Microsoft Releases Biztalk 2006 R2 Microsoft has pieced together a SOA offering with the latest release of BizTalk with OEM (third party) adapters and SOA governance from Amberpoint and SOA Software. Several software vendors OEM adapters and SOA governance and the additions for Microsoft do strengthen their offering. However, where competitors have built formal ESB offerings Microsoft has chosen to offer guidance on how to build your own with their products. You have to think this is a stop gap measure and not a long-term strategic direction. I would be concerned about writing a lot of code on top of these specifications.
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ESB guidance for Microsoft's products is on CodePlex - Microsoft's open source project hosting web site. "The Microsoft ESB Guidance provides architectural guidance, patterns, practices, and a set of BizTalk Server and .NET components to simplify the development of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) on the Microsoft platform and to allow Microsoft customers to extend their own messaging and integration solutions."
If you want to "roll your own" ESB with Microsoft products you need Windows Server 2003, the .NET Framework 3.0, and BizTalk Server 2006. The ESB Guidance provides standard ESB design patterns such as transformation, message routing, and exception handling using Microsoft technology.
Microsoft's Latest Innovations Take Productivity to the Edge - REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft® BizTalk® Server 2006 R2, Microsoft Corp.'s core service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) technology, is generally available today. This product includes advancements for radio frequency identification (RFID) and electronic data interchange (EDI), and extended interoperability such as Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Guidance and Line of Business Adapters. Together, these capabilities make it easier for companies to connect systems within their own organizations and across those of trading partners.
Microsoft Adds Point-to-Point Adapters to BizTalk - The other new item accompanying release of BizTalk Server 2006 r2 is what Microsoft terms "ESB guidance." By that they mean sample code, patterns, components, and suggested best practices for rolling your own enterprise service bus (ESB), using BizTalk Server and WCF. "Many customers have gotten into trouble with cost-prohibitive implementations. We think that this guidance will improve that."
The other offering, which consists of best practices and patterns for ESB, amounts to the Ikea approach to ESB. While Microsoft doesn't have an ESB in its catalog, it provides the piece parts for one, and like Ikea, encourages the user to assemble it at home. It's a well-worn Microsoft strategy to offer such kits and then simplify the instructions for assembly. It should also provide another nice opportunity for Microsoft's huge VAR channel.
AmberPoint Announces Support for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 - AmberPoint and Microsoft are working together to further enhance the integration of AmberPoint's industry-leading SOA runtime governance software, AmberPoint SOA Management System, with Microsoft BizTalk Server. This enables AmberPoint to apply the full range of its capabilities to the latest Microsoft platforms and create integration points into Microsoft's ESB Guidance. As a result, customers of both companies can gain visibility into service interactions within Microsoft BizTalk Server, in addition to monitoring and controlling services across distributed, heterogeneous SOA landscapes.
SOA Software integrates registry/repository to new version of BizTalk - SOA Software is integrating Workbench, its registry/repository product, with the new version of BizTalk. That's a notable tightening of links between the two, as previously, Workbench only tied in at the web server level with Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). The new feature, which brings the links directly into the integration tier, was jointly developed with Microsoft.
"We can perform policy enforcement directly inside BizTalk," said Ian Goldsmith, vice president of product marketing. "Regardless of whether the message is HTTP, SMTP, or EDI, we will see it natively inside BizTalk."
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