Hi folks, BizTalk has some great new features on the horizon and this CTP is jam packed
of new and improved features. I believe the CTP is non-public atm, with MVPs etc.
able to get access (or if you’re on the TAP program)
I’ve got a VM up and running with the setup and config working a treat – I’m not sure
how much I can say, but I’d like to say I’m very pleased with what I’m seeing!
The official feature set blurb goes something like this
Enjoy.
Details
Improved
productivity with new Microsoft Platform support
Customers
can now leverage the latest and greatest platforms, such as Windows Server 2012 RC,
SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 RC. All new BizTalk projects will target .Net
Framework 4.5 RC by default. The CTP also provides support for latest LOB versions
enabling customers to use BizTalk for integrating their applications with the latest
versions of SAP, Oracle and SQL Server. The new adapters provide a seamless experience
to enable hybrid connectivity, all done via configuration. The CTP provides native
support for ACS authentication and is extensible for other authentication mechanisms.
%u00b7 Platform
support
o Windows
Server 2012 RC, Windows Server 2008 R2
o SQL
Server 2012, SQL Server 2008 R2
o Visual
Studio 2012 RC
o Office
2010
o Support
for latest LOB versions
%u00a7 Support
for SQL Server 2012
%u00a7 Support
for SAP 7.2
%u00a7 Support
for Oracle DB 11.2
%u00a7 Support
for Oracle EBS 12.1
%u00b7 Adapters
o WCF-WebHttp
adapter, to consume REST service or expose REST service
o SB-Messaging,
for sending/pulling data from Service Bus Queues/Topics
o WCF-NetTCPRelay,
for hosting relays or sending data to NetTCPRelay end points
o WCF-BasicHttpRelay,
for hosting relays or sending data to BasicHttpRelay end points
Better
B2B with schema updates
EDI
standards evolve and one of the key investments made in this new BizTalk CTP is to
ensure that we support the latest B2B standards natively. This enables you to transact
messages based on the latest versions of EDI protocol.
%u00b7 B2B
enhancements to support latest standards natively
o Support
for X12 5040, 5050, 6020, 6030
o Support
for EDIFACT D06A, D06B, D07A, D07B, D08A, D08B, D09A, D09B, D10A, D10B
o HL7
2.5.1
We
are working on further schema updates such as HL7 2.6, these will be enabled in the
BizTalk 2010 R2 Beta.
Improved
Performance
The
CTP provides performance improvement for certain key scenarios. In case of two way
MLLP adapter scenarios where ordered delivery is set, the tests have revealed up-to
5X performance improvement so far in our environments. We have also made enhancements
in our engine to improve the performance in ordered send port scenarios.
Building
hybrid applications
Today,
there is an increase in the adoption of hybrid application scenarios where some components
of an application run in the cloud and some other components/LOB applications remain
on-premise. It then becomes important to integrate between these components and leverage
the richness of both worlds. In this CTP release, we enable hybrid connectivity by
providing first class support for integrating with Azure Service Bus Queues/Topics/Relays.
We are introducing the following adapters
%u00b7 SB-Messaging,
for sending/pulling data from Service Bus Queues/Topics
%u00b7 WCF-NetTCPRelay,
for hosting relays or sending data to NetTCPRelay end points
%u00b7 WCF-BasicHttpRelay,
for hosting relays or sending data to BasicHttpRelay end points
Integrating
with Azure Service Bus entities is now just a few configurations away!
Integration
with RESTful services
One
of the other prevalent trends in the market today is the proliferation of RESTful
services. Almost all new services, as well a lot of services created previously, have
a REST interface exposed. For example, all services in Windows Azure, data market
place, Salesforce, etc. have support for REST services. With this CTP release, we
are making it really easy for you to integrate RESTful services with BizTalk Server
using the new WCF-WebHttp adapter. All the REST operations like GET, PUT, POST and
DELETE are now supported natively. It gets better. We received community feedback
during and post TechEd conference that there should be a way to expose REST services
as well from BizTalk. We listened to your feedback. Along with consuming REST services
we are also really excited to announce that you now have an early preview to exposing
REST services from BizTalk Server as well in this CTP.
BizTalk
Server in Azure Virtual Machine role
All
the above enhancements are available right away for you to preview with BizTalk Server
in Azure Virtual Machine role. Setting up a new BizTalk Server environment usually
involves long lead time to procure hardware, get the dependencies in place, set up
the server, etc. This means long lead times before you can get started with your new
BizTalk Server environment. We are now leveraging the power of the cloud and the richness
of Windows Azure to provide an experience where you can get up and running with your
BizTalk Server environment in matter of minutes and move your existing applications
to the cloud without making any changes. Furthermore, the CTP provide improvements
to the BizTalk multi machine configuration and now you can do this using some basic
configuration settings with the click of a button in a single machine, without having
to go and configure BizTalk Server Group in each of the individual nodes.
Blog Post by: Mick Badran