Introducing BizTalk Server 2010
No application is an island. Whether we like it or not, tying systems together has become the norm. Yet connecting software is about more than just exchanging bytes. As organizations move toward a service-oriented world, the real goal—creating effective business processes that unite separate systems into a coherent whole—comes within reach.
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010 supports this goal. Like its predecessors, this latest release allows connecting diverse software, then graphically creating and modifying process logic that uses that software. BizTalk Server also enables information workers to monitor running processes, interact with trading partners, and perform other business-oriented tasks.
Key new features in BizTalk Server are:
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Better support for deploying, monitoring, and managing applications
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Significantly simpler installation
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Improved capabilities for Business Activity Monitoring (BAM)
BizTalk Server also uses the latest releases of other Microsoft technologies. It’s built on version 3.5 of the .NET Framework, for example, and the developer tools are hosted in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. For storage, BizTalk Server can use SQL Server 2008 R2, the latest version of Microsoft’s flagship database product. BizTalk Server 2010 can also run on 64-bit Windows Servers, taking advantage of the larger memory and other benefits that this new generation of hardware offers.
What is BizTalk Server?
Combining different systems into effective business processes is a challenging problem. Accordingly, BizTalk Server includes a range of technologies. The figure below illustrates the product’s major components.
As the figure suggests, the heart of the product is the BizTalk Server Engine. The engine has two main parts:
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A messaging component that provides the ability to communicate with a range of other software. By relying on adapters for different kinds of communication, the engine can support a variety of protocols and data formats, including Web services and many others.
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Support for creating and running graphically-defined processes called orchestrations. Built on top of the engine’s messaging components, orchestrations implement the logic that drives all or part of a business process.
Several other BizTalk components can also be used in concert with the engine, including:
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A Business Rule Engine that evaluates complex sets of rules.
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A Group Hub that lets developers and administrators monitor and manage the engine and the orchestrations it runs.
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An Enterprise Single Sign-On (SSO) facility that provides the ability to map authentication information between Windows and non-Windows systems.
On top of this foundation, BizTalk Server includes Business Activity Monitoring, which information workers use to monitor a running business process. The information is displayed in business rather than technical terms, and business users determine what information is displayed.
BizTalk Server and the Challenge of Connecting Diverse Systems
The great majority of modern business processes depend at least in part on software. While some of these processes are supported by a single application, many others rely on diverse software systems. In many cases, this software has been created at different times, on different platforms, and using different technologies. Automating those business processes requires connecting diverse systems.
Addressing this challenge goes by various names: business process automation (BPA), business process management (BPM), and others. Regardless of the name, two scenarios are most important for application integration. One is connecting applications within a single organization, commonly referred to as enterprise application integration (EAI). The other, called business-to-business (B2B) integration, connects applications in different organizations.
The figure below shows a simple example of the core BizTalk Server engine applied to an EAI problem. In this scenario, an inventory application, perhaps running on an IBM mainframe, notices that the stock of an item is low and so issues a request to order more of that item. This request is sent to a BizTalk Server orchestration (step 1), which then issues a request to this organization’s ERP application requesting a purchase order (step 2). The ERP application, which might be running on a Unix system, sends back the requested PO (step 3), and the BizTalk Server orchestration then informs a fulfillment application, perhaps built on Windows using the .NET Framework, that the item should be ordered (step 4).
In this example, each application communicates using a different protocol. Accordingly, the messaging component of the BizTalk Server engine must be able to talk with each application in its native communication style. Also, notice that no single application is aware of the complete business process. The intelligence required to coordinate all of the software involved is implemented in the BizTalk Server orchestration.
Connecting applications within an organization is important, but connecting applications that span organizations can have at least as much value. The figure below shows a simple example of this kind of business-to-business integration. In this case, the purchasing organization at the top of the figure runs a BizTalk Server orchestration that interacts with two supplier organizations. Supplier A also uses BizTalk Server, providing indirect access to its Supply application. Supplier B uses an integration platform from another vendor, connecting to the purchasing organization’s BizTalk Server orchestration using, say, Web services.
See Also
Technology driven products and services improve core operations and customer services in a small business enterprise as the Internet proves to be a strategic tool for easy networking, enhanced customer support, procurement supply chain management and productive communication.
BizTalk Server is a strategic tool that deploys the infrastructure provided by the Internet for easy networking, enhanced customer support, supply chain management, productive communication and other e-business applications.
Information technology does improve speed, accessibility and timeliness of the already existing information, but, in order to create new information and use the existing information in newer and more innovative ways there is a need for the appropriate tools that are able to evaluate information in novel ways. BizTalk Server is one such tool. Calling it a mere tool would be an understatement! In this article we will explain this new software keeping in mind the benefits that a small and medium enterprise (SME) can gain by deploying it effectively. business implementers, Web Service Developers, business analysts, technology planners, project managers, application designers and executives would find BizTalk Server workable software. It empowers you to use the infrastructure provided and build successful e-commerce communities.
To fully appreciate what this next generation software is all about, let us maunder for a moment and discuss the powerhouse of markup languages - XML. Exchanging information and data over the Internet can become complex and burdensome, more so, when applications from different companies are written in special unique formats that are difficult to exchange. A lack of a single "technical vocabulary" for describing business data and processes can result in fragile inter-connectivity thereby motivating the need for a meta language like XML that specifies a common code/meaning of all the data that can be exchanged world wide.
Organizations, applications and individuals can communicate far more effectively if they agree on the structure and meaning of information. XML was specifically designed to facilitate such communication and BizTalk Server provides a solid foundation necessary to wield XML as a strategic tool. Now, before you draw your own conclusions, let me clarify that you don't need to understand XML in order to implement BizTalk Server. A simple knowledge of HTML and relational databases, and a little effort in understanding the product enables easy data integration, workflow and knowledge management.
Microsoft built BizTalk Server as a part of their enterprise application integration in the .NET server family (www.microsoft.com) that constitutes a suite of tools and services like management, administration, mapping and tracking.
It includes the following:
- BizTalk Server Orchestration Designer: A design tool that enables business analysts, developers and IT professionals to interact on a common platform.
- BizTalk Editor: Creates and edits XML documents.
- BizTalk Mapper: Transforms one XML document into another XML schema.(Schemas are different ways that an XML document can be structured and predefined in order to simplify data exchange).
- BizTalk Messaging Manger: Allows the exchange of information and applications with minimal programming.
- BizTalk Framework: Enables routing, tracking and analyzing sent and received data.
- BizTalk Administration Tool: Allows end-to-end integration and easy online analytical processing of user-specific information.
- Pipeline Editor: Tracks documet processing from start to finish.
With the BizTalk Server you can do the following:
- Simplify data exchange - without editing or understanding XML you can create impressive documents and modify them using any text editor.
- Document translation, filtering and routing based on content.
- Conduct on-line transactions easily and cheaply along with the delivery of sound and video.
- Integration of typewritten user interface on Web browsers and backend databases thereby orchestrating purchasing and order processing systems.
- Create applications that can mediate between two or more heterogeneous databases and intelligently apply information that is tailor made to individual users.
- Point by point tracking of data thereupon establishing reliability among clients.
- Establish secure communications that support public key encryption, digital signatures and encryption along with multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), seamless links with customers, suppliers and partners. Integrate wholly unrelated functions like human resources and finances.
- 6/10/2011
- Muhammad Farhan-ul-Haq Siddiqui
- 3/13/2012
- eananta
