more background information and acknowledgments for on his blog.

If you are looking into implementing a BAM solution using the BizTalk Server infrastructure I strongly recommend reading this paper and testing the sample code provided with it. The online version is available on MSDN, however for the full Word version and sample code you may want to download it.

Enjoy it,

Ofer

Initial customer feedback on BizTalk Server 2009

As most of you may know from a previous entry in this blog, the first beta release of BizTalk Server 2009 has been made publicly available.

You can download it directly, after signing with a Live ID, from here.

We also made available the first CTP of the BizTalk 2009 ESB Guidance in codeplex.

A major theme of this release is the enhanced developer productivity and the significantly improved developer team experience.

This was made possible through integration with Microsoft’s application life-cycle management (ALM) solution: Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server.

I wanted to share with you the exciting feedback from an early adopter.
Gulf Coast Seal Ltd. took part in the Technology Adaption Program (TAP) of BizTalk Server 2009. Today their solution is already in production.
Here is what Jeff Lynch, Gulf Coast Seal's Information Technology Manager, has to say about BizTalk Server 2009:

“I really can’t tell you just how happy using BizTalk Server 2009 as a fully supported part of VSTS and TFS makes me. …
…Having BizTalk Server 2009 seamlessly fit into our application development life cycle under Team Foundation Server is extremely important in terms of our confidence in using BizTalk as the “glue” which binds our business processes together. Today, over 48% of our sales transactions and over 25% of our entire revenue stream comes in via BizTalk Server and to say that it’s “vital to our business” is an understatement.”

“In case I haven’t already mentioned this. The build and deploy speed of this beta is excellent. I just built and deployed a four project solution in less than 30 seconds in a virtual machine. This is substantially faster than BizTalk Server 2006 R2. Even my complex solutions are building very quickly and deploying in a matter of minutes. It is also nice to see the deployment detail being written to the Output window in Visual Studio 2008.”

I thought this might encourage you to start downloading and testing the Beta version of BizTalk 2009 if you have not done so already J…

Ofer

Developing Integration Solutions with BizTalk Server 2006 R2

Here is some good news for veteran BizTalk developers & architects.
Remember the whitepaper: Developing Integration Solutions with BizTalk Server 2004 ?

I used to recommend it to any organization embarking on their first BizTalk project.

It contained an approach for the major part of the Application Life Cycle Management for BizTalk Server 2004.

Well, recently Dennis Mulder, a senior consultant with MCS has updated this document to BizTalk 2006 R2 titled:
Developing Integration Solutions using BizTalk Server 2006 and Team Foundation Server
Check out the newly updated document that provides techniques and best practices for designing, developing, and deploying solutions within Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006 (R2) in conjunction with Team Foundation Server.

We intend to create next year yet another version of this document to cover BizTalk Server 2009.

Enjoy it!

Ofer

BizTalk Server 2009 Beta and RFID Mobile GA

In September, we provided a few more details on BizTalk Server 2009 features and release timing.  Today we’re excited to report that we’re continuing to make progress toward a full release in the first half of 2009, and have additional news to share.

The first public beta of BizTalk Server 2009 is now available here.   This is a feature complete release, and we encourage our customers and partners to begin testing and exploring today. We’ll also continue to tune the code base, focused on performance, reliability, etc.  Final release is on track for the first half of 2009, and as we stated earlier this year, we’ll release an update to BizTalk every two years going forward. We’re really excited to be able to give customers a tremendous amount of additional value for their existing investments, and to continue to make BizTalk Server an affordable investment.

The second piece of our news relates to RFID Mobile, and today, we are proud to announce that BizTalk RFID Mobile is now generally available.  Customers currently using BizTalk Server 2006 R2 who have purchased Software Assurance will receive BizTalk RFID mobile as part of their licensing agreement. We are so glad to be able to provide customers with even more value for their existing investments- this is simply an extension of RFID platform out to the mobile edge.

We hope that BizTalk Server 2009 Beta and RFID Mobile will enhanced productivity, platform alignment, and enterprise connectivity to users.  We encourage you all to try out the beta and send us your feedback; we’d love your feedback on how to continue to improve BizTalk Server to meet your needs.

