Azure Thoughts, EAI Challenges

About two and a half years ago I wrote a post on the TechNet Wiki blog about the BizTalk Server activity on the TechNet Wiki. Back then we (the TechNet Wiki ) had about 40 articles on BizTalk Server. Summarized and accessible through the BizTalk Server resources on the TechNet Wiki article that I reckon by now everyone has bookmarked in their browser. Going forward the TechNet Wiki has seen a tremendous grow of articles and increase in contributors ranging from MVP's, Microsoft employees and BizTalk community members. Besides the increase in content a new version of BizTalk Server (2013) has been released and it's cloud counterpart Microsoft Azure BizTalk Services (before known as Windows Azure BizTalk Services ). The best entry point is, no surprise there: Windows Azure BizTalk Services resources on the TechNet Wiki . Now let's jump into the numbers. End of 2011 around 40 BizTalk articles. Now almost two and half years later around 140 article common to all BizTalk...

The BizTalk Service in Windows Azure can be managed through a REST API. The API provides programmatic access to much of the functionality available through the Management Portal. With the REST API for managing BizTalk Services you can perform the following operations: Register BizTalk Service Create or Update a BizTalk Service Get Cloud Service Get Cloud Services Get BizTalk Service Properties Suspend BizTalk Service Resume BizTalk Service Restart BizTalk Service Poll on an Async Operation on BizTalk Service Sync Access Control Keys Delete BizTalk Service Backup BizTalk Service Restore Azure BizTalk Service from Backup In this post I like to show how you can leverage the REST API to manage BizTalk Service by means of a windows form application. Security To send request messages through the operations of the API you will need to have authentication in place. The REST API like the Windows Azure Service Management API uses mutual authentication of manageme...

Windows Azure BizTalk Services was released November 2013 and now within six months’ time there is a book about available. It has been written by Karthik Bharathy a Lead Program Manager in the BizTalk product group and longtime BizTalk veteran and Microsoft Integration MVP Jon Fancey . I have had the pleasure of being one the technical reviewers of this book and I must say the authors have done an excellent job. Is this a biased opinion. No, because: I have been working extensively with WABS and its predecessors EAI/Labs (beta). So I was able to put the thumbscrews on both of them, which resulted in valuable feedback for the book of the Microsoft BizTalk Product Group involvement, and they are very committed to it, Scott Guthrie endorses it and wrote a forward. WABS provides EAI or B2B services through the cloud and both are covered in the book. It is a promising technology with the increase demand for integration. The landscape we know today has changed with the rise of the...

Windows Azure BizTalk Services (WABS) provides capabilities for EAI and B2B in the cloud. This relative new service was made available for customers in November 2013. WABS is a cloud integration platform or integration platform as a service or IPaaS . Characteristic of IPAAS is that you build your integration on premise, deploy in the cloud, where it is hosted in a service (set of dedicated hardware). The service is offered through a subscription model for operating the service in the cloud (for BizTalk Services this means Windows Azure hence the name Windows Azure BizTalk Services). Currently there are quite some players offering that service like Dell, Attunity, MuleSoft, TIBCO, and so on. Microsoft is currently pushing the service hard to catch up with some of these players and try to quicken/hasten the maturity of the product. Therefore, Microsoft has committed to have a release cadence for new features every three months. The recent release was in February 2014, which added new ...

Windows Azure BizTalk Services (WABS) is general since November 2013 as a service within Windows Azure. Recently it has been enhanced with new features like backup/restore . This new service in Windows Azure is meant to provide EAI or B2B services through the cloud. The EAI Service enables you to exchange data through different protocols and transform it to and from different formats. Similar to what the on premise BizTalk offers through mapping and routing. The B2B services offer Businesses to exchange data between their partners. You can view it as a new way of EDI data exchange other than a value added network (VAN). During provisioning of a BizTalk Service you need to specify tracking database (Windows Azure SQL Database), and a storage account for monitoring and archiving. The tracking data can be useful for diagnostic purposes and to monitor what messages goes through BizTalk Service. The Tracking Database can be extended to meet your own tracking requirements, see W...

Windows Azure BizTalk Services (WABS) is general available now as a service within Windows Azure. To test or debug your Windows Azure BizTalk Service Bridge you can rely on using the BizTalk Service Explorer. This explorer is similar to another Visual Studio add-in like the Service Bus or Windows Azure Storage. The BizTalk Service explorer offers the following features: Browsing artifacts in you BizTalk Service Explore tracked events within your bridge Upload and download artifacts Restarting the BizTalk service Test and debug bridges Installation and configuration The explorer for WABS can be added within Visual Studio via extensions and updates, where you can search for in the Visual Studio Gallery. To add this explorer you need to go to Tools within Visual Studio. Subsequently you go to Extensions and updates… You then search in the Visual Studio Gallery online. You can now add a BizTalk Service(s) you have provisioned in Windows Azure. By simple right cli...