BTS 2006

That's very good news. I blogged about my frustration with the BizTalk 2004 setup issue last year also (http://www.unboxedsolutions.com/sean/archive/2004/08/07/288.aspx). It kinda reminded me of trying to get a java development machine set up compared to Visual Studio. :-)

And I'm having exactly the opposite experience, working from the same base VPC image on which I've done a variety of BizTalk 2K4 installs. Installs the prerequisites no problem, but a variety of fascinating errors ensue at actual configuration time. Cooling off, will try again on Monday and hope I don't have to do a complete fresh VPC build to make this work.

Great to hear, my experiences have been identical to your description above. I look forward to checking it out .

Our man Don Box recounts his experience with installing BizTalk Server 2006 and likes what he sees....

I am glad that they revised the installation for BTS 2006. Installing and configuring BTS 2004 was a pain in the neck.

Ho appena letto questo post di Don Box che elogia il prossimo BizTalk 2006: il particolare su cui...

Hi Don,

You might remember I sent you an email after you write that blog...asking why you did not just say it was BizTalk.

Unlike you I persisted for about 2 weeks...but ended up giving up in frustration. The product really felt like a V1 product (which I suppose it was given it was completely rebuilt in .NET).

I not only had completely different problems installing it on different boxes (Domain Controller, Web Server, etc), but I also got unpredictable timeouts when trying to run some of the code...on quite a grunty box.

At that point I said to myself "This product will be good...Just not yet", and decided to wait for the next version.

Unlike you I was so badly burned that I am going to wait until the final RTM version...I am not even going to look at the betas; but I am sure the team has done a great job fixing the rough edges of the first version...

We're using Biztalk for an internal project (it's a rewrite of a build/test system that VSTS isn't quite suited for).
The install of 2004 sucks. The documentation pretty much sucks, and the error messsages it spits out are oblique to say the least.

I've been hearing good things about 2006 so I guess it's time to stick on a box somewhere and check it out.
Now, if we could fix the sharepoint/asp.net on a common website life would be much better (ever tried publishing an orchestration as a web service in that configuration?!)

Seven hours one saturday from an unformatted Hard disk to an install of Windows, SQL, MS Office, VS2003, Loads of Prerequisites and SDKs and finally BIZTALK 2004 ! A few hickups, but it went reasonably well for me. I think the record is about 5 hours :)

Anyway I am rather intrigued by BIZTALK, for Orchestrating Web Services and hopefully Operator and System Workflows. I am looking forward to BIZTALK 2006 being more integrated. Setting up Adapters in BTS 2004 seemed like a lot of work, with a lot of field typing in and the Business Rules wizard did not seem integrated, and I could not get to work.

Hopefully one day we will get a lightweight BIZTALK option :)

Jules

That's interesting. What would you like to use a lightweight BizTalk for? What should be there and what would you be ready to discard?

Lots of things are going on as always:
1. We completed the "Microsoft position on ESB" document....

Well as developer community we will soon be decomposing monolith Applications and Systems into a collection of exposed Services. Then we have the opportunity to 'BITALK' the solution, such the the end customer (or their adminstrators) who own and understand the business process, can change their solution in BIZTALK, without having to come back to us developers.

But BIZTALK seems very heavyweight (and expensive) cos it is doing such a lot, and infrastructure dependencies. Basiaclly it would be nice to have just a lightweight Graphical front end (similar to BIZTALK) to a Workflow/Orchestration engine for exposed WS Services.

I guess this desire soon gets extended to support Indigo Services in general, and then I would like SQL (ODBC) database updates/triggers, and XML file drops/creations. Oh and then Transactions. So do I then really end up with the whole of BIZTALK ? Its just so big and expensive for an orchestration of four or five services.

I can imagine a market for such a lightweight product. Certainly I coud imagine it becomming non commercial student project or an open source product, even if Microsoft don't take up the opportunity. BIZTALK's little brother.

Jules

I see, thanks! It's nice to hear a voice for greater modularity of the product. And, yes, once you add everything you listed, you get pretty much the whole BizTalk again :-)

It is very encouraging to see the posts on new BT 2006 Installation.

I read about the changes in Admin tool as well as the split of some of basic tracking functions from HAT to admin.I am really interested more in learning these features.

Jules,

Dharma and I are going to show more or less what you're asking for at our PDC talk, all based on W*F (a.k.a. free) technologies + SQL.

DB

Recently, some prominent people have started (or, most likely, are just now talking about it) about BizTalk Server, some in...

nice to hear that.

There is a need for business integration as even in our country the global trend of business integration...

interesting blog of yours. keep it up.

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