Upgrading to WABS - February 2014 SDK

February 20 many new enhancements on Windows Azure were announced. Also Windows Azure BizTalk Services (or WABS) contained a number of improvements and extensions.

New features

Although this article is about the installation of the February 2014 release and migrating your earlier created BizTalk Services, I’ll first summarize the new features of this version of the SDK.

– EDIFACT Protocol Support and X12 Schema Updates

– Pulling Messages from Service Bus Queues and Topics

– Service Bus Shared Access Signatures (SAS) support with Service Bus Queues and Topics

– BizTalk Adapter Services no longer needs SQL on Premise

– Backup and Restore Support

– Operation Log Support

More information about all this and the other Windows Azure enhancements can be found at Scott Guthrie’s blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2014/02/20/azure-expressroute-dedicated-networking-web-site-backup-restore-mobile-services-net-support-hadoop-2-2-and-more.aspx

Download

The installation files can become downloaded from this location:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39087

Besides 32- and 64-bits installers of the SDK, you can also download EDI templates and a zip which contains 2 utilities, namely a BizTalk Map to BizTalk Services Map converter and a tool to migrate your BizTalk 2010 trading partners to BizTalk Services!

Installation

Let’s start the installation by starting WindowsAzureBizTalkServicesSetup-x64.exe.

Accept the license agreement and click Next

Check if all prerequisites are met, select all checkboxes and click Next

As I have already installed the November 2013 SDK, the installer shows which components are already up to date and which components will be upgraded. Click Next to continue.

Navigate to the BizTalk Service in the Windows Azure Management Portal and go to the Access Connection Information dialog.

Part of the installation of this SDK, is the migration of your LoB Relay(s) and LoB Target(s) from your on premise database to your BizTalk Service. Copy the Namespace, Default Issuer and Default Secret of your BizTalk Service and paste them in the Installation Wizard.