Microsoft BizTalk Server is an inter-organizational middleware system (IOMS) that automates

business process A business process, business method, or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks performed by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (that serves a particular business g ...

es through the use of ''adapters'' which are tailored to communicate with different software systems used in an enterprise. Created by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, it provides enterprise application integration, business process automation,

business-to-business Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) refers to trade and commercial activity where a business sees other businesses as its customer base. This typically occurs when: * A business sources materials for its production process for ...

communication,

message broker A message broker (also known as an integration broker or interface engine) is an intermediary computer program module that translates a message from the formal messaging protocol of the sender to the formal messaging protocol of the receiver. Mes ...

and business activity monitoring. BizTalk Server was previously positioned as both an

application server An application server is a server that hosts applications or software that delivers a business application through a communication protocol. For a typical web application, the application server sits behind the web servers. An application ser ...

and an . Microsoft changed this strategy when they released the AppFabric server which became their official application server. Research firm

Gartner Gartner, Inc. is an American research and advisory firm focusing on business and technology topics. Gartner provides its products and services through research reports, conferences, and consulting. Its clients include large corporations, gover ...

consider Microsoft's offering one of their 'Leaders' for Application Integration Suites. The latest release of Biztalk (Biztalk Server 2020) was released on 15 January 2020. In a common scenario, BizTalk integrates before going out and manages 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 Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms ...

. A developer can create transformation maps transforming one message type to another. For example, an XML file can be transformed to SAP IDocs.

Message A message is a unit of communication that conveys information from a sender to a receiver. It can be transmitted through various forms, such as spoken or written words, signals, or electronic data, and can range from simple instructions to co ...

s inside BizTalk are implemented through the

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

documents and defined with the

XML schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constrai ...

s in

XSD XSD (XML Schema Definition), a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), specifies how to formally describe the elements in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document. It can be used by programmers to verify each piece of item cont ...

standard. Maps are implemented with the

XSLT XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text, or XSL Formatting Objects. These formats c ...

standard. Orchestrations are implemented with the WS-BPEL compatible process language xLANG. Schemas, maps,

pipelines A pipeline is a system of pipes for long-distance transportation of a liquid or gas, typically to a market area for consumption. The latest data from 2014 gives a total of slightly less than of pipeline in 120 countries around the world. The Un ...

and orchestrations are created visually using graphical tools within Microsoft Visual Studio. The additional functionality can be delivered by

.NET The .NET platform (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a free and open-source, managed code, managed computer software framework for Microsoft Windows, Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft emplo ...

assemblies that can be called from existing modules—including, for instance, orchestrations, maps, pipelines, business rules.

Version history

Starting in 2000, the following versions were released: * 2000-12-01 BizTalk Server 2000 * 2002-02-04 BizTalk Server 2002 * 2004-03-02 BizTalk Server 2004 (First version to run on Microsoft .NET 1.0) * 2006-03-27 BizTalk Server 2006 (First version to run on Microsoft .NET 2.0) * 2007-10-02 BizTalk Server 2006 R2 (First version to utilize the new

Windows Communication Foundation The Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), previously known as Indigo, is a free and open-source runtime and a set of APIs in the .NET Framework for building connected, service-oriented applications. .NET Core 1.0, released 2016, did not s ...

(WCF) via native adapter – (Release date 2 October 2007)) * 2010-04-27 BizTalk Server 2009 (First version to work with

Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including web site, websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development ...

2008) * 2010-10-01 BizTalk Server 2010 (First version to work with Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft .NET 4.0) * 2013-03-21 BizTalk 2013 (First version to work with

2012 and Microsoft .NET 4.5) * 2014-06-23 BizTalk 2013 R2 (First version to work with

2013 and Microsoft .NET 4.5.1) * 2016-09-30 BizTalk Server 2016 * 2017-04-26 BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 1 (Application Insights and Power BI integration; Swagger-compatible REST Management APIs) *2017-11-21 BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2 ( Azure integration) *2018-06-26 BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 3 (

Office 365 Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs form ...

integration) *2020-01-15 BizTalk Server 2020 (First version to work with Visual Studio 2019 and Microsoft .NET 4.7)

Features

The following is an incomplete list of the technical features in the BizTalk Server: * The use of adapters to simplify integration to

line of business Line of business (LOB) is a general term which refers to a product or a set of related products that serve a particular customer transaction or business need. In some industry sectors, like insurance, "line of business" also has a regulatory and a ...

(LOB) applications (Siebel, SAP, IFS Applications,

JD Edwards J.D. Edwards World Solution Company or JD Edwards, abbreviated JDE, was an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software company, whose namesake ERP system is still sold under ownership by Oracle Corporation. JDE's products included ''World'' for ...

, Oracle,

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a set of enterprise accounting and sales software products offered by Microsoft. Its flagship product, Dynamics GP, was founded in 1981. Applications Microsoft Dynamics is largely made up of products developed by co ...

), databases (

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a proprietary relational database management system developed by Microsoft using Structured Query Language (SQL, often pronounced "sequel"). As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of ...

Oracle Database Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a proprietary multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation. It is a database commonly used for ru ...

and IBM Db2) and other Technologies ( TIBCO and

Java EE Jakarta EE, formerly Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), is a set of specifications, extending Java SE with specifications for enterprise features such as distributed computing and web serv ...

