Application Integration and E-Commerce Overview

BizTalk 2006 R2 delivers better support for electronic data interchange (EDI) and radio frequency identification (RFID) devices, among other new features. Released in Sept. 2007, R2 also includes integration with the Windows Communications Framework, which is now Microsoft’s primary messaging API and the focus of the company’s future integration and Web services development. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 also incorporates the Host Integration Server 2006 mainframe/integration product and adapters based on that product which were released after BizTalk Server 2006. Host Integration Server is no longer available as a separate product.

A BizTalk Adapter Pack planned for the first half of 2008 will deliver new adapters for mySAP ERP, Siebel CRM, and Oracle databases; the adapter pack will be a free add-on to BizTalk Server 2006 R2. The next major BizTalk Server release after R2 (labeled BizTalk Server V6 here, but not yet named) will deliver a new engine that uses the Windows Workflow Foundation (also part of the .NET Framework 3.0) for orchestration and the Windows Communication Foundation for messaging. These changes could simplify development of BizTalk Server solutions, but solutions built for BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and earlier will probably not run unmodified on the new V6 engine.