A few days late, but BizTalk 2010 is finally finished. The European BizTalk Conference I attended were meant to be the release party, but the product just missed the deadline. Now it's here though.
I'm mostly looking forward to the new and improved mapper but the enhanced granularity of performance settings as well as a standard SFTP adapter and integration with AppFabric is nice additions as well. Now I just hope for a project to kick off where this new version is chosen as the platform to use.
Showing posts with label BizTalk Server 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BizTalk Server 2010. Show all posts
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
European BizTalk Conference recap
I'm back at the office after two days at Microsoft in Stockholm and the European BizTalk Conference where I enjoyed myself together with another 150 attendees. A good event as always with the BizTalk User Group Sweden and great sessions that mostly covered the platform around BizTalk for a change.
The three speakers, Richard Seroter, Stephen W. Thomas and Ewan Fairweather, are three of the five authors of the recently published book Applied architecture patterns on the Microsoft platform, which in turn caused the event to follow the basic chapter layout of the book (a book I will review as soon as I have browsed through my copy).
Day one consisted to a large extent of sessions on the different technologies that are available. SQL Server, BizTalk 2010, AppFabric, Azure and WF 4.0 were covered. Day two had sessions covering scenarios where each of the technologies were used in the solution. On this second day, StreamInsight was used in a presentation as well as the last technology presented at the conference. All sessions got taped and so videos should be up on the net within a few weeks I presume.
A very important lesson learned at the conference was a discussion on the anxiety of BizTalk developers considering all this new technology emerging. The speakers made a strong point that BizTalk is not to be replaced by AppFabric, WF 4.0, StreamInsight, SQL Server functionality and whatever there might be. All this new technology can and will instead be used as a complement to BizTalk in order to leverage functionality that previously was hard or impossible to pull off using solely the BizTalk platform. A good example of this was shown in the StreamInsight session with a vast amount of data being streamed and analyzed in realtime.
All in all, a good two days with the crème de la crème of BizTalkers in the region as well as a few from further away in the world.
The three speakers, Richard Seroter, Stephen W. Thomas and Ewan Fairweather, are three of the five authors of the recently published book Applied architecture patterns on the Microsoft platform, which in turn caused the event to follow the basic chapter layout of the book (a book I will review as soon as I have browsed through my copy).
Day one consisted to a large extent of sessions on the different technologies that are available. SQL Server, BizTalk 2010, AppFabric, Azure and WF 4.0 were covered. Day two had sessions covering scenarios where each of the technologies were used in the solution. On this second day, StreamInsight was used in a presentation as well as the last technology presented at the conference. All sessions got taped and so videos should be up on the net within a few weeks I presume.
A very important lesson learned at the conference was a discussion on the anxiety of BizTalk developers considering all this new technology emerging. The speakers made a strong point that BizTalk is not to be replaced by AppFabric, WF 4.0, StreamInsight, SQL Server functionality and whatever there might be. All this new technology can and will instead be used as a complement to BizTalk in order to leverage functionality that previously was hard or impossible to pull off using solely the BizTalk platform. A good example of this was shown in the StreamInsight session with a vast amount of data being streamed and analyzed in realtime.
All in all, a good two days with the crème de la crème of BizTalkers in the region as well as a few from further away in the world.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Biztalk Server 2009r2 is to be known as BizTalk Server 2010
There was a mail discussion today between a number of consultants at work regarding the upcoming BizTalk Server version. It was previously known as BizTalk Server 2009r2 but was announced this week to be named BizTalk Server 2010.
There were a few concerned voices about what customers that just purchased BizTalk 2009 are going to think about Microsofts name changing move. I myself cannot see a reason to be too concerned though, but rather see it as the correct decision from both Microsoft as well as the customers that just got BizTalk Server 2009.
I believe (without having talked to anyone at Microsoft) that the reason for changing the name is mainly two-fold: Firstly, the name will synch with Visual Studio 2010. Secondly, and probably most important, the name change will reset the support cycle for the product. If a 2009r2 release were to be, its support cycle would be based on the release date of the 2009 version. Now they will reset it to the day in this year that the 2010 version will be out. Since BizTalk Server vNext will be a bigger change in the platform partly due to AppFabric, it's vital to have a longer support cycle for the versions being released before vNext.
While 2010 will bring a few neat things that I'm looking forward to (a proper SFTP-adapter and new mapping tool among others), the customers that have 2009 will still not miss out on any major things. It's especially not worth delaying a roll-out of the BizTalk platform (or upgrade) based on the improvements we get this year.
So all in all, it feels as the correct move by Microsoft, and everybody should be happy.
There were a few concerned voices about what customers that just purchased BizTalk 2009 are going to think about Microsofts name changing move. I myself cannot see a reason to be too concerned though, but rather see it as the correct decision from both Microsoft as well as the customers that just got BizTalk Server 2009.
I believe (without having talked to anyone at Microsoft) that the reason for changing the name is mainly two-fold: Firstly, the name will synch with Visual Studio 2010. Secondly, and probably most important, the name change will reset the support cycle for the product. If a 2009r2 release were to be, its support cycle would be based on the release date of the 2009 version. Now they will reset it to the day in this year that the 2010 version will be out. Since BizTalk Server vNext will be a bigger change in the platform partly due to AppFabric, it's vital to have a longer support cycle for the versions being released before vNext.
While 2010 will bring a few neat things that I'm looking forward to (a proper SFTP-adapter and new mapping tool among others), the customers that have 2009 will still not miss out on any major things. It's especially not worth delaying a roll-out of the BizTalk platform (or upgrade) based on the improvements we get this year.
So all in all, it feels as the correct move by Microsoft, and everybody should be happy.
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