My podcast this week is about BizTalk and Microsoft’s announcement that the long awaited BizTalk Server 2006 R3 will be released in early 2009 as BizTalk Server 2009. Microsoft’s adding RFID features and also refreshing BizTalk to work with other currently available Microsoft products like Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and WFCs in .Net Framework 3.5.
Donald Lutz, CTO at SOA/BizTalk development shop Technetronic Solutions (a company I advise), is a BizTalk expert and joins me for the podcast. If you aren’t familiar with BizTalk, we cover the basics; what an enterprise message bus is, how a message is communicated and handled within BizTalk, how BizTalk uses XML to transform message properties, etc. If you are new to BizTalk, you can download the trial version, and Donald also recommends checking out the book Professional BizTalk 2006 Server by Darren Jefford. During the podcast we also talk about what’s expected in BizTalk Server 2009 and why Microsoft chose to move forward with the release rather than opt for the much anticipated “Oslo“. Oslo is Microsoft’s future that ties together BizTalk, Visual Studio, Office clients, .Net Framework, WCF, Silverlight and other Microsoft products with workflow and a meta-data repository.
I always think of message bus technologies, like BizTalk, being used to interconnect and integrate multiple disparate systems. But Donald gives us an example where a legacy application was eliminated and applications dependent upon the legacy database and data structure could still operate by using BizTalk as the message transport mechanism, providing access to the data even though the application has been retired.
BizTalk and message bus technologies can seem a bit confusing to those unfamiliar with SOA and I think this podcast will help take away some of the mystery about BixTalk and ESBs (enterprise services bus.) Enjoy the podcast!
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