This post was originally published here
In the last period, I invested time in something that I think is one of the most important aspect in the integration space, the perception.
During my last events I start introducing this topic and I’m going to add a lot more in the next future.
In Belgium, during the BTUG.be, I shown my point of view about open patterns and in London, during the GIB, I presented how I approach to the technology and how I like to use it, I’ve been surprised by how many people enjoyed my sharing.
The Microsoft stack is full of interesting options, in the on premise and Azure cloud space, people like to understand more about how to combine them and how to use them in the most profitable way.
In my opinion, the perception we have about a technology is the key and not the technology itself and this is not just about the technology but this is something related about everything in our life.
We can learn how to develop using any specific technology stack quite easily but it is more complicate to get the best perception of it.
I like to use my great passion for skateboarding to better explain this concept, a skateboard is one of the most simple object we can find, just a board with 4 wheels and a couple of trucks.
It is amazing seeing how people use the same object in so many different ways, like vert ramps, freestyle, downhill or street and how many different combinations of styles in each discipline and each skater has an own style as well.
Same thing needs to be done for the technology, I normally consider 4 main areas, BizTalk Server, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft .Net or SQL and the main open source stack.
I don’t like to be focused about using a single technology stack and I don’t think is correct using a single technology stack to solve a problem.
For instance, BizTalk Server is an amazing platform full of features and able to cover any type of integration requirement and looking to the BizTalk architecture we can find a lot interesting considerations.
The slide below is a very famous slide used in millions of presentations.
Most of the people look at BizTalk Server as a single box with receive ports, hosts, orchestrations, adapters, pipelines and so on.
When I look to BizTalk Server I see a lot of different technology stacks to use, to combine together and to use with other stacks as well.
I can change any BizTalk Server behaviour and I can completely reinvent the platform as I want, I don’t see real limit on that and same thing with the Microsoft Azure stack.
Microsoft Azure offers thousands of options, the complicate aspect is the perception we have for any of these.
Many times our perception is influenced by the messages we received from the community or the companies, I normally like to approach without considering any specific message, I like to approach to any new technology stack like a kid approach to a new toy, I don’t have any preconception.
Today we face a lot of different challenges and one of the most interesting is the on premise integration.
The internal BizTalk architecture itself is a good guidance to use, we have any main concept like mediation, adaptation, transformation, resilience, tracking and so on.
If we split the architecture in two different on premise areas we open many points of discussion, how to solve a scenario like that today?
Below is the same architecture but using any technology stack available, during the GIB I shown some real cases and sample about that.
I also like to consider event driven integration and in that case GrabCaster is a fantastic option.
My next closets event will be TUGAIT in Portugal, TUGAIT is the most important community event organized in Portugal, last year I had the privilege to be there and it was an amazing experience.
3 days of technical sessions and covering any technology stack, integration, development, database, IT, CRM and more.
Many people attend TUGAIT from any part of the Europe, I strongly recommend to be there, nice event and great experience.