Best Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference 2009 Call for Content

As you know, our next Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference will be taking place January 26-30, 2009 in Redmond, WA.  At this time, we’re still accepting session submissions and would love to hear your stories on how you are using a SOA & BPM solutions today to lower costs and achieve your business objectives.   Case studies describing best practices and lessons learned provide unrivaled insight and perspective from the in-the-trenches work that you are engaging in everyday.  We realize that our customers would rather hear from peers, which is why we have dedicated a majority of our sessions for customer stories. 

Session submissions: Sessions are 1 hour in length and can be delivered in either breakout or chalk-talk styles. To submit a session, please complete the fields below. All speakers will have their conference fee waived and non-Microsoft speakers will receive a $1000 stipend. Please make sure to specify which conference (see below), either customer or partner, the content is for.  The call for sessions will close on November 14, 2008 and confirmation will be sent out by November 25, 2008.  Final presentations must be submitted by December 16, 2008. 

Please fill out the attached document and send to:  sbpcon@microsoft.com. 

Content Tracks

Track 1: SOA & BPM Best Practices

The SOA & BPM Best Practices track will highlight case studies including technical architecture and business results attained through applying SOA to create business solutions.  Sessions will target lessons learned and best practices to deliver SOA projects.  We will examine key scenarios like Composite Applications and Service Connectivity and various technologies and patterns applied to achieve business results.  In addition, guidance will be provided on the practical realities regarding how to achieve a SOA today, and sponsorships within your organization.  Additional insights will be provided on the latest technical trends including cloud computing and its business and technical impact for your organization so that you can build a sound, long-term SOA strategy.

Track 2: Technologies 

Upcoming BizTalk and .NET training classes

If you are looking for a deep dive or topic specific training on BizTalk or .Net, check out these new classes offered by our training partner Quicklearn:

This schedule is subject to change. Please visit www.QuickLearn.com for current schedule.

Regards,

Ofer

“Oslo” Interviews on Channel 9

As you know "Oslo" is the family of new technologies that enable data-driven development and execution of services and applications.  There will be several sessions at PDC discussing the technologies involved in “Oslo” in much detail.  In the interim, we have published two interviews on Channel 9. 

In these interviews, our very own Ron Jacobs talks to David Chappell and Jon Flanders to understand their perspectives on “Oslo” and how we can prepare for the road ahead.  If you’re wondering about “Oslo” tools, language and repository and want to build your apps today to prepare for the road ahead, you’d then definitely want to watch these videos.

Enjoy!

Marjan Kalantar

Blogs and Sites To Keep on Your Radar

We recently started the Connected .NET blog, where we’ll focus on the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) pillars of the .NET Framework.  You definitely want to follow this blog which targets to make content more discoverable and will be frequently updated by members of our product team with interesting news and tips.  Two other great resources are our MSDN sites for WF and WCF which we recently relaunched.  These portal-like sites will be frequently updated with fresh content based on your feedback.  

Another great blog to keep in mind is from our colleague Keith Pijanowski who frequently blogs on SOA related issues and recently started a series on WF.

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

Announcing the Biztalk Adapter Pack Poster

.NET Developer (Virtual) Conference starts October 28

This  virtual .NET Developer conference will feature loads of great content and speakers including RD's, MVP's, and more!  Hosted by  SSWUG.org at  http://www.vconferenceonline.com/dotnet/.

To see more details and RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=18189163425

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

Microsoft BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide has been released.

The new Microsoft BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide has been released to the web.

This document provides guidance & best practices on optimizing BizTalk Server performance for demanding production environments. It is based on numerous real-world engagements with customers by the BizTalk Customer Advisory Team CAT (Rangers), Premier Field Engineering and MCS.  

The guidance consists of the following 4 sections:

• Getting Started: an overview of the BizTalk Server functional components that can affect performance. It also describes the phases of a BizTalk Server performance assessment.
• Finding and Eliminating Bottlenecks: The Finding and Eliminating Bottlenecks section describes various types of performance bottlenecks as they relate to BizTalk Server solutions and information about how to resolve the bottlenecks.
• Automating Testing: Describes how to implement an automated build process and how to automate functional and load testing using Visual Studio Team System, BizUnit and Loadgen.
• Optimizing Performance: The Optimizing Performance section provides guidance for optimizing performance of specific components in a BizTalk Server environment

The guide is available in several formats and from several locations: