Merry XMas

Thanks for all the mail on the broken link to the WSE Attachment sample. It is now fixed (I ran out of disk quota).  In case you wondered I had to turn comment moderation on :( to stop all the spam that was appearing at a rate of about 8 posts a day.

I've had a couple of roadmap questions.  The best was one observant person who noted that BizTalk Server 2006 support for SQL Server 2005 is not in the roadmap document.  Our current plan of record is that BizTalk Server 2004 will not support SQL Server 2005.  Our reasoning is that SQL Server 2005 uses the .NET FW 2.0 and integrates with Visual Studio .NET 2005.  None of these things are true about BizTalk Server 2004 nor are they service pack items.  On the other hand all of these things are true about BizTalk Server 2006.  Given that solutions will easily move from BizTalk Server 2004 to BizTalk Server 2006 (ie. its an update not a migration) then the best thing to do is start building today with BizTalk Server 2004, buy SA on BizTalk Server 2004 and you will get BizTalk Server 2006 when it ships.  Of course customers looking to work with BizTalk Server 2006 early will be given that opportunity through the EAP/Beta programs that roll-out next year.

Oh one more thing on SQL BizTalk Server 2006 will continue to support SQL Server 2000 as well.

That reminds me I wanted to clarify our position on Active Directory.  Our installation instructions weren't very clear until recently (maybe they still aren't actually just re-reading them) which was causing confusion. If you have installed all the BizTalk Server services on a single machine you do not need active directory. If you have them distributed across multiple machines then the only supported scenario is to use active directory to ensure the accounts are consistent across all machines.  The active directory you use for your BizTalk Server installation can of course be specific to BizTalk and not used by anything else.

On another note, I wonder if anyone noticed that Indigo is "coming out" at VS Live 2005.  I've been working with the folks on the Indigo team and I'll be delivering an Indigo and BizTalk Server presentation in San Fran.  Come along and check it out.

My final SP1 update until it ships is: SP1 is done excepting an important external fix. Look for it last week of January.  Thanks to the customers who helped us test it.

Thanks to all of you 2004 was a milestone calendar year for BizTalk Server.  We have lots more in store in 2005.

Merry Xmas,Scott.

P.S. Where's my game of cricket on the beach after boogie boarding in the surf <sigh>. Oh well skiing it is then.