BizTalk Server as an EDI Gateway

BizTalk Server is being improved for service as an Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) gateway. Shown here is a custom EDI gateway system (center) that uses BizTalk Server to manage exchanges of EDI messages with customers over the Internet.

For example, when a customer sends an EDI order (1), the BizTalk Server EDI adapter (2) translates the order from an EDI format (such as EDIFACT) into the internal XML message format used by BizTalk Server. The resulting XML message goes to a custom orchestration (essentially a transaction program) that handles the order (3). The orchestration eventually sends two XML messages: One to the company’s mySAP ERP system to process the order, and one to its Siebel CRM system to record the customer contact. Adapters for mySAP and Siebel CRM translate these XML messages into vendor-specific message formats (iDocs for mySAP, an XML format for Siebel CRM) and transmit them to their respective targets (4).

Administrators can monitor the system in this example through a browser interface or from an Office application such as Excel via BizTalk Server’s Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) interface. Custom application logic, such as the orchestration, is developed in the Visual Studio environment, using BizTalk-specific plug-ins for defining message translations, business rules, and orchestrations.