BizTalk gets surprise reprieve

Microsoft has reversed course on the fate of BizTalk Server, re-naming the next version and setting a roadmap that calls for a major releases of the middleware every two years.
The decision to continue developing the middleware came as a surprise to some, as BizTalk was to be a launching pad for Microsoft's forthcoming "Oslo" technologies that include messaging (Windows Communications Foundation), workflow (Windows Workflow Foundation) and modeling tools.

Rob Helm, an analyst with independent analyst firm Directions on Microsoft, says: "It is pretty surprising and I have not seen this big a reversal from Microsoft in a while.

"They might be reluctant to yank what is now a fairly successful product for an unproven technology platform."

Microsoft says what was supposed to be BizTalk Server 2006 R3 will now be called BizTalk Server 2009. The full release is slated to ship in the first half of next year. In addition, the company says it will provide details on another new version, code-named BizTalk 7, in the early part of next year.

"We will continue to enhance and extend enterprise activity scenarios" in BizTalk, says Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the connected systems division at Microsoft. "We will make it simpler, add new capabilities around [business-to-business], build in our new RFID work and expand it to more general purpose asset-tracking, like tracking laptops or servers in your company, and provide a complete end-to-end asset management view. There will also be enhancements around [business intelligence] and business activity monitoring."

Company officials say Oslo will be discussed further during Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October. "We will talk about linking composite applications you build with Oslo to the existing services you may have already built using BizTalk," Kawasaki says.

In essence, Microsoft plans for now not to isolate current BizTalk users, which would have been the case with a wholesale move to Oslo.

"Our commitment is you can use BizTalk today with R2 and 2009 with our Oslo modeling technology without needs to upgrade," Kawasaki says.

BizTalk 2009 will deliver support for platform technologies including Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008 and the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1. Microsoft also has improved failover clustering so BizTalk can be deployed in multi-site clusters that eliminate the need for virtual LANs.

Source:- computerworld.co.nz/

BizTalk Server 2006 on Vista RTM

I had earlier blogged about my attempts to get BizTalk Server 2006 working on Vista RC1. I recently downloaded and upgraded to Vista RTM and after getting some other things out of the way, I finally found time to try out installing BizTalk Server 2006 on Vista RTM.

Having read in couple of posts about the "Run as Administrator" requirement to run certain software, I decided to run all setup programs and configurations wizards in that mode. Here is how it all went.

With Vista, VS 2005 Team Suite and SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition all installed and configured properly, I then started with BizTalk Server 2006 Developer edition setup. During setup BizTalk offers to automatically download and install the pre-requisites from the CAB file. Since in my earlier attempt i had used the XP cab file, I decided to use the auto-download option this time to see what happens. The setup program tried to download some cab file. I waited for about 5 mins, but didn't see any activity happening. It didn't report any error nor did it show any progress update.

Deciding not to wait further, I cancelled the setup and restarted again and this time pointed to my pre-downloaded XP specific cab file. I didn't try the Windows2003 specific cab file, since that is a server platform. To keep things simple, I didn't select EDI Adapter, no portal components and no single sign-on features. I did select Business Rules Engine though. The setup proceeded normally and completed without any errors. During setup, it did show a dialog about VS 2005 compatibility issues on Vista, but I select "run program" option and went ahead.

But this much had happened last time also. Post this, I then started the Configuration wizard (with run as administrator). Again without attempting anything fancy, I selected the basic configuration and provided a local user ID/pwd that I had created earlier (and made part of Administrator group) and went ahead. To my delight the configuration also completed successfully and I started feeling more confident about a successful execution this time.

I ran the BizTalk Server Administration tool and was able to navigate to various items without issues. During my last attempt, when trying to access an adapter I had got WMI error. This time, I was able to access all adapters without any errors. Having disabled user access control (UAC) feature already, I then proceeded to pick a sample from SDK and configure it so that I could test a running application. I picked up CBRSample from \SDK\Samples\Messaging (no particular reason for using this application) and ran the setup.bat file.

If you have been reading my earlier blog, you would know that i had again faced some errors here related to UAC and also WMI. Since I had already disabled UAC, there was no errors for directory creation and the setup.bat file ran successfully. Like setup, I again got a compatibility warning for VS 2005, but again I went ahead with "run program" option. I was almost there. With the application successfully configured and started, I knew that it will work fine this time.

I picked up the sample files provided with the CBRSample and placed them in the IN folder. A small wait (typically required for the receive location to poll again) and the files disappeared. However more wait, but the files never appeared in the output folder. Was something wrong with the setup again !

