Development status Active | ||
Initial release 19 December 2000; 16 years ago (2000-12-19) Stable release 2016 / 1 December 2016; 3 months ago (2016-12-01) Operating system | ||
Microsoft BizTalk Server (or simply "BizTalk") is an Inter-Organizational Middleware System (IOMS) that enables companies to automate business processes, through the use of adapters which are tailored to communicate with different software systems used in an enterprise. Created by Microsoft, it provides enterprise application integration, business process automation, business-to-business communication, message broker and business activity monitoring.
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BizTalk Server was previously positioned as both an application server and an application integration server. Microsoft changed this strategy when they released the AppFabric server which became their official application server. Research firm Gartner consider Microsoft's offering one of their 'Leaders' for Application Integration Suites. While there is discussion of the product direction of BizTalk, especially with cloud software becoming more common, Microsoft continues to support and update the product and offer coverage at their popular conferences such as Worldwide Partner Conference.
In a common scenario, BizTalk enables companies to integrate and manage automated business processes by exchanging business documents such as purchase orders and invoices between disparate applications, within or across organizational boundaries.
Development for BizTalk Server is done through Microsoft Visual Studio. A developer can create transformation maps transforming one message type to another. (For example, an XML file can be transformed to SAP IDocs.) Messages inside BizTalk are implemented through the XML documents and defined with the XML schemas in XSD standard. Maps are implemented with the XSLT standard. Orchestrations are implemented with the WS-BPEL compatible process language xLANG. Schemas, maps, pipelines and orchestrations are created visually using graphical tools within Microsoft Visual Studio. The additional functionality can be delivered by .NET assemblies that can be called from existing modules—including, for instance, orchestrations, maps, pipelines, business rules.
History
Starting in 2000, the following versions were released:
Features
The following is an incomplete list of the technical features in the BizTalk Server:
Human-centric processes cannot be implemented directly with BizTalk Server and need additional applications like Microsoft SharePoint server.
Architecture
The BizTalk Server runtime is built on a publish/subscribe architecture, sometimes called "content-based publish/subscribe". Messages are published into BizTalk,transformed to the desired format, and then routed to one or more subscribers.
BizTalk makes processing safe by serialization (called dehydration in Biztalk's terminology) - placing messages into a database while waiting for external events, thus preventing data loss. This architecture binds BizTalk with Microsoft SQL Server. Processing flow can be tracked by administrators using an Administration Console. BizTalk supports the transaction flow through the whole line from one customer to another. BizTalk orchestrations also implement long-running transactions.
Adapters
BizTalk uses adapters for communications with different protocols, message formats, and specific software products. Some of the adapters are: EDI, File, HTTP, SFTP, FTP SMTP, POP3, SOAP, SQL, MSMQ, MLLP, Microsoft SharePoint Server, IBM mainframe zSeries (CICS and IMS) and midrange iSeries (AS/400) server, IBM DB2, IBM WebSphere MQ adapters.
The WCF Adapter set was added with 2006 R2. It includes: WCF-WSHttp, WCF-BasicHttp, WCF-NetTcp, WCF-NetMsmq, WCF-NetNamedPipe, WCF-Custom, WCF-CustomIsolated adapters. Microsoft also ships a BizTalk Adapter Pack that includes WCF-based adapters for LOB systems. Currently, this includes adapters for SAP and Oracle database, Oracle E-Business Suite, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel Systems.
Additional adapters (for Active Directory, for example) are available from third party Microsoft BizTalk core partners.
Alternatives
The main competitors are: