posted on Wednesday, July 05, 2006 2:04 PM
by
jritmeijer
Biztalk 2006 - Day 1 - Getting started
Read all articles in this series
No application is an island. Whether we like it or not, tying systems together has become the norm. Yet connecting software is about more than just exchanging bytes. As organizations move toward a service-oriented world, the real goal—creating effective business processes that unite separate systems into a coherent whole—comes within reach... According to the first paragraph of Microsoft's whitepaper
Understanding Biztalk 2006.
Ever since I first saw it introduced during a TechEd 2000 session in Florida, I thought it was an interesting product with great potential. However, it was clearly not quite there yet. The last time I did anything serious with Biztalk was for a POS integration project using an extremely buggy beta version of the 2004 version, which was such a bad experience that I rewrote the functionality as a Windows Service, which was good enough for that particular project.
However, other than Windows Media Centre, most version 1.0 or 2.0 Microsoft products are rarely any good. Microsoft does not give up easily and with version 2006 it finally seems that they have created a great and mature product.
Over the next few weeks I will author a number of articles about how to get started with Biztalk 2006. As always, we start with the basics:
- Login to MSDN - you are a subscriber, right - and download Biztalk 2006 in your favourite language. It is a 450MB download.
- Read the previously mentioned Understanding Biztalk 2006 whitepaper. It is 33 pages and a good read.
- Before installing Biztalk on your own system, follow a 30 minutes Virtual Lab for a high level overview. This lab is hosted on a server at Microsoft and does not require you to install anything other than a simple ActiveX control.