October, 2005

BizTalkGurus.com has launched a new BizTalk Community Forum! This is not intended to replace the Microsoft Official Newsgroups. That should always be your first place to turn to for technical questions. But, if you are looking for a smaller, more relaxed area check it out. No registration is required to vote in polls, view threads, and post to the forum. Registered users can get forum level notifications, topic reply notifications, and create a user profile. Forum categories include: Site and Blog...

With the official launch of Biztalk 2006 just weeks away, I could not help but start thinking about what I would like to see in Biztalk vNext (a.k.a Biztalk 2008 / 2009). It will most likely have support for workflows written using Windows Workflow Foundation or even better it may be built on top of the Windows Workflow Foundation. That is great and all, but it is important not to forget that Biztalk is an integration tool. The support of workflows using Windows Workflow Foundation alone will not...

I tend to see more and more clients using Rule Engines now then I did in the past. So, what can we expect to see different and better in Biztalk 2006? At the BPI Conference two weeks ago we found out some of the new enhanced features that the Business Rules Engine would have in Biztalk 2006. Some of these are: - Ability to be installed without Biztalk - No longer needs to be called inside an Atomic Scope - Document type will try to be auto populated when you add a schema from an existing Biztalk...

Wow. I was in the middle of working on a blog post about message construction and the Business Rules Engine (BRE) in Biztalk 2004. Several other Biztalk Developers and I were talking about this topic at Tech Ed and at the BPI Conference. I looked at Richard's Blog and he posted an excellent post on the exact same topic! At first glance, it looks like the BRE changes an immutable message or does it? The long and short of it is: No : the BRE does not change an immutable message Yes : the Call Rules...

The Biztalk Subscription viewer is an essential tool for analyzing and correcting subscription errors in Biztalk. In Biztalk 2004, the subscription viewer was provided in the SDK. In Biztalk 2006 Beta, the ability to view subscriptions has moved to the Biztalk Administration Console. But, finding it can be tricky for someone new to Biztalk 2006. To view subscriptions in Biztalk 2006: 1. Open the Biztalk Administration Console 2. Click on the Biztalk Group your application is located in (you probably...