BizTalk Insider Newsletter #24

  • Article

I have had a newsletter that I have pushed out to interested people for a number of years. I thought I would share the collection of information here on my blog. This is a highlighting of important news, events, downloads, etc from the last few months as it relates to BizTalk and integration on Microsoft technologies. –Jonathan

In This Issue

  • In the News
    • Announcing BizTalk Server 2010 R2
    • The Service Bus September 2011 Release
    • Azure Service Bus Integration CTP Release
    • SQL Azure Q4 2011 Service Release
    • SWIFT: Microsoft Drives ISO-XML Messaging Development Initiative
  • Events and Webinars
    • Building loosely-coupled apps with Windows Azure Service Bus Topics and Queues
    • December 2012 Windows Azure for Developer Recordings
  • Releases and Downloads
    • Announcing CU3 for BizTalk 2010
    • Azure SDK November 2011 Release
    • Windows Workflow Foundation on CodePlex
  • Learning
    • Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 to Exchange Documents with Microsoft Dynamics AX
  • Articles and Blogs
    • Best Practices for Leveraging Windows Azure Service Bus Brokered Messaging API
  • Tools and Add-ons
    • BizMock for Testing BizTalk Solutions (including Orchestrations)
    • BizTalk Adapter Pack Migration Tool 2.0 for SQL, SAP and Oracle DB
    • Using the BTS WCF Service Publishing Command-Line tool with BizTalk 2010

In the News

Announcing BizTalk Server 2010 R2

The next release of BizTalk Server will be a 2010 R2 version and will be delivered approximately 6 months following the release of Windows 8. You can check out the blog entry and also the official roadmap page. It will include Platform Support, Improved B2B and support for the Cloud.

The Service Bus September 2011 Release

This was announced some time ago at the BUILD conference in September, but if you have not looked at the Service Bus Queues and Topics, they provide powerful capabilities that you can now leverage as a cloud service. Just think of easily being able to hook up dozens of hundreds of locations (e.g. stores, field offices, kiosks, manufacturing sites, warehouses) to fan in/fan out/route/filter messages. It also goes right along with the Integration CTP in the next announcement. Here a number of links for the service bus as well.

Azure Service Bus Integration CTP Release

The SDK and Azure labs environment is now available to the public. You can now try out the new integration service that will be rolling out in Azure later this year. This leverages the Service Bus capabilities that are already on Azure to be able to do perform messaging integration to/from the cloud and on-premise applications. For this release they are targeting EAI and EDI integrations. This includes a new design canvas for creating integrations, mapper with extensive new functoids and a trading management portal. Harish Agarwai discusses the EAI portion in this Windows Azure blog entry.

SQL Azure Q4 2011 Service Release

This was originally announced at the SQL PASS Summit in October and this blog discussed how it has now been made available on the SQL Azure platform. This release includes the tripling the maximum database size to 150 GB, SQL Azure Federation to simplify the setup, management, and the automating of shards for greater elastic scale and a refreshed SQL Azure management portal with new and streamlined features.

SWIFT: Microsoft Drives ISO-XML Messaging Development Initiative

At SIBOS 2011, Microsoft announced it recently became the first corporate treasury to implement Extensible Markup Language (XML) standard ISO 20022, camt.052 and camt.053 version two, the new international standard for cash management financial messaging. Microsoft implemented this solution with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Citi to provide a common language for Microsoft to receive electronic bank statements from its global banking providers.

Events and Webinars

Building loosely-coupled apps with Windows Azure Service Bus Topics and Queues

Azure Service Bus Topics and Queues were released to production in September. This video provides an overview of how to build apps with them by Clemens Vasters. This greatly enhances the existing relay service that has existed for some time on Azure to provide durable and decoupled communication using true publish/subscribe capabilities. Like the relay service, these will work with both cloud and on-premise application. You can also see an interview with Clemens on this same topic that he recorded in December.

December 2012 Windows Azure for Developer Recordings

On Tuesday December 13th Microsoft held a special Windows Azure event for developers. Watch the recorded videos of this event that broadcast LIVE from the Microsoft Redmond Campus to learn how to get started building applications for the cloud from Microsoft technical leaders Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich.

Releases and Downloads

Announcing CU3 for BizTalk 2010

With this Cumulative Update, the BizTalk Customer response team has addressed customer issues and also included enhancements around HIPAA 5010 support and performance improvement in tracking under certain circumstances. For HIPAA 5010 the update allows the usage of 999 functional acknowledgements and 277CA schemas for 5010 Errata. You can also check out the Customer Response Team blog for more information.

Azure SDK November 2011 Release

If you want to start using the Service Bus Queues and Topics, you will want to download the latest release of the Azure SDK, version 1.6. This is also delivered via the Web Platform Installer (which streamlines the installation experience) by clicking under the .NET install link from this page or as a standalone install from here. The Service Bus used to be a separate install for the AppFabric pieces, but has now been incorporated into the main Azure SDK.

Windows Workflow Foundation on CodePlex

The Windows Workflow team has a great site on CodePlex where they release a lot of interesting bits. Among some notables is WF Azure Activity Pack CTP 1 for calling into Azure Blog, Table and Caching services and Microsoft.Activities.Extensions download to get a number of new activities to try out in Workflow Foundation.

Learning

Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 to Exchange Documents with Microsoft Dynamics AX

I missed this document that released last summer. This white paper discusses how to integrate BizTalk Server with Microsoft Dynamics AX to exchange service documents. This leverages the Dynamics AIF (Application Integration Framework) and the BizTalk WCF adapters.

Articles and Blogs

Best Practices for Leveraging Windows Azure Service Bus Brokered Messaging API

The Azure Service Bus Topics and Queues have just recently released, but the Azure Customer Advisory Team has already been helping out customers to use these capabilities for some time. This article provides guidance on how to best use the new APIs that are available in order to create the best applications you can for your organization.

Tools and Add-ons

BizMock for Testing BizTalk Solutions (including Orchestrations)

Out of the box, BizTalk allows you to create unit tests for Schemas, Maps and Pipelines, but not for BizTalk solutions and notably not for orchestrations. BizMock fills this gap by providing the ability to test entire solutions in a programmatic and repeatable manner. This allows you to test a deployed instance by emulating messages for receive ports and validating messages in send ports.

BizTalk Adapter Pack Migration Tool 2.0 for SQL, SAP and Oracle DB

This tool has been around for some time, but wanted to make people aware since this topic does come up occasionally with the deprecation of the old SQL Adapter. In order to move from the old SQL Adapter to the newer BizTalk Adapter Pack SQL Adapter, it does require re-work. This migration tool eases the work necessary to get you to the newer and much improved SQL Adapter. It also assists in the migration of the deprecated SAP and Oracle DB adapters.

Using the BTS WCF Service Publishing Command-Line tool with BizTalk 2010

This tool is actually a BizTalk 2006 R2 tool, but can still be made to work with BizTalk 2010. If you use this tool with assemblies created with BizTalk 2010 you will get an error because the assembly is a .Net 4 assembly. To use this tool with BizTalk 2010 you need to edit the BTSWCFServicePublishing.exe.config file to specify to use the .Net runtime. See the bottom of the documentation page.