Via BizTalk Adminstration console, I found out that two service instances in resumable state. So this was still good news. The error stated no active subscription was found and little more investigation showed that the send ports didn't had the filter set. This was pretty simple to resolve and I added the appropriate filter as below. This behavior is also documented in the BizTalk's documentation.

CBRSample.CountryCode == 100 (for US)
and
CBRSample.CountryCode == 200 (for CAN)

I then resumed the suspended services and the messages were picked up by appropriate send ports and the output files appeared in their respective locations. To ensure that all was well, I picked up another sample from SDK - \SDK\Samples\Orchestrations\CallOrchestration and ran setup for this. This again was installed and configured without issues. The sample file from the In folder was picked up and i saw a file in the Out folder as expected.

The only small issue was that this sample didn't create a custom Application in BizTalk and got added to BizTalk Application 1, the default application. I haven't checked all the samples, so not sure which others use or not use the application feature. It would be good if all samples use the new Application feature of BizTalk since it really makes working with the various artifacts related to an application simple.

source:- infosysblogs.com/

Microsoft Announces BizTalk Server 2009

Microsoft renames BizTalk Server 2006 R3 to BizTalk Server 2009. The new release will be available in the first half of 2009 and will feature support for Team Foundation Server (TFS), Visual Studio Team System, and the upcoming “Oslo” modeling platform.

Microsoft announced the renaming of the next version of its BizTalk business process management server as well as detailed what will be in that product and what to expect in future releases.

Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft, said Microsoft has renamed what had initially been referred to as BizTalk Server 2006 R3 to BizTalk Server 2009. Microsoft will make the new version of the product available in the first half of 2009, Kawasaki said. Microsoft has released a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of BizTalk 2009 to members of its Technology Adoption Program (TAP) members, and the company will deliver a public CTP by the end of the year, he said

Kawasaki also said BizTalk Server 2009 has new features in three core categories: updated platform support, enterprise connectivity, and developer and team productivity. Microsoft also set a roadmap for BizTalk, including plans to deliver releases every two years at most.

Under the developer and team productivity category, BizTalk Server 2009 delivers new Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) support including support for Microsoft's Team Foundation Server (TFS). TFS support enables development teams to leverage the integrated source control, bug tracking, support for team development, Project Server integration and support for automating builds via MSBuild. Microsoft also has made improvements to the Visual Studio based BizTalk project system that enhances debugging support for artifacts such as BizTalk Maps, pipeline components and XLang orchestrations, and enables support for unit testing via Visual Studio Test.

Meanwhile updated platform support includes support for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.  BizTalk Server 2009 also takes advantage of the latest virtualization improvements included as part of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. And the product also features improved failover clustering, Kawasaki said.

Regarding enterprise connectivity, BizTalk Server 2009 has a new Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) 3.0 registry, new line of business adapters for Oracle E-Business Suites and SQL Server, as well as enhanced host systems integration. BizTalk Server 2009 adds a new Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) WebSphere MQ channel by providing the transport, data formatter and encoder to integrate directly with WebSphere MQ via WCF and a new WCF Service for Host Applications has been added to expose the traditional Transaction Integrator to .NET Framework developers.  In addition, BizTalk Server 2009 includes updated platform support for the most recent versions of CICS, IMS, CICS HTTP transport, DB2, DB2/400, DB2 Universal Database, and WebSphere MQ. BizTalk Server 2009 also features enhanced Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and enhanced Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Guidance.

Moreover, BizTalk Server 2009 features enhanced support for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Applicability Statement 2 (AS2), updated Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) support, new mobile RFID and device platform management, and new RFID standards support, Microsoft officials said.

Meanwhile, Kawasaki said future releases following BizTalk Server 2009 will address enterprise connectivity, enterprise visibility and support for the latest platform technologies. Future releases will feature developer productivity enhancements such as complex mapping, enhanced B2B support, complex trading partner management, expanded industry standards and schemas and low-latency messaging enhancements and ESB guidance. Future releases also will feature enhanced device support, business intelligence and BAM enhancements and will continue to take advantage of the latest advances in the .NET Framework, Visual Studio, and Windows Server, Kawasaki said.

In an interview on Microsoft's PressPass site, Oliver Sharp, general manager of Microsoft’s Connected Server team, said, "We’re beginning early planning on BizTalk Server '7' and will have more information to share about the specific scope of that release early next year."

