• Sidebar: BizTalk Absorbs Host Integration
• Chart: BizTalk Server Editions

BizTalk Server 2006 R2, released in Sept. 2007, delivers important improvements to Microsoft's application integration and business process management product. Specifically, R2 improves the product's Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) support and enables tracking of Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags. R2 also connects BizTalk Server to new workflow and messaging APIs that will play an important role in future products, including BizTalk Server itself. This release could bring in new BizTalk customers and will attract existing customers interested in EDI and RFID, but many existing BizTalk Server applications could remain on current versions.

With BizTalk Server 2006 R2, Microsoft also has discontinued the Host Integration Server product; all features of that product are now available in all editions of BizTalk Server 2006 R2. (See the sidebar "BizTalk Absorbs Host Integration".)

No Radical Technical Changes

BizTalk 2006 R2 is the fifth version of a server product that supports three key functions:

• Management of business processes—such as purchasing approval—that involve both people and applications
• Enterprise application integration (EAI), such as connecting a company's warehouse and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems
• Business-to-business e-commerce, such as the exchange of purchase orders among business partners.

Customers do not use BizTalk Server out of the box but instead write BizTalk applications that run on the product's engine. Key components of the engine include an orchestration component that can manage long-running transactions across multiple applications and users, and a messaging component that handles interapplication communication and translates among application-specific protocols and data formats. A feature called Business Activity Monitoring enables users to track the progress of BizTalk Server—managed processes in a browser or Office.

R2 uses the same basic BizTalk Server engine that was introduced in BizTalk Server 2004 and carried forward to BizTalk Server 2006. Consequently, it supports upgrade-in-place and will run most existing BizTalk applications without change. However, it does add significant new capabilities on top of the current engine.

EDI, RFID Lead New Capabilities

R2's main new capabilities fall in the areas of EDI, RFID tags, and support for the latest version of Microsoft's .NET Framework development platform.

Electronic Data Interchange

R2 delivers a completely reworked system for EDI, a family of technologies for automated exchange of business-to-business messages, such as purchase orders and shipping notices. EDI speeds supply chain operations and other processes in manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and other industries.

Among other improvements, R2 can validate and generate many more types of EDI messages than its predecessors, including all of the ANSI X12 messages required by the U.S. Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). R2 also builds in support for AS2, a protocol for securely transmitting EDI messages over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP, the primary Web protocol), and enables both inbound and outbound EDI messages to be grouped in batches for more efficient transmission and processing.

Furthermore, the Standard and Enterprise Editions of R2 will include Microsoft's formerly separate BizTalk Server accelerators. The accelerators are BizTalk applications that support specific EDI standards, including HL7 (healthcare), SWIFT (financial), and RosettaNet (manufacturing). This change results in a deep price cut for customers using these EDI standards, as the accelerators formerly cost from US$5,000 to US$20,000 per processor.

The improvements will enable more organizations to use BizTalk Server as an EDI gateway. However, some EDI customers will still need to augment BizTalk Server with add-ons, such as the Cactus Commerce's Global Data Synchronization accelerator for product catalog data. Also, the R2 EDI system is not compatible with the BizTalk Server Basic EDI Adapter, which supports EDI in earlier versions of BizTalk. Organizations can still run the Basic EDI Adapter on R2, but they will have to port EDI solutions to the new R2 EDI technology if they want to take advantage of new EDI capabilities.

Radio Frequency ID

R2 provides new support for RFID tags, inexpensive data storage chips that can transmit and receive data wirelessly. RFID tags supplement or replace bar codes and magnetic stripes to enable more efficient tracking of identity cards, shipments, medicine bottles, farm animals, and other high-value items.

R2 delivers a standard API and driver interface that enables business applications (including BizTalk applications) to communicate with and control devices that read and write RFID tags. It also provides an API and rules engine for filtering noise from incoming RFID data, a critical requirement. The R2 RFID technology, which is already supported by many RFID device manufacturers, could simplify RFID application development by supporting the most basic development tasks (such as filtering) and enabling applications to work with any supported RFID device.

.NET Messaging and Workflow APIs

R2 delivers several components to support the .NET Framework 3.0, the latest version of Microsoft's primary developer platform. These components will become more important as Microsoft and other developers make more use of that platform, which ships preinstalled in Windows Vista (and the upcoming Windows Server 2008) and which runs on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

Specifically, R2 delivers two new components that enable applications to send and receive messages over the .NET Framework's Windows Communication Foundation messaging API. The Communication Foundation is supported in some Microsoft technologies today: for example, it can be used to communicate with workflows created with the Windows Workflow Foundation workflow engine, which is built into the .NET Framework 3.0 and used by SharePoint Server and other Microsoft products. Moreover, the Communication Foundation appears set to become the standard cross-application communication mechanism for future versions of Microsoft products, including Office and the SQL Server Integration Services data integration feature. The Communication Foundation also supports the WS-* Web services protocols that IBM, Microsoft, and other vendors are promoting for cross-vendor application integration.

