BizTalk Server Team Blog

Today in Steven Martin's blog, we announced our plans to deliver BizTalk Server 2006 R3 to take advantage of the latest versions of 08 wave of products (Windows Server 2008, .Net framework 3.5, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008).  This will enable us to continue to take advantage of the improvements in our latest platform releases.  Furthermore, we will include additional investments in this release to deliver customer-requested capabilities in the following areas:

·         New web service registry capabilities with support for UDDI version 3.0

·         Service enablement of applications (through new and enhanced adapters for LOB applications, databases, and legacy/host systems)

·         Service enablement of "edge" devices through BizTalk RFID Mobile

·         Enhanced interoperability and connectivity support for industry protocols (such as SWIFT and EDI)

·         SOA patterns and practices guidance

We have also launched the BizTalk Server 2006 R3 TAP program.  If you have any customers that would be interested in this program, please visit our Connect site to sign-up.

TAP Sign-up Instructions:

·                      Please log on to Connect

·                      Under Categories select Server

·                      Look for BizTalk TAP Programs and select the "apply" link next to BizTalk Server 2006 R3

·                      Download and complete the BizTalk Server 2006 R3 TAP Nomination form and click the select button

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

At the RFID Journal Live event, we announced launch of our BizTalk RFID Mobile TAP program.

BizTalk RFID Mobile is an RFID platform for Windows Mobile and CE. BizTalk RFID Mobile consists of a runtime engine, tools, and components to develop, deploy, and manage RFID solutions on mobile devices. In combination with BizTalk Server RFID, the mobility release provides a platform for real-time decision making. BizTalk RFID Mobile extends management and event processing to mobile devices and allows communication between the server and mobile platforms.

Media outlets covering the news include Ars Technica, CRN, CXO Today, eChannel Line, InformationWeek, Network World, Red Herring, Redmond Developer News, RFID Journal, RFID News, RFID Update, SD Times and VNUnet.

More information about this launch can be found at the following sites:

·         Keynote: http://www.youtube.com/biztalkrfid

·         Website: http://www.microsoft.com/rfid

·         Blogs: http://blogs.msdn.com/sudhir and http://blogs.msdn.com/biztalkrfid

·         Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/biztalkrfid/

·         Press Release: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/apr08/04-17RealTimeRFIDPR.mspx

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

Microsoft BizTalk Server Operations Guide is now available on MSDN.  You can also download it as a separate PDF, DOCX or CHM.  This guide is based on real-world experiences around maintaining and operating BizTalk Solutions in demanding production environments.

Happy Reading!

Marjan Kalantar

We just launched an improved BizTalk Server partners site where our customers can find partners (both System Integrators and Independent Software Vendors) by workload and geography.  You can also find more information on how to become a partner.

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar 

Loan Origination Reference Architecture (OR-LOS) shows architects and developers how to bridge OBA technologies with transactional service oriented systems using technologies such as BizTalk.

OR-LOS includes the following assets:

·         Architecture Guidance: Set of whitepapers that are real world scenarios driven by the lending industry.

·         Application Building Blocks: An installable code base, message schemas, BizTalk accelerator and install guides will jump start your development effort

·         Hands on Lab: Virtual PC image that allows customers to jump right in!

·         Rich Media: WebCasts and PodCasts

For initial mentions and discussions, see the following sites: Microsoft Watch, CNN, FOX Business, InfoWorld,  SysCon Media, Boston.com, SoftPedia.com, Destination .Net, Outlook Power Magazine and The industry Standard.

Mike Walker’s blog provides more details as well.

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

I'm happy to announce that the new BizTalk interactive capabilities reader has been published to the BizTalk Website.

This is a navigation control based on Silverlight technology, which ties up the BizTalk capabilities poster with the capabilities guide. Both published separately here.

It lets you navigate the capabilities poster image and and drill-down to specific bullet by bringing up the BizTalk capabilities guide to provides a brief paragraph on that particular capability. You can use hyperlinks at the end of the paragraph to get more details from the BizTalk documentation on MSDN site. 

Our hope is that this will help in establishing a common taxonomy of BizTalk capabilities accross the community of Developers and IT Pros and will raise BizTalk reviewer's awareness of "what's included the box". Even experienced developers might find it usefull in exploring new territories and learning about those aspects of BizTalk that they might have not been exposed to yet.

So go ahead give it a try and let us know what you think...

Regards,

Ofer

We have just launched this week the BizTalks Blogs site.

This is a blog aggregator bringing the most recent blog posts of Microsoft internal & external bloggers about BizTalk and CSD technologies to one place.

Check it out on BizTalkBlogs.com .

Regards, 

Ofer Ashkenazi.

I wanted to highlight two great blogs for everyone to keep track off.

•              Those of you who use our forums frequently, you must have come across Mohsin Kalam at some point.  Mohsin constituently ranks as the top and the most helpful forums answerer.  You can follow Mohsin’s blog for helpful articles.

•              For those interested in RFID, Sudhir’s RFID blog is a great one to follow to keep track of key events, announcements and other helpful information in the RFID world.

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and BizTalk RFID documentation is released to MSDN library online with Community Content (Wiki) feature enabled.  

This feature allows anyone registered with MSDN online using a passport account to contribute to the content of the documentation.  A nice example for a community content post can be found at the bottom of this topic inside the Community Content control.  The Community Content control allows you to extend the content of the topic with your own content such as code examples, tips and tricks, links to other relevant content in other blogs, etc.  Anyone registered with MSDN online can contribute. When you click Add Community Content link in the control, it will guide you through the registration process if you have not already registered.

Please note that the Community Content feature is not provided to give documentation feedback or ask questions on the topic. 

•              To give feedback on documentation, please use the Click to Rate and Give Feedback link at the top-right corner of a topic in the documentation. 

•              To ask questions and for community support, please visit the BizTalk Server and RFID forums.

We look forward to your contributions to the community content and feedback on the documentation. 

Please see the following for more information:

•              Code of Conduct

•              MSDN Wiki Frequently Asked Questions

•              Contribution Agreement

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

One day instructor led training is now available that introduces the new development features available in Visual Studio 2008.  You can find out more about this course here.

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar

There is a great new article on MSDN magazine on how to connect to mainframe applications with BizTalk Adapters and .NET.

This article discusses:

•              Connecting to a host system

•              Exposing COBOL apps as endpoints

•              .NET Framework integration

•              Terminal screen-scraping

Almost every major industry that uses mainframe for business critical systems still uses COBOL.  In this article, you will learn about BizTalk adapters for mainframes, exposing COBOL applications as endpoints and .NET assemblies and adding them to any business process managed by BizTalk.

For more articles from the author, please see Bash’s blog.

Regards,

Marjan Kalantar