RE: Blue...you need a hug buddy...Thanks, Jeep...Here's the cut and paste of the relevant section of the 3rdQ issue 1 of BizTalkHot Rod e-mag link. Sirit you'll see is still chummy with Bill! Hugs for everyone!
This summer Microsoft will introduce the next version of BizTalk Server. This release has been called a product refresh by some, however, af-ter looking at all the new features and enhance-ments, it is easy to see that this is more than just a product refresh.
In this article I will talk about a few of the major new enhancements and features. The enhancements include compatibility with Vista as well as Office 2007. The new features include: • Microsoft EDI Solution for BizTalk Microsoft RFID Framework BizTalk Adapter Framework BizTalk Adapters for WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) BizTalk Windows SharePoint Server Adapter (including compatibility with MOSS 2007) .NET Adapter Framework .NET Line-of-business (LOB) Adapters BAM interceptors for WCF and WF
Let’s take a look at these in more depth.
Microsoft EDI Solution for BizTalk
The Microsoft EDI solution for BizTalk provides function-ality previously found with Covast. This solution adds full featured EDI capabilities around X12 and EDIFACT and will ship with over 6000 schemas. The EDI support in BizTalk will include functions around design time, runtime and operations. The runtime features include ACK processing (both single and two phase), envelope accessibility in receive processing as well as character set support. Batching is also supported for both inbound as well as outbound. The batching capabilities are con-figurable and include the ability to batch outbound sets according to a schedule or character/document count. The design time features schema editor extensions to provide processing for TransactionSet and Interchange. There is also a MapText to XSD conversion tool. The operations features include a Partner Agreement Man-ager which will allow you to capture and configure part-
Stephen Kaufman
Microsoft Consulting Services
Principal Consultant
BizTalk 2006 R2 — First Look
ner contact information, runtime information and en-veloping information. There is also an EDI deployment wizard.
The Microsoft EDI solution also includes AS2 support. As part of this support the s/MIME encoding supports 8bit/base64 encoding, RC2/TDES encryption and SHA1/MD5 signing.
The schemas supported are included in the following table
5
Microsoft RFID Framework
The RFID infrastructure in BizTalk 2006 R2 will provide a uniform way to discover, communicate and manage RFID devices on the Windows platform. BizTalk’s RFID capabili-ties include the core components to build applications for inventory tracking, asset tracking and track-and-trace.
BizTalk 2006 R2 will feature a set of API’s and tight integra-tion for third parties to tie RFID hardware and software in the platform. Currently companies are building applications at a layer above the device layer. Burley Kawasaki, Micro-soft BizTalk Server Group Product Manager, was quoted ―we are trying to put in place a generic layer that keeps you slightly buffered from the hardware. It is similar to printer drivers. You don’t need to know or care too much what the printer manufacturers are doing as long as they provide a standard driver that lets you print‖.
Currently Alien Technology Corp, Cactus Commerce, Inter-mec, Paxar Corp, Sirit Inc. and Symbol Technologies have announced interoperability between BizTalk Server 2006 R2 RFID and their readers, tags and software. The goal in part-nering with these companies is to provide for out-of-the-box integration which hasn’t existed within the industry. The use of RFID has been getting more prominent since the cost of tags has been declining. Companies such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, the Department of Defense and many pharmaceutical companies have started to mandate the use of RFID technologies which has brought the technology to the forefront.
BizTalk Adapters for WCF
The BizTalk Adapters for WCF provide the functionality in BizTalk to consume WCF services and expose BizTalk as WCF services. The WCF adapters will have five adapters which have pre-defined bindings. These were selected as the most common bindings and should provide the means to easily connect to your WCF services. These 5 adapter bindings are the BasicHTTPBinding, WsHttpBinding, NetTcpBinding, Net-NamedPipeBinding and the NetMsmqBinding. There are also two additional adapters that provide you the flexibility to configure the behavior and binding information. These 2 adapters are the WCF-Customer Adapter and the WCF-CustomIsolated adapter. The following list provides more specific information on the adapters: • WSHttp adapter: This adapter will provide the WS standards support using the HTTP or HTTPS transport. This adapter allows full access to security, reliability and transaction features. It supports text or Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) encoding BasicHttp adapter: This adapter provides the ability to communicate with ASMX based web services and clients that conform to the WS-I Basic Profile 1.1 standard NetTcp adapter: This adapter provides the WS* stan-dards support over TCP and also has full access to SOAP security, reliability and transaction features. It sup-ports binary encoding and is especially suited for WCF to WCF environments NetMsmq adapter: This adapter provides queued mes-saging support using MSMQ. This adapter support binary
encoding NetNamedPipe adapter: This adapter provides cross process, on-box communications. This adapter supports binary encoding Custom adapter: This adapter provides you the ability to configure the binding and behavior for both send and receive ports CustomIsolated adapter: This adapter also provides you the ability to configure the binding and behavior but does so over the HTTP transport
In addition to these adapters, a new WCF Service Publishing Wizard and WCF Service Consuming Wizard will be included. Just like the old Web Service Wizard that shipped with pre-vious versions, these Wizards will be used to publish orches-trations and schemas as WCF services as well as to consume WCF services and create BizTalk artifacts.
BizTalk Windows SharePoint Server Adapter