Kawasaki also spoke on BizTalk Server 2009's relationship with Microsoft's yet-to-be-released modeling platform, code named "Oslo." In the PressPass interview, Sharp said: "Many of our BizTalk customers are running mission critical applications; they need choice and flexibility in adopting future technologies such as Oslo; therefore, it’s an important guiding principle to our planning efforts that we preserve our customers existing investments in their BizTalk Server infrastructure. Current BizTalk Server 2006 R2 or BizTalk Server 2009 customers will be able to benefit from Oslo by being able to leverage and compose your services into new composite applications. "

Source:- eweek.com/

Microsoft: Scoop On BizTalk Server 2009

Microsoft's BizTalk Server 2009 is on track for availability during the first half of next year with a full public Community Technology Preview of the business process management server product slated for this year's fourth quarter, Microsoft said Friday. Microsoft also provided more details about new capabilities in the software, which until now Microsoft had called BizTalk Server 2006 R3.

As it has done with some of its other products, Microsoft is committing to a regular and more transparent development schedule for BizTalk Server, said Burley Kawasaki, product management director for Microsoft's Connected Systems Division. Microsoft wants to fall into a "rhythm of releases" for BizTalk Server, delivering a major upgrade every two years as it plans to do with Windows Server and other products. "We're trying to be more predictable for our enterprise customers," Kawasaki said.

Microsoft has begun planning for the product release that follows BizTalk Server 2009, code-named "BizTalk Server 7," Kawasaki said, and will start providing customers and channel partners with information about that release early next year. Priorities for that and future generations of the product include more tools for enterprise connectivity, support for the latest capabilities in the Windows platform such as messaging and workflow, and improved visibility throughout a business for such applications as business intelligence and asset tracking.

Enhancements and new capabilities offered in BizTalk Server 2009 generally revolve around improved enterprise connectivity, expanded platform support and improved developer productivity, Kawasaki said. "It's a pretty full release. It helps reinforce the focus on enterprise connectivity."

BizTalk Server 2009 will support Microsoft's new wave of platform systems including Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5, as well as supporting Microsoft's new Hyper-V server virtualization software. Managing the life cycle of applications developed for BizTalk will be easier with a new release of ESB Guidance 2.0 patterns and practices.

The new software will offer improved connectivity both inside and outside the firewall through a new UDDI v3-compliant services registry; new and enhanced line-of-business adapters for SQL Server, Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL)'s E-Business Suite and other applications; enhanced integration with host systems such as IBM (NYSE:IBM) WebSphere MQSeries and CICS; and a new mobile RFID platform. The software will also provide enhanced business-to-business capabilities with updates to its EDI, AS2 and SWIFT protocols.

Source:- crn.com/

Report: Beware of 'chaos' SharePoint Can Create

A report from Forrester is warning customers to consider carefully how they plan to use Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server product, which they say can wreak havoc in an IT organization when used as a custom application development platform.

The recently published report, "Now Is The Time To Determine SharePoint's Place In Your Application Development Strategy," outlines how, while SharePoint can be extremely useful for creating company intranets, companies should be careful when using it to create custom applications because the product lacks features -- such as in application lifecycle management (ALM) and enterprise application integration (EAI) -- that other, more proven development platforms have.

Also, SharePoint is misunderstood in general, and while it allows users to create their own applications and customize SharePoint intranet sites quite easily, this can turn into a quagmire of complexity for the organization when it comes to managing and supporting those applications, the report said.

This complexity causes IT teams to become busy trying to "fill the product's gaps in application life-cycle management and enterprise integration as they create policies to prevent a new chaos of user-generated applications," according to the report, written by Forrester analysts John Rymer and Rob Koplowitz.

The problem becomes further complicated by the lack of people who have advanced development skills for SharePoint, they said.

In the report they outline several customer scenarios in which custom development on SharePoint got out of hand and became more than a company's IT staff could handle.

In one, a so-called SharePoint "power user" inspired "a reshuffling of IT," analysts wrote. The user built several popular custom applications using SharePoint, assuming that the development and operational organizations could support them. However, they couldn't because it required "specialized skills that neither organization possessed," according to the report.

The firm had to hire a new IT specialist to fill in the gap and expand SharePoint's role in the company's application-development strategy, according to a report.

Microsoft originally conceived SharePoint as a portal product on which companies could build Web sites. But with its release as part of the 2007 Office System, Microsoft has expanded the product to become a hub for collaboration, document-management and business intelligence, not to mention a development platform for building custom intranet sites and other applications.

SharePoint adoption has grown faster than even Microsoft could anticipate, which could have something to do with the lack of people with the skillset to deal with the product. The quick uptake also could have pushed SharePoint into uses that Microsoft hadn't yet prepared the product to deal with.

"I don't think that even Microsoft could predict the adoption rates that SharePoint is seeing," said Andrew Brust, chief, new technology of IT consulting firm twentysix New York.

Indeed, in their report, Rymer and Koplowitz note that Forrester's clients said SharePoint's growth "has caught many application development managers by surprise." They compare the headaches SharePoint sites create for IT managers to how Lotus Notes databases were in the 1990s. Both products allow for the explosion of custom sites and applications that IT departments can have a hard time managing.