R2's components for Communication Foundation connectivity include the following:

Communication Foundation Adapters for BizTalk Server. A collection of adapters enables BizTalk applications to send and receive Communication Foundation messages over various transport protocols (including HTTP and Microsoft Message Queuing). These adapters will be most useful for connecting Communications Foundation messaging applications to other applications and business processes using BizTalk Server as a hub. For example, an organization might use the adapter to connect a Workflow Foundation workflow for handling customer e-mail to the organization's accounting and sales applications via BizTalk Server.

Line-of-Business Adapter SDK. This SDK, also available separately from R2, enables developers to create custom Communication Foundation adapters for specific business applications. The custom adapters created do not require BizTalk Server: they directly extend the Communication Foundation to support specific business application APIs and communications mechanisms. A developer would use the SDK to enable a business application to communicate over the Communication Foundation. The application could then communicate directly with other applications that support the Communication Foundation (such as SharePoint Server workflows), or indirectly through BizTalk Server and the R2 Communication Foundation adapters.

Microsoft itself will develop adapters with the Line-of-Business Adapter SDK. Specifically, it will ship adapters for mySAP ERP, Siebel CRM, and Oracle databases in a BizTalk Adapter Pack, which will be a free add-on to R2 and will also be sold separately. The Adapter Pack is currently available as a Community Technical Preview and is planned for production release in the first half of 2008.

Apart from Communication Foundation messaging support, R2 also delivers Business Activity Monitoring interceptors for the Communication Foundation and Workflow Foundation. The interceptors capture events in business applications that use these APIs, enabling organizations to monitor the applications with BizTalk Server's tools and generate reports on the progress of business processes (such as approval processes) that use the monitored applications.

Evaluation and Future Directions

R2's expanded EDI and RFID features will probably attract some first-time BizTalk Server customers, continuing the product's rapid recent growth (it has gone from around 4,000 customers to around 7,000 in two and a half years). However, existing BizTalk Server customers will have to carefully evaluate upgrades to R2. The most likely candidates for upgrades are customers that have Software Assurance on BizTalk Server, and that are considering new or substantially expanded BizTalk applications for EDI or RFID.

Following R2 in one to two years will be a new version (not officially named, but sometimes referred to as V6) that will deliver a new engine. The new engine will rely on the Workflow Foundation for orchestration and the Communication Foundation for messaging. Developers can already preview one part of the V6 messaging architecture: the V6 messaging adapter framework will probably resemble the one implemented today by the Line-of-Business Adapter SDK.

Other priorities for V6 include the following:

• Better integration with SharePoint Server to support communication with users (as opposed to software) involved in business processes
• Improved application deployment and management
• Integration with Microsoft-hosted online services (currently being tested under the name BizTalk Services) to support business-to-business processes.

Existing BizTalk Server solutions will not run unmodified on the new V6 engine. However Microsoft intends to ship the existing BizTalk Server orchestration engine side by side with the new one so that customers can continue to run existing BizTalk Server orchestrations on the V6 product.

Enterprise Price Increase; New Branch Edition

As its "R2" designation implies, R2 is not a free upgrade for all BizTalk Server 2006 customers: only customers who have purchased Software Assurance upgrade rights on their licenses receive a free upgrade. R2 retains the BizTalk Server licensing model: it is licensed per processor, except for the specialized Developer Edition, which is licensed per user. However, for Enterprise Edition (only), processor licenses apply to physical processors, not virtual machines, so a fully licensed computer can run any number of instances of BizTalk Server 2006 R2 in virtual machines. (See the chart "BizTalk Server Editions".)

The price of Enterprise Edition has risen by US$5,000. R2 also introduces a new Branch Edition that costs considerably less than Standard. Branch Edition is intended as a lower-cost platform for satellite installations dedicated to a single application. For example, a warehouse might use BizTalk Server Branch Edition to track incoming and outgoing RFID tags, and upload relevant data to a supply chain management application via BizTalk Server Enterprise Edition. However, Branch Edition lacks some features of the Standard and Enterprise Editions, notably the bundled accelerators and the adapters for business applications such as mySAP ERP. Branch Edition can run at most one BizTalk application, that application must communicate with a BizTalk Server Enterprise Edition installation, and the application cannot be used for business-to-business transactions.

Resources

New R2 EDI features are outlined in "BizTalk Electronic Data Interchange Reworked" on page 10 of the May 2007 Update.

R2 RFID capabilities are explained in "RFID Software Planned" on page 20 of the July 2007 Update.

BizTalk Server support for new workflow and messaging APIs in both R2 and V6 are discussed in "Future BizTalk Could Change Workflow, Messaging" on page 36 of the June 2007 Update.

Host Integration Server 2006 adapters and product features are previewed in "Host Integration Server Updated for .NET, BizTalk" on page 12 of the Apr. 2007 Update.

The BizTalk Server Web site is www.microsoft.com/biztalk.

The Line-of-Business Adapter SDK for the Windows Communication Foundation is available at www.microsoft.com/biztalk/technologies/wcflobadaptersdk.mspx.