) * Accelerators offer support for enterprise standards like

RosettaNet RosettaNet is a non-profit consortium aimed at establishing standard processes for the sharing of business information ( B2B). RosettaNet is a consortium of major Computer and Consumer Electronics, Electronic Components, Semiconductor Manufacturing ...

, HL7,

HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, ...

and

SWIFT Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIF ...

. *

Business rules engine A business rules engine is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. The rules might come from legal regulation ("An employee can be fired for any reason or no reason but not for an illegal r ...

(BRE). This is a Rete algorithm rule engine. * Business activity monitoring (BAM), which allows a dashboard, aggregated ( PivotTable) view on how the Business Processes are doing and how messages are processed. * A unified administration console for deployment, monitoring and operations of solutions on BizTalk servers in environment. * Built-in

electronic data interchange Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the concept of businesses electronically communicating information that was traditionally communicated on paper, such as purchase orders, advance ship notices, and invoices. Technical standards for EDI exist to ...

(EDI) functionality supporting X12 and

EDIFACT United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT) is an international standard for electronic data interchange (EDI) developed for the United Nations and approved and published by UNECE, the UN Econ ...

, as of BizTalk 2006 R2. * Ability to do graphical modelling of business processes in Visual Studio, model documents with XML schemas, graphically mapping (with the assistance of functoids) between different schemas, and building pipelines to decrypt, verify, parse messages as they enter or exit the system via adapters. * Users can automate business management processes via Orchestrations. * BizTalk integrates with other Microsoft products like Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft SQL Server, and

SharePoint SharePoint is a collection of enterprise content management and knowledge management tools developed by Microsoft. Launched in 2001, it was initially bundled with Windows Server as Windows SharePoint Server, then renamed to Microsoft Office ...

to allow interaction with a user participating in a workflow process. * Extensive support for

web service A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

s (consuming and exposing) *

RFID Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder called a tag, a radio receiver, and a transmitter. When tri ...

support, as of BizTalk 2006 R2. Deprecated in the 2016 release * Support for Application Insight, as of BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 1 * Automatic deployment through Visual Studio Team Service, as of BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 1 * Exposed management REST APIs with full Swagger support, as of BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 1 * Exposed operational data with Power BI support, as of BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 1 Human-centric processes cannot be implemented directly with BizTalk Server and need additional applications like

Microsoft SharePoint SharePoint is a collection of enterprise content management and knowledge management tools developed by Microsoft. Launched in 2001, it was initially bundled with Windows Server as Windows SharePoint Server, then renamed to Microsoft Office S ...

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 In computing, serialization (or serialisation, also referred to as pickling in Python (programming language), Python) is the process of translating a data structure or object (computer science), object state into a format that can be stored (e. ...

(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 transaction Long-running transactions (also known as the saga interaction pattern) are computer database transactions that avoid locks on non-local resources, use compensation to handle failures, potentially aggregate smaller ACID transactions (also referred ...

Adapters

BizTalk uses adapters for communications with different protocols, message formats, and specific software products. Some of the adapters are:

, file,

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

, SFTP,

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typi ...

POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, i ...

SOAP Soap is a salt (chemistry), salt of a fatty acid (sometimes other carboxylic acids) used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually u ...

SQL Structured Query Language (SQL) (pronounced ''S-Q-L''; or alternatively as "sequel") is a domain-specific language used to manage data, especially in a relational database management system (RDBMS). It is particularly useful in handling s ...

, MSMQ, MLLP, Azure Logic App, Azure API Management,

Microsoft SharePoint Server SharePoint is a collection of enterprise content management and knowledge management tools developed by Microsoft. Launched in 2001, it was initially bundled with Windows Server as Windows SharePoint Server, then renamed to Microsoft Office Sh ...

IBM mainframe IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM since 1952. During the 1960s and 1970s, IBM dominated the computer market with the 7000 series and the later System/360, followed by the System/370. Current mainframe computers in IBM' ...

zSeries IBM Z is a family name used by IBM for all of its z/Architecture mainframe computers. In July 2017, with another generation of products, the official family was changed to IBM Z from IBM z Systems; the IBM Z family will soon include the newes ...

(

CICS IBM CICS (Customer Information Control System) is a family of mixed-language application servers that provide online business transaction management, transaction management and connectivity for applications on IBM mainframe systems under z/OS ...

and IMS) and midrange

IBM i IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS in 2 ...

(previously

AS/400 The IBM AS/400 (Application System/400) is a family of midrange computers from IBM announced in June 1988 and released in August 1988. It was the successor to the System/36 and System/38 platforms, and ran the OS/400 operating system. Lower-cost ...

) systems, IBM Db2, IBM

WebSphere MQ IBM MQ is a family of message-oriented middleware products that IBM launched in December 1993. It was originally called MQSeries, and was renamed ''WebSphere MQ'' in 2002 to join the suite of WebSphere products. In April 2014, it was renamed ''IBM ...

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
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 MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

, PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel Systems. Additional adapters (for Active Directory, for example) are available from third party Microsoft BizTalk core partners.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Microsoft Biztalk Server 2000 software Enterprise application integration Message-oriented middleware Microsoft server software, BizTalk Server Middleware Proprietary software Service-oriented (business computing)