In Microsoft's defense, Brust said the company recognizes that SharePoint has some technology gaps and is working hard to fill them, noting that solving the problem of SharePoint's limited ALM capability in particular is the sort of thing "Microsoft lives for."

He also noted that other Microsoft products -- such as BizTalk for EAI and Visual Studio Team System for ALM -- can help IT departments work with SharePoint in the meantime.

In their report, Rymer and Koplowitz noted that while Microsoft is working to fill the gaps in the product, organizations should carefully consider before deployment how they will use SharePoint, if at all, in their organizations.

They suggested companies choose one of three scenarios for SharePoint to make the product work as effectively as possible.

One is to use the product as merely an application for collaboration and sharing information and not as a development platform at all, they said. The second scenario is as both an application and an intranet platform for which the company fills in product gaps -- which in addition to ALM and EAI include issues surrounding the reliability, availability and scalability of the product.

The third and most complicated scenario for an organization would be to use SharePoint as both an application and an enterprise portal at the core of a company's application-development strategy, analysts said. However, organizations must choose this option knowing it will require heavy lifting on the part of the IT team, and also eventually require a transition away from other portal or intranet software that may currently exist in the organization, according to the report.

source:- pcworld.com/

BizTalk Server for Windows Server 2008 not till 2009

When Microsoft launched Windows Server 2008 in February, company officials shared timetables for how long it might take the company to make available compatible versions of its various business applications. But it wasn’t until this week, the company finally shared information on how and when it will release a Windows-Server-2008-compatible version of its integration server, BizTalk Server.

Users had been wondering when and whether Microsoft might port BizTalk Server 2006 to its Windows Server 2008 platform। On April 23, Microsoft Connected Systems Division Director of Product Management Steve Martin blogged that Microsoft will release an updated version of BizTalk some time in the first half of 2009 for Windows Server 2008. That release will be called BizTalk Server 2006 Release (R) 3.

Microsoft is limiting the feature changes it is making to BizTalk for the R3 release, Martin blogged। The included changes will include UDDI 3.0 support; enhanced support for B2B protocols like SWIFT and EDI; and new and updated adapters for business apps and databases. Martin blogged:

“To ensure existing BTS (BizTalk Server) applications continue to run without changes, we are taking an incremental approach and limiting the changes to the items listed above। Because this release build on existing bits, the name of this release will be BizTalk Server 2006 R3. Refreshing the bits (instead of applying a large Service Pack) provides for the best update experience. You should expect to see a CTP (Community Technology Preview) of BizTalk Server 2006 R3 later this year (with an RTM planned in H1 CY09).”

One Microsoft partner said BizTalk isn’t the only Microsoft application lagging well behind Windows Server 2008।

“System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 just released on April 1 2008, but it was developed and tested ONLY on a W2K3 platform and domain (plus it needs WINS too),” said Scott Hill, CIO of RightSize IT, a Microsoft Gold reseller partner based in Texas। “It will not be supported on a W2K8 platform or ‘native mode’ domain until the Service Pack at year end.

“Another application has the same issues – OCS (Office Communication Server)2007। That team is now stating that they will not have a fix this month as discussed in January, but are delaying until that service pack in December 2008,” Hill said.

Any other users running into other Windows Server 2008 compatibility snags with Microsoft and/or third-party apps?

source=http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1363

Microsoft Adds Mobile RFID To Biztalk

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) is adding support for mobile RFID readers to its BizTalk Server product with a goal of enabling these devices to transmit data to back-end स्य्स्तेम्स

Microsoft BizTalk RFID Mobile works in conjunction with BizTalk Server 2006 R2, the business process management and service-oriented architecture offering Microsoft launched last Fall, to allow workers to make realtime decisions based on the data they gather in the field using mobile RFID readers।

For example, a service technician on a factory floor can walk up to a piece of malfunctioning equipment, and using an RFID reader, pull maintenance history and diagnostic information onto the device, and then transmit that data back to headquarters।

BizTalk Server 2006 R2 introduced support for fixed RFID readers, and BizTalk RFID Mobile expands this to mobile environments, said Steve Sloan, lead product manager in the Connected Systems division at Microsoft।

"Connecting the data coming off that reader to backend SAP (NYSE:SAP)-type systems has been a challenge, but it helps make data relevant to the business," Sloan सैद।

Microsoft on Thursday kicked off a beta of BizTalk RFID Mobile and is recruiting customers and partners to take part in its BizTalk RFID Mobile Technology Adoption Program।

source=http://www.crn.com/software/207400388