Messaging, Workflow Roadmap Announced

A project code-named Oslo will deliver updated messaging and workflow technologies in the next version of BizTalk Server and other products starting in 2009. These technologies are central to Microsoft’s platform for service-oriented architectures and composite applications, which many architects believe are a faster and less costly way to build new business applications. Understanding Oslo can help organizations choose the right technologies for applications today, but Oslo is still far off and represents a broader vision that might never be realized in full.

Backing Service-Oriented Architectures

Oslo is not a product but a project to update Microsoft technologies for service-oriented architectures, and for composite applications built on those architectures.

A service-oriented architecture is one in which the functions of major business applications (for example, a company’s enterprise resource planning [ERP] system) are made available as Web services, large-scale software components that communicate by exchanging messages as described in published message interfaces, or “contracts.” For example, a hospital might create Web services for patient administration, lab scheduling, and clinical records on top of its existing ERP installation and clinical systems. Oslo will deliver Microsoft’s next generation of messaging APIs, tools and services for building such Web services on Windows.