Welcome to Microsoft BizTalk Server FAQ's Blog
BizTalk Server used to be positioned as both an application server and an application integration server. Microsoft changed this strategy when they released the AppFabric server which became their official application server.
In a common scenario, BizTalk enables companies to integrate and manage automated business processes by exchanging business documents such as purchase orders and invoices between disparate applications, within or across organizational boundaries.
History
Starting in 2000, the following versions are released:
- 2000 - BizTalk Server 2000
- 2002 - BizTalk Server 2002
- 2004 - BizTalk Server 2004 (First version to run on Microsoft .NET 1.0)
- 2006 - BizTalk Server 2006 (First version to run on Microsoft .NET 2.0)
- 2007 - BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (First version to utilize the new Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) via native adapter - (Release date 2 October 2007))
- 2009 - BizTalk Server 2009 (First version to work with Visual Studio 2008)
- 2010 - BizTalk Server 2010[5] (First version to work with Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft .NET 4.0)
- 2013 - BizTalk 2013 (First version to work with Visual Studio 2012 and Microsoft .NET 4.5)
Features
The following is an incomplete list of the technical features in the BizTalk Server:
- The use of adapters to simplify integration to line of business (LOB) applications (Siebel, SAP, IFS Applications, JD Edwards, Oracle,[clarification needed] Microsoft Dynamics CRM), databases (Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database and DB2) and other Technologies (Tibco and Java EE)
- Accelerators offer support for enterprise standards like RosettaNet, HL7, HIPAA and SWIFT.
- Business rules engine (BRE). This is a Rete algorithm rule engine.
- Business activity monitoring (BAM), which allows a dashboard, aggregated (PivotTable) view on how the Business Processes are doing and how messages are processed.
- A unified administration console for deployment, monitoring and operations of solutions on BizTalk servers in environment.
- Built-in electronic data interchange (EDI) functionality supporting X12 and EDIFACT, as of BizTalk 2006 R2.
- Ability to do graphical modelling of business processes in Visual Studio, model documents with XML schemas, graphically mapping (with the assistance of functoids) between different schemas, and building pipelines to decrypt, verify, parse messages as they enter or exit the system via adapters.
- Users can automate business management processes via Orchestrations.
- BizTalk integrates with other Microsoft products like Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft SQL Server, and SharePoint to allow interaction with a user participating in a workflow process.
- Extensive support for web services (consuming and exposing)
- RFID support, as of BizTalk 2006 R2.
Architecture
The BizTalk Server runtime is built on a publish/subscribe architecture, sometimes called "content-based publish/subscribe". Messages are published into BizTalk, transformed to the desired format, and then routed to one or more subscribers.
BizTalk makes processing safe by serialization (called dehydration in Biztalk's terminology) - placing messages into a database while waiting for external events, thus preventing data loss. This architecture binds BizTalk with Microsoft SQL Server. Processing flow can be tracked by administrators using an Administration Console. BizTalk supports the transaction flow through the whole line from one customer to another. BizTalk orchestrations also implement long-running transactions.
BizTalk Message Flow
- A message is received through a receive port and handled by a configured adapter, e.g.: File, FTP, HTTP, SOAP, SQL, …
- The receive pipeline processes each message and can perform operations like decryption, signing, …
- Optionally receive ports transform a message via mapping to a different format
- The message is put into the MessageBox which resides on a SQL Server database. Subscribers (Orchestration or Send Ports) are notified
- Orchestration picks up a message and executes logic to support your business processes
- The message (processed by orchestration or not) can be transformed into a different output format before sent via mapping
- The send pipeline can perform certain operations like encryption on the message before generating the final output format
- The send port uses the configured adapter to transmit the message to the next system
List out some Artifacts of BizTalk Server?
#. HAT
#. BAM
#. Adapter
#. Pipeline
#. Orchestrations
#. Role Links
#. Send Ports and Send Port Groups
#. Receive Ports
#. Receive Locations
#. Policies
#. Schemas
#. Maps
#. Resources
#. BAS Artifacts (Business Activity Services)
