BizTalk Accelerators

BizTalk Server Accelerators speed up the implementation of solutions. Microsoft provides accelerators for SWIFT and RosettaNet among others.

BizTalk Adapters

Because BizTalk Server needs to communicate with a variety of other software, it relies on the BizTalk Adapters to make this possible. An adapter is an implementation of a communication mechanism, such as a particular protocol. All the adapters are built on a standard base called the Adapter Framework.

BizTalk server is supplied with more than 20 adapters. These include adapters for BASE EDI (EDIFACT and X.12), files, FTP, HTTP, MSMQ/MSMQT, POP3, SMTP, SOAP, Websphere MQ, SharePoint Services, WSE, SQL Server, Oracle Database, TIBCO, SAP R/3 (Version 4.x and 6.20), Siebel, and PeopleSoft.

If other adapters are needed, they can be developed individually or acquired from third-party suppliers.

BRE

The BizTalk Rules Engine enables the creation of policies consisting of individual rules. The BRE can evaluate documents on the basis of specified rules, and apply the actions defined in the rules to the documents. The policies can be called from orchestrations. However, policies can also be used by any application that the BRE has an appropriate API for.

BizTalk Server Engine

The BizTalk Server Engine is the heart of the product. It consists of two main components:

Business Activity Monitoring

BizTalk makes it possible to implement business processes by connecting several systems together. The users of these business processes need to be able to find out the status of the processes. In order to provide users with an accurate picture of the current status of one or more processes, the Business Activity Monitoring modules collect permanent data from running processes, and store it in a database.

Infopath

Infopath is a Windows application program that enables XML-based forms to be designed and filled with information. The proprietary, XML-based file format of the Infopath files takes a similar approach to the W3C XForms standard to represent form fields and control elements of data instances in XML format.

The main target group consists of organizations with homogeneous work environments that need to be able to integrate forms into workflows.

Orchestration Designer for Business Analysts

Orchestration Designer for Business Analyst is a tool that enables business analysts to create orchestration data flows in the familiar Microsoft Visio environment. The complex flows can then be exported to the orchestration designer and used by developers to implement the orchestrations.

SharePoint Server

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is an extension of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).

Among other things, it offers more features for workflows, business intelligence, searches, and managing large web sites.

SharePoint Services

The purpose of WSSs is to optimize the cooperation between users within one web user interface. The fundamental structure of Windows SharePoint Services ensures that the cooperation between the people involved is integrative and subject based.

WSS is a free add-on to Windows Server and includes templates for creating document libraries, blogs, wikis, and meeting workspaces.

WSS also offers a workflow environment, which enables the publishing process for a document, or the authorization of vacation requests, for example, to be represented (support for human workflows).

StreamInsight

Microsoft StreamInsight is a solution for building applications to filter, correlate, and process events in real-time so that downstream applications, service-oriented architectures, and event-driven architectures are driven by true, real-time intelligence.

StreamInsight was planned to be a part of the Microsoft SQL Server product, but it is technically independent. StreamInsight has a .NET-based API. Developers implement input and output adapters as .NET classes that can connect to any kind of data producers or consumers of event streams. Filtering, aggregation, and correlation of event streams are formulated LINQ queries that are run by the StreamInsight engine.

Enterprise Single Sign On

When systems from different manufacturers are integrated, the user names and passwords that allow access to these systems must be made available. On the one hand, the information must be treated as strictly confidential (encrypted storage), while on the other hand, a mechanism is needed to assign Windows accounts to user accounts on backend systems.

From version 3.0 of .NET onwards, Microsoft has supplied CardSpace, a token-based identity metasystem, which uses standardized WS-* protocols, such as WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-MetadataExchange, and WS-SecurityPolicy. CardSpace can be integrated with any product that supports these protocols.

Entity Framework

The Entity Framework is Microsoft's O/R mapper, which was introduced together with SQL Server 2008. Entity Framework maps database and domain models using XML files.

The Entity Framework offers an open provider model, and database manufacturers such as IBM and Oracle have already announced their own providers.

It works as an LINQ provider that allows .NET developers to formulate queries in the Language integrated Query (LINQ) syntax that has been introduced with .NET version 3.5.

OData and WCF Data Services

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a highly interoperable "RESTful" Web protocol for querying and updating data. OData builds upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub), and JSON. OData is released under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise that allows anyone to freely use and implement OData.

WCF Data Services allow for an easy implementation of an OData data service based on .NET (3.5 SP1 and 4.0) and the Entity Framework.

With IBM's WebSphere eXtreme Scale REST data service, there is already a non-Microsoft implementation of OData.

Trivadis TMDA

Trivadis Managed Data Access is a generator, that enables a data access layer with the accompanying dataset and filter classes to be created on the basis of an existing database schema and configuration file. However, TMDA also has a class library (the actual data access layer) that provides powerful functions for programming database accesses.

WCF

Windows Communication Foundation combines the remoting, Microsoft Message Queues (MSMQ), DCOM, and web services communications technologies within one newly developed, standardized API. It also incorporates additional web services protocols, such as WS-Security and WS-Transactions, which previously had to be installed separately as Web Services Enhancements (WSE). In addition, WCF integrates distributed transactions with COM+.

The philosophy behind WCF is frequently summarized as ABC or address, binding, and contract.

WF

Workflow Foundation is the workflow engine of BizTalk. It enables sequential or state-driven workflows to be defined, and business rules to be tested. In this case, the implementation of the rule manager is equivalent to the instantiation of the policy activity of Workflow Foundation. Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is part of .NET 3.0.