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 by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

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 technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...

, it provides

enterprise application integration Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the use of software and computer systems' architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications. Overview Enterprise application integration is an integration framework comp ...

business process automation Business process automation (BPA), also known as business automation or digital transformation, is the technology-enabled automation of complex business processes. It can streamline a business for simplicity, achieve digital transformation, increa ...

business-to-business Business-to-business (B2B or, in some countries, BtoB) is a situation where one business makes a commercial transaction with another. This typically occurs when: * A business is sourcing materials for their production process for output (e.g., a ...

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. Mess ...

and

business activity monitoring Business activity monitoring (BAM) is software that aids the monitoring of business activities which are implemented in computer systems. The term was originally coined by analysts at Gartner, Inc. and refers to the aggregation, analysis, and pr ...

. 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. An application server framework is a service layer model. It includes software components available to a ...

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

Gartner Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its clients ...

consider Microsoft's offering one of their 'Leaders' for Application Integration Suites. The latest release of Biztalk (Biztalk Server 2020) was released on 15th of 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) from 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 platfor ...

. 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 discrete unit of communication intended by the source for consumption by some recipient or group of recipients. A message may be delivered by various means, including courier, telegraphy, carrier pigeon and electronic bus. A ...

s inside BizTalk are implemented through the

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

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 constr ...

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, which may subsequ ...

standard. Orchestrations are implemented with the WS-BPEL compatible process language

xLANG The Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL), commonly known as BPEL (Business Process Execution Language), is an OASIS standard executable language for specifying actions within business processes with web services. Process ...

. 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.

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 The Microsoft .NET strategy is a marketing plan that Microsoft followed in the early 2000s. Steve Ballmer described it as the company's "most ambitious undertaking since Internet Strategy Day in 1995". In support of this strategy, between 2000 and ...

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 supp ...

(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) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such a ...

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 Power BI is an interactive data visualization software product developed by Microsoft with a primary focus on business intelligence. It is part of the Microsoft Power Platform. Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors t ...

integration;

Swagger A swagger or swagga is a swaggering gait. Swagger also may refer to: * Swagger or swagman, a transient labourer in Australia and New Zealand * Swagger (software), a specification for defining the interface of a REST web service now known as Open ...

-compatible REST APIs) *2017-11-21 BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 2 (

Azure Azure may refer to: Colour * Azure (color), a hue of blue ** Azure (heraldry) ** Shades of azure, shades and variations Arts and media * ''Azure'' (Art Farmer and Fritz Pauer album), 1987 * Azure (Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell album), 2013 ...

integration) *2018-06-26 BizTalk Server 2016 Feature Pack 3 (

Office 365 Microsoft 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 formerly marketed under the name M ...

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 ac ...

(LOB) applications (Siebel,

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a separ ...

, 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 IBM ...

, Oracle,

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales is a customer relationship management software package developed by Microsoft. The current version is Dynamics 365. The name and licensing changed with the update from Dynamics 2016. Release History Microsoft C ...

), databases (

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ...

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

and

IBM Db2 Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and ...

) and other Technologies (

TIBCO TIBCO Software Inc. is an American business intelligence software company founded in 1997 in Palo Alto, California. It has headquarters in Palo Alto, California, and offices in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South ...

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 Health Level Seven or HL7 refers to a set of international standards for transfer of clinical and administrative data between software applications used by various healthcare providers. These standards focus on the application layer, which is "la ...

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, 199 ...

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 * SWIFT, ...

. *

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 re ...

(BRE). This is a

Rete algorithm The Rete algorithm ( , , rarely , ) is a pattern matching algorithm for implementing rule-based systems. The algorithm was developed to efficiently apply many rules or patterns to many objects, or facts, in a knowledge base. It is used to deter ...

rule engine. *

Business activity monitoring Business activity monitoring (BAM) is software that aids the monitoring of business activities which are implemented in computer systems. The term was originally coined by analysts at Gartner, Inc. and refers to the aggregation, analysis, and pr ...

(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 (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 web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft Office. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and its usage v ...

to allow interaction with a user participating in a workflow process. * Extensive support for web services (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, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromag ...

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 web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft Office. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and its usage v ...

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) is the process of translating a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored (e.g. files in secondary storage devices, data buffers in primary storage devices) or transmitted (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: electronic data interchange, file,

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 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, w ...

, 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 data ...

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 typica ...

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. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common ...

SOAP Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are used ...

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

Microsoft SharePoint Server SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft Office. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and its usage v ...

IBM mainframe IBM mainframes are large computer systems produced by IBM since 1952. During the 1960s and 1970s, IBM dominated the large computer market. Current mainframe computers in IBM's line of business computers are developments of the basic design of th ...

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 now includes the newest mod ...

(

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

and

IMS Ims is a Norwegian surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Gry Tofte Ims (born 1986), Norwegian footballer * Rolf Anker Ims (born 1958), Norwegian ecologist See also * IMS (disambiguation) Ims is a Norwegian surname. Notable people wit ...

) 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 ...

(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-cos ...

) systems,

, 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 ''IB ...

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

and Oracle database,

Oracle E-Business Suite Oracle Applications comprise the applications software or business software of the Oracle Corporation both in the cloud and on-premises. The term refers to the non-database and non-middleware parts. The suite of applications includes enterprise res ...

, Microsoft SQL Server,

MySQL MySQL () is an 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 relational database or ...

, PeopleSoft Enterprise and

Siebel Systems Siebel Systems, Inc. () was a software company principally engaged in the design, development, marketing, and support of customer relationship management (CRM) applications—notably Siebel CRM. The company was founded by Thomas Siebel and Pat ...

. 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)