Professional BizTalk Server 2006 Update

I thought those of you that still read this rather poorly-updated blog might be interested in the current state of play with my BizTalk Book!  It's been taking every spare moment of my life hence the blog has had to take a back-seat, plus I need some content for the book :-)

The end is in sight with all chapters due to be submitted to the publisher by the middle of November and it shaping up to be better then I ever imagined!  There's still some hard work required in the coming weeks though.

As you already know I brought Kevin Smith on-board a few months back and he's just submitted his draft of the Testing chapter, it covers some fantstic content you won't find anywhere else, including BizUnit, LoadGen, BizTalk Code Coverage and Profiling and a whole load of techniques and best practice that we have developed with numerous customers over the years.

I've also just brought Ewan Fairweather on-board to write the Administration chapter, Ewan has been "doing BizTalk Administration/Support" initially as a Dedicated Supportability Engineer (DSE) and now as a Rapid Response Engineer (i.e. when it breaks - he comes and fixes it!) for over two years.   Ewan is far better then little old developer me who typically just "throws it over the fence" :)  His most recent content list has blown me away and it's shaping up to be the bible of BizTalk Administration!  No pressure Ewan!

I've just submitted the Rules Engine chapter which was really hard work given the subject-matter but I'm really pleased with how it's turned out, I know I'm biased but it looks like the best and most approcable resource on the Business Rule Engine that I've seen, covering how it works, facts, interceptors, long term fact retrievers, etc.

I have just started on the Performance and Scalablity chapter which is covering all of the key things required to get your BizTalk envrionment correctly tuned and then a guide on which perforamance counters to monitor, what they mean, how to tune BizTalk, etc.    I'll provide another update in a few weeks! 

The current chapter list is as follows

* Chapter 1: Technical Primer
* Chapter 2: BizTalk Architecture
* Chapter 3: Adapters
Chapter 4: Pipelines
* Chapter 5: Orchestration
* Chapter 6: Business Activity Monitoring
* Chapter 7: Rules Engine
* Chapter 8: Testing
Chapter 9: Performance and Scalablity
Chapter 10: Low Latency
Chapter 11: Administration
Chapter 12: End to End Scenarios
Chapter 13: BizTalk Patterns
Chapter 14: Windows Workflow and BizTalk

Publication date is still set for March, I know it's a little while but I promise it'll be worth the wait!  I'm desperate to ship the book, that way I can finally buy my Xbox 360 that I've been putting off purchasing because I know I'll spend valuable book writing time playing on it otherwise!

As ever, if you've any content suggestions please let me know and I'll see what I can do!

Thanks for all your support (and patience) so far!